SLIDERS:
The Dark Side of Transgender
By
Aimee Norin
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011, 2012 by Aimee Norin. All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This novel is meant for mature reading and is not recommended for minors.
SECTION 1: EXCITED IN THE BEGINNING
SECTION 2: THE LONG MIDDLE
SECTION 3: AWAKENING
INTRODUCTION
Sliders: The Dark Side of Transgender isn’t like most books about the subject. The main character shares her life as she sees it at each stage of her transition, and it varies dramatically through her life. The novel as a whole, however, is shared with the understanding of some much older transitioners, thirty to forty years into transition.
Sliders is a novel about a lifetime of trying to find love and fit in; it gets at the heart of rarely shared difficulties, including social alienation, good and bad sex, people who take advantage, and passionate conflicts between factions. While supportive of transition, this novel does not paint everything rosy or rubber-stamp beliefs.
Sliders follows a kind and likeable university professor through thirty-six years in transition, from 1990 with the loss of her family in Beverly Hills, to 2026 and her eventual life by the beach in Santa Monica. This novel is a serious character study about someone who embraces the joy of transition, who becomes a national leader of the transgender paradigm, yet who makes several mistakes along the way and winds up where she doesn’t want to be before she finally figures out herself. Some of it is very dark. People who give mixed signals and the problem of denial can make finding a way difficult. Through hard experiences and with the help of someone she didn‘t expect to play an important role in her life, she learns what not to do and what she could have done better.
She had feelings she didn’t know how to express; she learned lessons from people who lied. She encountered situations she never could have predicted, and she made risky choices. Through much of her life she was unaware of some key problems.
Finding a better way through that maze can be difficult for anyone, she later learned to her surprise. Even if there is help.
Aimee Norin
EXCITED IN THE BEGINNING
Age: 38
The early 1990s
Regina Isler was happy, even high, in a way she’d never known, and no drugs were involved. Wearing only a thin paper smock, she sat on the doctor’s office examination table, in his fancy office suite high over Beverly Hills, with a smile on her face that wouldn‘t go away. Losing her wife and kids, her home, and her job had been painful. But the reason she lost everything else was that she’d gained herself, and the joy that came with that gave her an inner glow. She felt she was hugging herself from within, as if her arms were wrapped around her heart, carrying it gently into a new world.
God, how things worked, that the worst pain she’d ever known could be followed by such pervasive joy. She felt as if she wanted to touch everything around her, anew, for the first time, to reach out and greet the life energy in everything, to be closer to it. This is an intralife reincarnation, she thought, both a death and a birth of sorts, only without forgetting the life before. She was reborn. The whole world was completely different—the way she approached life, the way the world treated her, the way she dressed, walked, talked, and moved, the things that were important to her—and every day she was becoming more giddy with excitement.
She felt the paper on the exam table beneath her. It was so soft. She’d never noticed that before. She smiled, visibly. Hello, paper, she thought. She heard the air-conditioning coming in through the vent, flowing perfectly through the louvers. She noticed the squeaky clean countertop filled with sterile supplies, not a hint of dust.
That window was too large for her to ignore! Her heart embraced the window. Hello, window. Such a beautiful window. The whole western wall of the room was glass. She felt an urge to go over and look out.
She glanced unnecessarily at the door. What a beautiful door! Is he coming yet? she thought playfully. The door didn‘t answer, but Regina was sure the door’s silence meant that the coast was clear. It had to be a female door because people entered it. She laughed to herself; this was all very unlike her. The doctor didn’t seem to be coming in yet, and she hadn’t heard anyone lift her chart off the outer side of the door. So she slid off the table and walked over to the window. The glass was warm to her touch, glowing almost as much as she did.
There it was: everything. The whole world was down there waiting for her, and she was part of it. Her heart went out to every single thing she saw, the people, the birds, the buildings, the huge blue sky above, the Pacific Ocean off in the distance. She loved everything in life, as if each breath held the scent of a fragrant rose she could smell forever. Everything glowed, as the whole decade had seemed to glow since the beginning.
All fifteen days of it.
The ’90s will be ecstatic, she told herself with an uncontrollable smile. The whole world felt fresh and—alive!
She touched the window. All those people running around. Women with their own breasts! Wearing lingerie under everything. And people like their underwear! All because they’re women.
She was feeling ramped. Her mind was dancing. It wouldn’t hold still. She had her own breasts, now! She looked down at them. On hormones, her breasts never developed much, so she had some installed. She felt like a schoolgirl who had won the lottery, as if the whole world were at her feet—and there they were down below, she joked to herself again. There were so many new things to try, and so many ways to do them. She giggled.
She counseled herself to slow down a little. She was normally reserved and dignified—a tenured professor of clinical psychology—but not lately and not today. She couldn’t be. She was busting.
Busting! She laughed again at her own joke, touching her lips with the fingers of her right hand. Her forearm brushed against her right breast, a fairly new feeling, which gave her another rush.
Female hormones softened her skin in ways she hadn’t expected. The surprise wasn’t just that her skin was softer to someone else’s touch; her skin itself was softer—so everything she touched was softer, too. Her own skin felt softer to her because the fingers she used to feel it were softer. When her arm brushed her side, both textures were softer. Women’s clothes were softer than men’s, and when they graced her softer skin, the sensation was electric, leagues softer than anything she had experienced before as a man. When she bathed, her bath oils floated over her skin in a fluid harmony of heavenly synthesis. And even when she did nothing in particular, just by walking or moving, her skin stretched against itself and seemed so sensual.
She raised her left hand so she could see her fingers and, ever so slightly, moved each finger against the other. Her fingers were clean. Nothing on them. Yet they were slick. She couldn’t escape the feeling they must have a little glycerin on them, each and every one.
