Being Emily (27 page)

At the end of the day, she believed in a God who took care of His people, not one who hurt and limited them without reason. It came down to a choice between two worlds. She could look for weeks for answers and still it would be a matter of faith and belief. What did she believe to be true about this world she lived in? Did she believe that God made some people homosexual and transsexual just so they would have to overcome that? Or did she believe in a God who so loved variety and diversity that He created all manner of things and loved them all as they were?

Put that way, the choice was clear. Her God had always been a loving God not a legalistic God. Jesus had said:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
She was drawn to the image of Jesus as bridegroom by the same idea that captured her attention in the Song of Solomon where God was represented by the lover. It was that quality of love: deep, vast and unalterable. She knew God loved her that way and she tried her best to return it. Her relationship with Chris couldn’t compare to that, but she tried to take care of him as best she knew how.

She realized that she might be the only person in Emily’s life who could reflect to her the kind of love that God had for everyone. Maybe that’s what she was here for.
Unless it was really all about her learning to wear eye shadow.

Claire laughed and pushed herself up off the stone on the riverbank. Actually, in a way, it was both about Emily and eye shadow, she realized. Over the last six months she’d gone from being terrified and confused to knowing she would fight for Emily’s right to be herself—and fighting for Emily was fighting for herself too.

Standing with the cooling air on her face, Claire saw the pattern coming together. Emily was just the visible edge but everyone had parts of themselves that they were afraid to show. The more she spoke up for Emily, the more Claire felt those parts in herself come forward: the vulnerable, soft, creative elements of her own being.

She thought of a half dozen spiritual quotes that expressed that idea, but she didn’t need to look up any of them. The connection between her and Emily and all the people in the world was for
a moment shiningly clear
in the early evening’s golden sunlight.

I thought we were going to a movie, but Claire told me to drive to Dr. Mendel’s office. At first, I just stared at her because I couldn’t figure out what movie theater or restaurant was anywhere near that office park. In addition, Claire was actually wearing a red T-shirt with her jeans, which made me wonder what was going on with her.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you have an appointment,” she said.

“No I don’t.”

“Come on, drive, we’re going to be late. I made you an appointment with Dr. Mendel. Hit the gas.”

As I turned the car in the direction of her office, my heart started lifting and the headache around my eyes relaxed. I didn’t dare hope that I would get time with the doctor.

“How did you make me an appointment?” I asked Claire.

“It’s called a telephone,” she said. “You punch in numbers and someone answers, remember?”

At the office building she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the waiting room. Dr. Mendel smiled when she saw us sitting there, and I’m sure we were quite a sight with me slump-shouldered in my chair and Claire gripping my hand as if I was going to bolt. And I suppose if it had been Dr. Webber instead of Dr. Mendel, I would have. Instead I let Claire pull me into her room and push me toward the couch. Claire remained standing.

“Chris is all messed up,” she told Dr. Mendel. “She won’t tell me all of it, but I’m hoping she’ll tell you. Dr. Webber’s been saying some crap to her, and I think she’s starting to buy it. Can you straighten her out? Err, so to speak.”

“I’ll try,” Dr. Mendel said.

Her reading glasses hung over her chest, taking the place of the pearls that she wore when my parents came to the appointment. She had on
a bluish
lavender knit sweater with short sleeves and I loved the color. It made her bright blue eyes really stand out, but when she turned them to me, the lines around them were tight with concern.

“Great, I’ll be waiting,” Claire announced and skipped out of the room.

I stared at the closed door. “She just told me about this,” I said.

“You don’t look well,” Dr. Mendel offered. She pulled her chair two feet closer to the couch and sat down close enough that I could have reached forward and touched her knee. “Have you been taking care of yourself?”

“No,” I admitted. “Life has pretty much sucked after we left here. Mom grounded me for life, Dad doesn’t talk much,
I
ran out of hormones so I’m a rage-monster again. And then I freaked out after this dinner thing. Well, Mom freaked out first, but I really lost it and started cutting up my boy clothes and beating the crap out of my door.”

“You didn’t hurt yourself?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I couldn’t.”

“That’s good.”

“And then they asked me to go back to Dr. Webber and said if I saw him for a month I could go get hormones.”

“That’s an interesting strategy,” Dr. Mendel said neutrally. I got the impression that “interesting” was a euphemism for “screwed up.”

“He’s crazy,” I told her. “He thinks he can cure me of my
transsexualism
. He thinks I get off on thinking about myself as a woman.”

“What do you think?” Dr. Mendel asked. Something in her voice got me—the way she just asked and then got quiet to listen to me. She really wanted to know and whatever she believed, one way or the other, she wasn’t going to push it on me.

I started crying. The tears felt hot on my cheeks, not like all the helpless tears I’d cried in the past few weeks, these were pure grief mixed with the hurt and rage and fear that I needed to get out of me. She handed me tissues and let me cry for what seemed like the whole hour.

“I don’t think I’m crazy,” I managed at last. “I don’t think this is all in my head. I just know I’m a girl, that’s all. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand?”

“Probably for many of the same reasons it was hard for you,” she said, and I was able to smile because of how gently she reminded me that I’d had years to understand what it meant to be transsexual and my family only had a few weeks.

