TOP DOG PRESS
TOP DOG PRESS
On Growing Older in an Unfriendly Place
I was never cut out to be a revolutionary. Oh, I had my share of skirmishes when I was a young queer. The white punks yelling names and throwing beer bottles at me from the doorway of the corner bar. The lady from the Employment and Training consortium telling me I had to dress nicer - more like a girl - or no one would hire me. The co-worker on the 11 to 7 shift unloading UPS trailers asking me if I was a lezzie. The college classmate who knew perfectly well I was a lezzie, asking in all seriousness how two women could possibly "do it," because she was straight and she just couldn't imagine, like, how. But that was in the dawn of time, when a lesbian really was the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion, and we were warriors, then. Now lesbians are all the rage, and on a bad day it seems like all the femmes sleep with men and all the butches are taking T, and I am too old to be a pansy faggot butch leatherdaddy in a female body, too old to be anybody's boi, too old to even think of living as a man before they'd let me have my crazy papers. I like my safe blue-collar government job and my customers who think of me as the mail lady. I like living with the same big butch woman who has loved this body and slept with it no matter what, just like she loved and slept next to that stinky old mutt she moved in with twenty years ago. I like playing with the occasional femme bottom and the even more occasional boi bottom, and I dream of a tough butch top who wouldn't mind beating the shit out of somebody who looks, when naked, just like their Irish spinster maiden auntie with a crew cut, and maybe even fucking her, too. I like cuddling up in a big warm heap with all the dogs and cats and my sweetie, and sleeping in that apolitical, unhygienic bliss every night that God grants me. I like my life. And I am not brave.
To spit in the face of a world that says there are only two genders, assigned at birth, takes courage. I don't have it. It takes courage, in a world of only two genders, to choose the one that the rest of society considers inappropriate. I can't claim for myself the masculine pronouns, even though they make more sense in the depth of my being than "she" and "her" ever did. I attended a discussion once, in which one of the panelists described the research project she and her team had undertaken, which found that, in a society where masculine is the default, it takes seven female cues to outweigh one male one. It would require jewelry and make-up, visible breasts and girly clothes, as well as an air of deference - besides the hairless face and alto voice I already possess - to persuade supermarket cashiers to consistently call me "ma'am" instead of "sir." I'd rather be called "sir," in fact, but I prefer to get away with my groceries than try to explain. I haven't any gumption left for explanations. What I've got is a 30-year mortgage, three dogs, seven cats, two jobs, and a spiritual community that would gladly give my girlfriend and me a marriage certificate, if we wanted one. I don't have courage. I've got laugh lines and incipient jowls, neck wattles and gray hairs. I've got a lover who takes high blood pressure medicine and a geriatric Lab. I've got memories of a lesbian community defined primarily by separatists, and memories of an adolescence when I was terribly afraid that there was something wrong with me, besides the fact that I was a nerdy social misfit, and ugly, to boot. I am glad to the bottom of my heart to know that the world has changed, but I can't claim that I was one of the ones to change it.
Instead, I've always chosen the path of least resistance. I went to a women's college and spared myself the usual indoctrination into competitive heterosexuality. I got a job where nobody cares what I wear and I can't be fired for anything short of actual violence. I live in the small town where my girlfriend grew up, the place she calls home, which (as everyone knows) is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, you and your weird-ass butch lover, too. I was lucky enough to find a true love who is practically bombproof. Kinky polyamory? No problem - well, not much. Post-traumatic stress nightmares? They'll pass. A long-lost sister who talks non-stop to the television? As long as we've gone deaf by the time she has to live with us, we'll be fine. What's a little dysphoria after all of that? The state of being genderqueer hasn't been too hard to live in, with a life so blessed.
It's only my body that's become untenable real estate. To say it's betraying me would be too dramatic, since it's never been much of a friend. Having had asthma since I was 6, I spent my childhood (not to mention most of my adulthood) being bookish and uncoordinated. Until adolescence, being a girl was only a minor nuisance, thanks to the fact that my father had wanted a boy and could almost forget he hadn't got one. True, puberty was a nightmare. Being a girl meant this? Breasts - the horrible, useless things jiggled when I moved and bounced when I ran. A bra might have helped, but bras had straps, and straps got snapped by the boys who used to be my friends and equals but now considered me an alien species. They made jokes. They stared. I hid my extremely unwanted tits under baggy sweatshirts and developed a permanent slouch. At least menstruation didn't show - if you were lucky and (like a scout) Always Prepared. I came to tampons early and didn't give a crap whether they destroyed my technical virginity. As soon as my period became predictable, I settled down to a lifetime of ignoring it. My body was not my friend, but I could live with it, and even learned to enjoy it. I was never stone.