Women have had this all along, she thought, and they may not have known. Unless they’d been through a transition themselves, changing from a man’s skin to a woman’s, they’d have nothing to compare. They’ve never known what they had.
She knew the people in the city below could neither see nor hear her, but she felt she should give herself permission to share her joy: it’s part of a healthy mind, she told herself, to vent pain, but also to experience pleasure. She didn’t think she should be dignified all the time; self-restraint just wasn’t fun.
“Hello, everyone! How do you do?” she asked in her natural voice, showing the world her new C-cups. “What do you think? As good as anyone’s? Brand new,” she confided. “Aftermarket installation.” She turned sideways a bit and gave the city a profile.
The plastic surgeon came in the door suddenly, but to her surprise, she didn’t mind. She turned to smile at him, her smock still open to the front.
“Good morning, Regina.” The doctor was not fazed. He’d seen this before. “Showing the world, right?”
Regina acknowledged in a softer voice, “Yes.”
“Does it approve?” he asked.
“Heartily.” She was sure.
He gave her a small chuckle. “Have a seat.” He motioned to the exam table.
Regina climbed back on it.
“Like this?” she asked, settling back.
“That’s good,” the doctor answered with a reassuring smile.
Regina tried to relax.
He glanced at her chart. “I did you last Thursday. It’s been a week.”
She nodded.
A nurse came in and then excused herself and left.
The doctor smiled at Regina. “Wrong door?” he suggested. “Let’s just have a look now.” He opened her smock a bit more. “Ah! Beautiful,” he exclaimed. “Couldn’t look better on a movie star. I do some of them also, you know,” he bragged quietly.
“Which ones?” Regina smiled broadly, proud of her new breasts.
The doctor gently felt them. “Can’t say,” he said with a knowing smile. “Patient confidentiality and all, but I see some of my breasts about every other time I go to the movies.
“They look good,” he said, back to the task at hand. “They hang like I’d expect at this stage post-op. How do they feel?” he asked. He poked and massaged a little.
“Still a bit numb in places, but the pain has not really been a problem. The pills you gave me worked fine.”
“How long did you take them?”
“Only for two days. I don’t like to take pills if I can avoid them. The rest are at home in the bottle.” They were narcotics, a strictly controlled prescription, and Regina was aware of the problems associated with them. “Do you want them back?”
“No. You keep them for later.”
He stepped back for a look at her breasts together, framed by her largish shoulders, rib cage, and biceps.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He considered. “I’m extrapolating. Considering you as a whole. You weigh about one eighty-five? I’m getting the whole picture, the gestalt. I want you to be happy with your results, not have to come back next year dissatisfied. Is the size right for you? You should have C-cups when you’re done. And if you ever want a reduction, just let me know. I do those, too.” A smile.
“I have narrow hips, a small butt. Can you do anything about that? Give me a more girlish figure? Like Cher, maybe?”
“Not much at this time. There are a lot of problems with that. There have been some attempts, but the results are highly questionable and problematic. The inserts don’t stay put well, and experimenters are having problems with infections in them. I’ll let you know if I get something going.
“As far as that goes, though, you don’t need to worry, because breasts like these,” he cupped them proudly, “will draw the gaze of the viewer up here, and breasts are womanly.”
She looked relieved.
He stood back.
“There is still some swelling, which is to be expected. Remember: don’t judge their looks until you’re three months post-op, when most of the swelling is gone. Until then, one may appear larger than the other, and that may change week to week. Little things you do may affect that swelling, such as rubbing them, doing anything to irritate them. Oh, and don’t sleep on your stomach. Okay, young lady?”
Regina felt charmed to be called “young lady.” She was not so young at thirty-eight, and she was new to being called a lady. She could get used to that for, like, the next fifty years.
The smile on her face wouldn’t go away.
“That smile happens to a lot of my patients,” the doctor said. “How’s your sensitivity?”
“It’s okay. Not bad.”
“And it’s only been a week! Great.”
His assurances relaxed her.
“Any surgery carries a risk of complications, but the way I did your implants, you’ll be just fine. I have excellent results. Just wait until the swelling is gone, same as for looks. You’ll have someone goggling at them in no time. You into men or women?” the doctor asked.
Regina didn’t think the question inappropriate; she was eager to disclose and share. “Women. I’ve tried regular men, and I can have sex like other women, but I can’t get into it.”
“Then you’ll have women pouncing on your breasts in no time. But don’t let them yet. Tell them to take a number. They’re still healing.”
As if it were possible, she seemed to smile more.
“Now let’s lie back and get into the stirrups.”
“There’s a need?” she asked. “For breasts?”
“It’s what women do,” he reassured her.
Of course! She relented. He was the doctor.
“Since you’re here, we should look at what might be done in the future.”
He helped her lie back and put her heels up into the stirrups. The position felt odd to her, but, she reasoned, it was something she should get used to.
“May I?” he asked.
“You’re the doctor.”
He gently lifted her penis and looked under it and under the scrotum; he felt the size of the testicles, all briefly, to minimize discomfort.
“How long have you been on hormones?”
“Two years. I transitioned last month. I wanted every day of the ‘90s to be as a woman.”
“Good, good. So your penis has decreased in size a little on the hormones. It’s probably a bit smaller now than it was two years ago.”
“Yes. I estimate some twenty-five percent or so.” And then gently, to not hurt his feelings, she said, “We like to think of it as a clitoris, Doctor. The Y chromosome has been neutralized; it’s smaller under hormones and the tissues are homologous.” She was well read on trans-related literature.
“Same nerves,” he agreed. “Are you going to want sex reassignment surgery some day?”
