A Bridge too far.

 While not entirely surrounded by water like the fabled Seven Bridges of Konigsberg problem*, the village that I live in is bounded on one side by a canal and on the other by a small river  and by a couple of small nature reserves at the top and bottom of the village. 

(*well, famous a handful of mathematicians and students of graph theory anyway.)

There are around five bridges (I can never keep track) mainly on the canal side, plus two or three locks that allow footpath access to some of the neighbouring villages on the either side.

When I first started venturing out in the early mornings as Susie, sometime in mid-2019, it was often those two nature reserves and trails that I headed for, where I could walk for an hour or two and not encounter anyone apart from a few intrepid joggers and early morning dog walkers. (Later, as I grew more confident, I would look forward to these chance encounters and even stop for a brief chat or make a fuss of a playful dog.) 

I've only ever done the full route (some 12 miles) once, which proved to be a bit of mistake. Probably as a result of dehydration and tiredness, I took an awkward tumble on the way back. The next day I found I couldn't put any weight on my left foot, and was still hobbling about painfully for the next two or three weeks, and which put paid to any more excursions for the result of summer.

After that I decided to take things in more relaxed and manageable chunks, taking  in just one side or the other and two three bridges at a time. At some point I decided I should bring a camera with me and record of photo of Susie at each of those crossing places. 

Then just as I was getting more comfortable and confident about those weekend morning walks, along came covid and the first lockdown, which put paid a those excursions for a while, since it's very difficult to maintain 2m distance on a narrow towpath from someone coming in the opposite direction without diving into a hedge or ending up in the canal, neither of which are guaranteed to enhance a lady's dignity.

Indeed, it's only recently that I've restarted some of those morning walks again. So here's a reminder of those pre-lockdown days when a chance encounter on a morning walk was an opportunity to exchange friendly greetings or a few word rather than avoidance and concerned looks. Hopefully we will be able to return to those days before too long.

same coat, but different hairstyle: blonde for a change.

[edit] apparently the bridge in the photo above is called a wight bridge, where a small island (wight) splits the river into two for a short stretch before it rejoins later downstream. Also the bridge I crossed to get to a neighboring village where I once spent a delightful afternoon in a church sale as just another lady from a nearby parish. See back (in black).

Readings: Stories of loss, desire and transformation

"In Cleveland it was well known that any wild goose which flew over Whitby would immediately drop dead, and that to catch a seal it was as first necessary to dress as a woman."

This little epitaph, taken from Keith Thomas in Man and the Natural World prefaces Sara Maitland's 1988 short story 'Self-Seal', first published in A Book of Spells and reprinted in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windlings's The Year's Best Fantasy. Second Annual Collection, which is where I first read it, along with Lucius Shepard's 'Life of Buddha' (which I'll return to later.)  It is a one of a handful of trans-themed stories that made an immediate and personal connection that has remained with me since, some thirty years since I first read it.

The main character (there are only three people in the story, and two of them are not human) is a youth (never named) on the verge of manhood and yet to prove himself a man by going down to the sea's edge to catch a new born seal and bring back its skin as a prize. He has continually put this off but this will be the last year he can do it before his beard grows and it is too late. It is not the killing he is afraid of - he has slaughtered pigs, wrung the necks of chickens, drowned unwanted kittens in a sack as part of growing up on a farm. 

No, not the killing, but the feeling when his mother lays out her skirt for him the night before the mother seals arrive on the beach to give birth.

"It is the other. His mother had smiled last year when he tried to tell her. His stomach feels sick to think about it. His dreams fill with it."

When the day comes, he wakes, strips and puts on the dress his mother has laid out. It falls lumpenly, ugly. The sight of his feet poking out from the bottom are ungainly, ludicrous. In that moment, "He knows what his fear is. It is pleasure. Pleasure and desire." 

Instead he raids his mothers kist for her best clothes: stockings, corset and petticoats and bonnet, and fumbles with the ribbons with now slippery hands, until at last he is dressed and it feels right this time. One more thing. He takes a ribbon and pulls his member tightly back until he is smooth down there. There should be something else down there, something he will never know, but this is the best he can do.

