Stuck in the Middle With You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders (14 page)

In that book, my father [comes off as] a monster, because [to me,] at that age he was a monster.

JFB:
Do you think the job of fathers in raising sons is fundamentally harder than the job of the mother? I think that’s one of the things I was struggling with as I went from a father to a mother. Wondering, okay, well, is this a different job than I signed up for? Or is it the same job with a different accent? And I’m still struggling with the answer to that.

AB:
I know a man who works with his hands for a living, very rugged guy. Single father of a daughter. And he’s the best mom you could ever want, because what’s a mom? A mom is the word we use to describe nurturing, and, you know, unconditional acceptance and love, so what’s a dad? My mother, when my parents divorced, used to say to me, “Don’t call me your mother, call me your parent.” I’ve been thinking about that since I was a kid—What is a mom? What is a mother?

JFB:
Early in transition, I was very afraid for my boys not having a father, and that this was something I’d taken from them.

AB:
They didn’t, and you did, and that’s fine. It’s not like you abandoned them on the street. You did take away the father, if a father is the man. It’s gone! Poof! You took it away, that role, that briefcase and that hat and that suit, as surely as if you stepped on it with your foot like a cockroach.

But what’s a father? What did you really take away from them? You took the ability for them to call you Dad, or Deedie to call you her husband.

JFB:
Or to look at one of their parents and say, “I’m going to be like him.”

AB:
Well, they still can say exactly the same thing, and I’m sure they do. Why wouldn’t they?

JFB:
The things I was going to teach them, I think, are the things that I’m still teaching them—human kindness, generosity. As a result of having me as a father, I think my boys are forgiving of people who
are different. I think they’re funny. I hope those are all the things they would have had anyway.

AB:
I would hope it would be even more than forgiveness. I would hope they would feel proud to have a parent—I would feel safe. If I had a parent who went against the grain of society to protect themselves, to do what was right and sane, versus festering and writhing and becoming who knows how unstable. There’s a great deal of safety, from a kid’s point of view, to having a parent know exactly what they want. “This is going to be different here, guys, okay, but we’re doing it.” There’s something about that that is only honorable.

JFB:
Is that what your father didn’t have? Did your father somehow not know what he wanted and who he was?

AB:
My father was completely disconnected.

JFB:
It seems like, in your writing at least, that your parents were almost perfectly matched for bringing out the worst in each other.

AB:
They really were.

JFB:
Each of them seems three-quarters of the way sane when they’re away from each other, but both of them seem all the way crazy when they’re together.

AB:
They formed an unstable chemical when they were together. It was a relief when they were apart. My father was never sophisticated enough to grasp the notion of “I’m not your mother. I’m your parent.” That distinction he would never think to make.

JFB:
What did your mother mean by that?

AB:
She was saying to me, this is not about losing your father, but I do not want you to think of me as your mother. Don’t come to me asking me to make your lunches.

JFB:
Why did she not want to be your mother?

AB:
Because my mother did not want to participate in the tasks that are associated so heavily with the word
mother
. In the context of someone who’s twelve, thirteen, fourteen, my mother was not the kind of person to make lunch for you.

JFB:
She wanted to be seen as an artist, not as someone who makes your peanut butter and Fluff.

AB:
Exactly. She sort of felt she had better things to do. And she did, I’m sure, she did, that’s fine, that was never my … I admired that.

JFB:
What about now? Do you feel free of them, your parents? Do people ever break free of them?

AB:
We break free, but just because we leave our parents doesn’t mean they leave us. The things that our parents taught us from the moment of our arrival in the bassinet, until whatever age it is that we leave, that is a part of our weave and weft.

JFB:
Is there anything in you that has ever yearned to be a father? I know for gay men, that can be a more complicated question than to a straight couple. But is there?

AB:
Oh yeah, definitely. I’ve always wanted kids; I’ve always wanted a large family.

JFB:
What would their names be? Have you figured out their names?

AB:
I’d have funny names for them. I don’t know … Gunther?

JFB:
Sons or daughters?

AB:
Both, all of them. Like a litter.

