Redefining Realness (29 page)

We exchanged niceties about our hometowns, trips, and procedures. She told me she’d undergone GRS five days before me and was accompanied by her girlfriend, who had returned to Australia earlier that morning, prompting me to ask if she’d ever seen a kangaroo. Genie was the kind of sweet that answered my cliché with a spark of newness, as if it were the first time a foreigner had asked that question.

She was in her mid-forties, but her sunny demeanor made her appear a decade younger. Sadly, the details she shared with me about her life didn’t match her light disposition. Before transitioning, Genie worked as an engineer, was married for nearly twenty years, and had a teenage son.

“My family was my everything,” she told me with a hint of nostalgia. “That’s why I tried so hard to hold my feelings at bay. I wanted to be the best parent and partner I could be.”

After deciding to transition three years before, she swiftly lost all the things she loved: her career, her home, her wife, and her son, who she said was figuring things out. “People say that I’m being selfish, that I haven’t thought about what this is doing to my son,” Genie said.
“But I thought about what this would do to my son every day. I put my family’s needs first for fourteen years. I just couldn’t keep hiding anymore.”

Sadly, living your truth has consequences. The social cost of transitioning can be astounding. Genie had been working as an accomplished engineer, but when she announced that she was trans, she was asked to step down from a job she loved, and in turn lost her only source of income. Because of stigma and discrimination, it can be difficult to get a new job, which impacts the ability to pay for health care, food, shelter, and other necessities. Luckily, Genie had savings that she could rely on, but this didn’t compensate for the rejection of those closest to her.

Genie met new friends in trans support groups in Sydney, which was where she met her girlfriend, another trans woman. She had held Genie’s hand over the past few years, the only family she’d been able to rely on. I’m still struck by how many trans and queer people around the world are flung out of their homes, ostracized by intolerant families, and go on to reconstruct the idea of family by creating a network of kinship.

“We became fast friends and eventually a bit more,” Genie said. “She’s been my angel.”

When I think about Genie’s story, I can’t help but marvel at the resiliency of trans people who sacrifice so much to be seen and accepted as they are. Despite those sacrifices, trans people are still wrongly viewed as being confused. It takes determination and clear, thought-out conviction, not confusion, to give up many of the privileges that Genie did to be visibly herself, though her experiences varied from my own.

I was a young person who grew up poor, brown, and trans. I didn’t calculate loss because I had no job or money to lose. Luckily, my family, despite their messiness, was an asset. They embraced me in
a way that Genie’s family did not. This lack of social capital instilled an “I have nothing to lose” blind determination that made it easier for me to be true to myself at an early age. I was unabashedly brave, taking risks because I had no experience. Genie, on the other hand, had so much to lose. She had lived most of her life being perceived and awarded as a heterosexual white man—the epitome of power in our white patriarchal society—but when she announced that she was trans, she paid many costs. She had access to funds, though, that allowed her to seek medical intervention swiftly, whereas my lack of resources led me to risky sex work.

I was admittedly bitter about Genie’s economic stability, about the fact that the monetary costs of this trip to Bangkok would not affect her bank account. I was broke: not a cent in my account until my scholarship checks were deposited in the New Year. In turn, I noticed that Genie made it a point several times to marvel at my appearance and the fact that I was able to transition early. I distinctly remember her telling me over spicy tom yum soup that I had a lot to be grateful for because I was a “freaking babe.”

She looked at me in awe, marveling at how well I could “pass,” as if I had everything because the world would read me as a desirable woman: young, attractive,
and
cis. I knew through various experiences that when I was presumed to be a cis woman, I was still operating in the world as a young black woman, subject to pervasive sexist and racist objectification as well as invisibility in the U.S. media, which values white women’s bodies and experiences over mine.

