by Renee James
After Ray’s service, I sit in my chair and update my card on him. It occurs to me that the feelings he aroused in me are new. I don’t want to sound superficial, but whenever I have found someone sexually attractive in the past, it was based on physical characteristics that I noticed right away. This was different. It started with what a really good person this man is, then what it would be like to be held by him and loved by him. He would never be interested in me, and I’m not disappointed at that thought. I’m strangely refreshed to have felt these things about someone.
Is this just age? Hormones? Or am I starting to think like a woman?
***
MY FIRST CHRISTMAS as a transwoman.
When I was married and passing as a normal person, I always wondered how many people actually experienced the kind of holiday joy that’s portrayed in popular movies and books and television shows about Christmas. I liked the music and the lights, but the whole run-up to Christmas seemed stressful for everyone and the harder people tried, the more their Christmas spirit seemed contrived. Except for kids of a certain age and their parents.
As a gay man living alone, the holidays were just lonely. I had no family to dine with or buy gifts for, and none of my romances coincided with the holidays. There was plenty of merriment to be had in the clubs and bars, but I’m not much of a drinker and I wasn’t into the meat market part of clubbing either. So I read a lot of books, toured the city lights, visited museums and the like.
I thought my first holiday season as a transwoman might be different, but it hasn’t been. Marilee and her husband are holidaying with one of their kids in Michigan, Cecelia has gone to Florida for a week, and Ray has his daughter and his ex at a resort in Arizona. I’ve taken in some events at the Center, but to be honest, my heart’s just not in it.
It’s okay. I don’t get depressed or suicidal or anything. Maybe because I kept my true self hidden for so many years, this feels a lot like all the holidays of my life. Even as a child, Christmas seemed overblown. My mother went through the motions of being in the spirit of things, but my father didn’t even try to fake it. I’d get a football or a shirt or whatever on Christmas Day, we’d have the mandatory big dinner, and then we’d all just try to make it through a long boring evening in our own respective ways. Thanksgiving was better, I guess because it came without expectations.
When I told my family I was gay I didn’t have to think up excuses not to come for Christmas dinner anymore. The invitations just stopped. They may have quit having Christmas, for all I know, or they may have just quit inviting me. When I think about my family—as I often do for a moment here or there during the holidays—what I find most remarkable about us is that four people who had absolutely no love for one another could treat each other reasonably well for so long.
***
I DON’T HAVE TO BE OUT HERE freezing my butt off.
My appointment book is getting a little better. The rush-hour handouts are working. I’ve picked up a rash of new customers who have already been in and a bunch more who have booked their first visit. Most of the ladies who have come in have rebooked and I’m running a two-for-one deal that’s bringing in new customers, too—any client who gets someone else to book with me gets a half-off service and so does the new client. .
Even though things are picking up, I’m still passing out leaflets one or two nights a week. I want the business, but I also have an ulterior motive. I’m keeping an eye out for Strand. Every once in a while I catch sight of him moving north and I follow him. He always heads for a four-star hotel, for a tryst no doubt. I don’t know if the sex is any good, but they don’t spare the expense on the hotels.
As for why I’m following this jerk, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just jealous that he treats someone else like a human being and me like garbage. All I know is I’m not going to let him get away with murdering Mandy. And I’m not going to let him get away with hurting me.
I just don’t know what I’m going to do. Yet.
So for now I just want to get to know more about this pig.
Tonight they’re going low-end. I’ve followed Strand to a very nice, old hotel on Randolph, west of his usual haunts on Michigan Avenue. It’s a lovely remnant of old Chicago with a really elegant lobby, but it’s several pegs down the price scale from the elite digs they’ve been shacking up in.
I follow him from a half block or so behind. Once he ducks in the door of the hotel, I speed up. He always goes directly to the elevators, so why spend any more time than necessary out in the deep freeze?
