The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You (7 page)

For some transpeople, the mere invocation of their former names is a source of stress and anxiety. It makes sense. For lots of transfolks, the very first thing they have the agency to change is their names, and hey—trannies are no less in the thrall of naming than anyone else. Many people’s first step out of the Big Box o’ Standard Gender is to rename themselves for their new journey, perhaps the most universal rite of passage across time and geography and culture. There’s a reason for this: a new person demands a new name. We know this instinctively, perhaps genetically, even if we cannot point to or prove exactly why. Of course, a newly out transperson is not entirely a different creature, any more than someone in any of the above, culturally defined name-change scenarios is. But perhaps there is a line of newness beyond which a new name is demanded. Regardless, we as transpeople are fond of our new names, and sometimes afraid of our old ones.

I do not hate my first name, but I am aware of who uses it or even wants to know it, and why. Elder relatives and airport security people are, well, who and what they are, and their motives aren’t problematic to me. But often new acquaintances will query me avidly and with an odd sense of entitlement—or, more regularly, demand to know—what the S. in my name stands for. There’s something about my choice to leave my initial out where anyone can see it but not use it that is apparently too tempting to resist. US lawyers refer to this as an
attractive nuisance
, like when you leave the pool in your yard unfenced. It’s not that my first name is a secret—you’ve read it ten times already if you’ve got this far in the book—but I’m on my guard anyway. I know that some people like to make their own rulings about what’s valid in the worlds of transpeople (a topic treated more thoroughly in the chapter called “The Velveteen Tranny”) and that they will call me by my first name no matter what I say.

In training sessions for provincial Human Rights investigators about trans issues, one of the first kinds of trans-identity-related harassment I make certain to cite is the tactic of calling a person who has transitioned by hir former name repeatedly, with the intention of being disrespectful. Maybe it’s this history that makes me wary, but when I introduce myself and people ask me what my real name is, or what the S. stands for (if they’ve seen my book covers or something), I pause. It seems like revealing an intimate fact to answer the question, and if I do not feel intimate with someone, then the question is jarring and intrusive.

(I have a fantasy list of intimate questions about names I consider asking people in return, focusing on who they were named for or why their names were chosen, or how they decided to change their names with marriage. Turnabout seems like fair play, and if I am expected to answer intimate questions about my name from relative strangers, then it seems only fair that I should get to ask them as well.)

This is often, but not always, a diversion of the cisgendered, sometimes accomplished by guessing, sometimes by demanding the birth name of someone too young or startled or disempowered to tell them where to stick it, sometimes by means of trickery or research. I do not generally consider it malicious, except in cases where someone then
calls
their target by that former name without permission, which is about as rude a thing as you can do to a transperson. In the Angie Zapata murder case, the defense attorneys called her by her former, male name over and over and over, trying to hammer home the idea that she had perpetrated terrible, tranny trickery on her murderer. It backfired. The use of her former name was correctly seen by the jury as disrespectful, and the combined disrespect of client and attorney bought Allen Andrade a sentence with a hate-crime addition, totaling life in prison without possibility of parole. The naming issues crop up instantly whenever the news involves a transperson.

This particular news will be outdated by the time this book is in your hands, but parallel things happen often enough. Aiden Quinn, a Boston transit driver, caused a crash while text-messaging with his girlfriend. He’s a transguy, and so instantly all the news outlets started digging around in his records to see what they could find out, outed him as a transsexual, and some of the sleazier ones started referring to him as Georgia “Aiden” Quinn. It’s become a shibboleth of trans-awareness in much the same way that in 1999, when
Boys Don’t Cry
came out and the case was repopularized in the media, you could tell a lot about a newspaper by whether it referred to the murder victim as Brandon Teena (as he preferred) or Teena Brandon (the legal name of the deceased at time of death).

