Trans-Sister Radio Page 15

  And since Glenn seemed to know so much about her involvement with Dana, it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that he knew as well what Dana was planning to do in a couple of days in Colorado. And that my ex-wife would be with him.

  Certainly I wish now I'd kept my mouth shut, because the last thing I ever want to do is to complicate Allie's life--or mine. (We seem to do that well enough on our own.) The fact is, when I opened my mouth and started talking about Allie's and Dana's trip, I had no idea that Glenn didn't know where they were going, or that he would have such a strong reaction to their travel plans.

  I had no idea that events, after that, would sprout beyond anyone's control--certainly beyond mine.

  It was all a bit like mushrooms in a wet summer.

  In a way, it was a bit like the transgender tapes. My station devoted a whopping twenty-two minutes to transsexuality over two days in March, and most of it was focused on Allie's battle with some local parents. Later that year NPR would see in the story five days of programming on the nature of love.

  At that moment, however, on the day after Christmas, I wasn't thinking about programming. I was merely making small talk in a supermarket. Nothing more, nothing less. To me, it was just a little grocery store banter.

  *

  PART III

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Tuesday, September 25

  DR. THOMAS MEEHAN: If you get beyond what some people consider the grisly details of the surgery, there's something very primal going on here, something very basic. A profound human desire. And that's my point. We--and I mean the doctors, but I guess the same could be said for the patients--are all playing Creator. Some of us do it better than others, some of us do more of it than others.

  But man has always wanted to remake man. Look at the Frankenstein archetype. Look at the whole history of bioengineering.

  Let's face it, right now we put the genes of arctic fish in tomatoes, we clone all kinds of mammals. You and I both know it's only a matter of time before we start cloning humans.

  And that's a big part of the enticement science has for the scientist--or, in my case, for the surgeon. That sense of creation. Of control. The whole idea that we're doing something that's never been done before.

  Hell, in that regard, what I do is nothing compared to a lot of my peers. Compared to them, I'm just a cut-and-paste pieceworker.

  CARLY BANKS: And yet like all surgeons who perform sexual reassignment, among Dr. Meehan's critics are those people who insist he is taking advantage of transsexuals--who suggest he is, in essence, preying on a mental illness.

  MEEHAN: Preying? God, no. I'm healing. Or at least trying to heal. I'm giving them their best shot at a normal, happy life. Therapy doesn't cut it with these people. Surgery does. That's the reality, whether you like it or not.

  Chapter 17.

  dana

  THE FIRST THING YOU SEE ARE THE HUAJATOLLA--Ute for "breasts of the world." You'll be driving south on the interstate, and suddenly you'll notice a pair of massive geologic hooters rising from the rough plains. The Huajatolla are northwest of Trinidad. Igneous rock. Twin mountains that tower well above twelve thousand feet. Ghost white in the winter, an almost neon green in the summer.

  There are tales that gold can be mined in the rivers that snake through them, but my guess is they're packed mostly with coal, just like the other peaks that circle the town to the south and the west and the north.

  I've met trannies who hated Trinidad and simply couldn't believe they had to go there for their surgery. I know one girl who actually chose Palo Alto for the sole reason that it was in California, and another who went to Portland, Oregon, just so she wouldn't have to spend a couple of weeks in a shell-shocked little mining town in southern Colorado.

  But I rather liked Trinidad, and I liked it for all sorts of reasons. Certainly the karma felt right. Not only does the approach to the city have mountain-sized mammaries to greet you, but the river that weaves through Trinidad is called the Purgatoire--an ever-flowing boa of water whose very name celebrates the betwixt. The between. The transgendered.

  And in ways the city will never admit, it likes the transsexual business. For a time, the town lived off the mines and the railroads, but no more. The last mine went belly up in 1995. And while there will always be boosters who will try to bring tourism to "historic Trinidad"--Gateway to the Rockies, Bat Masterson Territory, Kit Carson's Personal Rest Stop--the fact is, the town is in the middle of nowhere. Southeastern Colorado. Nearest city of any size? Pueblo, eighty-five miles to the north. And, as far as I can tell, lawman Bat Masterson only tried to keep the peace there for a year. He actually lost his bid for reelection as marshal, having taken the townsfolk for a thousand dollars each month playing cards.

  And while Indian fighter Kit Carson indeed visited Trinidad throughout his career, my sense is that coming in Trinidad mattered much more to him than coming to Trinidad. He'd struggle in after who knows how long on the Santa Fe Trail, and climb into a hotel bed with some company for as long as the money would last.

  Once, when the mines were thriving, a good thirty thousand people lived there. Now there's barely a third that many. For a time, the city had boasted a two-level Main Street that stretched four solid blocks, and the shops possessed lower floors that were accessible from the sidewalk. When the population dwindled, however, there was no longer a need for all that space, and the underground was buried in cement--literally drowned in mortar and sand and stone, and then paved over with asphalt. You'd never know it was there, except for a tiny section of one subterranean block that has been preserved--two dark store windows--and may be accessed by an unmarked flight of steps on the corner of Animas and West Main.

  Trinidad's big employers these days? A junior college. A prison. And the hospital where people like me come for our surgery.

