Redefining Realness (19 page)

Mom followed Rick everywhere, even if it meant missing work. I would wake in the mornings to grab Raisin Bran, and she’d be on the couch in denim shorts and a T-shirt with her bag at her side, ready for one of his “adventures.” He was a thief and would pull stunts regularly to stay afloat, selling or pawning goods for money or drugs. He worked as a security guard for a hot second and eventually was fired after he spent off-the-clock hours stealing from the offices and homes he was supposed to surveillance. Mom told me she went on a bunch of these stunts with him, including the time he stole our first computer. I wasn’t apologetic about having a stolen computer, just happy to have one, gleefully chatting on AOL Instant Messenger.

Shit got real one night when we were grabbing dinner at L&L near the airport. On our way home, Mom began whining that she wanted to go somewhere with Rick. This pathetic sound was one I had grown accustomed to hearing. Usually, it would end with Rick going along with her begging, but this time he wasn’t having it.

“Why you wanna come with me for?” Rick asked.

“I just want to be with you,” Mom said.

They were quiet until we pulled in the parking lot of our apartment. Mom passed the food to Chad, putting her and Rick’s plates in a separate bag, which she placed on her lap in the front seat.

“Elizabeth, get out of the car,” Rick said, obviously fed up.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mom said, unmovable.

“I’m only going to say it one more time: Get out of the fucking car, Elizabeth!” he roared.

Mom didn’t move. Chad, Jeff, and I stood by the elevator watching Rick open the driver’s door, lean over, and scream, “Get the fuck out!”

“This is my car,” she said. “Get your own car if you want to leave.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” he shouted as his right hand smacked her in the back of the head, rocking the car. My heart was beating fast.
My eyes followed Rick as he slammed his door, stomped to my mother’s side, and dragged her out of the car with a fistful of her brown hair in his hand. Gravy from her hamburger steak plate was all over her shorts as she sat in her own food.

I watched my mother pick herself up from the oil-stained cement. She stood up, grabbed the styrofoam plates, and threw them at Rick. Defeated, he returned to the driver’s side, and they drove off together.

It was this “I have nothing to lose” climate, this understanding that the bottom couldn’t be far away and that I didn’t have stability anyway, that gave me the courage to open up to my mother about the fact that I had been taking Wendi’s hormones behind her back. It was just after dinner. I was damp from my shower, bare-faced, wearing pom-pom shorts and a tank top covering the full A-cups that I was proud of. I was helping Mom load the dishwasher as I detailed that I had been taking medicine for the past six months that would help me become a girl, that my mind was made up, that I had a plan, and that I needed her help. “I never ask you for anything,” I said, “but I need you to take me to Wendi’s doctor in Waikiki, who specializes in this medicine, and sign off on my treatments.”

Mom looked at me with a knowing glare, as if she had known years before—maybe back when I mistakenly told her I was gay, maybe way back when she was sixteen and told her mother in their kitchen she was pregnant with Cori—that we would be right here, with me telling her that I needed her help. I felt she was finally looking at the daughter she had overlooked this entire time.

“Whatever you need, Janet,” Mom said without argument, returning to the dishes in the sink. My mother knew the train had left the station and that she had a choice: to jump aboard or let it reach its destination without her. Thankfully, she chose to ride it out with me. That didn’t mean my mother didn’t have her reservations. She later told me she worried about what others thought and said, about the
second-guessing of family and friends who told her she shouldn’t encourage me in this way, that she was doing the wrong thing by letting me dress like a girl. I’m not a parent, so I can only imagine the guilt, judgment, and pressure my mother must’ve silently endured those years as she let me steer the way toward my future.

A few Saturdays later, Mom drove Wendi and me to Dr. R.’ s for my first physician-monitored hormone appointment. The three of us sat in the waiting room as Wendi (whose skittish presence had become constant in the office over the years) signed herself in. I had accompanied Wendi a number of times to Dr. R.’s office—I was a familiar sight to him—but this was the first time I had signed myself in for an appointment. He called Wendi first, spending about twenty minutes taking her weight and blood pressure and injecting her with estrogen. After she returned, Dr. R. called my mother and me into his office. “Hi, Mrs. Mock,” he said, extending his hand to Mom while shooting a knowing glance my way. “So I hear Janet is ready to take the next step.”