After a pause to let her words sink in, she continued. “I know there’s a simple answer to this question, but I want you to look beyond it: why are you so hurt by what Dr. Webber says?”

“I feel insulted,” I said, “but that’s the simple answer. And I feel invalidated, like he doesn’t really see me at all. And I’m afraid—sometimes, I’m afraid he might be right.”

She nodded, so I went on.

“You know, I have some girl clothes that I’ve worn out in the world a few times, and before Mom went nuts sometimes I’d just get up in the middle of the night and put them on. I liked to surf the web and stuff when I was dressed like myself. But sometimes when I’d get dressed up in the girl clothes, I would get aroused, like Dr. Webber says. I get afraid that maybe I’m just deluding myself and maybe I am a guy who gets his kicks dressing up like a girl.”

She nodded again. “You’re worried that if you get an erection while wearing women’s clothing that you’re a fetishist or cross-dresser and not a real transsexual?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing I was
blushing
a deep beet color.

“You know there’s no such thing as a test for a ‘true transsexual’ by which we could determine externally whether it’s right for someone to transition or not. Only you can say if this is who you are and what you need,” she said. “But I can tell you a few things that might help you answer it for yourself. There isn’t a one-to-one connection between getting an erection sometimes and being aroused by the idea of wearing women’s clothing. As I understand it, you’re basically thrilled any time you get to participate in life as a girl.”

“Of course,” I said.

“And your body doesn’t always know the difference between that excitement and arousal. Certainly not at your age with all the hormones you have coursing through your body as an adolescent. Have you noticed other times when you get an erection for seemingly no reason at all? Or when you’re excited about something but not necessarily turned on sexually?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“Do you find women’s clothing sexually exciting?” she asked.

I thought about it. “Not really. I mean, not the clothes themselves. But sometimes when I’m in them I think about having a real woman’s body and what that would feel like to be able to touch someone and be touched without feeling like the Frankenstein monster.”

“Frankenstein?” she queried.       

“Like I have extra parts clumsily bolted on,” I said, so embarrassed by this whole conversation that I thought I’d probably melt through the floor before the session ended.

“That makes sense to me,” she said. “As I said, you’re the only one who can say what’s going on in your mind, but I don’t think it’s unusual for a person who knows
herself
to be a woman to be aroused by the idea of being made love to as a woman. If you’re aroused by the idea of being a man who presents as a woman, we should talk about that. For example, if some of the arousal comes from the idea of being discovered as a man, or perhaps being a man who is somehow forced into womanhood. Those are both also valid ways to be.”

“No, I don’t want to be a man at all, I never have.”

She smiled. “No one else has the right to tell you who you are, no matter what degrees they have. Are you committed to going to the rest of your appointments with Dr. Webber?”

“I want the hormones, and that’s the only way my parents are going to let me have them.”

“Then let me give you one bit of advice, though I’m not in the habit of doing that: Don’t get angry at the rain.”

“What?”

“When it rains and you get wet, you just dry off again. You know it’s not raining on you personally, so you don’t get upset at it. You know the rain falls on everyone the same way. You just take whatever steps you need to dry off and take care of yourself. Dr. Webber is like that. He’s just raining and it’s falling on you, but it’s not personal. He would treat any teen
who
came to him and said ‘I’m transsexual’ that way; he’s not addressing who you are, Emily, as an individual.”

I’d have hugged her, but she was a therapist and I didn’t know if that was cool, so when we stood up I just shook her hand for a long time. Before I opened the door, I paused. “My mom and dad don’t know I’m here, do they?”

“I doubt
it,
Claire set up the appointment and paid for it.”

“She paid for it? Wow. Can I do that too?”

“Of course you can. Just call a few days in advance and we’ll set it up.”

I slipped out to the waiting room and half-lifted Claire out of her chair into a huge hug.

“Hey it worked,” she exclaimed. “I got you back.”

I kissed her. “You’re a great protector,” I said.

“Claire the Mighty,” she grinned.

***

I couldn’t say I was looking forward to the next trip to Dr. Webber, but at least I wasn’t dreading it quite so much. I even played with him a little bit. At one point I volunteered, “I’ll tell you some of the fantasies I have about being a woman.”

“Go on,” he said.

I was trying hard not to smile. “In one, I go out to dinner with my girlfriend, Claire, and the waiter says ‘What would you ladies like to order?’
Oh,
and then there’s the one where I’m shopping, and I go to use the women’s restroom and there’s another woman in there and she looks at me and says ‘Nice shoes.’”

Mostly I put up with him trying to guy-bond with me, and talked about my childhood memories of my dad. Dr. Mendel’s advice made a big difference in the visits too. No matter how stupid they got, I’d come home and take a shower and imagine washing off any crap he said, and then I’d towel off and imagine I was drying off the rain.

“It’s not personal,” I’d look at myself in the mirror and say until it sank in. And then I’d go down to dinner.

Most of August was one of the strangest times of my life. Now that I was out to my parents, I didn’t try so hard to act like a guy. Slowly, I started being myself as best I could and a weight lifted off my shoulders and skull. Around the house, though, my self-expression met with mixed results