by Renee James
“I liked making love with Don. I liked making love with you, too.” “But surely it was more frequent with him . . .”
Betsy laughs. “You still have a lot to learn as a woman, Bobbi. It wasn’t any more frequent with Don than with you. Just because someone is a hetero male doesn’t mean they want to stand stud every day. Life gets in the way. Business, travel, meetings, worries. And there’s the Virgin Mary syndrome . . .”
I cock my head in question.
“When you’re dating, an interested man can’t wait to get you in bed. After you get married and the novelty has worn off, they don’t think of you as a sex object anymore. You’re more like the Virgin Mary. They love you but they don’t have wild sex thoughts about you anymore. You have to work through that with them.”
I nod. I know what she’s talking about. I lived it from the other side of the gender divide, but I thought it was just me. What has grabbed my attention, though, is that she’s addressing me as a woman, a less experienced sister. We are talking about sex like two women, like adult siblings. It makes me feel so authentic. I glow all over.
I wonder if I will find a friend like this in prison. Not a lover. A soul mate who will accept me as a woman.
* * *
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10
Wilkins leafs through his murder book. He has been working on it day and night. He can’t sleep anyway, and the department has put him on medical leave, so there’s nothing else to do.
It is the most thorough murder book he’s ever assembled. He has added extra touches to make sure nothing slips through the cracks if he dies before the case is prosecuted. There’s the boilerplate stuff, like his theory of the crime and the relevant factual documents. And added features. He has created an appendix that profiles each person he believes could have had a role in the run-up to Strand’s murder. Each profile has a photograph of the person and hard data that will make locating them easier a year or two or three from now when this thing comes to trial. Drivers license number, phone number, social security number, current address.
After the facts he writes a narrative about each person. Who they are, what they do, how they figure in the murder.
The murder book is as thick as a Russian novel and has just as many characters. He’s proud of it. It’s his last work as a cop. He wants to go out right. Maybe they’ll use this as an example in training young detectives in the future. That would please him.
He is focused on the investigation all the time. Everything else in his life is too depressing to contemplate. He wonders if he will live long enough to see Logan’s trial. Probably not.
He thinks it’s a decent case, which is far more than any other detective could have achieved. No smoking gun, but months of hard digging and creative analysis have produced a powerful inventory of circumstantial evidence. Plenty of proof to indict, probably enough to convict. But it would be better if he had even just one piece of hard evidence linking Logan directly to the crime. DNA or a hair sample from Strand’s apartment. An eyewitness. A confession.
A confession. Wilkins sits back in his chair and thinks about the confession. He thinks Logan is one of those people who wants to confess. People with a sense of decency have trouble living with a crime like this, knowing they murdered someone. They are plagued by guilt and fear for as long as they hold it in.
Wilkins has that trait, himself. That’s one of the reasons he never shot his firearm except at the range. His son will learn that about him in his journal, the one he’s been keeping just for Stephen. Stephen, he says, don’t own a gun and don’t shoot anyone. Even when it’s legal, it’s hard to live with.
Logan has a conscience. She has to be plagued by nightmares and remorse. He thought she might have come forward by now. He could sense that she wanted to when they talked. She wasn’t on the edge, but she was close.
He wonders if maybe she’s protecting an accomplice, if that’s what’s holding her back. She could be the type. He couldn’t come up with anything on an accomplice, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. The weight lifter was at work that night. The Swenson woman didn’t have a great alibi for the time of the murder, but the doorman at her building saw her come in before midnight and didn’t see her leave again.
As much as he poked around for information about other possible accomplices, nothing else had turned up. Just Barbi Dancer’s recollection of a black sport sedan driving by at around the time Strand was being abducted, but that went nowhere—no license plate, no driver identification, not even an indication the vehicle had anything to do with Strand’s abduction and murder.
