A Dahl’s House

In the middle of the annual holi-craziness. December’s usually a pretty stressful time for me. I’ve been sick during Christmas three of the last five years (although thankfully not this year), and somehow it seems like work always seems to be especially busy—and this year’s definitely no exception. Plus I’m doing five shows this month, which I definitely enjoy, but they do tend to take up the weekends. So I didn’t get the lights up this year, and still having put up the Christmas tree. So I feel like, to quote from The Waitress’ “Christmas Wrapping:”

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!
But I think I’ll miss this one this year.

Most of the time the feeling passes, though with relatives staying over and then obligatory cross-country travel to visit more relatives, I’d really enjoy a quiet Christmas home alone once in a while.

It’s been nearly two years since I first started going out in public. It’s been quite a journey—from being terrified, yet exhilated, to stepping out in the backyard late on a moonless night, to being regularly out in public, even if I’m not fully out. These days it’s more of a “don’t advertise, don’t deny” situation. That’s to say, I don’t necessarily advertise my crossdressing, but if asked I’m not going to deny it either.

I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate that unlike so many crossdressers, I’ve never felt particularly guilty or shameful about my crossdressings (even if it wasn’t something I was gonna go out and tell people about). And for that I thank my Mom (as well as my late Dad) who raised me to be self-confident even I was the odd man out in a variety of ways.

No I haven’t told her, and I’m not sure I ever will. I think she’d be accepting and at times it painful to compartmentalize myself—for example, I’d love to tell her about performing. But mothers worry, and I don’t want her to worry.

So anyway… Thank you, Mom!

Non-stop work has kept from posting the last two weeks, but I’m finally getting a chance to catch up.

I’d volunteered to join Transgender San Francisco’s speakers’ bureau and I did my first outreach engagement talking to a local PFLAG group. Fortunately, I shared the podium with TGSF’s president, Allison, who has done a number of Trans 101 sessions, including for the local police departments, so I didn’t have to wing it entirely.

There were about two dozen people at PFLAG meeting, with at least a half-dozen with children or relatives who are trans, mostly on the FTM side. (Which makes sense, given that it’s not uncommon for FTMs to have spent time in the lesbian communities.) Needless to say, it was a receptive audience and Allison and I were told we gave one of the better presentations they’d had.

Last week, one of my best CD friends, Erica, came out the visit. Even though things were really crazed, I took the time to go meet her for dinner up in SF. (You can read her account of things.) Aside from it always being lovely to spend time with Erica, it was also a good mental break from work as well.

Thankfully, I’ve handed off the project (mostly—since I suspect there will be revisions in the offing) and headed off to Vegas (yeah, baby Vegas!) for a few days of play and a few days of attending a conference. I won’t be going out in femme. Mostly, I’m just a bit worn down and don’t feel like it. But also it’s one of the trade-offs of going in-house. Running my own consultancy, I was prepared to deal with the consequences if I was spotted en femme, but since I’m now “representing” my employer among my professional peers that changes things. But maybe some other trip.

Standard disclaimer: Going out of the house was right for me, it may or may not be right for you. If you’ve got no desire to leave the house, that’s fine, I’m not trying to push you out the door. But for those who’ve been yearning to do so, I just want to let you the world may not be as scary a place as you think.

Had a nice weekend going down to visit my Mom for her birthday. While I was there, we saw an excellent exhibition of Ansel Adams’ photos, which I highly recommend seeing if you’re in the Orange County area this spring.

On the flight home, I was reading the wonderful “Butch is a Noun,” which caught the eye of the woman sitting next to me. Turns out she was a med student who’s planning to go into psychiatry, so she was interested in learning about a variety of people’s experiences. Which in turn led me to also recommend “She’s Not the Man I Married,” and in turn to mention that I crossdress and do some Trans 101. We had a nice discussion and I could see the lightbulbs going on in her head. An added bonus was that it turned out she hates flying, so our talk took her mind off that.

So hopefully it’ll lead to one more person in the psychiatric community who’s got a more realistic picture of what trans people are like.

So went out for my usual Sunday brunch again and while I was waiting, Maria came up, gave me a big hug and said, “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” I told her that I was sorry for putting her on the spot. “But you’ll promise, you’ll forgive me, won’t you?” she replied. I told her yes, I did forgive her.

The restaurant was unusually busy, so afterwards we had only brief bits of conversation. Eventually she left me a note with her phone number, which said she was ashamed of herself and asked me to give her a call. I thanked her again and by the time I’d finished brunch, we both seemed to be putting it behind us.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to call her this evening since I went up to San Francisco and got caught in massive traffic jam. (Seemingly there was some big event at Pier 39 and Embarcadero was shut down, not a pretty combination.), So I didn’t get home until too late. (It was too important to do on the cell while I sat in traffic.) I’ll try to catch her tomorrow.

One my guilty pleasures is the TV show, “How It’s Made,” where “we discover how products in our everyday lives are made, such as: toothpicks, compact discs, cereal, fibre optics, potato chips, airplanes, etc.”

There is a beauty to the whole robotic ballet of the assembly lines (of course it helps to have a perky musical score rather than the actual factory noise) that makes me understand the rhapsody of the Futurists.

So this morning, I went back to my favorite restaurant for my usual Sunday brunch determined to follow Tink’s advice and just act completely normal. The manager greeted me with his usual over-exuberance. Maria was working another section, but I caught her eye as she passed and let her know that I had the coupons for her as per usual. She took them with her usual abundant thank you’s.

Chalk one up to “commerical courtesy” I thought. But then….

I was head-down in the newspaper when, as she was passing by, Maria gave my hand a tap and gave me a big smile when I looked up. Then as was leaving, she gave me a friendly pat/rub on the back in the same sort of way she’s done previously.

