Q: One of the things I found so refreshing about your memoir was your honesty. Some of the earlier transsexual memoirists like Jor gens en were so circumspect, because of the times the authors were writing in. They really couldn’t discuss their sex lives, for example. But you really don’t pull any punches. You put it all out there.
I’ve heard that. And I’m flattered. That’s what I wanted more than anything. If I’m taking this step, and coming forward at long last, I must be honest, and I can’t sugarcoat anything.
Q: One of the things I’ve found interesting as I’ve been conducting my research is the conflicted relationship between homosexuality and transsexu-ality. Christine Jorgensen and many other early transsexuals were adamant about insisting that they were not homosexuals. One of the things I found unique about your book is that you admitted that you were a gay man …
Perceived to be a gay man. But I didn’t think that was the case. Before I met Dr. Benjamin, well… You wear the badges that are available at the fair and that’s what was available. I was not popular in the gay bars, and the men who were attracted to me were attracted because of the image I projected onstage. I was just too ultra for the gay community. If an interested potential partner thought that you believed it (that you were female), that’s the difference. If it were bigger than life, drag, a parody of femininity, that’s camp. Then, that was okay.
Q: Did you feel comfortable in the gay community before your transition?’
No. I did not feel comfortable in the community. I do more so now, actually. Adore it, really. Because I’ve become an icon. I went to a book reading in San Francisco, and there was a very interesting young man who came by and said, “This book is so important to me because the movement in the gay community is now to exclude those of us who want to cherish our femininity.” And I thought, yes … Because here he was in a lumber shirt and the whole thing. I view that as almost criminal. We just must learn to let people be as they are. The whole impersonation thing also [drag queens] … The community has turned on those representatives of the Stonewall era. They are ashamed of them now.
Q: You were a patient of Dr. Harry Benjamin. You met Dr. Benjamin when you were working at Finocchio’s?
Yes. Started hormones, did all that. And of course with his rules and regulations, generally you have to dress in the clothing [of your preferred gender] for a time, but I didn’t because I was working at Finocchio’s.
Q: And he referred you to your surgeon, Dr. Elmer Belt?
Yes.
Q: Can you tell me a little about Dr. Benjamin, as you knew him?
He was doing extremely well in the early sixties. He had offices in Paris, New York, and San Francisco. As much as he did for me, and as much as I appreciate what he did for me … well, we were referred to as “his girls” and then there were RGs, “real girls.” And it has only recently struck me that if we had our druthers, and in a perfect world, that distinction would not be there. And I question his putting it there. I was wondering what he really was thinking. He was very kind, very gentle, very embracing, but I’m not sure that he really got it, as I perceived it. But I don’t think that we could have expected any more at the time.
Q: At the time you transitioned, there was no real “transgender community. “ You pretty much transitioned in isolation, didn’t you?
Well, I did have friends. [Laughs]
Q: But you had no sense of being part of a movement?
Oh, good god, no. I would have run from that.
Q: Did Benjamin’s clients, patients …
Children. [Laughs]
Q: Did you keep in touch with one another?”
Pretty much so. For example, my friend Charlotte, whom I mention in the book. She was stepmother to three children. We ran around as couples, and of course neither husband knew.
Q: You were married three times and none of them knew about your surgery whenyou married?’
I just didn’t see the need to share that information. And actually still don’t. It just seems to me that you are cutting out problems for yourself, if you say, “Before we go any further, I must share this with you.” And then you have your first fight, and you think, “Had I not told him, would we have had this fight? What is he thinking? Is he judging me?” Now if you are secure enough in yourself, perhaps you don’t go through that. I’ve never been that secure.
Q: So when do you tell?”
If you wait until after the fact (and I have experience with this), that’s worse. That can really be seen as betrayal. I don’t have any answers with any of this. I would hate to be with a man and worry that he was with me because he couldn’t quite accept homosexuality. And all those nagging ugly little thoughts. You buy your ticket and take your chances.
Q: Do you think things were easier when you transitioned?
No doubt about it. People did not know what to look for. There were so few of us, as I’m fond of saying, very few transsexual houses on the block. Forget community; there were few houses on the block. And the people that I knew were friends, for example, my friend Stormy that I write about in the book. She was a vivid character. But she also was very fortunate in that she was beautiful. And I don’t mean to say that everyone must be. But passing, or blending, being able to survive in the world of your choice, is extremely important. I just don’t see running up flags and banners to say, “We’re different.” Because that’s what they are saying to me, “We’re different than you are.” And I don’t feel different.
I went too far by denying my history. But… I have discovered that when I was teaching locally and the word went out [about my trans-sexuality] the principal said, “Why should I be upset? Come back next year.” That is because I have done my job well. I have presented myself respectfully, with some decorum. I would hate to be seated here with you and have a representative of the TG community come in and make a spectacle. It would make me feel embarrassed, but I would feel the same way if anyone came in and made a spectacle. It takes us back rather than pushing us forward.