“God no!” She was clear. “Those people think they can be female without their clitoris!” What a thought.
“It might still function as a clitoris. The surgeries are better than they used to be.”
“Remove ninety percent of the thing? Invert part of it? Rearrange? Use only part of the glans for the clit, hoping the nerve doesn’t get cut?” Regina said, aghast.
The doctor said nothing, so Regina continued. “The surgeries are just not good enough, and what I’d have wouldn’t be the real thing. No. I’ll stick with what I have. It’s my clitoris. I can have sex as a woman with it. And anal sex is just as good as vaginal.”
The doctor gave her a knowing smile and draped her smock back over her.
Chapter 2
They raced up Interstate 15 past Baker at ninety miles per hour in Stephanie’s red 1978 T-top Trans Am, top panels left back at home, screaming joy and laughter about womanhood to every atom of life on the planet.
Grandma and Grandpa Slow were creeping along in the right lane when the fast car raced past, a doppler-shifted V-8 and a higher-pitched “WOMAAAAAaaaaan!” heard above the wind noise.
Stephanie was driving, sometimes even paying attention, which was so hard.
Regina sat in the passenger seat, knees together with her left touching the center console—not because the position was ladylike, but because it seemed to put more pressure on her groin. With her genitalia tucked far back into her panties, sitting on them on the leather seats, she was getting aroused.
Regina ran her left hand over the hose on her left thigh. The tender skin she had developed from the hormones made the hose feel even more electric than before. She could feel them better than she ever could before; they were so much softer.
She looked over at Stephanie. They were both wearing slinky miniskirts with hose, silk panties with white lace borders, and teddies underneath. A vision of what she needed filled her mind and grew until she couldn‘t ignore it. I can’t go on like this, she thought. I can’t enjoy the day with this happening all by myself.
Stephanie looked at her and saw her flush, and Stephanie’s expression changed to one of need, also. Then all they could hear was the wind rushing over the top of the car, the engine roaring.
Regina said nothing, but she moved her left hand over to Stephanie’s right, on her gear shift lever, and gently lifted the hand off and guided it to her leg.
The car swerved a little.
Then Regina brought Stephanie’s hand slowly up her silky thigh to her groin, over her erection tucked deep beneath her skirt. She held the hand there and closed her eyes as if she might blow any second.
Regina felt the warm air, the freedom in the car, the sun shining down on them both, and she looked longingly toward the side of the road.
“Me, too,” Stephanie told her.
Regina reached over and slid her left hand under Steph’s skirt, and it was true. Stephanie was as erect as a post, though her penis was still tucked back in her panties, also.
Stephanie pulled the car over to the side of the road and reached farther down into Regina’s panties to slide her penis out. Regina felt Steph’s mouth warm and wet sucking on the whole thing, her tongue moving over the head, and within about five glorious seconds Regina came, filling Stephanie’s loving mouth with her come. She nearly passed out from the feeling.
Grandma and Grandpa Slow drove past them and saw Stephanie giving head to Regina, cleaning her penis with her tongue. They were going so slow they could have probably filmed the scene for five minutes on the way by. Their mouths dropped open, their words stunned, their heads shook in shame, and Regina thought she’d come again right there in front of them.
Regina gazed in amazement at her life: she was sitting beside the road on this fantastic morning, wearing a minidress, panties, bra with real breasts, teddy, hose and heels—not one article of men’s clothing anywhere around her—with Stephanie’s face in her crotch against her soft dress, two hundred miles from Los Angeles where the only clothes she had to wear were these that she brought with her, where she had to dress like a woman whether she wanted to or not, where she had to face life as a woman with whatever it offered her.
She felt liberated from the chains of manhood she’d grown so sick of in recent years. She felt confirmed in a role that couldn’t be made manly at this juncture. If a natural disaster occurred, she’d have to deal with it in her dress. When she had to interact with people, she’d have to do it in her dress. When she checked into the room, when the waiter served her dinner, when the dealer dealt her cards, she’d have to wear her dress because that was all she had with her. She felt like such a woman, and she could have an erection the whole time if she wanted. If an erection occurred first, she couldn’t bend it back under her panties. But if it was already tucked and then got erect, it would stay there. As a matter of fact, it stayed in place better with a bit of an erection because she could push on the front, at the base, and push the length of it backward.
Stephanie finished cleaning Regina’s penis, and Regina began coming back down to earth a bit. She framed Steph’s face in her hands and raised it to her lips to kiss her lovingly for a long time. Their tongues met and swam together like dolphins. Regina could taste herself in Stephanie’s mouth, mixed with the flavor of her lipstick.
Stephanie didn’t have to ask. She just leaned back in her seat, and Regina reached over to move Stephanie’s panties aside. “You don’t have any panties,” Regina said. “Only a teddy? How do you keep it in there? It’ll fall out sometimes with only a teddy.”
Stephanie laughed. “That’s okay, love. Women don’t wear panties with a teddy.”
Stephanie’s legs were beautiful in her hose, and her miniskirt draped them so softly. Regina bent over to take her fully into her mouth and loved every second of it for her.
Stephanie took only a few seconds, also, to come. She held Regina’s head down in her crotch with both hands as she squirmed. A bit of come leaked out of Regina’s mouth onto the hem of Steph’s skirt. Regina loved the sight. She couldn’t contain her feelings and groaned with joy. Then they kissed again.
“Lesbians. Jesus Christ, we’re lesbians,” Regina said. And that was exciting to her, too.
“We’re only straight if we kiss a man or let him fuck us, honey,” Stephanie said.
They kissed again, and Regina felt Steph’s breasts. Steph moved to do the same, but Regina spoke up, “No, no. Doc said it’s too soon for that for me. You’ll have to wait.”