My mother smiled apprehensively from her seat across from the doctor, taking in his gray hair, blue smock, thick glasses, and perpetually chapped lips. I was sure his empathetic and direct approach would ease any reservations Mom had. I watched her closely as she took in the bulletin board covered with photos of past and present patients, including a snapshot of Tracy onstage at Venus and Wendi’s freshman yearbook photo.

“Great, and are you both clear about the regimen?”

“I know the next step is shots, since I’ve been taking Premarin for the past six months,” I explained excitedly, knowing that Dr. R. had experience with patients who self-medicated.

“You are right: The next step does include weekly doses of Estradiol Valerate, which is the estrogen I prefer for my patients. I find that injections reduce the strain that oral medicine has on the liver,”
he said. “It’s twenty dollars for a twenty-milligram shot of Estradiol, which I pair with the supplemental vitamin B12. We will start Janet off with half a dose, monitor that for three months, and then graduate her to the full dose.”

During our consultation, Dr. R. detailed the potential side effects, including mood swings, altered hunger patterns, slower metabolism, weight gain, water retention, increased risk of blood clots and breast cancer, and of course infertility. I was a child, so having children was never on my mind; I can only echo Morrison’s character Sula: “I don’t want to make someone else. I want to make myself.” Dr. R. assured my mother that I was in good hands and that he had been treating transsexual patients for nearly thirty years in Hawaii.

“Most important, your daughter will remain healthy and will be pleased to finally appear as she feels,” he said. “She will also be able to live in the world as a young woman, an attractive one at that, something that isn’t easily achieved or possible for most of my patients.”

It was vital to me to be seen as the girl I was, and Dr. R. was the first person to vocalize that possibility as a reality. Becoming my own woman was no longer the unrealistic fantasy of a thirteen-year-old. His statements about my appearance validated my dreams, easing Mom’s anxieties about my prospects and the effects of the irreversible steps. The fact that I fit our society’s narrow standard of female appearance also eased my mother’s worries about my future and the harsh discrimination and harassment that often comes with being read as trans.

Though I am unapologetic about the way I look—an amalgamation of my parents’ features and early access to medication that halted the effects of testosterone—my appearance has granted me an advantage in life. I have been able to navigate this world mostly unchecked, seen as my true self without being clocked or spooked, as the girls would say colloquially. When I was younger, I remember taking
pride in people’s well-meaning remarks: “You’re so lucky that no one would ever know!” or “You don’t even look like a guy!” or “Wow! You’re prettier than most ‘natural’ women!” They were all backhanded compliments, acknowledging my beauty while also invalidating my identity as a woman. To this day, I’m told in subtle and obvious ways that I am not “real,” meaning that I am not, nor will I ever be, a cis woman; therefore, I am fake.

These thoughts surrounding identity, gender, bodies, and how we view, judge, and objectify all women brings me to the subject of “passing,” a term based on an assumption that trans people are passing as something that we are not. It’s rooted in the idea that we are not really who we say we are, that we are holding a secret, that we are living false lives. Examples of people “passing” in media, whether through race (
Imitation of Life
and Nella Larsen’s novel
Passing
), class (
Catch Me if You Can
and the reality show
Joe Millionaire
), or gender (
Boys Don’t Cry
and
The Crying Game
), are often portrayed as leading a life of tragic duplicity and as deceivers who will be punished harshly by society when their true identity is uncovered. This is no different for trans people who “pass” as their gender or, more accurately, are assumed to be cis or blend in as cis, as if that is the standard or norm. This pervasive thinking frames trans people as illegitimate and unnatural. If a trans woman who knows herself and operates in the world as a woman is seen, perceived, treated, and viewed as a woman, isn’t she just being herself? She isn’t
passing 
; she is merely
being
.

With the consultation behind us, my mother sat in the waiting room with Wendi as I embarked on my first hormone shot. Dr. R. fitted his rubber gloves on as I sat on the white-paper-lined exam table. Grabbing a syringe, he stuck his needle into a brown vial of Estradiol Valerate, then filled it with a translucent oil that had a slight golden color. He stuck the same needle into a brown vial of vitamin B12 , which added red to the syringe. He wiped an area of
my right butt cheek with an alcohol swab and quickly stuck me with the needle.