The flip-side variant among transfolks is to be shown the year- book or former identification card of a transperson, with their old name and haircut—a kind of fond bonding ritual, a way of taking someone into confidence with information you fully trust that they will not use against you. This naming thing, it’s tender stuff, like showing someone your alarm code. You have to trust that they won’t sneak in and harm you, that they can carry sensitive information and only use it in a moment of genuine requirement. That they won’t allow you to be called out of your name, even after your criminal conviction or untimely death.

Me, I do neither and both, as usual. I carry my first name around; I cannot quite allow it to pass into Former Name status, and yet neither can I really embrace it anymore. Sometimes, when required to use it for travel or banking purposes, I pronounce it in the Israeli fashion, Sha-RONE, like the former Prime Minister. It has the effect of masculinizing, of providing an alternate narrative for these commercial encounters that explains why the big dude in front of them has a girl’s name. I once spent the most satisfying fifteen-minute hotel-check-in of my life bonding with a young guy named Mychell. His name, pronounced the same way as Michael, evidently often causes people to pronounce it as Michelle and/or expect to find a woman answering to it. In retrospect, I can only wish I had recorded his elaboration on his name. He shared his empathy at having a name many people read as a woman’s name, honored his mother for choosing it, cited that as the reason he would not change it, and talked about the cultural arrogance of the United States and how we’re so quick to believe that we understand the gender of names when we really don’t, as he succinctly put it, know shit about it. I shared with him the tidbit, usually reserved for lectures, that about half of Bengali men’s names end in a vowel, which is a strong marker of a female name in North America. He shook his head and laughed. Then he wished me, under my masculinely pronounced female first name, a very good night.

New Year

This whole story would never have happened, except that the day after Christmas it began to rain. I try to remember that all of these lovely, funny moments are always out there just waiting for the right moment, or weather, but it’s difficult to see except in retrospect. And then when you get them, you have to use them right. It’s harder than I remember, every time, but the payoffs are good. I assume you all know this, but I am writing the story down here to help me remember.

This year, at New Year’s Eve on the Gregorian calendar, Ishai was supposed to be off skiing from hut to hut in the backwoods of Quebec on a trip I had arranged for him as a Chanukah gift, and I was supposed to be having a visit from Zev. But it started to rain, and it kept right on raining, and by December thirtieth—when Ishai was supposed to leave—it had rained so very much that they closed every provincial park in Quebec to skiers. But Zev arrived on schedule and so, between one thing and another, we all three found ourselves looking for a place to have dinner the next night, on New Year’s Eve, a holiday none of us celebrates (two Jews and a Muslim walk into a buffet . . .) but which tends to play merry hell with one’s dinner options. We finally settled it that we’d go for dinner at the best of the local Indian buffet places, which had good food and was open and seemed like more than enough festivity for us. As we arrived and waited to be seated, my beloved husband and I smooched a little, feeling snuggly and fond. When we stopped, I saw a table of three to my left actively and animatedly (with gestures) debating our genders.

I loathe this. I don’t know why it bothers me more than other gender-related unpleasant behaviors, but it does, it screams of rudeness. Sometimes I just smolder, sometimes I go over and make a snarky comment about gender nonconformity not being positively correlated with hearing loss, sometimes I ask from where I stand in ringing tones if they could be any more rude. I have been known to approach and simply stare, puffed up and looking as imposing as I can, until they turn away or mumble an apology. I get terrifically activated by it. What’s worse, I cannot seem to stop, even though I try very hard to remember everything I know about gender and about kindness and about people and how we are all just trying to make it work as best we can. In a serious and worrisome way, however, this has not been a location of good behavior on my part. Nor has it been good for me.

Perhaps because I was in pleasant company, perhaps because it was right on the cusp of a new year, that night I took a deep breath, and somehow managed to make a different choice. I went to my seat quietly and thought about what to do, and I tried not to seethe or fume or snap at my dinner companions. When I got up to go to the buffet, I took the waiter aside and quietly told him I wanted to pay for their dinner, and to please add their check to mine. It somehow deflated me a little. I let out my long-held angry sigh and refocused on the food (tasty) and the company (ditto) and how good it smelled in the restaurant and how pleased I was to be wearing my nice new shirt. I had an idea of what might happen with the gender-performing strangers. But mostly I felt calmer, and was better company at dinner, and enjoyed my meal more. Most importantly, I wasn’t angry with them anymore. Sometimes I really resent that whole thing about forgiveness and kindness and how it makes
you
feel so much better—I am pretty much a New Yorker, after all—but it totally works.