Q: You haven’t had the sense that you were discriminated against in your own life?”
I was discriminated against when I was perceived to be a gay man. But after that, no. I mean, granted, there have been situations where a love of my life whom I had shared this information with said, “I can’t stay.” But he didn’t hit me upside the head. This was his choice. And that could have been based on any number of things. So, no, I don’t feel discriminated against.
Q: But others do feel discriminated against?”
I understand that. When I first came here, I went to a support group, thinking that I could be a great deal of help. I was pretty much rejected by that group because what I was saying was, “My training is how to walk, how to sit, how to use makeup,” and they were saying, “We are who we are, and society has to learn to accept us this way.” And I don’t think society has to do anything, nor does society owe us anything.
Q: Your view is a not a popular one in today’s trans community. I’m sure that many don’t want to hear it.
They don’t. I’m not out there sharing this. But this is very important to me because I feel that what Dr. Benjamin labeled—I started to say “started,” but we know that’s not true—but he put a focus on something that he happened to call “transsexual,” though it has little or nothing to do with sexuality. But his dream for us was that we should be able to fulfill our dream. That we go into society, that we blend and go on with our lives, and so it is an affront to me when I hear people say, “We want to shock. We want to,” in my estimation, “be as offensive as possible.”
There are not many of me around. They’re dying off. And the others that are preaching the same gospel are not coming forward. They’re comfortable in the life they’ve chosen. And I think I do probably tiptoe around that subject in the book. It disturbed me to see … well, we had no political agenda, and to see people getting mileage out of just being transgendered? This is something that you are. I personally see it as Benjamin s
aw it… something that happened during that hormonal bath and it’s just something that we have to correct. Just like you have to get rid of your appendix, this is just something else we have to get rid of.
Over the years it seems to me—and I know that this sounds harsh—almost any troubled being thought they could put on a dress and say, “Here’s a comfortable label.” Because in the beginning we were medical problems, and there was a bit of understanding and sympathy, and I think that we attracted a lot of troubled people. That’s not politically correct at all, but I’ve seen it. And I just say, these are not our brothers and sisters. And I have to say that is more true for our sisters. By and large, I don’t think that I’ve ever met an FTM that I don’t just adore.
Q: When did you first encounter the transgender movement?’
I had not heard that term, “transgendered,” until about two years ago. “Transsexual” I knew. I find it all very interesting. Sunday, I went to a group here called Mountain Women, predominantly lesbian-identified. One of the women wanted to hold hands and say, “We’re not men, we’re not women, we’re just beings who are experiencing this day.” And I thought, “Now I don’t know how much alcohol it took her to get there, but isn’t that a lovely philosophy.” If we all felt that way, I think that maybe that’s where we are moving as a species. It would be a great move for women, wouldn’t it, to have that power?
But I’m disturbed that my brothers and sisters still need to label themselves, rather than just saying, “I am changing to the gender of my choice, and that’s all there is to it.” We do not need to unite, we do not need to do anything, or even ride in the Gay Pride Parade. What is this? I don’t feel any more gay than the man in the moon. I just don’t get it. But then I think perhaps I’ve been extremely lucky that I was allowed to be. I wasn’t labeled. I could go on with my life.
Of course, coming from Dr. Benjamin’s point of view and reference, the objective is to get this out of the way and go on to join the mainstream. So it disturbs me—not a major disturbance, but still— that there is a movement that’s saying there’s a third gender here. I think we’re all on a continuum anyway, a mix of male and female. Just stop being so goddamn intellectually smug about this whole thing. At the same time, I don’t want people in the transgender movement being slaughtered.
Q: When you first came out to California you began working at Finoc-chio ‘s, the famous drag club in San Francisco.
Yes, Finocchio’s was definitely a training ground. But as good as Finocchio’s was for me, it was merely a stepping-stone. My life actually began in 1962, with surgery. It was a rebirth, truly. Everything prior to that was in preparation for a better life. I didn’t know what that better life was going to be, or how I was going to get there, but I was very aware of not being comfortable in the life I was living. This was not me. I had that brief time span onstage at Finocchio’s, when people applauded and said, “Ooh” and “Aah,” but that was as close as I had ever gotten to what I wanted. But that was only on the stage, not off.
But going into television on The Red Skelton Show—that was really show business. I had worked prior to the show and had done a movie called The Love God {’with Don Knotts. I got an agent, took acting lessons, then did a thing called The Female Bunch, with Russ Tamblyn, which is today a cult classic, but is so tacky, so terrible. I think I tell the story in the book, that because we didn’t want to sleep with the grips, my girlfriend and I passed ourselves off as lesbians, and because of that… the dialogue was pretty much being invented as we went along, and the dialogue did take on a very lesbian overtone. [Laughs] And it was one of the first. Then I went to work at the Ambassador Hotel, and that led to the Skelton show. Usually you reverse that order, you do stage and then television and film, but I did film first and then television.