Stephanie understood and felt her own instead, while they kissed again.
Then they both tucked again, back between their cheeks, left their skirts in a risqué drape over their thighs, and headed out for Hot Vegas. Stephanie slammed the car into first, popped the clutch, and the car squalled for a mile up the freeway.
Jean, Nevada, went by so fast that, if she’d have blinked, she’d have missed it. In fact, Regina did blink, and she did miss it.
Then Vegas hit them like an orgasm.
She’d waited for this for years. She wore skirts and panties, bought shoes at will, talked girl talk with anyone who would listen—Stephanie, mostly—flirted with other women, teased men, danced when something wonderful happened, and enjoyed herself immensely.
This was what life was about, she felt: just be yourself, totally, just yourself, without others telling you how to be, what to say or do, what to wear, how to act, or who to have sex with. She’d missed the sexual freedom of the ’80s because she was busy being all proper, being married, raising children. But in the ’90s, she was going to ride the wave of sexual liberation wherever it took her—and with gusto.
They blew through casinos like high rollers in heels, playing twenty-one, craps, roulette, sometimes literally screaming at the top of their lungs even over small wins, drinking mostly soft drinks because they didn’t want to dampen the moment with a downer. This was a time for excitement, and they didn’t need any little white pills to keep them going. Nothing could beat this: breaking down social walls that limited you to boxers or briefs, speaking in a deep voice and walking as if you had a four-foot board up your ass, and playing a role in life not dictated by preachers and old men in smoky rooms with cigars.
Fuck ’em! she felt. Fuck all of them for all that sex role stereotyping, their belief that men are men and women are women and that you have to be one or the other or else. Fuck ’em with their dicks in briefs and their pussies in panties. God didn’t ordain that. It isn’t written in stone anywhere that you can’t be a woman regardless of how your clit is formed. She can be a woman, she knew, if she’s a woman. And fuck the circular argument also! Whose business is it of anyone’s, anyway, if she’s a woman or what she has under her skirt, under her panties, held tight against her butt by her teddy. Whose business is it if she likes to wear hose and feel their soft, silky fabric slide over her thighs, getting her aroused? Whose business is it if she likes to wear a slinky dress that slides over her ass while she walks, or if she likes it to ride up on her thighs when she sits down? Why does it matter if she’s a woman with muscles? All women have muscles. Some even have large muscles, like body builders, and people still know they’re women. Muscles are homologous, too.
Sitting at the next slot machine, Stephanie reached over and put her hand in Regina’s crotch, felt the penis hard there, underneath. Regina froze and then smiled, so Stephanie grabbed her hand and led her into the ladies’ room, into a stall, where they started kissing again.
Regina could stand the tension no more.
She lifted Steph’s skirt and pulled her panties down to her thighs. Stephanie lifted Regina’s skirt and pulled her panties down, also, their erections standing out like soldiers ready for action, the front of the skirts draping over them like tents.
College campuses were so “home,” the stately halls, the lawns, the trees, the smell of miles of cut grass, the students strolling by with books. Regina had been on them ever since she was eighteen, either as a student or as a member of the faculty, and they’d been among the most beautiful, challenging, and enlightening places she’d experienced in her life.
She’d been on sabbatical since she’d transitioned two months before, and she didn’t realize how much she’d missed the place.
“Thank you,” she said to a former colleague, both for helping her feel a part of the campus again and for giving her an opportunity to be a part of the enlightenment process for this group of students.
She was speaking to his class on human sexuality about transgenderism. Personal revelation and thought were the heart of her presentations. And, it appeared, she was successful in getting the students to forget her status as a professor and to drill her personally with the most detailed, intrusive, and offensive questions they could think of. To give them an idea, she’d passed around a hat containing the worst questions she could think of to ask, and the students seemed to get the idea. The discussion became a free-for-all after she got her audience going. After all, it was the ’90s, and stuffy, old-school, didactic instruction was passé. Particularly with her.
“So you threw away all your men’s clothes?” a lad asked.
“Yup,” Regina said.
“Okay. So you’ve had surgery to become a woman, now?”
“Yes.”
“What was that like?” someone else asked. “Were you scared?”
“No,” Regina answered. “I was excited.”
“What kind of excited?” a young man from the back of the room asked, but his question got jumped on.
“You took female hormones?” another asked.
“Yup.”
“Those breasts are yours?”
“Yup.”
“Can I come and feel ’em?” a young man with a big smile asked from the side of the room. The class laughed in a way that made Regina think the fellow might be the class clown.
“You’re using ‘come’ and ‘feel’ in the same sentence in a class on human sexuality?” Regina feigned embarrassment to him, and the class laughed some more. But Regina didn’t want the class to progress to a touchy-feely level, so she added, “I’ll have to decline. No offense, but I’m just not into men.”
“Ooohhhhh,” the class groaned.
A gay student hopped up in mock outrage to ask, “You saying there’s something wrong with loving men?”
“No, no,” Regina told him. “Sit down. Just as it’s not wrong for you to prefer men, it’s also not wrong for me to prefer women.” Her warm smile got the message across.
“But do you still prefer women because you’re still so manly?” The class didn’t like that question, but the student defended herself with, “It was taken from the hat!” and she showed it on the slip of paper.
“Yes, that’s right.” Regina calmed them down. “College campuses are notoriously some of the most liberal places in our country, but some of you might be interacting with people one day who aren’t on campus—that is, unless you stay in school your whole life and never graduate and never take an apartment anywhere and always keep paying tuition forever, which is great for those of us who want a raise.”
She got some laughter on that.