He pictures Logan in his mind, how she looked when they talked in her salon. Yes, he thinks, she was close. She wanted to tell him. It’s worth asking her again. He would ask, not bully. He’d be respectful, courteous. He’d give her a last chance to redeem herself, free her soul, catch a deal from the DA.
He tries to scuttle the next thought, but he can’t keep the image out of his mind of Logan being hauled off to jail in handcuffs, another victim of a murderer the police should have caught. It’s the law, he thinks, but it’s not fair. Logan was right about that. If CPD had done a better job with the Marvin investigation, none of this shit would have happened.
He pushes the thought from his mind. His job is to enforce the law. A judge or jury will decide what’s fair. But as he thinks it, he knows better. Trials are about laws and evidence. She’ll take a beating if it goes to trial.
Call or meet in person? His appearance is so off-putting that he has been avoiding in-person contact when he can. Even walking down the street is embarrassing, people gawking at him, doing double takes. Jesus, wait ’til they make my face into a monster mask, he thinks. The medical text photos flash into his mind, rotting jack-o-lantern faces crushed on one side, hellish fiends with puckered mouths and desperate eyes. People will wince and gag.
But maybe not Logan, he thinks. She sees strange-looking people every day. She mothers them. Maybe seeing Wilkins’ pathetic appearance will break down some of her defenses.
He dials her number. It’s not like he has anything else to do. It’s not like he has anything to lose.
* * *
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12
“You should come, too,” says Lisa. “I can get you a ticket. Free.”
She is sitting in my chair at the salon. I am prepping her for an up-do. She has a formal party to attend tonight, a black-tie fund-raiser for the LGBT community. The mayor will be there, congressmen, bankers, stockbrokers, the hoi polloi of Chicago. The big thing is, she came to me for the ’do. The olive branch has been extended.
I smile and study her face and hair in the mirror. When we meet at community functions I see her differently than I do now. What I notice when we meet out there is her femininity—her face, her actions, her voice most of all. I notice that she is pretty, but as a transwoman myself, her attractiveness is less significant than the fact she looks and sounds like a woman. Many of us don’t, me especially.
In the salon, a different image appears. Now I look closely at her face shape and skin tone, the symmetry of her facial structure, the relationship between her head and the rest of her body, the color of her hair, her best features. It’s no longer about her transsexuality or mine. Here, she is just a woman wanting to feel beautiful tonight, and I am a hairdresser who wants to help her get there.
“I think society events like the Mid-Winter Ball are best left to the Cinderellas among us, Lisa,” I answer. “But thank you. That’s a generous offer.” Indeed it is. The tickets go $250 apiece.
“You’re as much a Cinderella as anyone else,” she says as I work her hair with my hands, feeling the texture, looking at how her face changes when I move the hair to different positions. “Here’s an idea. Get your boyfriend to come, and I’ll get two tickets.”
This is a very nice offer, but I’m feeling like the main point here is, she can get two tickets, just like that. And she thinks Officer Phil is a hunk.
“I’m afraid Phi
l and I aren’t an item.”
“You broke up?”
“If you can call it that.”
I begin sectioning Lisa’s hair. “What happened?” she asks.
This is where I change the subject with clients. I don’t talk about sex or politics during a service. But Lisa isn’t a regular client. She’s here as a one-shot deal, and we know each other outside these walls. And we aren’t friends, so there’s nothing to lose.
“Basically, he’s not sure he can handle life with a transwoman, but I don’t think he’d have that issue with you or one of the other cute girls. I’m just too big and masculine. Oh well . . .” I try to say it with nonchalance, but even I can hear the edge in my voice. It still hurts.
“Don’t say that. You’re a proud, beautiful woman, Bobbi.”
Yay rah. It’s nice of her to say something encouraging, but this is strictly pro forma script in the trans world. Everyone is proud and beautiful. Lisa means well. She’s motivated by her Lincolnesque humanity. She’s here to save the wonderful people of transgenderland and some of them are somewhere between ugly and embarrassing to look at. Being patient with us is part of being a savior.