Now, this.
It's not enough that my ovaries gave me tits, flab, PMS, monthly bleeding, and second-class citizenship. Now they're dying, and they're not going gentle into that good night. My doctor calls it perimenopause. I call it hell. Periods that show up four days early or six days late? Got 'em. A period that stops after three days, making me think I got off easy for once, then comes back with a vengeance two days later? Just infrequently enough that I'm always fooled, ha-ha, gotcha! How about the disgusting sludge-like brown ooze that continues for up to two whole weeks after my period was supposed to be over? Sometimes I think that's gone, too, then it comes back in the middle of a fuck. Oh, how charming. But even so, it's not the worst. I can ignore nearly anything physical; the Stoics had nothing on me. Friends compare my attitudes regarding eating and sleeping to medieval religious practices for the mortification of the flesh. I am always decorated with bruises I have no idea how I got, having simply failed to notice the pain when it was inflicted. However unpredictable and ugly menstruation might become, I can grit my teeth and wait it out.
It's what the wacky hormones are doing to my emotional state that's the real pisser. I used to be able to look at a calendar and tell myself: I don't need to make a list of my fifty biggest worries so I can stay up all night and figure out their priority -- it's just PMS. I could wait out the anxiety, the weepiness, the tendency to take offense at innocuous comments and start wondering if my girlfriend was going to leave me. It's just my stupid female body. Forget it.
Now, even when my period is nowhere in sight - or at least I don't think it is - I find myself feeling like everything is going wrong and it's all my fault. I have to fix it. I can't leave it alone until I figure out how. Roadkill frogs get me choked up. My incredibly evil Bitch Boss from Hell enrages me and I think I can't stay at this horrible job another minute. Since even at the best of times I am not exactly a laid-back personality, such emotional hyperintensity makes me hard for even me to live with. What if I'm just going crazy? What if it's all just stuff gurgling up from the uncharted depths of my subconscious ("Mom? Is that you?") and it will never end?
At 45, there are days when I think I've crested the hill, and I can see pretty much all that there is to look forward to. Remembering my grandmother, whose genes seem to have passed to me nearly undiluted, I know what I'll look like when I'm ancient. On cold damp mornings when my fingers ache, I think of my father's big knobby knuckles, swollen with arthritis and still scabbed and dinged from the wounds he received, unnoticed, doing carpentry and car mechanics. He hardly had time to enjoy a retirement bashing his hands to bits before a heart attack took him out, and I think of that sometimes, too, when an unfamiliar chest pain catches me by surprise in the midst of my too-often-angry, workaholic life. It's cosmic irony to be protected from his fate by the X chromosome he gave me, instead of the Y chromosome I would have preferred, and have the chance to live to 90 like his mother, instead of dying at 61, like him. With health insurance, miracle drugs for the asthma, and all the exercise I never got as a kid, I am actually in pretty good shape. I start thinking I can coast the rest of the way; then my body throws me for that old perimenopausal loop.
I don't know how much of this I can stand. At my most rational I think of Patrick Califia, who decided to transition largely because of the havoc menopause was wreaking on his already-compromised health. After many years of rejecting the possibility, he embraced it. But Patrick Califia had - and has - courage. I try to imagine what transition might entail, besides relief from my body's hormonal distress and escape from the confines of being female in a culture that still, deep down, fears and despises women. I think about testosterone, and facial hair. I'd like to grow a beard - a goatee and a mustache, in the current fashion. It would hide my receding chin - hurrah! I might actually have muscles to show for all my weight-lifting, although considering my scrawny and chicken-chested father, there's no guarantee. I imagine my hips and belly melting away. I imagine having an insatiable interest in sex. It's all good.
But imagining the process, I realize that I would have to endure not only psychotherapy - therapists make my teeth itch - but any number of gynecological exams. The thought stops me cold. Putting my feet in the stirrups for a doctor is something I can't bring myself to do, pap smears and ovarian palpation be damned. It's not a rational thing. God knows how many girls have had my legs spread while they fucked me for public view. And my doctor is a woman. I just can't do it.