I enter the lobby behind several businessmen and take a quick look to make sure Strand isn’t in the reception area. He isn’t. I don’t see him by the elevators, either. The great man is probably already getting it on with Ms. Wonderful.
Beyond the reception area, the lobby widens and narrows in a series of sitting rooms, all clad in wood paneling and furnished with old high back chairs and overstuffed sofas. There is a bar, and a wait staff delivers drinks throughout the lobby. I love the elegance and latter-day gentility of this place. I haven’t been in here in years, and never as Bobbi. It’s cold outside so I decide to stay for a drink, for old times' sake.
I settle in an old chair at the edge of the room, well away from the bar and the elevators. I try to be obscure. It is dim in here, and sitting on the perimeter of the room, I do not stand out.
A waitress comes to take my order. As she draws close, she makes me and she does one of those double takes people do with their eyes—she looks, looks away, looks, looks away, and finally establishes eye contact with me.
“Good evening…ma’am,” she says. She is a little uncertain with the “ma’am” part but handles it. The hotel sees plenty of gays and even the occasional trans person in the course of a month; it’s in the middle of the theater district and theater draws the LGBT community like money draws Republicans. She hands me a small menu and recites tonight’s drink and appetizer specials. “What can I bring you?” she asks.
I order a glass of wine, no food, and watch her whisper something to another waitress and the bartender when she goes to fill my order. I pay with cash when she brings my order, but wait with the tip until I leave. She’ll probably think I’m going to stiff her, so she’ll leave me alone. That suits me perfectly. I could use a little alone time right now.
For bar wine, this one isn’t bad. I swirl it in my mouth and savor the taste and recall another time, maybe five years ago, when I sat in this lobby and stayed in this hotel for a weekend with a very nice man. He was from a small town in Iowa, married, kids, apple pie. He came to Chicago on business a couple times a year and stayed over on Friday and Saturday night to imbibe in the cultural benefits of the big city: mainly, a male bed partner and a play.
We met in a bar. He was actually looking for a male prostitute he had met before and we just started talking by chance. We hit it off and he asked me if I’d be his theater date the next night. It ended up being one of the most fun weekends of my gay life and I had the feeling it was like that for him, too. I never saw him again, but I’ve often wondered how things worked out for him.
At the edge of my vision I see a figure approaching. I glance over. My heart freezes. It’s Strand. What the hell? Faster than I can inhale he sweeps into the chair next to me, his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed.
“Bobbi, my goodness what a small world, isn’t it?” His voice is dripping with sarcasm. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “What are the odds that we would see each other right here tonight? My, my. I would love to find out what you’ve been up to, but I have to run. Let’s plan to get together soon, though, okay? Let’s plan on having a smashing good time.”
He slaps his thigh hard when he says “smashing.” I wince. . “Let’s plan to do that very soon. Very, very soon.” He smiles that cold smile of his, all shark teeth and snake eyes. He is gone before I can utter a word.
He was trying to be menacing and it worked. I’m frozen in place, numb with dread. He is beyond angry. He means t
o beat me, maybe kill me. Whenever he feels like it.
We have entered into a whole new realm.
***
He enters the elevator shaking with rage. The tranny thing, the boy with tits, has the gall to be following him! Stupid, disgusting freak!
On the ride to her floor he gets his rage under control and considers what the tranny is trying to accomplish. Revenge, but how? Maybe by feeding the gay rumor mill with stories about him and Martha. The LGBT community’s rumor mill is an underground unto itself, rife with juicy news about sexual transgressions of the rich and famous. Reaching everywhere, boardrooms, city hall, barbershops. Everywhere. He begins to seethe again. It would never get in the papers but the buzz would be embarrassing for Martha. It could end her marriage. And it could cost him the account.
Stupid queer!
He stops at the door of her room. ‘Stupid dead queer,’ he thinks. He returns to the elevator, and then to the lobby, looking for a stupid tranny boy with tits to scare the shit out of. The really fun stuff will come later, but this will be a good appetizer. The beast is hereby in ascension.