She tells me that I’m a role model for several of the girls at TransRising. “Especially the bigger ones.” As she says it she realizes her social error. “You know, I mean the taller ones. They see in you that they can be tall and sexy and have great careers.”
Good recovery, Lisa. Just for that I won’t dry your hair with a blowtorch.
We talk about the TransRising ladies while I wrestle with her hair. It’s long and straight, not a hint of curl, and as slippery as satin. That makes it very attractive when she wears it down. It moves with silky grace and gives off a healthy shine. But it’s hard to work into formal hair because it resists back-combing and curling as if each hair were coated with Teflon. I cover the base of her locks with a hair spray that sets up like Krazy Glue, then tease like a hairdresser possessed by the devil.
Lisa is talking about the girls at TransRising. She remains calm as I turn her head into a ball of cotton candy. She is interesting and insightful, much as I wish she weren’t so I could feel better about my misgivings toward her. She knows each of the TransRising residents on a personal level, their histories, what they like and don’t like, what they want to achieve with their lives, where they are in their transitions and education. What they need to accomplish to be accepted as women in polite society.
For all my doubts about her motivation, Lisa is invested in the dispossessed people of TransRising in a way that no other volunteer is. The hours and energy required to accumulate the knowledge she has goes far beyond anything the rest of us would even contemplate. Even if I’m right about her motivation, her work for disenfranchised Chicago transwomen is Mother Theresa–worthy.
Lisa has given me carte blanche on this service because she’s never had an up-do she likes, and I’m getting into it. I carefully sweep the hair from the back half of her head into a series of graceful arches that rise upward over her crown then bend forward toward her face. I make the same arc with sections of hair on the front half of her head and intertwine them with the ends of the back hair. I continue to arc sections back, up and forward, and secure them in an intricate pattern that’s really just a loose, puffy two-strand braid. The height of the hair decreases as it comes forward achieving the silhouette of a classic twist, but with a lot of texture and complexity. A few inches from her face, I stop braiding and feather her ends into long bangs that descend to her eyebrows.
She is elated and I am jealous. She looks like a red carpet celebrity. The bangs bring more oval symmetry to her face, the high-piled hair in back gives her an aura that is equal parts royalty and sexpot. When she combines this with a low-cut gown, she will leave a trail of male desire wherever she goes.
“Bobbi,” she exclaims, “you’re a genius.”
She’s gushing like a schoolgirl who’s just been kissed by Elvis. I look at her and see youth and beauty and the arrogance that comes with it, but when she looks at herself she looks through the prism of her own vulnerabilities, just like the rest of us. She got a princess moment right here in my chair and she can’t stop glowing about it. I’m gushing, too—this is the kind of client joy I live for.
As I show her what she looks like from the sides, the rear, and standing up in a full-length mirror, I wonder what it’s like to be Lisa, to be young and beautiful and smart and ambitious and to look and feel like a woman. There is joy on her face.
I will never know that joy. When I look in a mirror I will always see someone who doesn’t look at all like the me inside. I will always see the masculine features where a Lisa-like princess is supposed to be. And I fear that someday in the not-too-distant future I will be seeing these things in a prison mirror, if they have mirrors in prison.
* * *
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14
The magnificent jazz singer Lou Rawls once likened Chicago’s winter winds to “a giant razor blade blowing down your spine.” My analogies are running more to a naked plunge in the Arctic Ocean as Cecelia and I play tag with Robbie while Betsy kneels at Don’s gravesite. The exercise gets our blood pumping again, though it’s too late for my fingers and toes, which will probably never recover the sense of touch.