The realization is sometimes prelude to despair. If I can't embark on a gender transition and save myself from this misery, can't even go to a doctor for relief of the symptoms of menopause, what else is there? Last winter, after nearly spinning my car out on a snow-slick pavement while delivering the mail, I pulled over and wept. I never cry. The hormonal storm within was worse than the barrage of snow and freezing rain that had been making my job a living hell, day in and day out. The weather had to change eventually, but the internal chaos seemed like it would never end. I sat by the side of the road and cried, wishing for a lovely on-the-job accident that would give me a nice vacation, and if it killed me, well, I have an obscene amount of life insurance for someone with no dependents. My sweetie would be set for life. She'd miss me, but she'd get over it, and I wouldn't have to deliver any more fucking Wal-Mart circulars on any more fucking icy roads ever again. In fact, I considered, as my eyes swelled into piggy little slits and my nose dripped snot on the steering wheel, maybe I ought to just drive into a telephone pole. Nobody would even know that it wasn't an accident.
But even killing yourself takes a certain amount of courage, and I'm not that brave.
Thank God.
There's a postal clerk in a nearby town who underwent the transition from M to F, sometime since I came to work for the USPS. I don't know her, but I heard about her through the postal grapevine that flourishes through postmasters' endless hours on the telephone and clerks who drop in to neighboring installations with mis-sent tubs of mail. She's easy to spot. I see her sometimes when I go to that post office for my own personal business and have to wait on line in the lobby like anybody else. I always smile my warmest, friendliest "I'm your kind! Isn't that neat-o?" smile as I hand her my money, but if I'm looking for recognition, I'm in for a let-down. She never meets my eyes.
I try to understand why. Is she so militantly gendernormal that she dismisses any solidarity she might have had with me, because she was never queer, just the unfortunate victim of a birth defect that required surgery and hormones to correct? Is she afraid of losing what little ground she's gained, as if acknowledging me might cost her the grudging acceptance of her fellow postal workers?
Somehow, I doubt it's anything like that. I'm afraid that she's just so used to gawking and ridicule, that she never looks up at all. She weighs letters and sells stamps, punches out money orders and puts the bull's-eye on certifieds, never once meeting anyone's eye. I wonder what it must have been like, explaining to her old-school small-town postmaster boss that he - she - would be wearing women's uniforms and make-up to work. I wonder how she must have steeled herself for her co-workers' silence and the whispers and guffaws that must have erupted every time she left a room. Maybe she sidestepped the restroom issue by using the postmaster's private lavatory, if he was a nice enough guy to offer it, or did she suffer through each day not daring to drink coffee, waiting until her lunch break when she could finally race home to pee?
It's sobering to consider her life and realize how easy my own has been. I doubt I would ever have the wherewithal to face such obstacles, even with major surgery involving prosthetics. Especially when the end result is such a crap shoot.
Even so, FTMs seem to come out luckier than MTFs. The tranny guys I know look younger than the women they had been, although this is a mixed blessing at best. Do I really want to wake up one day as a wet-behind-the-ears junior male in the eyes of the world when my internal clock is pushing 50? The transition process often leaves MTFs with such glaring incongruities that they can never completely escape the notice and ridicule of the ignorant. On the other hand, some FTMs apparently gain the respect accorded to the superior sex by default. It seems that society grants more leeway to defective males: just because he's short and pretty doesn't mean he isn't a red-blooded American he-man, podner! Unless, of course, it's late at night in an alleyway and you're out to bash yourself some fags. But what about the less obvious telltales of half a life lived in another gender?
Try as I might to kill it, every now and then my inner '70's lesbian-feminist jackbooted enforcer of political correctness rears her ugly head, and I find myself clucking judgmentally over the behavior of an unsuspecting tranny girl who has just blundered by being - gasp! - too assertive. A real, female-from-birth woman would never act like that; only someone raised with male privilege would push himself into somebody's face, speak out of turn, be so self-centered, be so much like a man, and who does he think he is, anyway? As if the self-abnegation of second-class citizenship needs to be jealously guarded and zealously preserved. I'd probably just shrug her off as a pushy bitch, if I couldn't tell she was transgendered, and the realization makes me cringe. I wonder, too, what parts of my socialization would place me in the cross-hairs of the Gender Police, if I somehow got the guts to transition. Society is more forgiving of a milque-toast man than it is of a battleaxe. Men might make fun of a nelly guy who ends all his sentences with a question mark and crosses his legs at the knee, but women will probably think he's sweet. As for the pushy trans broad? We all line up to burn her at the stake. In the end, I am less worried about the gender-appropriate behavior I might get wrong, than the masculine behavior I already get too right.