“Interacting with noncampus personnel, you need to understand where they’re coming from. Crude questions are part of it. Crude orientations are often part of it. So let’s deal with it. That’s what we’re here for. There are a couple of things in the question that are important, I think. Now don’t get upset,” she cautioned them.
The class consented.
“One,” Regina continued, “is whether gender, masculine expression, is related to sexual orientation. There is a positive correlation between sex orientation and gender expression that people at large seem to sense, right or wrong, that being that many gay men have some effeminate characteristics, and that many lesbians have some more masculine characteristics. Many individuals don’t fit that trend, though, just to point that out. And while the correlation exists, there may be other reasons for it besides sexual orientation—who you’re into—causing gender, or gender causing sexual orientation. We don’t know. Maybe we will in Star Trek days. I hope so.
“Two. Am I really manly?” The class was quiet, and that wouldn’t do.
“You’re trying not to embarrass me. Unfair!” she mock-scolded them. “You’re going to have to go out into the world and interact with real people from Texas, from Ohio, or even from the Valley!” More pretend outrage, enjoying a poke at the Valley.
The class laughed again.
“Come on! Who has the question about my appearance?“
A young man in the back held up his slip of paper.
“Well, Geronimo? Jump!” Regina told him.
“Okay,” he said, though he seemed reluctant.
The class waited. Regina drummed her fingers on the desk at the front. Whistled a bit. Put her hands on her hips. Sent out for coffee. Had some dental work done. Looked around the room at invisible rafters, then back at the young man.
The lad laid the slip of paper down on his desk.
“All right.” The man looked serious. “We’re supposed to address as well the views of others off-campus, who may have family who are transgender? Who may not like it. So, here it is: You don’t look like a woman to me. You look like a man in a dress who doesn’t know he looks ridiculous, and the whole thing about you being a woman is pure hype, a postmodernist twist on reality to fulfill your fantasies.”
The class was stunned silent. A few mouths flew open. After a couple of moments of shock, the hosting professor of the class decided to rein this in. “Mark! We don’t think that, we—”
“No, no, Prof,” Regina said in her typical man’s voice. “I got this.” Regina looked angry and slowly reached into her purse to take out a small squirt gun; she squirted the blunt Mark from across the room. A few students squealed and scattered, laughing and chattering. Mark got hit by some of the sprinkles, but he stayed right where he was and glared.
Regina half smiled. The class half smiled. The prof looked angry.
Regina waited for a couple of beats and then broke the silence. “That,” she said, “was not the question on the piece of paper. But it was exactly what I was hoping for.”
Everybody looked at her and then at Mark.
“Those questions in the hat were to give you a guideline, to get you started. Because when you interact with those folks, or if some of you later become therapists and you work with a transperson who has nonaccepting family, friends, or employer, that is exactly the sentiment you will be faced with. If you don’t learn in here, you won’t perform out there.
“Damn that was good.” Regina continued rummaging through her purse. “I ought to give you five bucks for that.”
There was some nervous laughter, as part of the class didn’t know how to take Mark’s statement or Regina’s response. Mark didn’t look as if he were espousing the view of the conservative masses. He looked as if his words were his own view.
Regina continued, “It stings like holy hell to hear what you said. But those sentiments, when they exist, will sting those you’re trying to help, also, when their own families feel that way, so, again, we have to deal with that view. Thank you, Mark. That took courage.”
“It wasn’t courage. It was honesty.”
“God, you give him an out, and he steps right back into the shit,” another student complained.
“Jesus, that was rude,” said another.
Then a round of controversial comments erupted from the class as a whole, as the students jumped into a debate on whether Mark’s view was inappropriate for this class or whether his comments were enlightened, considering what the guest lecturer was telling them.
Regina gave the professor a look to indicate “let it run, I got this.” She let the discussion continue for a minute while she gathered her thoughts.
“Okay. Pipe down, or I’ll have to use Mr. Squirty again,” Regina finally said, the humor intended to break the tension.
“You can’t,” Mark said from the back of the room. “You had Mr. Squirty removed.” Some chuckles.
Regina took a deep breath, debating her answer, but Mark spoke first.
“You said you had surgery to become a woman, didn’t you?” Mark said.
“Yeah, that’s right,” another student chimed in.
They all stared at her crotch, and a few students tried to ask about her operation, but Mark spoke above them. “Regina, may I ask if you’ve had the surgery to get female genitalia?”
“That’s private, Mark,” the professor scolded with both his tone and his glare. “We will regard her as a woman in this classroom because that’s the way she self-identifies—”
“You don’t mean because that’s the way I am?” Regina asked. “Just because that’s the way I identify?” She intended her questions not as scolding but as part of the open discussion she’d been encouraging.
“Regina,” Mark tried again. “I don’t mean disrespect, but in the spirit of speaking the view of unaccepting significant others, I think I should share the truth of what we’re seeing. None of the others will, that’s clear,” he said and looked around at the other students. “I have to say that you don’t look like a woman. You’re, what, six feet tall or better?”
“Five foot, eleven inches, plus two-inch heels today,” Regina said.
“You have broad shoulders. Your arms are long. Your forearms are muscular, which you display out of your three-quarter sleeves. Your hips are narrow, yet you wear a straight skirt. You have male-pattern baldness and you display it by brushing your hair back and over your head. And your voice is clearly a man’s. Your manner is kindly, but I don’t see any ‘woman’ in it—”
The class erupted in protest.
“Mark!” the professor barked. “Please leave the class. Now. I’ll see you in my office afterward.”
Regina began to hold up her hand in protest, but she couldn’t get any words out. She looked down at the floor, and tears began to flow silently down her cheeks.
Mark gathered his things and left.
The class talked.