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said as I handed him the ten-dollar fee for the half-dose shot. Dr. R operated on a cash-and-check basis and billed Mom’s insurance only for the quarterly blood tests that monitored my hormone levels and liver and kidney functions.

I blossomed under Dr. R.’s care, and the potential he saw in me slowly became a visible reality. As my body began evolving, the world treated me differently, and I learned firsthand that society privileges physical beauty. Being beautiful is a personal and a social experience, one that has an effect on how you’re treated in addition to how you feel about yourself. I was still the same person (and knew how it felt not to be perceived as desirable or good-looking), yet suddenly people were kinder, enamored by my apparent beauty.

This desirability put me in sharp focus of the male gaze. Being subjected to catcalls, whistles, and unsolicited phone numbers became a norm, and during my nights out in Waikiki with Wendi and her gaggle of trans gal pals, I quietly based my self-worth on the number of times I made a guy’s head turn. Objectification and sexism masked as desirability were a bittersweet part of my dream fulfilled.

At the same time, I began looking in judgment at the girls Wendi and I hung out with. We were in varying phases of our development as trans girls. Some of us were considered “passable,” while others were not. I glared at those whose shoulders spanned broadly, who were over five-ten, who twisted their hips as they walked, who laughed a bit too loudly or deeply. My body and appearance had been policed my entire life, so I began policing other girls. As a teen, I wanted badly to pass. Due to this investment in keeping appearances, I grew self-conscious when I hung out in large packs of trans girls because the risk of being read as trans heightened. So I began stealthily separating myself from the group.

As they gallivanted on the Waikiki Strip, I would stroll a few yards behind, distancing myself. The first time I got hit on by a guy, I was walking slowly with my friends on Kalakaua Avenue in a black cotton corset and light pink pants. His name was Adrian, and he was mocha-skinned, with model good looks. He was a marine stationed in Kaneohe and spoke with a slow Southern drawl, a reflection of his Alabama roots. He was tipsy and twenty-one, with striking white teeth and an unflinching stare that made me feel like I was the only girl in the world. I remember lying about my age (I said I was eighteen, two years older) and about my friends, claiming that I knew only one of the girls, the most petite of our group. Adrian and I exchanged numbers quickly so I could catch up with the girls, who kept walking up Kalakaua Avenue.

I was on cloud nine, really feeling myself. It was the first time that a guy I was attracted to had approached me with equal desire. When I caught up with the girls, a few were quick to call me out for “acting fish.”

“That bitch thinks she’s too fish for us,” one of the girls said loudly enough that I could hear. I chose to ignore it, hoping that it would just go away and Wendi would deflate the situation with a joke, the way she usually did.

“She thinks just because she’s pretty that she’s better than us,” another girl said, prompting the first girl to turn around and approach me.

“Just because you look good doesn’t make you better than anybody. Trust!”

I vividly remember the sting of the bitter truth, echoing the concept of beauty as currency and the hierarchy it creates: If she’s
prettier
than I am, then she is more valuable, and thus has access to
having it all.
Instead of fighting back, I chose to be silently defensive, denying my actions as misunderstood and refuting their claims under the
guise of jealousy. It was one of the last times I chose to hang out socially with a large group of girls. Isolation made me feel safer, though the irony of separating from the pack, of separating myself from my trans sisters in an effort to be welcomed into larger society (into the gaze of a guy), is glaring to me now.

I personally know many women who choose to leave behind their pasts—their family and friends, anyone who knows they’re trans—in an effort to blend in as cis. The trans community calls this “living stealth.” For many, it is an act of survival. Many choose not to lead with the fact that they are trans, in order to avoid the stigma, prejudice, discrimination, and safety concerns that come with being visibly trans. At twenty-two, I would choose to leave family and friends behind to live my life openly as a young woman in New York City. But as a teenager on a small island where it seemed I couldn’t escape my past, I banked on my looks, which allowed me to live visibly without people harassing me or gawking at me. Usually, when I attracted attention, it was in the form of a lustful gaze from guys like Adrian, whose interest in me further validated my womanhood.