As he leaves, he sees himself in the parlour mirror. How pretty she is, he thinks. And then, in the next sentence, comes the switch of pronouns. 

"How pretty I am, she thinks, and she raises the latch and skips out." 

Shivering in the cold air, she goes down to the water's edge, where the seals are coming in, to watch them give birth and suckle.

"Good morning, my dear," says Seal  Woman to her. "and welcome".   "Hello says the new Seal Child. "Will you come and play with me?". "Yes" she says, "yes, please".

So the three of them enter the sea, where they swim and play (she has no fear of drowning) and one by one she loses her bonnet, skirt and petticoats as the Seal Child nips and tugs at the laces and ribbons until there is just one small ribbon left. And when, back on the beach, this comes loose with another playful tug, there is a moment of consternation, alarm, and shame.

"I'm sorry", he says to Seal Woman.

"I was never fooled before" say Seal Woman. "Why is that?" 

"I was naked", he says. "You could have seen. You must have known"

"That's not what counts", says Seal Woman. "You must go now."

But we know. I can't speak for Sara Maitland, but in this poised moment of shame, sorrow and loss, I feel that she she does know, and that she's talking to me. That this is a story aimed squarely at how I felt at that age, and when I first read this story, and still now.

And then the exchange that has puzzled me ever since.

"I could cut it off", he offers, and for a sweet moment of fear, excitement, desire, he means it.

"No, that's not what counts," says Seal Woman.

"No" he agrees.  "Please. Please let me stay."

But the moment passes and before he can remember the reason he came in the first place, and as the rock drops from his hand, they vanish  into the sea.

'Later he will say, "I caught a seal, but then I let her go." He does not know if they believe him. He does not know if he is a man.'

Some of us are still wondering, or even if we really know what it fully means to be a man.

But what was meant by that last "That's not what counts", which, unless I'm misreading this, almost seems to counter the first? My reading of the first is that Seal Woman saw a girl because at their first meeting on the beach and in the water there was only a girl there to see, as evidenced by Maitland's use of pronouns, which then shift back abruptly to 'he' when the final ribbon loosens and the girl is revealed as male. Is this an argument that what counts is anatomy, or only when anatomy is revealed or, in this case, becomes erect? I still hope not. So much of what has gone before to this point, seems so unerringly accurate of that mixture of fear and desire to cross and be taken for and seen as female, that to snatch that away at the last moment, to say "that's not what counts", seems cruel.

It's an argument I have with another story, Neil Gaiman's otherwise  sympathetic graphic novel A Game of You in the Sandman series, in which Wanda, a young transwoman frightened of taking the final step of GRS, is left behind by her flatmates when they cross into another world because, according to the witch child, Thessaly, in the eyes of the Moon Goddess, she wasn't born a woman. Wanda's abandonment ultimately leads to her death when the house she has been left in comes, literally, crashing down around her,  and then to the ignominy of being buried in a suit under her deadname by the very parents she has run away from to live as her true self .

Gaiman has, not surprising, received quite a lot of flack from readers among the trans community, either from the implication that what really matters (at least in the eyes of the goddess) is who we are born as rather than who we choose to become, or from an inability to envisage an ending to Wanda's story that didn't follow the cliché of a tragic ending for a trans character, or both.

Contrast this with Lucius Shepard's short story 'Life of Buddha' in which it is magic that effects Taboo's final transformation, a magic which initially seems to inhabit him precisely because of his gender fluidity - presenting at different times as a man (albeit with small breasts hidden under loose clothes) or in a dress and wig as a rather beautiful young woman. Taboo, like Wanda, is afraid of the surgeon's knife, and resists his friend Buddha's arguments that he should take the final step and become the woman that Buddha believes he is destined to be. Things come to a crisis when Taboo's flat is raided and both the attackers end up dead in the ensuing fight. Taboo, panicked and afraid, has to disappear, and Buddha sees the obvious way out. If Taboo can cure other people's complaints and remove warts and growths with his herbs and magic, why not use it to take this last step to become the person he so wants but is afraid to become. 