Once upon a time, a girlfriend accused me, stingingly, of objectifying her. To this day I don't understand what I did wrong, as I was too mortified at the time to ask her to explain. Would I become even more of a clueless macho pig with massive doses of testosterone coursing through my veins? I seem to have an unfortunate tendency to talk to a girl's cleavage - although, to my credit, I think it only happens in places where the cleavage is being deliberately displayed for my appreciation. And the only one who has so far pointed it out is a femme who gleefully enjoys discomfiting me. But I'm sensitive. She's right. I was talking to her boobs. What if, after T, I never looked up at a woman's face again? Just shoot me now, someone.
Instead of being merely irritatingly self-conscious, would I turn into a relentlessly self-absorbed egomaniac? Instead of being an inveterate flirt, would I become an overbearing tail-chaser? Instead of being extremely opinionated, would I become a world-class pontificator? Is it all in the hormones? Is masculinity just a matter of degree?
My decision to go from female to male would probably surprise no one who knows me, not even my sister. The word "feminine" has never been used to describe me; even as far back as elementary school, my sixth-grade teacher warned my mother that I would never be a cheerleader. When my partner's 54-year-old brother finally came out as gay, he discovered that he was, in fact, the last to know. The rest of us had always wondered how he had ended up straight. I imagine a similar reaction to any decision of mine to change gender. I remember the lover, more than 20 years ago, who told me I was more like a man than any woman she'd ever met, and how thrilled I was by the compliment. Whatever social opprobrium I might meet would not likely come from the people I care about. As far as the larger world goes, I could probably do what I've always done, and pick my way carefully through the minefield, making the safest choices, choosing the easiest path.
There would be just as many advantages as drawbacks, if I decided to transition. My in-laws would probably heave a sigh of relief. I could once and for all rule out going to the Michigan Women's Music Festival and go lie on the beach in P-town, never having to wonder what I'm missing. I could do my blood pressure a favor and cancel my subscription to the Lesbian Connection. Perversely, I would feel free at last to explore my sexual attraction to males. If I had top surgery, I'd never have to wear another bra. I wouldn't even have to buy new clothes, except maybe some men's bikini briefs that look just like the cotton panties I wear now. Honestly, why buy tightie whities if I still have to pee sitting down?
Perhaps it's not so much a matter of courage, but complacency. As long as the hormones are toeing the line, I can muddle through like I always have, never feeling really happy with this stupid female body but never unhappy enough to change the corporeal status quo. However uncomfortable I am with the lesbian community, it's still my home. My fascination with masculine bodies might (I hope) blossom into some lovely play with a bisexual bio-male guy who likes to wear skirts and fishnets while still being at least as butch as me. He has a cute ass, and I'm too old to worry about labels. And I've discovered of late, that I'm not the only dyke with a Tom of Finland fetish.
I'm sure that being born female saved me from the misery my brother endured as the unready repository of all my father's expectations. Being a girl was evidence that my mother might not be completely right when she told me I was just like my father and my father was a monster. There were probably many other advantages, as well, and I'd be grateful, if only I could know what might have been.
For all my totting up the pluses and minuses and coming out short on courage, in the end, it might come down to a matter of cold, hard cash. Even if I could endure the tender ministrations of the medical profession, how would I pay for it? Blue Cross does not cover chest surgery. I doubt that I would qualify for a medically necessary hysterectomy, however horrendous the menopause; they'd just give me a scrip for Premarin. But I earn a pretty good living by working-class standards. I could probably save up for a flat chest and metoidioplasty, if I wanted them badly enough, which makes me luckier than a lot of guys for whom the price of a medical transition is hopelessly out of the question. But would I? To be honest, I'd probably rather save for a trip to Ireland. I think of the transmen who go ahead whether they have the money or not and live each day as targets for the bigotry of the gendernormal because they can't be themselves any other way, who therefore have more balls than a platoon of genetically endowed jarheads, and I feel like a schmuck. I don't have the courage? I don't have squat.
But the demon voice still whispers in the back of my mind: if I could just take a pill and wake up the next day in a fully-equipped male body, would I? The fantasy is so pleasantly far-fetched, that I can't resist spinning out all the possibilities, mostly pornographic. What's the first thing I'd do? Oh, come on. It would make a great funny dirty story, except that it's probably already been done a million times. I can't think of any off-hand but Nancy Springer's wonderful Larque on the Wing, but the converse -- waking up female -- has been the subject of writers from Virginia Woolf to Robert Heinlein. I might as well imagine waking up as a poodle. Or a giant cockroach.