JFB:
What do you think your father thought he was going to be when he set out on this [journey]?

AB:
I don’t know. I never really knew my family very well.

JFB:
When we’re kids, we think our parents have this plan. Like this guidebook somewhere.

AB:
I never found that. I thought my parents were insane and I couldn’t wait to get out. Even when I was lonely, I thought they were completely fucking insane.

JFB:
And you knew they were just winging it?

AB:
Yeah, because it was just a chaotic mess.

JFB:
I think that’s one of the things that makes your experience, in addition to the many other things, so different, because I think for a lot of people that I know who were raised in two-parent homes, there’s a certain point at which they realize their parents don’t know what they’re doing. It’s a great shock. In a way, for me, it wasn’t really until I had my own kids that I understood. It made me forgive my parents
a little bit. Of course, my parents never did anything to me like your parents did to you, and on the whole it was a very stable family. It was years before they found out how unstable it was, because of what I was hiding from them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really getting hot up here.

AB:
It’s hot up here, man.

JFB:
So—was there a shadow family that you imagined belonging to? What was that like? Who were they?

AB:
It was derived from different images on TV, I think. I liked the idea of a large family because it seemed, I don’t know, part of the pack. Just to be able to relax and not [be] so tense. Worried. I was always worried, so I think I would always like …

I would have liked Willy Wonka.

I guess what would have made a difference is to have had happy parents, regardless of anything else. That they’d been happy people. Or happier. Not so angry. It would have nurtured and watered the light-heartedness that I have, that I feel inside but that I don’t really express enough, except in writing.

JFB:
If you fell in love with some guy who had two sons, seven years apart—like your family—would that be appealing? Or would you run in the other direction?

AB:
It would depend on how fucked up they were.

Like, this guy I bought my camera from, he came out and I met his teenagers, you know. And his daughter: She’s fifteen and smart as shit, and funny. And the son’s smart—I just was like, I wish you were mine! I totally wanted those kids. Oh, I would have loved it.

But then, you know, there are the kids who are, like, little judgmental, petty, dimwitted things. And if I had some—if this person I fell in love with had kids who felt very entitled and were not bright?

I’d feel like I would be compelled to ruin their lives.

“I’
LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT
,”

I
SAID
.

Zach, Jenny, and Sean Boylan, fall 2001. Wal-mart
.

Courtesy of the author

We moved to
Ireland in 1998. I had a job teaching American literature at University College Cork. The boys went to Montessori School, where they learned to sing in Irish.
D’aois MacDonald bhí feirm, E-I-E-I-O!
Getting them ready in the morning was a challenge, though, especially Sean, who at age three had become rather particular regarding his sartorial choices.

One morning, as I was trying to get him dressed, Seannie resisted the shorts that I had selected for him. They were plaid and had an elastic waistband. He pulled them off, threw them on the floor.

“Okay, you’re not doing that,” I said. I laid Sean on his back on the floor and held him down with one hand while yanking the shorts back over the child’s kicking feet. Then I pulled him into a standing position. “When I put your shorts on, you leave them on,” I said.

Sean yelled, “I don’t want pants! Oh, I hate pants!” And threw them onto the floor again.

“Goddamn it,” I said. “What did I just say?” I clenched my jaw, and the muscles in my temples pulsed.

I’d finally come out to my wife in the months before we left America, told her I had gender issues, that I wasn’t sure how deep they went, but that I hoped she could stand it if I cross-dressed once in a while. She’d been strangely sanguine. Sure, why not, she’d replied. Fantasy’s a good thing.

Among the other things I’d brought to Ireland was a small suitcase that contained a wig and a pair of heels, size twelve. Every once in a while, when the kids were asleep, I put this stuff on and read the
Irish Times
, did the crossword. Still, this wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it might sound.

I got Seannie down on the floor and pulled his shorts on. The child kicked and screamed as if being stabbed with knives. Still firmly holding my son down with my right hand, I pulled a pair of socks onto the boy’s feet, and after this stuffed each writhing, kicking foot into a tiny sneaker. “No!” screamed Sean. “I don’t want them! I don’t want them!”