* * *

There are several other stories that have remained with me long after I read them (William Carlson's very strange 'Dinner at Helen's and Sonya Dorman's 'When I was Miss Dow'), but maybe for another post depending on whether this sparks any interest.

Pride, Proud?

 The eagle-eyed (and eared) among you may have noticed that this June is Pride Month.

It's a curious time, and not just because most of the celebrations are online (or in the case of BBC Radio 6music, on the airwaves) rather than out the street.

It happens to be a curious time  for me personally because this is the first time I've been actively involved in the celebrations. 

Circumstances have conspired in previous years - even before lockdown - to prevent me actually attending a public Pride event, either as my everyday male persona or as Susie. That one is still on my bucket list.

But this year I found myself on the newly formed Pride committee at work, helping to arrange and publicize the network and a number of events lined up throughout Pride Month in June.  And it's even more curiouser* for me in that I have not actually come out to the rest of the committee as bi-gender, or hinted at the existence of Susie. Instead I registered as an ally when I joined rather than identifying as any part of the  LGBT spectrum.

[* if it's a good enough for Alice then it's good enough for me.]

It feel does a little disingenuous, and I suspect at some point that this unresolved situation may have to change. The trouble is, as with a lot of  decisions you keep putting off, the harder it gets to finally do something about it, and the more uncomfortable having to explain why you kept putting it off in the first place. 

If and when I come out at work is not down to any actual or perceived pressure to do so. The company I work for is very supportive of Pride as part of a wider remit of Diversity and Inclusion and it's made very clear that you are not expected to do anything that would make you feel uncomfortable: You can be out and proud, or you may not think you are ready, or you even think it's no-one else's damn business how you feel and you you fancy. It is entirely your choice, and everyone needs to respect that.

But Pride? If I'm still hiding the existence of Susie, even to my fellow members on the Pride committee and who I can trust to be accepting and completely confidential, then should I be celebrating Pride? Am I, in fact, proud?

Possibly not. I've lived with this dual aspect of me so long, and though some pretty grim times, that it's not something I can say I'm proud to be in the same way I can take pride in a skill or an accomplishment. It's just a weird kink, maybe even a glitch, in the way I developed. It's there, and it's always been there, and to me it's sort of like saying  you are proud of being left handed, or having blue eyes, or a middle toe longer than the rest. (I haven't by the way, so don't bother checking your own in case it's some weird medical marker.)

No. I'm celebrating Pride for other people: for my colleagues and my friends, both at work and elsewhere, whether they know me as Susie or not. And that means for you too.

Happy PRIDE.

Back (in black)

So, (she says brightly, as if five years hadn't elapsed since her last post), I have a question for those who, like me, don't or can't live in their preferred gender full time, but have to take those days on a catch-as-catch-can basis when circumstances allow.

When it's time to stand in front of the  mirror for that essential transformation from who you have to be, to who you want to be, does the face come first, or do the clothes come first?

I ask because in the early days - and in my case we are talking about the very early days  of the 1970s and 80s  before trans was an encompassing spectrum covering bi-gender, non-binary, two-spirit and the rest, there seemed to be just two options for who you were: either on the path to full transition, or  a crossdresser (and more usually the loaded term transvestite for the latter), and even then neither seemed to fit comfortably with how I felt -  but in those early days of secrecy (and, yes, a degree of shame) it was very much more about the clothes. 

But in the last few years something has changed. It's become very much more about trying to capture who I want to be seen as. The clothes aspect of the transformation has become a lot more understated and dressed down. Consequently, I find I now pay far more attention getting the face, the makeup  contouring and eyebrows, and (most importantly) the hair to the point where I can see Susie gradually emerge in the mirror, even if she is still (at that stage) flat chested and wearing one of my old raggedy sweaters.