I intermittently kept an eye on their table. After a while, it was time for them to pay, and the pantomime I was able to read from across the room was pretty much what I had anticipated. The waiter explained that we were picking up their check. They looked puzzled, talked about it a bit amongst themselves, and elected their representative. The guy who had been dining with two women walked over looking cheerful but a bit hesitant. He said that they’d told him we were buying their dinner, and thanks very much, um . . .

I stood up and introduced myself, Ishai, and Zev before he had an opportunity to get any further. We shook hands all around. He went on to say thank you again, and that it was so nice, but . . . had we met before? Was he forgetting us? He fumbled his way through his questions, trying hard to figure out why we were buying their dinner without offending us in case we were old friends from university or business colleagues he didn’t recognize out of context or, er, something.

Taking a deep breath, I simply said that we’d noticed them talking about us when we arrived, and that we’d thought they might like a reason to come over and meet us in person. And then I shut up and waited.

He paused, dropped his head a little bit, and took a breath. To his credit, he didn’t dissemble or try to offer some sort of junk excuse. Then he said, sort of quietly, “That’s a remarkable gesture,” and picked his head back up and shook hands all ’round again. As he did, he said, “It’s good to meet you,” and he sounded as though he genuinely meant it. We wished each other a happy New Year, they left, and we had dessert.

I cannot tell you how satisfying it was. Partly because I was able to manage that kind of interaction without losing my temper for blessed once, and partly because they got the point in a far clearer and pointier way than any stare-down or snarky comment had ever got it across. Plus, to be honest, the look on his face when he realized how very busted they were was worth far more than the fifty dollars I paid for their dinner. But busted with kindness. That’s the trick.

I wonder about how to apply the same lesson when I don’t happen to have the spare cash to be buying dinners, or when the venue is different. Perhaps a little gender-explanatory card and a cupcake (which I would carry with me at all times)? I’m not sure. To be honest, I haven’t figured it out all that well, and often my desire to protect and defend the people I’m with is much greater than my interest in remaining centered on kindness. It is, however, entirely true that I felt great about my New Year’s escapade for weeks afterward. Even if it wasn’t perfect, it was better than I had ever done before, and eventually I decided that “better than I’d ever done before” was more than enough to ring in a New Year.

The Velveteen Tranny

I. Theory

I think it would be a very nice thing, to be real.

I don’t know for sure. I’ve never been real, and so it’s a bit hard to say. Perhaps there are things about being real that I wouldn’t enjoy. But considering the tone and flavor with which I am generally, and have across my lifetime been told I am not real, I assume it must be better. Or, at the very least, that there must be some benefit, if only because so many people
think
it’s better than being. . . the things I’ve been. Not fake, quite. I’m rarely told I’m fake, but I can’t imagine why since it seems clear that fake is the opposite of real. Doesn’t it? Never having been real, again, I am not sure.

I wasn’t ever a real girl, except, I think, when I was so young that I wasn’t myself at all, just an extension of my parents’ projections about me. I do have photos of myself in dresses with pinafores and petticoats, and I am certainly smiling pink, gummy smiles in them. But it’s not long before, in the pictures, I am wearing blue jeans and T-shirts, or grubby shorts showing filthy knees from playing explorer games in the vacant lot with the kids on my street. I played basketball with Michael Carroll, who was fifteen when I was five and must have grown up to be a great dad, as patient as that boy was. My realness never took hold, as a girl, despite all the ways anyone ever tried to make me more real from the outside in, as though if enough eye makeup were applied it would eventually sink in through the skin. I tried and failed, and tried some more.