When Betsy’s mourning ends, I scoop up Robbie, and the four of us head to the car. We are arm-in-arm, Cecelia on one side of my grieving former wife, me on the other. In the car, I direct Cecelia to a restaurant a few miles from the cemetery. It’s nearly empty on a Sunday afternoon, the other patrons gathered in the bar to watch football and drink. We get a table overlooking the river and order hot drinks and soup. Robbie is fascinated with the electric fire glowing in the fireplace and Cecelia takes her for a closer look.
“How are you holding up, honey?” I ask Betsy.
She shrugs. “I’m okay. I just wish—” She stops, shrugs again, stares at her soup.
“What do you wish?”
She stares me in the eye. “I’ll tell you my worst secret if you’ll tell me yours.”
“Let’s not do that.”
We fall silent. Betsy stirs her hot chocolate, eyes downcast, for a long minute. She looks up.
“I was a poor wife to Don,” she says. I’ve never seen eyes so sad. “I wasn’t really honest with you before, when we talked about sex. He . . . he . . . wasn’t a very good lover. Especially after my miscarriage. He had trouble getting . . . aroused. I could do it, but . . .” Her voice trails off. “But it was difficult for both of us. It was a lot of work, and sometimes he still couldn’t do it. And then he didn’t want to kiss me because, you know . . .”
Yes, I know. Men are so neurotic about sex. You pleasure them and all of a sudden you have germs.
“Everyone has those kinds of issues sooner or later,” I say.
“I don’t know about everyone. I know Don was crushed. He felt awful that he wasn’t a better lover. He even asked me once if I needed to take a lover.”
“Did you?” I withdraw the question immediately. It’s not my business. I only asked because I didn’t see why she should feel responsibility for their sex life.
“No, of course not.” She answers anyway.
“So why the guilt?”
“Because when he offered to get Viagra, I told him not to. I said I preferred it natural, even if it was just sometimes. But, Bobbi, the truth was, I just wasn’t interested in him sexually. I loved him, but I didn’t enjoy making love with him. So he died unfulfilled. And it’s my fault.”
We join hands across the table. I look into her eyes. “He would never say that, Betsy. He did not feel that. You were the highlight of his life. I could see it with total clarity. Anyone could.”
She shakes her head and looks down again. “I wish I could feel that way.”
“I think if you talked about this with a therapist they would tell you that you’re turning your grief into guilt. They might even know why that happens.”
Actually, I don’t ha
ve much more faith in psychologists and therapists than I do in a kind and interactive deity. About half of the ones I’ve met had the intellectual depth of a Fox News commentator.
“The best sex I ever had was with you.” It just bursts from her lips, quiet, but as shocking as if she had screamed it in a crowded room. I have come to think of my former penis as a sort of dildo with nerve endings that was distributed to the wrong person. I enjoyed the male climax and getting aroused, especially in my younger days when testosterone coursed through my veins as if I were a real boy. But I never really thought of myself as male, not even at climax. And as our marriage matured, the frequency of sex slowed down a lot. I always assumed Betsy just forgave me for being a crappy lover. Her revelation leaves me speechless.
“It’s okay, Bobbi. You can talk.”
“I feel like I lost the last set of car keys.” This is unintentionally funny. I was thinking that my lost penis was the engine that made us “go” in bed. Betsy snickers.
“Well, Cecelia has the keys,” she says.
“Yes.” I nod. “But not the one you want.”
We exchange juvenile laughter.
“If you let me set you up with my hooker, he’ll make you forget my missing member in an hour or so. He is a genius and I was a fraud.”
Betsy’s face is bittersweet, part smile, part sadness. “It wasn’t just the physical part, it was the love that made it sweet, Bobbi. I can’t get that from a hooker.”
I understand what she means, but the thing about being a transsexual is, you learn quickly you’ll never have it all. Your life becomes a matter of getting what you can. I’d love to be Officer Phil’s official full-time lover, but that’s not going to happen. Actually, it’s not going to happen with any nice man. An erotic session with a professional every now and then isn’t my first choice, but I got a lot of pleasure from it and it beats watching television.
* * *
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14