But how about if I won the lottery, that nasty little voice nags, would I do it then? It's only slightly less far-fetched a possibility, but, somehow, much more frightening. I could go back to school. I could write full time. I could live in San Francisco or Provincetown or anywhere I wanted. I could be whatever I wanted. If money was no object, I could shop around for doctors I was comfortable with. Hell, I could even buy my testosterone on the black market, and do it myself, as long as I was willing to take the risk. If money was no object, would I choose gender transition? Would I?
Let me sleep on it. Maybe I'll wake up with some courage.
Sometimes I think people (including myself) would be a lot happier if we could treat our bodies with the same loving care that we give our pets. I would never make a dog work as hard as I do. I would never feed it as much junk, or ignore an illness. If I took care of my body as well as I took care of my dogs, I would give it a lot more love and a little more exercise. I would never think of making it undergo surgery for mere cosmetic reasons - the idea of tail-docking or ear-cropping, even dew-claw removal, is horrible to me. I would love it just the way it was. The only surgery I could condone is something that would improve its quality of life. Would being a man in the eyes of the world improve my life sufficiently to make the risk and pain of surgery worthwhile? And would I even win the crap shoot, and end up with a gender presentation that will convince the kid behind the counter at Burger King? (I can thank the Goddess that at least I'm tall enough - barely. Tom Cruise, I've heard, is only 5'7", too.) Dogs don't care if they're male or female. In a perfect world, would I?
Not if I could have a hysterectomy on demand, buddy. And I would never have gotten teats unless I was about to have puppies…but, no. Let's not even go there.
The real world is gray, not black or white. Gender is a spectrum. Maybe if I were less comfortable with the notion of not starting at F, not ending at M, I would be less complacent about being stuck somewhere in the middle. Maybe if my hormonal imbalance became unremittingly unlivable, I would have to invent some courage out of sheer necessity. Maybe if the current right-wing political backlash were to throw a successful putsch, I would have to get off my fence and make a stand, out where someone could see me. How much difference might it make in the world, if the mail-lady grew a mustache and stuffed a packy in her pants?
Hmmmm.
I have to admit that being brave is easier, the older I get. For years, I suffered from stage fright so crippling I couldn't play music in front of anyone, not even a teacher, even though I'd spent years learning classical guitar and lute, as well as bluegrass guitar and five-string banjo, and the music major I had otherwise completed required me to display minimal proficiency on piano to be allowed to graduate. The stage fright got so bad, I couldn't make my fingers work. So I gave up. Public speaking in any way whatsoever was impossible; it was all I could do to get up and say my name after Meeting for Worship, after I became a Quaker. Now that middle-age has guaranteed I won't win any points on looks alone, I've found myself competing in poetry slams. And winning. I no longer bat an eye at reading the most absolutely, deliciously filthy erotica in front of crowds of strangers, or dear friends, for that matter. People even ask me to sign things. I blush, but I do it, grinning like a fool. Not long ago, I MC'ed a reading, and had a great time. Stage fright - who, me?
To date, I must include in my credits a drag performance as Amos, Roxie's sad sack husband, in "Funny Honey" from the movie musical, Chicago. It was something a femme lesbian friend wanted to do for the Imperial Court of Massachusetts, as part of a fund-raiser for The Network/ La Red, which supports lesbian, bisexual and transgender victims of domestic abuse. An excellent cause, and how could I tell the lady no? I loved it. Now I spend my odd moments thinking up drag names for a character for whom not even fake facial hair will obscure the map of Ireland - Roddy O'Shaggin? Willie O'Quim? Oh, the Ancient Drag Kings at Tara! (and it's ancient that I am, for sure) - and trying to come up with a suitable musical number to lip sync. For next year.
Who knows where it will all lead?
Maybe I'll follow in the footsteps of Quentin Crisp, who made up his wrinkled old face and sent his campiest drag self out into the world, unapologetically, at an age when most queens would reasonably spend more time thinking about rheumatism than rouge. He never had to foment revolution, he just was one. Could I ever have the courage to be outrageous? I doubt that I'll ever take testosterone or go under the knife, however much I might sometimes despise this body and its sick sense of humor around the estrogen thing. I don't think I could tell my friends I'd rather be called "he" now, thank you, never mind my coworkers and the guys that work on my car. I'll never be able to spit in the face of a world that says biology is destiny.
But I really, really would love to moon it.
Ó Skian McGuire 2002