Genie’s persistent reference to my appearance reflects many people’s romanticized notions about trans women who transition at a young age. I’ve read articles by trans women who transitioned in their thirties and forties, who look at trans girls and women who can blend as cis with such longing, as if our ability to “pass” negates
their experiences because they are more often perceived to be trans. The misconception of equating ease of life with “passing” must be dismantled in our culture. The work begins by each of us recognizing that cis people are not more valuable or legitimate and that trans people who blend as cis are not more valuable or legitimate. We must recognize, discuss, and dismantle this hierarchy that polices bodies and values certain ones over others. We must recognize that we all have different experiences of oppression and privilege, and I recognize that my ability to blend as cis is one conditional privilege that does not negate the fact that I experience the world as a trans woman (with my own fears, insecurities, and body-image issues) no matter how attractive people may think I am.

Regardless of our differences, Genie and I grew close, and she was by my side on that fourth day when Dr. C. removed the gauze and catheter, assisting me in taking my first steps. I dangled my legs on the side of my bed and smiled at Dr. C., Jane, and Genie, who surrounded me.

I touched my feet to the cold tile and steadied myself, waddling a bit uncomfortably to the bathroom to pee. My urine sprayed wildly, wetting my butt in a way that I wasn’t used to. Dr. C. said it was natural and that it would settle into a more controlled stream. Looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I noticed the gap between my legs. I had been reshaped, and I felt closer to whole for the first time in my life. I had an overwhelming sense of lightness, as if I had let go of a burden so heavy, a burden that I had wished and prayed would just go away, and finally that burden was gone. I felt authenticated, similar to Sula after having sex with a man, basking in a “privateness in which she met herself, welcomed herself, and joined herself in matchless harmony.” Now I felt I could go about in the world just as Janet.

Later that afternoon, Jane and Genie demonstrated the most laborious part of the recovery process, dilation. Handing me two
white eight-inch stents—one was two inches in diameter, the other three—Jane applied lubricant to the thinner one and helped me guide it in. She told me to hold it there for twenty minutes. It was a process I’d have to repeat twice a day for the next six months, gradually increasing the size of the dilator to ensure that I maintained the depth Dr. C. had created. The healing process took six months, with the sutures and swelling disappearing. After a year, I stopped dilating altogether.

Still, it would take me years to feel at ease in my body. I was able to have pleasurable, comfortable sex with men, and I even learned to share my body in an intimate way, beyond transaction, with a partner for whom I cared deeply during my years in college. Unfortunately, having a successful operation did not relieve me from the universal awkwardness of first-time sex. Having the body I had always wanted helped me feel liberated in bed, but I was still wracked with insecurity about the size of my thighs, the attractiveness of my vagina, the diameter and darkness of my areolas. These insecurities are the same that any person experiences when exposing their body in intimacy.

All showered for the first time in Bangkok, I had my final meal with Genie over noodles. We promised to stay in touch through e-mail and bade each other a fond farewell. I assured her that I knew she would rekindle her relationship with her son, and this made her teary-eyed. She checked out from the hospital that night and relocated to a local hotel, where she explored Bangkok for a few days before returning to Australia.

Alone again with my thoughts, I reflected on happy beginnings, on starting anew, on the thought of rebirth. Unlike a new baby, I was branded by situations and people and decisions. Forgiving myself would give me the power and strength to move forward and truly have a new beginning, full of promise. It would take me years to do
that work and release myself from the shame attached to the actions that had led me to Thailand.

The next day was Christmas morning, and I called home to check in with Mom, Chad, and Jeff. I wished them a merry Christmas and told them that I was healing fine. Jeff asked me if I’d had the chance to see the golden and bronze Buddha statues we saw on the Travel Channel. I remember laughing and telling him I had seen nothing but my recovery room, deflating his visions of sightseeing. Chad and I didn’t talk long, but he told me that he missed me. It was the first time I had heard him say that since we were six and seven—the last time we were separated by an ocean, he in California, me in Hawaii. I found myself homesick and grateful that I had people to go back to. I also felt selfish for not giving them an opportunity to say they were afraid for me; for not even realizing that I was missing Christmas. As I went to sleep that night, I reflected on the gift of affirmation and love that my family had given me unconditionally, which enabled me to give myself the best gift ever: self-actualization.