***
AFTER MY ENCOUNTER WITH Strand yesterday, I had nightmares about Strand hurting me, killing Mandy, beating others, always with those dead eyes of his. I woke up with raccoon eyes from lack of sleep. I tried to reduce the puffiness with cold slices of cucumber, then a hemorrhoid ointment, and then I tried to hide it with makeup. I was only half successful. Several people have asked me if I’m okay today. They didn’t say I look like crap, but I’m sure their concern was based on me looking like last week’s oatmeal.
I had half a dozen customers today—not great, but for a slow Tuesday, not too bad. Especially considering where I was a couple months ago when I had some Tuesdays without a single customer, not even a walk-in.
Better still, four of today’s customers were repeats. They knew they were coming to see an oversized transsexual hairdresser and they had already made their peace with it. It was interesting how that changes things. We just jumped right into the service, then into small talk. There wasn’t any of the tension about me being trans and them trying to deal with that. . It was boring. Pleasantly boring. I look forward to the time when all my days will be like that and I’m just another hairdresser trying to make people look their best.
I’m heading straight home tonight. After last night’s scare, I’m dropping the private-eye stuff. Tonight will be a well-cooked meal—soup, salad, and a sautéed whitefish filet with a touch of lemon, maybe some chopped green onions, a dash of pepper.
As I start up the stairs to my apartment I’m trying to decide whether or not to substitute a baked potato for the soup. I notice something outside my door. Halfway up the stairs I can see that it is a bouquet of flowers. Alarms go off in my head. Flowers are part of Strand's language. The thought makes me shiver. I slowly ascend the stairs, hoping they’re from Marilee. Or maybe Ray. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were from Officer Phil…with maybe an invitation to dinner and a night at the theater? Yeah, dream on.
They are yellow roses, a dozen of them. In the dead of winter. I fish out the card and open it. My heart stops.
It reads: I have a big surprise for you! No signature.
None needed.
I automatically look over my shoulder, as if the bastard were waiting to fly at me with a knife as soon as I read the card. Nothing.
I ascend the stairs to the top floor to make sure he’s not lurking. My heart is pounding. It’s dark and I’m scared. There’s no chance he’s still here, but if I don’t prove it to myself I’ll spend the night cowering in fear about it. There is nothing at the top of the stairs except the doors to the two third-floor apartments. I walk all the way back down to the ground floor. As I step out on the porch I pull the flowers out of the wrapping and fling them onto the front lawn.
I say a short, silent prayer over them. Eat shit and die, Strand.
***
He watches from his car, parked across the street from the tranny’s building. His lights are off, but he doesn’t bother to slouch down. He doesn’t care if the tranny sees him or not.
The tranny bursts onto the porch from inside the building, still wearing the silly coat it walked home in. Anger is etched on its mannish face. It flings the roses toward the curb, the blossoms separating in mid-air and fanning across the icy grass. He smiles. The bitch’s anger pleases him. It’s not just anger, it’s fear, too. He can smell it from here. Delicious.
January
STRAND PROMISED TO COME CALLING almost a month ago and he hasn’t made good on it yet. I think the weather is holding him back, though I know he hasn’t dropped the matter. . We haven’t been above freezing in a week. We’ve had highs in the single digits, with wind chills below zero at night. Usually when it’s this cold, it’s also clear. But we’ve had overcast skies and a six-inch mini-blizzard and several light snowfalls. The snow doesn’t melt because it’s so cold. The stuff on the street turns to a frozen slush during the day because of the road salt, but it doesn’t actually melt. The slush clogs curbs and gutters and loose snow blows into your face wherever you walk. If you don’t wear tall boots, when you step off the curb the slush seeps into your shoes and you are in for a bad day.