Regina sat in a chair at the head of the class and crossed her legs, hose over knobby knees and thin calves, large feet in black two-inch-heeled pumps. She let the class slow down because she didn’t yet have the strength to continue. The professor tried to step in to help, but Regina motioned for him to hold off.
“No,” was all she could get out right then. But after a few minutes, she gathered her strength. “I hate Mark, and I’m thankful for him at the same time,” she said.
A student reached into her purse and offered Regina some tissues, which she used to wipe her face. She sniffled. Saying “thank you” to the student helped her regain her voice.
“It’s okay because we need to share this process together.” She paused again to collect herself. “I think I have some of my own issues here. Mark’s comments weren’t strong enough to provoke this,” she said, referring to her crying. “A person doesn’t usually go through all this calmly. The transition is not like quitting a job or moving to a new city.”
“When you meet someone like me in the future and she’s talking to you about her heart breaking because her wife is leaving her, because she’s lost her job and home, because people treat her like a freak—all that because she’s put on women’s clothes and gotten herself breasts—you need to know both what she’s going through and what others in her life are thinking and doing. Mark performed a helpful service here today because he was the only one who would help us see that.”
The class digested this. No one said a thing.
“No. I didn’t have this removed,” she said and motioned toward her crotch. “I don’t want to. There are more options out here than transsexualism. It’s the ’90s now, and I’m coming out as a transgenderist. We’ve been around for quite a while. Like most, I don’t want this removed,” she said indicated her crotch again, “and why should I? Transsexuals get all the press. But I have to speak honestly about how I see other choices because that’s what I’m here for, or how else can I help people understand? How else can I support my position? My lifestyle?
“I am a woman, a female. Not because of consensus, but because I feel myself a woman inside. I have had a male body for most of my life, a penis and testes, and that’s good. I didn’t start out thinking I was female, but the idea grew in me. It’s where I evolved to. Why? I don’t know. But the idea became more and more important as the years went on.
“I’ve always been interested in wearing women’s clothes, and as I developed, I also wanted to have breasts.
“Why? I don’t know. But I have to be myself, and so I transitioned to being a woman.”
The class paid respectful attention. Regina wished Mark were still there so he could hear this, but the prof had sent him out.
“But to me, it’s not a penis but a clitoris. Sounds ridiculous? Female-to-male transgenderists who take testosterone, their clitoris grows to about the size of my little finger, and if they have it released, it angles up, and they call it a penis. Indeed it is a variety of penis, because the tissues are homologous.
“And in male-to-female transgenderists, hormones are also taken, female hormones, and the penis gets a bit smaller over time, nearer that same size. So why can’t I think of it as a clitoris? It is the same tissue as your clitoris, “Regina said and motioned to a female student sitting near her.
“What about you?” she asked another female student. “Do you like to have sex with your clitoris?”
The student looked surprised to be asked such a blunt question, but she answered, “Yes.”
“Well, so do I. And if I have it removed, it won’t be there. Most of it would be thrown away in a garbage pail. I’m just as much woman and female as anyone,” she asserted to the class. “Sex is in the brain.
“So, if I’m female, and these are my genitalia, then these are female genitalia. Modus ponens,” she said, using the Latin term for an argument in deductive logic. “If, if I am female then these are my genitalia, then, if I am female, then these are my genitalia.”
“It sounds like you’re making an assumption about your first premise, there,” a bright student said.
“Modus ponens is valid; disagreement over premises is part of my life,” Regina said. “But that’s the way I see it. It’s what I feel like to myself. It’s what I’m here to share with you today. To me, there’s no difference. I’m not going to have my clitoris cut off to meet someone else’s standard.
“People accept me as a woman just as other women out in the world because they can see the truth of it. I’m a woman, a transwoman, and just like anyone else on this planet who is different—whether of a minority race, a different religion, or another sexual orientation. I can have a good life being different in this way if I’m true to myself.”
Lying on a padded table, Regina held her breath as the needle was inserted into another hair follicle on her upper lip, near the nose. This was the most painful area for her. She took some painkillers she had left over from her breast augmentation, and she needed them, because electrolysis was painful. But it was the only way to get rid of her beard.
Women do not shave twice a day, so she had to get rid of it. And she was still working on hair removal after a year and a half, though she was new to this particular electrologist. People didn’t seem to stay in her life long.
The electrologist made conversation to help her relax. “So, Gina, you’re a psychotherapist?” she asked.
Regina groaned as the needle stung.
“RE-gina, please. And yes,” she said between stings. “Yes, or I have been,” she said, pleased to distract herself from the stings.
“Not anymore?”
“Well, I am, still. But when I changed my clothes, I might as well have changed my practice, also. Most of my clients left. So I lost my practice. Maybe I can—” Regina stopped to wince from another sting. “Maybe I will try to rebuild one, some day. Working with transfolks.”
“I have clients. You should have patients? You treat them.”
“Makes them sound sick, that way, doesn’t it?” Regina said. “And that creates a separateness.” Regina paused for another sting but continued talking to distract herself. “I like to de-sick people, and that includes how I talk with them.”
“Okay,” the electrologist said with a smile.
“Mostly, though, I’m a professor.” It occurred to Regina that she might be bragging to the electrologist, which was unlike her normally.
She paused her thought for another sting.
So why was she bragging? Knocks, she thought. She’d taken some ego blows, a lot lately, and she was trying to feel better.
“Do you research mostly or teach?”
“I used to do more research but as I grow older, I really prefer teaching.”
“What kind of research?” the electrologist asked, which got a groan from Regina. “Oh, sorry! Bad question? Stress affects how much pain clients feel.” She removed the needle, removed the whisker, and inserted her needle into another follicle.
Regina groaned again. This stuff was seriously painful.