Then things really started to flower, with The Red Skelton Show. I started getting quite a bit of work. I did a lot of early television … in fact, recently I was auditioning and a young director looked at my resume and said, “My god, you were there at the very beginning of television!” You start feeling hair sprout from your ears and a cane. [Laughs] But I was there doing all that variety show stuff. I did The Andy Williams show, and Leslie Uggams and Dean Martin. The Partridge Family. A skunk had gotten on the bus, and so Danny goes around to get costumes for the family with a cigarette girl or something in Vegas, and he’s trying to get me out of my costume.
I also did Night Gallery. When Rod Serling interviewed me he said, “If I wanted a showgirl, I’d hire Kim Novak. If you pull any of that showgirl shit on me, I’m going to have you right out of there.”
Q: So you had a reputation as a showgirl?”
I did have that reputation … well, I didn’t dare try anything else! So I was walking around on stilts and in miniskirts and very breathy. Smiling a lot. Not just in film, but in real life also.
Q: You were selling sexiness as a commodity?’
I don’t even know that it was sexy. It was a particular look. Do you remember Little Annie Fannie, the cartoon? Big eyes and the lips and the little perky nose and the long legs. That was the image. It was just another version of drag. The ultimate drag queen was Mario Thomas. With the lashes and the hair. That whole image back then. I was very familiar with that. Once, when I was working at Finocchio’s, I was going to work, and I saw Ann-Margret, standing on the corner in all of her glory. And it was the same act.
Q: Did you have the political consciousness to make the connection back then?
No, but I was shocked to discover that some of the people I considered to be the most beautiful women in the world were going through the same traumas that I was. We had the same goals; we were going about it the same way; we were going to private clubs in Beverly Hills, trying to be noticed, trying to be discovered, trying to find a sugar daddy. It was the same damn thing.
Q: The life of a starlet?”
Exactly. And the “will somebody really love me for who I am?” This was not transsexual, it was being a woman.
Q: Did you enjoy your life as a starlet?”
I loved everything that went with it. The restaurants, the parties. People treat you with great—they might be snickering behind their hands, but I don’t think they were at that time. I don’t think the word “bimbo” had been invented yet, but we were invited just to decorate the tables. And with some of the Syndicate, the attitude was “just zip it if you’re not going to say something that’s ‘airhead.’” [Affects a breathy, dithery voice] “What’s your name again, I just can’t remember names for the life of me.”
Q: Did you ever have a sense of “they don’t know all of me “?
No. I don’t know whether that is because I have this theatrical mentality, that I can believe whatever. I think I’m a really good actress, because the character becomes very real for me. So I was still being the reflection in the eyes of those that wanted me. So I saw myself as they saw me. And it was very comfortable for me.
Q: When did that start to change for you?
I think that I came into my own when I woke up one day in my late fifties and realized that—it seems like it was overnight—that men have stopped turning around on the street to look. So it gave me the freedom to really deal with me. To see myself. It’s part of this whole gender thing, I think. Now at sixty-three (sixty-four in December), I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (and I never had to do that) and I’m stumbling down the hall, and as I pass a mirror and see myself, I think, “I’m really happy with this body—it’s sagging, it’s falling, it’s all of that, but it’s me.” And it’s the me that I wanted to be. So maybe the stomach is breaching and maybe the boobs are sagging, but it feels genuine.
Q: So your experience of aging is a woman’s experience of aging?”
Yes. You know, a female friend of mine from the early years, whom I had not talked to in over forty years, called after she read the book and said, “I know you’re writing about a transsexual experience, but you’ve written my stor
y.” And that’s very important to me. And I think that’s also extremely telling. We can label it any way we want to, but the experiences are the same.
Q: One of the questions that I’ve asked everyone whom I’ve interviewed for the book is “What is gender?”
I don’t even know what that means anymore, don’t know that I ever knew what it meant. To me, how you are perceived dictates how you are treated, and I have been treated with the female experience. I’ve had some bad experiences. Part of that too is being raised in different times, not knowing that you have the option to make choices. My sisters, for example, were raised with the “don’ts.” I didn’t have any of those so I really made some serious mistakes. It took me a long time to realize that if the bar is closing and I’m in a really wonderful conversation that I want to continue, it does not mean that I can go to someone’s apartment in the hope of continuing it. I’m a slow learner.
Q: What is it that made you aware from early on that you were female despite what your body was telling you?
The Riddle of Gender Page 13