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A Life Less Ordinary

by Emma Mishel

Editors’ note: The names of all the individuals in this story are pseudonyms intended to protect the subjects’ privacy.

PAPERS, files, folders, boxes, Post-Its, labels, magazines and books fill the tiny, square computer room in the back of his house, along with two desks that take up two entire walls. He comes in shirtless, sits down in an old office chair covered by a Pomeranian dog tee, and faces the computer. Glasses and a full, brown beard cover his face, and.his His head is balding but for tufts on the sides by his ears. He has with him a large black-and-beige shoe box.

He places the shoe box on the desk and begins to unload the items inside: a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a packaged needle, a cotton ball, a Band-Aide, and a tiny green bottle of liquid. One by one, he places each item neatly on a paper towel. He opens unwraps the Band-aideAid and sticks it to the bottom of the desk for easy access. He dabs the cotton ball with alcohol, shakes the green bottle and opens the needle package. Carefully, he sticks the needle into the green bottle, turns it upside-down and pulls back. He watches it fill up to exactly 0.7, flicking it a few times to get rid of any bubbles that have formed. Birds chirp outside the screen door on to his left, and Jack FM plays on the radio to his right.

He pulls out the bottom drawer from the desk and props up his left leg, then. He begins to massage his thigh. After his leg is sufficiently relaxed, he rubs the alcohol on a selected spot in the middle and quickly sticks the needle into his thigh. Slowly, he pushes the needle down, never taking his large brown eyes off of the liquid going into his body-- the liquid that has transformed him from Joanna Lynn to John Lee Anderson.

John, 45, could tell you what it was like to have a woman’s body, but he could never explain what it was like to be a woman. He just never felt like one. Even as a little girl, John felt  thatfelt that he should have been born a boy, though he didn’t have the language to explain it. In kindergarten, John’s class had a circus. Teachers assigned him to wear a purple tutu for the performance. What he really wanted to be was a lion, or a tiger, or a bear, or one of the ringmasters. Wearing a tutu with bright white tights underneath was completely humiliating for him. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew it just wasn’t right.

John found himself constantly jealous of his older brother, Frank. Their dad would teach Frank things like how to be a gentleman and how to play different sports, and John would wonder, Why doesn’t he play catch with me? Why doesn’t he teach me how to be a gentleman?Stuck playing Playing house, John would always be the daddy or the dog, feeling like a boy who just never got the chance to be a boy.

At 14, John came across a newspaper article about a man who was having sex-reassignment surgery to become a woman: Christine Jorgensen. “Transsexual,” they called it. His heart beat a little quicker at that moment, and he thought to himself, That’s me! But at the time, he thought that only men could become women, and not vice-versa. He decided to go to his the local library in his hometown of rural Indiana to find out more. When he got there, howeverHowever, the word “transsexual” was nowhere to be found in any of the books.

Feeling extremely isolated, he turned to his two closest girlfriends from school and told them that he thought he should have been born a boy. Both of them were shocked and disgusted, .andthey They didn’t want to talk about it. Hurt and lost, John came to the realization that if he couldn’t tell his best friends, then there was nobody in the world he could talk to about his feelings. From then on, he started internalizing them, trying to make them go away by pushing them deep down inside. Not until his late twenties did they erupt again.

Outside the weather is both sunny and overcast. Nothing beats a cup of our new coffee is written on a white board next to the front counter. Receipts are printed, change is knocked around in the cash drawer, and a bell on the door sounds anytime it is opened. As a couple exits the restaurant, John enters eagerly, followed by Sandra, his friend of over 10 years.

John takes off his sunglasses, puts them in his pocket, and looks around. The hostess greets them and leads them down a walkway to a booth by the window. John takes off his blue hat that says “Cabela’s” on the front, the name of a sporting goods store that Sandra introduced him to many years ago. He doesn’t play a lot of sports, but he loves camping. There’s something about being on his own out in the middle of nowhere that is very cleansing to him. As he sits down, he tosses the hat on the seat across from him and clears his throat. Sandra sits next to him, fixing her T-shirt that says “Alaska: The Last Frontier.”

In the ‘60s, Sandra was a Forward Observer in Vietnam, meaning that she was a reconnaissance position that was extremely dangerous. Today, she makes her living as a machinist. Every day she creates various parts out of metal. She transitioned into a woman at her job—a place John describes as having “no normal people.”

While they eat, John and Sandra talk about all of the different transgender groups they have attended over the years. They agree LOTS (Love of Transsexuals)Love of Transsexuals (LOTS) was the best group they’ve ever been to, and; it was also where they first met back in ‘97. LOTS was a support group run by the mother of a transitioning female-to-male, and John thinks that’s why it was so successful. Typically, the same-sex parent of the a person who is transgender is the one who takes it the hardest.

Sandra then remembers to tell John about one of her mother’s friends who visited her mother’s house recently: . She looked at my mom’s refrigerator and saw a picture of me and my four brothers, and she asked my mom, “I thought you had five sons?” My mom said, “Well, this one’s transsexual! What do you expect her to look like?” Sandra giggles and looks at John, who nods and smiles. He then looks down at his plate.

            “I don’t think my mom could even say the word transsexual.”            

Before John told his family he was transgender, he told them he was a lesbian. At 19, he was living in Alta Loma, California with his parents and brother. They had just moved there from rural Indiana where they knew of only one gay person—the theater director of the local church whom everyone was warned to stay away from.

In California, John got a job at Carl’s Jr. It was there he met his first lesbian. John developed an intense infatuation for her after he learned about her feelings for women. From then on, he started going down the lesbian path, and California was the perfect place to start experimenting.  As a A frequent bar-hopper, John met a woman named Michelle one evening, and they immediately connected and started a relationship. John stayed the night at her place two nights in a row, causing his parents to worry as they didn’t know where he was. Their only daughter was missing, and they feared the worst. In distress, they called the local sheriff. After that, John knew he had to tell his parents what was going on.

When he told them he was a lesbian, he didn’t think they would be that surprised. John had been dressing pretty butch for a long time. For his 13th birthday, he and his mom went to the store to pick out his birthday gift, .andhe He chose men’s dress slacks. His mom didn’t seem to mind. Nor did she mind sewing shorts under the skirts John had to wear to school when he was younger so that he could feel more comfortable. But after finding out that her only daughter was a lesbian, John’s mother did mind. She and her husband, who were both conservative Republicans, told John that he could not be that way under their roof. So John went to live with Michelle.

(continued on page 2)