“No, no, it’s all right. I have a low pain tolerance. It’s just me.” Regina exhaled to try to relax. “I used to focus on problems of differentness, how someone who is different may struggle with a life of separateness or seek acceptance— Ah!” Regina said with a little laugh. “I guess I still do. Eeeeah!” Regina groaned again.
“That was a sensitive one. I think we’re on a tense subject, Regina, and you’re feeling more pain.”
“Now,” Regina said in humor to help distract herself, with as little lip movement as possible, “there’s a good little electrolysis machine. You don’t want to hurt me. This is the ‘blend’ method?” Regina asked, though she knew it was. It was just that this approach was more painful than the galvanic method used by the last person she’d seen. She was trying it because she liked the personality of this electrologist. She seemed like a warm, inviting person. Regina had felt a little alien with the last one.
“Just relax,” the electrologist said soothingly. “Do some alpha waves—think calm evenings on a warm beach—”
The electrologist worked on a few follicles a little farther from the nostrils for a while to help Regina relax.
Regina groaned a bit more and then tried more conversation to distract herself, trying to keep her lip movements to a minimum. “My concern was the development of anger and depression over time in people who are different, if they can’t find acceptance—” another groan “and the possibilities of suicide later in life.”
“Working with gays?” the electrologist asked.
“No. Schizophrenics, actually, and other people with substance-abuse issues because, not surprisingly,” Regina paused holding her breath, stifling a groan, “heavy substance abuse also creates a significant separateness with which a lot of users struggle, and symptoms often overlap between a schizophrenic and a post drug–impaired individual.”
“Heavy.”
“Not all that heavy, really,” Regina told her between pursed lips. “They’re all people with feelings.”
Electrologists can become confidants, like therapists or bartenders sometimes, or even a friend, although they’re just there to stop unwanted hair from growing. But they’re in a helping profession, and they are helping immensely; and you’re there, face to face for hours on end, so conversation seems to happen. Many electrologists converse with clients to distract them from their pain, help them relax.
“My wife left me,” Regina told her finally. “My kids don’t seem to want me around. The dog stayed with them. I had to move,”
“How many kids?” she asked. Regina knew that people ask mundane questions want they fear a conversation can get too dark.
“Two. A boy and a girl.”
“How old are they?”
“Twelve and ten. Jack and Jill.”
The electrologist chuckled at that and inserted her needle into a new follicle, getting another groan from Regina.
“Just kidding,” Regina said, smiling right through another groan. “They’re good kids, and we’ve always raised them to have a sense of humor about life.”
“Like you?” she asked.
“Yes. People who have transitioned usually have a different sense of humor, coming at life from a different angle, with elements of anger and frustration, yet needing to survive. Humor helps handle stress.”
“Survive?”
“Suicide is a big risk.” The conversation had turned too serious, and insertions temporarily stopped. “You have no idea now difficult life is when you’re this different.” Regina motioned to her attire. “I mean, I still have hopes and dreams, I still love, and I can still be hurt. I still need to work, shop for groceries, go to the movies. I still pay taxes, but if I soften my skin, if I wear a dress, suddenly I’m treated like a leper, only that comparison insults lepers.
“All of a sudden, people are afraid to admit they like me. Old friends leave. Family members no longer call. Colleagues don’t want to agree with me on as many things, even when I’m clearly right or helpful. They don’t want the allegiance. People stop coming over to visit.
“You know how you have to live, how you have to put yourself out there every day with a positive attitude, how you have to take emotional risks in finding someone to love or date, and how you may fear rejections or failure.”
“Yes,” she said, looking as if she feared where the conversation might go.
“Try dealing with all that, but being a transgenderist as well, a ‘man in a dress,’ people think. You have no chance, or almost no chance. It’s hard.”
The electrologist said nothing for a while, waiting for the mood to change.
Regina seemed to relax some, lying more softly on the table.
“I’m sorry. It must be hard.” The electrologist didn’t sound patronizing or placating; she sounded genuine in her concern.
She asked with her eyes if it was okay to continue, and Regina indicated with a slight nod. “But can we move to work over by the sideburns? The lip is getting raw.”
“Sure,” she said, and she moved to do so.
The electrologist asked another safe question. “So where did you move to?”
“A little house in Santa Monica. It’s a long walk to the beach, but it’s nice enough. It has a private backyard.”
“Great. You unpacked yet?”
“No. I haven’t spent the time—” Regina started and then corrected herself. “I don’t think I want to, I guess. I go digging through boxes to find a skillet or my files. I have boxes stacked along bare walls. Curtains are the first priority, though, so the neighbors can’t see me running around in there naked. Need a little privacy.”
“I love moving into a new house. It feels so fresh and new, like starting over.”
“Yes, it can.”
The electrologist inserted her needle into another follicle near the ear, got another groan.
“Or,” Regina said, “it can feel like a hole to which you’ve been resigned by a disapproving society, a place of your own because other people don’t want you in theirs.”
Chapter 5
Regina drove her black Porsche between rows of palm trees, up North Beverly Drive to her nice former home in the middle of Beverly Hills, although actually located down on the flats. Now her ex-wife-in-process had the house, along with the palm trees, the pool, the yard, the gardeners, and the kids. She can damn well have the bills, too, Regina felt, and she was relieved her wife wasn’t asking for any alimony or child support. Marsha was the one with most of the money anyway, being a successful lawyer, but the real reason she was making no demands was probably because she wanted to sever all ties with Regina, just keep her away. Marsha didn’t want others in her life to know she’d been married to a freak.
And Regina also knew she was lucky at that. Sometimes if a divorce gets nasty, the spouse will level charges of abuse or molestation to hurt the other and improve a negotiating position, but Marsha hadn’t. And Regina didn’t want to do anything to hurt Marsha or the kids. So theirs was a clean divorce-in-process, no fighting, just paperwork.