I returned home on December 28, wrapped in the airline’s blue blanket. Mom, Jeff, and Chad greeted me at the baggage claim. I noticed my mother was visibly shaken, her eyes swollen as she rushed toward me, embracing me for what felt like the first time in a long time.

“I’m sorry, Janet,” Mom wept into my ear, her tears collecting on the side of my neck. “I should have been there with you.”

My mother had never cried for me. I’d seen her hurt many times by men who failed her, from the night she slit her wrists as a cry for help to the time Rick hurled her onto the oily pavement of the parking lot. Her apology was the start of a more honest chapter in our relationship, one where I finally began seeing her not as my mother but as a woman with her own dreams, wishes, failed expectations,
and heartaches. I had faulted Mom for not living up to the image that I had projected onto her, the image of the perfect mother I felt she should’ve been for me. No one was able to live up to that ideal because that woman did not exist.

What I appreciate now is that my mother never projected such an image of the perfect child onto me. She never made me feel bad about being feminine, about ingesting hormones behind her back, about taking the steps I needed to reveal myself fully. She knew her limitations. She knew what she was and wasn’t able to give. In her quiet way, she stayed out of my way; she could give me that. She accepted me. She trusted me. She let me lead the way toward my own dreams of self. But my mother recently told me that she carries guilt about not having the means to pay for my surgery or at least to travel to Thailand with me. “I feel I failed you,” Mom said, “but out of all of my children, I never have to—and still don’t have to—worry about you. You always had a plan on how you would accomplish the things you have in your life.”

I can’t imagine having such blind confidence and trust in a teenager, but my mother must’ve seen
something
in me, something that comforted her and told her things would be okay. The guilt my mother carries about Thailand is not necessary to me, because I never expected it of her; I don’t feel she should have been there with me. Though I kept my expectations of my parents low, I felt and still feel it was my own journey to take, a journey of self-revelation, mirroring that of Janie returning home from burying the dead in the beginning of
Their Eyes Were Watching God.

“There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction,” author J. K. Rowling said in a commencement address. “The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.”

I took responsibility for my life at a young age because my mother and my father steered themselves and me in the wrong direction. The choices they made were fueled by their own desires, good and bad, and taught me that I, too, must follow my own. My father loves reminding me that we are so similar, yet our likeness is what maintains the distance between us. Though we have healed and made vast improvements over the years, I am still learning to accept that I don’t have to like him all the time, and he doesn’t have to like me, but we will always love each other. Our relationship is composed of love and friction, nostalgia and expectations, respect and contradictions. My father holds a grudge against me for not consulting him about my journey to Thailand, yet he’s unapologetic about his absence through those formative years. I, on the other hand, long to be close to him but can’t help silencing my ringer when he calls. That’s the
is
ness of us.

Regardless, I would not be the person I am today without him or my mother. I’m grateful that they lived their lives on their own terms, that they instilled in me a sense of personal responsibility for
my
life, and that they always let me know that once I attained whatever it was I sought, they’d always love me.

When I returned to my twin mattress on the floor in our apartment, it was my mother who helped nurse me back to health, preparing meals and filling my prescriptions. It was the first time in my life that I remember her doting on me. We would both heal and grow closer over the years, years in which my mother would have other chances to dote on me. I still smile when I get my monthly care packages filled with my favorite Hawaiian delicacies,
li hing mui
gummi bears,
furikake
popcorn, and bags of vanilla macadamia-nut Kona coffee.

My mother often claims that I was the parent and she the child. I like to think that we were growing in life together, figuring out who
we were in the context of our relationship and our relationships with ourselves and other people. I can honestly say that my mother, who has been happily single for more than a decade, has settled into herself, into a point of contentment that has allowed the two of us to be more than mother and daughter but actually friends. When I think about my relationship with Mom, I think about what Maya Angelou said about her mother: “My mom was a terrible parent of small children but a great parent of young adults.”