So what changed? Partly the realization that I will never be the late teens to twenties girl who has been inside my head for as long as I can remember, but more importantly because, since the middle of 2019, Susie started to venture outside the house and into the wider world. And with that, a realisation of the importance of blending in, of how women of a certain age (it's impolite to ask, but you can make your own estimation from the pictures below) looked and dressed when out and about. 

 So, yes, five years since the last post, That's not so many. Sorry about that. What on earth  happened?

The short answer is I went into a sort of meltdown and retreat, at least for a large part of 2017-2018. The most immediate cause of that was stupidly leaving my private journal where my partner found and of course read it. And in which I had vented a lot frustration about my feelings of being trapped into pretending to be someone I wasn't happy being. Cue recriminations, accusations and a retreat, on my part, into sullen silence and a period of personal lockdown. That lasted for most of 2018, when, to my surprise, I was invited to go the the States (I'd not been out the country in almost 20 years). "You should go", my partner said. "In fact you need to, and do something to get out of yourself."  So I went, not without some trepidation (the last time I went abroad, in the early 80s, after a similar confrontation about my dressing, I returned to an empty flat). And for the first time in ages, I had fun and enjoyed myself. I came back both rejuvenated and determined that I didn't want to be in  retreat and hiding for the rest of my life. 

The first step  was to re-establish contact with the local trans support group and the second was to come out in public for the first time as Susie at one of the meetings. That first time out was a nervous moment, especially the walk to the pub, but the smiles and hugs (remember them?) were something I'll remember a long time.

Since then, I've been out as Susie a number of times. Those occasions are still on a catch-as-catch-can basis, but we've established a workable arrangement where I can have occasional days to myself, and as Susie, as long as my partner never has to meet her. 

Of course, that last bit of acknowledgement and acceptance is still pretty high on my bucket list, but outside that I've given that bucket a good denting, going out on long walks, shopping, dropping in on a local art exhibition and, still a memorable highlight, attending a church fair in a neighbouring village where the curiosity of my appearance for the ladies of that parish was not that I was unusually tall, or had big hands or a deep voice for a woman, but that I had walked "all the way from K--", a couple of miles away on the other side of the the river, just to get there.

That afternoon, browsing the stalls and  chatting over tea and cake, I almost forgot the way I was dressed, or the unaccustomed feeling of having long hair again, and felt completely comfortable and welcome. (Whether and what was said after I'd waved my goodbyes is something I'll never know, and to honest I'm quite resigned to the fact I may not always 'pass'  on every occasion I'm out, as long as people are happy to take me as I present.)

 

So, that's it, and where things remained, at least until everything got locked down again, although this time for the covid outbreak and a long period where Susie had to go back to being a fond memory, at least as being able to get out again is concerned. 

Hopefully there will be better times ahead.

xxx

 

The conversation we are not having...

Sometimes a picture really does say more than a thousand words.

Source: http://thisisindexed.com/2016/01/or-it-will-rot-your-insides/


Sometimes the elephant in the room is so big that it's hard to see each other clearly, let alone start the conversation.

Christmas

For this of us who are accepted by our friends and family, Christmas can be a wonderful time.

For others of us who are still in hiding, and who dare not ask for what we really want for Christmas, it can be just another nail in the coffin as we unwrap another sensible jumper when what we really wanted was a gold sequin top.

If I manage to get any free time between now and Christmas this year, I would like Susie to  wrap some of the presents, so she will at least be there in spirit on the day, even if no one else knows.

Though the Wardrobe: The Belle Dress

I was lying in bed last night listening to the radio and I caught the last part of The Belle Dress, a short story by novelist and playwright Lucy Caldwell, read by Kerr Logan.
It's a really beautifully observed story and I suspect many of us would recognize our early selves in that same mixture of longing, confusion, desire and shame.


You can find it here on BBC RadioPlayer  and also on the Radio Player pop-up app.
It starts about 2 minutes in  and is available for the next 29 days.