My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover (21 page)

she thought it wasn’t a great wig, like someone receiving chemother-

apy, “And you can get such good wigs now.” Ellen, when I ask, tells me

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she’s not happy with it, but it cost a thousand dollars! She wonders if they don’t rip off transsexuals.

Next time Ellen comes I’ll introduce her to the Witches. We’re

four close friends who walk around the reservoir every Tuesday and

Thursday mornings, then go to Le Pain Quotidien for cappuccino.

Lily, Fran, Patty, and I— dubbed by Patty “the Witches”— have devel-

oped a unique bond, like friendships at college with their continuous

and uninterrupted rhythm. Unlike most New York relationships,

nothing has to be compressed into an appointment, squeezed in over

lunch or on the phone; everything gets aired and discussed: books,

movies, politics, gossip, and whatever’s ailing our bodies and minds at the moment. Patty is writing a book about the influence of Schiaparelli in her life; Fran’s an ingenious and creative dresser; and Lily, who grew up in France and Italy, is the epitome of European chic. How will Ellen strike their style- savvy eyes?

In late February, accompanied by Eleanor, she will have the genital

surgery, moved up to accommodate the doctor’s schedule and also be-

cause she is deemed highly qualified by the two therapists required to

evaluate her mental state, her preparedness. It normally takes a year,

but she’s such an especially good candidate, the two therapists give her an unqualified thumbs- up in terms of how realistic her expectations

are, her mental health.

The surgery, with Eleanor accompanying her to Arizona, involves

a vaginoplasty and (four months later) a labioplasty. Reader, be warned.

Since I’ve already provided graphic details of the facial reconstruction, it seems only right to describe the genital one as well. But as they say on the news before showing pictures of carnage in the Middle East:

some of these images may be shocking. As Ellen explains it— and here

I force myself to switch to detached, biology- class mode— they first

separate the head of the penis from the shaft, but keep it attached for

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the nerves and blood vessels. Then they take the shaft and split it, removing the insides (discarded, or perhaps, as Ellen conjectures,

shipped to Japan as a delicacy), and make a cavity in the pelvic area for the vagina. They then turn the skin of the penis inside out, to form the wall of the vagina. For the labia, they use the penis head to form the

clitoris. The scrotum is then removed, followed by the testicles, and

the skin of the scrotum becomes the labia. There’s some fine- tuning,

plus another follow- up visit (Ellen will go alone), just as for the facial reconstruction. “It’s as if you begin and end life as female,” Ellen says.

Despite our inclination to recoil from such details, the procedure

is actually far simpler and less painful than the facial reconstruction, and proceeds uneventfully and with satisfaction to all except Eleanor.

For her it was heartbreaking, “the real last step,” she tells me. “Until then, believe it or not, I still felt he might change his mind, go back to being John.”

For Ellen it was a triumph: the test among transsexuals is that if

done right, neither your lover nor your gynecologist will
know. (This presuming it’s a superficial exam.) She visits her gynecologist— and

passes the test.

By now she’s accustomed to “presenting” as a woman, and so ready

to reach out to fellow residents of Pine Mountain. Having come upon

a notice on the bulletin board of a women’s group that meets monthly

for talk, book discussion, sometimes a speaker., she calls the head of it, tells her she’s a transsexual and would like to participate, but doesn’t want to offend anyone or make life awkward. Could the woman think

about it, and talk to the others? She does, they all vote to include her, and she’s become a regular member of Mountain Women. She also

volunteers at the Nature Foundation, providing information, leading

hikes.

I’m invited to give a talk at a women- in- film weekend at Kripalu,

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the yoga center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Being a sometime yoga

practitioner if not devotee, I leap at the chance. The accommodations

are even more minimal than I’d expected. At the reception desk, ar-

riving guests are greeted with neither key nor candy but a bowl of ear

plugs. People pay princely sums for dorm rooms with no locks on the

door, no phone, a “reading” lamp with barely the wattage of a night-

light. Inmates pepper the beautiful meadows like roaming cows, in

search of cellular signals to the outside world. Activities other than

yoga are discouraged, as are material possessions except those pur-

chased at the abundantly stocked gift shop.

At the panels and talks, personal experiences are more in demand

than critical analysis; the communal gatherings are predictably new-

agey, and full of deep breathing and Women- on- Women bonding, cel-

ebrating our wonderfulness. Other than meeting the fabulous Jane

Alexander, the most interesting moment for me comes at the end of

our last session, a panel on women who make movies. The talk from

the podium has concluded, the discussion is petering out, when a large

elderly woman in a pants suit comes to the front of the room.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she says, haltingly. “My name is

Jenny Stevens. This week I heard the spirit of enlightenment, the ex-

citement of possibilities for women expressed in totally positive

terms . . . by everyone but me. We talked about hope for the future of women, and I probably appreciated that more than any of you, because I have chosen to spend more of my life as the woman I have al-

ways been. This is the first time I’ve said it in front of any group: I am a transsexual woman.” She went on to describe the choices she’d made

and the pain to herself and others (she’s been a businessman with fam-

ily). She’d felt early on that the traits of the feminine gender, both good and bad (more caring, loving, intuitive, if also more bitchy), were those she wanted and needed.