The problem was, Regina missed her children so much she could feel the emptiness in her gut. The source of the feeling wasn’t just the move, the loss of her old identity, or the painful changes she’d had to make under crisis. It was the loss of her family. At night when she was trying to go to sleep, she’d feel the vacuum in her stomach created by their loss. On waking alone. When seeing other families in public. On coming home to her own, separate, empty house. The look of worry on Marsha’s face when Regina left, the look of loss on her daughter’s.
That was the image that stayed with Regina so clearly when she was trying to sleep or eat or work: her daughter, Lisa, crying, while Daddy was willfully driving away.
She was still grieving the loss of her children. She had to see them if she could without upsetting Marsha too much.
She knew being at the house was a violation of her implied agreement to stay away, that she could embarrass them all, that going there could change the course of her divorce, still not final; but she’d held both children in her arms when they were born, cuddled them when they were infants, picked them up when they fell, cleaned scrapes, helped them learn to walk and then ride a bicycle, moved with them from their old house in Santa Monica to this house in Beverly Hills. She had got them seated in a new school and shared these last dozen Christmases with them.
To have that all ripped away because she couldn’t keep the bedroom door locked? Because she felt like a woman? Because they couldn’t stand to see her as a woman? It seemed such a major loss for such minor things.
How could this be? She’d raised them to be more liberal than that, to be more accepting—
Their rejections were their mother talking, not them. Their mother had kicked Regina out.
The kids said they were embarrassed by Regina, that they didn’t want their friends to see her in this neighborhood, but their rejection stemmed from their mother’s attitude, Regina felt certain.
Regina was vilified as the perverted freak, and the kids lived with their mother who held the purse strings, the parent who would represent them as normal to their friends at school and the club.
Regina understood.
There was nothing she could do about the situation, but she did sorely miss them. She ached to see them. Her last visit had been months before. She’d driven by a dozen times, never stopping, never getting out of the car, never seeing the kids in the yard or coming and going, all the time questioning her agreement to stay away for “their benefit.“
The thought of her kids being raised without her made her ache inside. She’d not be allowed to go to any school plays, no concerts, no movies, no birthdays, no pool parties, no graduations, nothing. Until they were of age and probably never even after that, if the wife had any say in it, with the assumption that, after six or seven years of the poisoning the kids would get from their mother, they wouldn’t want to be around Regina anyway.
She parked her Porsche on the driveway for the first time in months.
By Beverly Hills standards, the house was on the less expensive side of the median, though still nice. Her savvy ex-to-be was able to buy the place two years ago because she was a smart real estate attorney who learned of the former owner with a problem and then bought the house on the cheap to prevent foreclosure. The transaction was all very hush-hush as that former owner had a public reputation to uphold, so the public line was that he was fed up with the pejorative “left coast” and was moving to Miami where he could still live in the U.S. but be closer to the Caribbean.
Who cared, really?
Regina missed her kids.
She got out, walked to the front door, and rang the bell with her knuckle so she wouldn’t break a nail. Time passed, The foot didn’t pat. She stood like a lady, patient. Someone should be there this time of day. The sun shone, shadows crept, and birds chirped.
Finally the door opened, and there stood Marsha: five feet, seven inches, hair perfectly styled, a striking figure in a tailored miniskirt suit, black two-inch pumps. Perfect, save the stern look on her face.
Marsha stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. “Get out of here!” she said in a loud whisper.
Regina opened her mouth to speak, but Marsha cut her off. “Get out of here!” Marsha repeated.
Regina didn’t move.
“I’ll call the police!” Marsha threatened.
“No, you won’t. That would draw attention,” Regina countered.
“Yes, I will! And, yes, it would draw attention, but having been drawn, I’ll have no reason to worry any longer about the neighbors, so I’ll get you arrested for trespassing, and I’ll tell my lawyer you violated your agreement to stay away, and I’ll sue for child support, and get I’ll get the court to question why you want to wear dresses near your kids! I’ll do all that to fuck you up!” Marsha waited a second for her threats to soak in.
“I have nothing to lose, Marsha,” Regina said. “I’ve lost most everything but my self-respect.”
Marsha looked around, past Regina, to see if any neighbors were looking. None yet.
Regina said, “But they’re still my kids, and I’m not sure I made the right decision in promising to stay away. Even if I’m a woman, I’m still their father.”
Marsha’s eyes rolled. “What a crock! Woman?”
“Yes. I’ve had surgery to become a woman. I’m female—”
“Reggie.” She looked angry but she paused, as if trying to organize her thoughts. “Reggie, you’re a nice person. You’re smart. You used to be a good father. But whatever you are, you’re not a woman. You’re just screwed up. Look at you! What the hell are those gallon jugs on your chest? Even if you were going to impersonate a woman, you don’t look like one. You’re wearing clothes designed to make you look like a man in a dress. Even if you were a woman, you don’t have the figure for those clothes. Straight skirts are there to slim your hips, but yours are already tiny. Miniskirts are there to show off your legs, but your legs look like a man’s. You look like a clown, a caricature of a drag queen. I don’t want the neighbors to see you. I don’t want the kids to see you. Especially Leon. He’s twelve, and impressionable. You’ve hurt him quite badly already.”
Marsha’s words felt like daggers through Regina’s heart. Nothing could be as painful, Regina was sure. Tears welled up in her eyes and began to smear her mascara.
“These are appropriate clothes for a woman. Women wear these—” Regina tried to respond.
“But you’re not a woman, Reggie.”
“I am inside—”
“Are you mental?”
“This is not a mental illness,” Regina countered.
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