What’s it all mean? I’m not really sure…

Obviously she wasn’t avoiding me. It seems like she was treating me with the same familiarity as before. Maybe she’s realized that even though she now knows something about me that freaked her out, I’m still me. Maybe realizing that I probably overheard her comments about me caused her to do some self-reflection. I dunno. At this point, I’ll leave it at “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Sure enough, thanks to the closed-toe shoes I wore, I ended up with a nasty smudge to last week’s pedicure, so I went back to the salon to get it fixed. As I was going in, I ran into one of the hair stylists who wanted to know how come I wasn’t en femme again. I said I was just in for a touch-up and besides I felt like being a boy today. “Well I think you look hot either way,” she said. Cue blushing and mumbled thanks.

‘Course she probably assumes I’m gay—she’s seen me en femme and seen my pictures, but haven’t been there when I’ve talked to the nail techs about my dressing. But it was nice all the same. Especially because feeling not as attractive en homme is probably one of the reasons I started crossdressing as a boy.

Some lessons learned (with much thanks to the folks at the My Husband Betty forum for helping my sort out my thoughts) from last week’s coming-out-gone-wrong:

• I now have a greater appreciation why “I Will Survive” is the gay national anthem. Actually, I’m only half-joking. After an emotional beat-down—which I’m sure many gays experienced coming out in the 1970s—I can appreciate the affirmation of saying: You think I’d crumble / You think I’d lay down and die / Oh no, not I / I will survive. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I’m still here.
  


• Jude pointed out that we get so used to this being everyday, no big deal, that we forget that for much of the world, it’s not, and that we are perhaps the first trans person this person has ever met, up close and personal.


• What hurt the most was hearing that sort of reaction from someone I thought would be OK with it. It’s one thing to get stares and giggles while out, or to get a hostile reaction while doing outreach—I hate to say it, but I’m used to experiencing bigotry in that context. But in this case, part of me was kicking myself for misjudging someone so badly. In this case, I think I was a bit over-confident based on the the nail salon experience the day before.


• Sometimes you just never can tell how folks will react. Maria had seen my Halloween pictures of me as Little Red Riding Hood and seeming had gotten a kick out of them, and likewise seemed to enjoy the fact that I had painted nails that morning. So each coming out really is a bit of a leap of faith.


• While this incident went badly, I’m not going to let it outweigh all the positive ones I’ve had. Usually coming out is a liberating and positive experience. So I’d like to think I won’t be overly fearful of confiding in people in the future (although I admit I’m feeling a little gun-shy at the moment).


• While I’ve felt it’s important to show folks photos of me en femme to try to give people a sense that I’m not what they’re probably picturing—Klinger or Dr. Frank N. Furter —I need to be sure to ask if people are interested in seeing them, since it could be perceived as TMI and being exhibitionist in the wrong way. (Normally, I do but I mistakenly skipped based on Maria having seen past pictures, her enthusiasm for my nails, and me having told her that I’d share a secret with her if she was interested.) That’s one misstep I feel bad about. The other is putting Maria in a position where she felt cornered. It would’ve been one thing if I’d showed up en femme, in which case I would’ve expected to be treated like any other customers. But this was tangential to business but in a setting where she felt constrained by “commercial courtesy.”


• I’m not quite as fully self-accepting as I thought. Initially I did feel bad for making Maria so uncomfortable—and yeah, it was more than just for the reasons mentioned. There was a part of me that felt bad that I’d physically sickened someone. (When I posted about it at the Betty boards, I named the thread “chastened” (definition: to correct using punishment or suffering.)


• But Tink points out that if we reframe the situation we see it for what it truly was. Imagine that I’d been talking with her and when the topic comes up naturally, I pulled out a picture of my girlfriend, who’s another race. Or if I were gay, I pulled out a picture and said, “That’s my boyfriend.” Neither photo is a graphic tongue-down throat picture, but maybe we’ve got an arm around each other. Had I overheard Maria express similar feelings about race or sexuality, I would’ve had no problem saying to myself, “What a bigot!” I’m sorry that she can’t look past her prejudices to see me as a person, but that’s her problem.

As far as what to do Sunday, when I go in again for brunch, I’m planning to take Tink’s advice to go and act completely normal, offer Maria the coupons as usual—and only if she seems distant, will I apologize for the manner in which I came out (but I won’t apologize for being who I am). We’ll see what happens.

Thursday I finally got a chance to attend one of the Transgender San Francisco’s mid-month get-togethers. While I’ve been interested for a while, it’s tough to go home, get changed and get up to San Francisco on a week night.
But I’m interested in volunteering to do outreach as part of TGSF’s speakers bureau, so it was a chance to meet with TGSF’s officers for some mutual sizing-each-other up.

Unfortunately, after a nicely dry weather, we got the first big storm in weeks, so needless to say traffic was a mess. Nor did I realize that the restaurant was across the street from BART (which meant I could’ve parked in Daly City and ridden in, rather than having the ever-so-lovely task of trying to find parking in San Francisco).

But, while late, I finally made it. There were close to a dozen people there, about half who I’d met before, and we chatted over tapas. It seemingly went well, and they seemed pleased to have a crossdresser who was willing to step forward and help out.

(For better or worse, most “transgender” organizations seem to be dominated by transsexuals—since so few crossdressers are willing to step out into such a scarily public role. And any organization, from the PTA to the Girl Scouts, tends to reflect the concerns of those willing to devote the most time and energy, even despite their best intentions. Not that I have any problems with TGSF per se, but I’ve heard bitching by crossdressers that the “transgender” organizations overlook CD-specific concerns. I do think there are things such organizations can do to be more CD-friendly, but bottom line it’s time to put up or shut up.)

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get a chance to do some speaking in the near future.