In the second account of the creation of persons, God “causes a deep sleep to fall on Adam so he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place,” which is both too on the nose an analogy for top surgery to be worth bothering with, and too obvious a reference to Marilyn Manson supposedly getting some of his ribs removed so as to more efficiently suck his own dick; an effectively contentless Bible reference. This version, too, so often seems to cause people to lose their heads and attempt to draw conclusions about why, say, men are hardwired not to notice the little blinking light that means the dishwasher is ready to unload, the better to serve the Lord, or why women make especially good part-time social workers, because the rib is the most compassionate and curved of all the parts of the human skeleton, or similar nonsense. But it too is a story of a shared body, of like and unlike, of bones and flesh held in common, of naming and separation and distinction and community; there is good in this telling of the story, too.
Grace, who has previously appeared throughout this book first as an unnamed friend, then as my girlfriend, is now my wife; we were married shortly before I finished the manuscript. At the time, I understood our wedding as symbolizing the crowning (or at least penultimate) addition to an already large family; she is now the only family member with whom I have a relationship, a development that has been both completely devastating and entirely necessary. We both took public steps toward transition within a few months of each other, and hers has been consistent in a way mine has not. Every so often we seek reassurance from each other that it is not necessary for our transitions to serve as equal and opposite reactions to each other, that we are not violating a strict one-in-one-out policy, that what we hold in common is a commitment to autonomy, moral sanity, and pleasure. The fear that one day I will affirm a commitment to pleasure and autonomy that finally and inexorably alienates me from the approval of my family is now gone. I find the absence of this fear exhilarating and deeply disorienting, as it has acted as a counterweight on me for my entire adult life.
I fear—how could I not?—that I will merely replace one error with another, that I will take avowal of desire in itself as an unalloyed, uncomplicated good in all places and in all situations, that no matter what I try to make of my life, I will never be free of that counterweight, whether I ever speak to another member of my family of origin again—always reacting, equally and oppositely, to someone else’s commitments. I have changed my name, first, middle, and last, several times over. At present I have taken my wife’s last name as my own and have said, a little desperately, “No matter what happens between us, I’m staying a Lavery,” more than once. There are many good ways to relate to the world, except the way I was raised in—where then to begin seeking out new forms of relation, and against what should I try to rate these methods, having no organizing basis of comparison?
As a child, I belonged to a denomination that discouraged infant baptism but encouraged “adult” baptism beginning at the age of twelve; it perhaps goes without saying that I was not encouraged to make any other “adult” decisions on my own behalf at that age by either my family or the church to which we belonged. Plenty of twelve-year-olds spend a little time in a lake, of course; in a very real sense there’s nothing particularly unusual about my having been briefly dunked underwater the summer after sixth grade, and subsequently I have little to complain about. But I cannot shake the sense that I have only recently sprung from being held underwater, unsure whether I have been released or struggled my own way out or simply found myself, like all human beings, naturally and instinctively buoyant. If one finds ground to stand upon, it so follows that the rest of the river is but shallow; thus we get over.
Acknowledgments
I’m deeply grateful to my agent, Kate McKean, for helping me write a book unlike anything I’ve written before, as well as editor Rakesh Satyal for bearing with me during a number of identity crises that this collection was merely “memoir-adjacent” and not a full-bore autobiography. I’m also grateful to my longtime business soulmate, Nicole Cliffe, for thinking carefully and speaking lovingly about our changing relationship to sisterhood, which has been a source of great joy and affirmation to me.
I’d like to thank Flan Joel, Peyton Thomas, Isaac Fellman, Calvin Kasulke, Colette Arrand, and Frances Hocutt for helping to sharpen and refine my ideas about trans narratives. Additional thanks are due to the following men, mostly fictional, for inspiring my transition: William Shatner’s roles on both Star Trek and Columbo, André 3000’s wardrobe, Rufus Wainwright (particularly the Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall album), Johnny Weir at the 2010 Winter Olympics, Brendan Fraser in the late 1990s, and the entire cast of The Outsiders. Thank you all for being so attractive that it changed the trajectory of my life.
I thank the good Lord, who made me trans, and who is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial will also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it, 1 Cor. 10:13.
To Grace Elisabeth Lavery, whose own transition has served as a model for rigorous thinking, personal vitality, the ruthless pursuit of joy and acceptance, I am truly and immeasurably grateful. There is no reader whose judgment I prize more. I am at my best when I push myself to keep up with you; it is a delight, an honor, and a meaningful challenge to be married to you. Thank you for being so attractive that it changed the trajectory of my life.
About the Author
Daniel Alexander Mallory Ortberg is a cofounder of The Toast and the author of Texts From Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster. He currently serves as the advice columnist Dear Prudence for Slate and lives in California.
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Also by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror
Texts from Jane Eyre
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Author photograph by Grace Lavery
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-9821-0521-1
ISBN 978-1-9821-0523-5 (ebook)
Something That May Shock and Discredit You Page 21