If you do wear boots, the salt-laden slush turns them to junk in a few days. You can try buying crappy boots for the sacrifice, but they just fail faster than expensive ones. You really can’t beat Mother Nature, not in the Chicago winter.
On the street, we look like a city of mummies. People wrap scarves around their necks and the lower parts of their faces. When the wind is whistling up the streets, people wrap the scarves up over their noses and pull hats to just above their eyes.
The one positive part of this is that, on the street, no one can tell I’m trans. And it’s too cold to give a damn anyway.
Most of my friends and customers are at their annual breaking point with Chicago’s winter weather. They talk of Florida, California, tropical islands.
Me, I take solace in hot meals and steaming baths, good books, offbeat programs on public radio. And not being killed by Strand. Earlier this week I was Officer Phil’s companion for a stage play at a neighborhood theater. No, he’s not interested in me. Alas. He likes to attend social events in the community with members of the community. He spreads it around—always someone different. The play was awful, but I had a wonderful time getting ready for it and Phil was a very thoughtful escort. And the experience gave me material for many nights of erotic dreams. Yes, I still have a crush on Officer Phil. I may always have a crush on Officer Phil.
I'm thinking of myself as a woman more and more now. I have dreams about making love as a woman, what it would be like to be with a man. I have those dreams about making love with women, too. About what it would be like to make love with a woman as a woman.
Bisexuality is another of my abominations against all that is Puritan and hypocritical in America, and I should be ashamed of myself. I’m not though. In fact, a lot of us trans people who go through all the rejection that comes with transitioning get to a point where loving someone and being loved back is more important than minutiae like gender.
Whatever. What’s significant is that I see myself as a transwoman now. My memories of Bob Logan, strapping six-footer with rippling muscles and Marlboro Man looks, are pretty much gone.
But I also realize I’m not ever going to pass for a genetic woman and, to be honest, I don’t feel like one. To many of my transsexual sisters who grew up hating everything about being male, their life’s goal is to look, act, and talk like a genetic woman. And to be accepted by genetic women as a woman.
I’m coming to realize that there are anomalies in my transsexual makeup. A lot of them. I never minded being a boy as a child, even though I would have preferred to have long hair and wear dresses. I mostly preferred boy’s games to girl’s games, and I had friends of both genders.
When I started going through puberty I got much more interested in girls, both as a bo
y and as a transsexual. As my female classmates grew breasts and started wearing tight sweaters and short skirts, I found it hard to think about anything else. It was very confusing. On the one hand, I wanted to have sex with half the girls in my junior high. I got erections in almost every class from gazing at the girls. On the other hand, I also wanted to have cute hair and perky breasts and boys getting erections by just looking at me.
I think that’s a good definition of conundrum.
Like so many trans youth of that era, I didn’t know the name for the disease I had, but I knew it wasn’t safe to talk about, or to act out. So I did what I was supposed to do. I spent the first four years of puberty trying to get laid, and the next ten or so after that trying to decide if I liked it.
Well, let me clarify that. I did like it. It was better than being horny. But I was thinking I’d like it better if I was the one on the bottom. Back in those days, no one talked about transsexuals, so I assumed I was gay. After a few years as a gay man, I finally realized the main thing I liked about being gay was it allowed me to be effeminate. I wasn’t attracted to men any more than I was to women. I was attracted to both.
When I started cross-dressing and my friends got me active in the TransGender Alliance, things started coming into focus. The first thing was learning that gender identity and sexual preference are two completely different things. One of my mentors used to say, “Gender is who you are, sex is who you love.”
Of course, even knowing that much, it took years to think of myself as a transsexual. I couldn’t tell you why, really. I suppose it’s because transsexual isn’t something anyone wants to be. It’s way off the map of accepted behavior in our society. If someone hates you for it, it’s okay because you're not really human. If someone is nice to you, it’s because they’re a saintly person, not because you're human and deserve to be treated well. It’s a tough road to travel and the only ones to complete the journey are those who have no other choice.