Squirrel Cage (25 page)

Alex was working as a girl at one of the prominent hotel chains. I was hanging out with one of my devil incarnate accomplices, the first that I had met in the valley. We had somehow discovered that a bender was working at the hotel. We had a name, and night work shift and the name of the hotel That’s what we had. That was actually quite a lot. In the bender world, especially in Salt Lake City, contacts were impossible to find. They were buried deep in stealth. To reach out was impossible. The chance of discovery would carry hellish attacks. I knew. I was going through it.

It was midnight. I called the hotel and asked for Alex. I had no idea that Alex’s en femme name was something else.
Shortly, Alex came on the phone and we arranged to meet him.

Only a half hour had passed and we were sitting in the dimly lit lobby of the hotel.
Alex withdrew from the cave where he had been working doing some clerical work in the back office where he could not be seen. He introduced himself to us with his en femme name, Angela. We talked for a while. Alex told us that no one knew about his male persona here. He had applied for the job as Angela and had been working there for a month.

“You asked for Alex on the phone.” Squirrel said.

“I know,” I shot back
silently
.

Normally, I wouldn’t speak of “Alex” and “him” under such circumstances. In respect, I would use “Angela” and “her”. But the reasons why I still think of “Alex” as a “him” would unfold.

I was about to learn over the next few months just how powerful motivations pushed transsexual individuals. I knew how it was in my personal experience. It drove me to steal, to betray, to be totally self-centered. I would learn that it was so powerful that many people with their
Squirrel
would never fully mature, pursue advanced education, or develop meaningful relationships. Not being able to find good paying jobs, they would turn to any means possible to make enough money to survive, to transition, to make the final change with surgery. Many would be incompetent, sexually slaved to prostitution, devious, and totally unpredictable.

My life teetered on the brink of this pit. I certainly had been through much of this myself. I had betrayed my family. I had stolen early in my youth. Right now, I was cheating on my expense reports to survive. I did everything that was necessary to hide my secret. But that was all unraveling. At least that piece of my dishonesty would no longer exist.

I made a big mistake with Alex. It was a mistake that I would learn to never make again.
You do not disclose everything about yourself simply because you share the similar problem. It is true that to have a friend you must be a friend. But the process of being a friend should not require full disclosure. It can and should take time. You need to test the waters. You must understand the bounds of the relationship and then expand them as you grow.

So Alex was Angela. And everyone in the hotel knew about Alex. That should have set off all kinds of alarm bells. Either he was lying about his application to the job or someone had disclosed this information to the hotel staff. I did not think clearly through this. So, you ask, why do I not refer to Alex as Angela, why I do not use an individual’s preferred pronouns? I later learned that Alex was a consummate liar. His inner prison held a truly evil
Squirrel
. Alex, not Angela, would betray me. I would soon learn from first hand experience much of what my own family had been burdened
with
.

Alex was having a hard time.
Someone had broken into his apartment and had taken almost everything he owned.
He had his letters of recommendation
for surgery
he said and was in desperate need for funds to get his surgery.
He told me that he had breast implants already. He told me that he had been a member of the LDS faith. He instantly gained my trust. I had not learned the
obstinacy
to accomplish his own perverted goals,
yet. That would come with the passage of time, interaction with church recommended psychiatrists, and discrimination at work.

I thought at the time that Alex would be a valuable source for information.
And briefly he was.

Within only two weeks, Alex
’s will
was broken. His family, his church leadership, and his family’s psychiatrists soon found a way to saddle him and force him to return to manhood. His father made sure that he was financially bankrupted.
He lost his hotel job due to his father’s intervention. With his possessions stolen and a pending rent payment due, he felt he had no choice but bend to the will of his family. His father told him that he could move home and he would provide for his needs fully until Alex could finish college and move on with life. I had little inkling of what he had gone through with his church relationships. I could only guess by comparing what I was going through. If he were to move back in with his parents, he would have to give up his
Squirrel
and remove his breast implants.

Alex gave up, had his implants removed, and moved back home.
But he did not fully give up.

Within a week, he sat in my apartment retelling his recent history. It was very sad and not dissimilar to my current state of affairs. It hurt to see someone so emotionally destroyed. And then I was shocked with his next revelation. “I have a plan Cindi, if you will give me the money for my surgery, I will work very hard to pay for yours.”

We were both novices in different degrees. We had a version of innocence and immaturity that needed to be developed. Physically, he was an adult but emotionally he was a juvenile. He had the thought process of a 14 year old.

“Alex,” I replied.
I don’t have any money.
If I did, I would not loan it to you.” I still had a tremendous faith in
my
trust with Alex.
But I had always been tight with money.
I did not enough to loan money to anyone.

He pleaded with me to no avail. After providing for my family and my own personal needs, I had
nothing
to pay for my own transition. I was already building quite a bill with Debra, my electrologyst. I really had no idea how I was going to pay her back.

It wasn’t long before Alex was meddling in my personal affairs. I do not know why. I could never understand it. His family had contacted my family. Alex had promised to help them bring me back. He was telling them that he had fully come back to live his life as a male. At the same time, he was visiting me, begging for support to return to life as a woman. I do not know the extent of the involvement or if there was even a conspiracy hatched to bring David back. But I learned, several years later, that he helped arrange a meeting with a senior church leader through working with my parents.