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“I want to move into the ranks of the active now,” she said, and

concluded, “My favorite song used to be ‘I Enjoy Being a Girl!’ and

now it’s ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar.’ ”

At first silence, then an eruption of applause and cheers, bringing

tears to her eyes. Members of the audience rush to embrace her, in-

cluding the woman who has come with her, and amidst the general

celebration and “right- ons!” there are murmurs of “I thought so,” or “I sat by her at lunch and I was wondering.” She’s seventy, closer to the

ex- linebacker T than the “stealth” T— i.e., the ones young and/or

pretty enough to “pass.” Her voice is simply a raspy older- person’s

voice, which in a way is more neutral than Ellen’s. She’s so engaging, so happy to be among sympathetic sisters, that the delight speaks for itself. She appears neither surprised nor annoyed when some of the at-

tendees tell her they’d suspected she was a transsexual. The one word

everyone uses (as they do when hearing of my brother) is “bravery.”

Yes, it takes courage to go through with it, to risk exposure, ridicule, and danger. But to Ellen, like Jenny, it doesn’t feel as much like bravery as “realism”— a last chance to get things right, bring the inner and outer self into alignment.

After the hullabaloo has died down and people start to drift out, I

approach her and confide my own tale. She greets me as a comrade- in-

arms. We become fast friends as she describes some of her own experi-

ences and asks about my sibling’s.

She explains now, and in subsequent e- mails, that she— and prob-

ably Ellen— are “secondary” transsexuals in that “the urge keeps

growing as we get older and begin to understand ourselves and our

journeys. The primary transsexual is one who recognizes it very early

and can make the transition easier in every way, especially physically.”

In earlier years she had considered genital surgery because she

wanted a man, “although as a man I wasn’t necessarily gay . . . per-

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haps bisexual. But I wanted a man as any woman wants a man . . . to

totally surrender (at least sexually). But by the time I recognized that fact, I had family, business, and other considerations that made it impossible.”

Some things annoy, some break my heart. Sometimes they’re the

same thing. It’s the spring of 2007. Eleanor’s son has a jazz gig— he’s a guitarist. Ellen would like to come. Adam’s a fairly open guy but his

boss and his wife will be there, and Eleanor says he’s just not ready to make introductions. I’m ashamed for all of us, but . . . it’s just too soon!

Later that spring, the same tricky situation presents itself to me. I

have a lecture engagement at the University of Richmond in April, and

Ellen wants to attend. She says she would just stand at the back of the room. But I’ll be staying with Eleanor, and while neither of us is comfortable with the idea of Ellen coming to the lecture, for Eleanor it’s worse. Her house is two blocks from the university and many of her

friends and mine will be in attendance. This will be only the second time I’ve seen Ellen, and we haven’t yet appeared in public together. I remind her that Beth’s tolerance and openness are not the standard reaction.

“Reactions have been all across the spectrum,” she insists. “The

people at Pine Mountain, the working people, are fine with it. Some of

these— the woman who does my manicure- pedicure, the cleaning

woman, and others— have become friends.”

To me that’s a slightly different matter. The ever- thoughtful Ellen

says, “Do what causes the least stress,” which of course makes me feel

a surge of guilt for excluding her. She wants so much to be accepted,

but she can’t just “slip in.” And so we agree she won’t come to this one, but will to the next one.

Eleanor says people are “reading” Ellen and she doesn’t realize it.

Possibly, but isn’t this another necessary form of denial? We all wear

blinders of one kind or another, else how would we get through each

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day? And for the transsexual, all it takes is one remark out of the

mouths of babes, and— poor naked emperor— the sham is exposed.

It’s no wonder the child poses a constant fear. Not yet initiated into the adult conspiracy of silence, the oracular tot gives voice to what their elders are thinking, or almost thinking. Renée Richards (in
No Way

Renée
) writes of what I now think of as a
Transamerica
moment. She is somewhere, having a “bad voice” day, and a child asks her mother,

“Why is that man wearing a dress?” Over the many insults she’s en-

dured, she continues to remember this one disproportionately, and

realizes, “I must have missed a great many subtler cues, thanks to my

capacity for self- deception”— a self- deception that she sees, and I see, as a form of self- preservation. If she, or Ellen, were to notice and feel every curious eye, every disdainful glance, how could either go forward? Ellen tells me that she
was
anxious in the beginning, but then decided to believe that everyone “read” her, which was enormously

freeing. She acknowledges that those who knew her before will always

see Chevey inside Ellen, but strangers have told her that if they hadn’t heard her voice they would never have known.

I dream constantly, and most involve someone who looks like

Chevey metamorphosing into a woman, sometimes Ellen, sometimes

another woman, then back again, while great anxiety revolves around

a trip to Richmond that the three of us— or perhaps I should say four

of us— are to take. But then role reversal was a recurring theme in my

psychoanalysis: my analyst, male, often became a woman in my dreams.

Was this some version of my strong mother, or was my unconscious

preparing for this day?

I go down to Richmond to give my lecture and take a taxi to Eleanor’s,

where I will be staying. Ellen has come down for the day so the three

of us can have lunch together and she greets me at the door. I do a

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double take. As deeply in tune as we are, the sight of her never ceases to startle. Yet I’m happy the three of us are together and it seems to go pretty well. But when I return to New York, Eleanor calls and says she

just can’t see Ellen anymore. It’s too wrenching.

“Every time I see her, I see my husband and it’s killing me. I told

her I want to go on having a relationship with her but only on the

phone or e- mail.”

And that’s how they communicate for the next two and a half