“Cindi, you need to talk to Elder Packer. I did and he helped me a lot,” he told me.
Elder Packer was an apostle.
He was in the top leadership of the church. I had met Packer in Chile. He was visiting when I came down with typhoid fever.
I was so ill; I could barely make it to the bathroom to attend to personal needs.
He had given me a bles
sing so that I might get well. Even though the blessing didn’t stick,
I
still
respected this man very much.

“Yes,” I replied. “If I could talk to Elder Packer, I believe that he could help me.”

Alex volunteered to help get me in to see Elder Packer.
The appointment to visit with Elder Packer did not materialize. Instead, Alex proffered an appointment, already set up, with Elder Kakutchi, a Native American member of the quorum of the Seventy, one level down from the top level body of the apostles of which Elder Packer was a member. I had never met Kakutchi, but I reluctantly took the piece of paper. I would, for one last time, try to retrieve my life through the advice of a senior church member.

I sat down in Elder Kakutchi’s office.
He sat across from me, with a desk
and a closed manila folder
separating us. “What can I help you with this afternoon Brother Steele?” he queried.

I did not know at the time he was fully aware of my problem. I did not know that he had been prepped with all of the history of my life. I did not know that he already knew what he was going to say.

“Elder Kakutchi,” I started, “I have a problem that I was born with. It drives me, it prods me, I do things beyond the realm of reason and normalcy. I do things that are embarrassing and just downright stupid.
I want… I have always wanted to be a girl, to be a woman.”

“Brother Steele, you were not born with this problem” he stated flatly. “You have been taught this immoral thing. What are you doing to overcome this problem?”

I briefly related my history and then told him of what had happened in recent history. “Elder Kakutchi, I have prayed many times each day for God to lift this burden in my mind. I served a mission as best as I could. I have attended all of my meetings. I have married in the temple as advised. I have given myself in my callings to teach gospel doctrine in Sunday school, work with the boy scouts, direct the church choir.
I have always volunteered to work at our church farm. Many times I
have toiled
there alone, working for hours attempting to drive this thing from my mind. And lastly, I have attended the temple as often as is possible.
I have done all that I have been asked to.
The problem only grows stronger.”

“Brother Steele, that is not enough!” he exclaimed.
“You must develop a personal relationship with Christ,” he went on.

I reflected on my life. I had truly tried to develop this personal relationship with Christ.
I had read and studied the scriptures. In fact, I had read and studied all volumes of Church scripture several times. I had studied them with scrutiny as I had prepared gospel doctrine classes for years.
I had many unanswered questions but I had come to comprehend that not all questions could be answered. For most of my life I realized this. I knew that I had done all that could be done. What more could I have done to comply, to mold myself in the vision of the perfect person, to humbly have a personal relationship with Christ? These thoughts were processed through the
Squirrel
cage in an infinitely brief pause.

“Brother Steele”, Kakutchi went on, “The spirit tells me that you are using drugs.”

“Elder Kakutchi, the only drugs I have taken were on the advice of a psychiatrist recommended by the church.
It has taken me 2 months of literal hell to get them out of my system.
I don’t use drugs!”

“Brother Steele, the spirit tells me that you are participating in a homosexual lifestyle, that you are having physical relations with men.”

Without analyzing an answer, without evaluating the proper thing to say, without understanding the consequences of a thoughtful response, I shot back “You are full of shit. The spirit is telling you nothing that is true. You have shown me that you, yes you, do not have a spiritual relationship with Christ. You
lie! I don’t take drugs and I have had relationships with no one
.”

“You are in deep doo doo now,” advised
Squirrel
.

“Brother Steele, I know that you are upset.
But you must realize that you are living a lie.
After all, you can not turn lead into gold.” Elder Kakutchi warned.

Again without thinking I responded immediately.

“Elder Kakutchi, you can turn lead into gold.
You obviously know nothing of nuclear physics.
It can be done.”

“Great”, said
Squirrel
, “you are knee deep now. You are never going to get beyond this. You do not challenge a senior authority of the church.”

Elder Kakutchi tried to reason with me but his reasoning was based on falsehoods and on lies.
He may have been a spiritual man once, but today, he was presenting data he had received from someone else, perhaps from my family or Charlene’s family, as facts.
The folder sat on his desk with my name on it. He referred to it constantly.
The spirit was not
with him, revealing the truth
as he claimed. He was pulling it from notes in
that desktop
folder.
My faith in my church was shot in the heart and mortally wounded in that moment. There was nothing more he could say.

So Alex had helped set this up with my family’s involvement. My mother would later tell me that Alex presented himself to them recovered from transsexualism, that he had relied on God and the spirit of a strong testimony to break its bondage.

At the same time, he was begging me to finance his own transition. I had no idea at the time of his involvement but his actions had demonstrated clearly to me that I could no longer trust him.
I still do not know fully what his involvement was with my family. Were there conspiracies hatched?
I’ve often wondered if one of those shrinks I saw had been one of the ones who had helped “cure him” so that I may endure the same abuse. I added this experience to my paranoia storage container.
I did not know if there was a conspiracy but I could not take the chance that there was.
I was now
literally afraid for my life
.