  Certainly, there are upright citizens in Trinidad who don't approve of the surgeons who help the trannies who pass through the town, but most of the folks are tolerant and helpful and kind. They need us and we need them. The relationship is downright symbiotic.

  Allison and I landed in Colorado Springs just after lunch and arrived in Trinidad about three in the afternoon. Trinidad is 130 miles south of Colorado Springs, but the speed limit on the interstate is a glorious seventy-five, and the weather was fabulous: a cerulean blue winter sky, a balmy forty degrees. The driving was easy. And though there was plenty of snow on the mountains to the west, there was absolutely none on the ground in our strip of the state. All in all, it made Vermont seem positively glacial.

  And so we were settled into the Holiday Inn just south of the city by the time the sun had set, and we were wandering down Main Street hand in hand in search of a restaurant for dinner by six.

  The next day, Saturday, we went sight-seeing, and that must have killed a solid forty-five minutes. It isn't that Trinidad has nothing to see, but there isn't a whole lot that's open in December. Trinidad History Museum? Closed. Old Fire House Number One? Doors shut and sealed. The Archaeology Museum at the junior college? A vault. And the illustrious A. R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art? Boarded up--like a lot of the city, it seemed.

  Fully half the storefronts in the town were vacant, the glass either replaced by plywood, painted over by children as part of a school art project, or filled with some unrealistically optimistic real-estate agent's large lease or FOR SALE sign.

  In all fairness, the city does have a great many buildings from the early boom years that are absolutely exquisite, and practically the entire downtown--El Corazon de Trinidad--is a National Historic Landmark District. I especially liked nineteenth-century cattle rancher Frank Bloom's Victorian mansion, which I am quite sure was the inspiration for the home in which the kindly Norman Bates would live with his mother in Psycho.

  But my favorite structure, of course, was the five-story stone bank building where I knew Dr. Meehan had his offices. Arched windows, magnificent detailing along th
e pediments. My surgeon toiling away on the very top floor when he wasn't in the operating room at Mount San Rafael. The building was constructed in the 1920s, in the waning years of the Trinidad coal country heyday.

  Mount San Rafael, the hospital that would be my address for a little more than a week, was about a mile outside of town. Allison and I went there Saturday afternoon, and we visited the shrine on the small bluff above it. The Ava Maria Shrine. It looks down upon the two-story hospital. The Trinidad Ava Maria is inside a little white stucco chapel, rich with the exterior detailing we expect from our most cherished roadside art: neon lettering, a neon star, a life-size painted statue of a monk.

  The chapel was locked, but there was a little grotto beside it. Allison and I sat for a moment on one of the blue benches and looked at the icons of Jesus and Mary under glass. We were both quiet for a long moment, and then Allison asked me if I'd been praying.

  "No," I said. "But I will before we leave. I think I'd feel guilty if I left here without praying. And with major surgery in a couple of days, it seems to make perfect sense to hedge my bets. And you?"

  "Me?"

  "Praying: Were you praying?"

  "As a matter of fact, I was."

  "May I ask what for?"

  She stared at the plaster Christ on the cross and took my hand. She found it without looking.

  "I was praying for you to be happy. For this to be the right decision," she answered evenly.

  "That's very sweet."

  She clicked her tongue in her mouth. "I'm one hell of a sweet girl."

  There was a slight edge to her voice that I'd come to recognize: Frustration. Incredulity. A hint of despair. Instantly I convinced myself that in reality Allison had been praying that I would yet change my mind. Maybe have a last-second submission to the chromosomes and plumbing I'd been given at birth. Perhaps accept the shell I'd endured for three and a half decades.

  "You're so good to be here," I said. "I will always be more grateful than I can tell you. You know that, don't you?"

  "I do."

  "And if there was any way in the world I could change my mind ... well, for you, Allison, I would. I surely would. But I can't."

  She took back her hand and placed it inside her coat pocket. It was just cold enough that we could see our breath when we spoke--little curls of steam that rose up in the air and disappeared amidst the white latticework that surrounded us.

  "Don't worry," she said, "I wasn't praying for that. I don't pray for things that specific."

  "No?"

  She shook her head. "I see no reason to court disappointment in this life. It seems to come often enough on its own."

  There's a story that one night in 1908, when Trinidad physician John Epsey was leaving the hospital, he saw a flickering light on the hill before him--despite the snow and the wind and the fact that at the time there was nothing but scrub pine and rock on that bank. And so he wandered toward it, perplexed, and discovered there the 250-pound statue of the Virgin Mary that is still a part of the chapel today. No one knew where it came from, no one understood how it got there.

  Inspired, that very year the townsfolk built the grotto in which Allison and I sat for a few minutes our first Saturday in Trinidad.

  Today, some of the locals insist, if you come at the perfect time of the day or if the moonlight is right after dark, it looks as if the statue of the Virgin is crying--sobbing, in theory, because of the surgery that occurs right in front of her. Literally, right under her nose.

  Allison and I were told these stories when we were having a cup of coffee after visiting the shrine. The waitress at the diner regaled us with stories about Trinidad, especially the tales she'd heard about the trannies who'd come before me. Initially, I was a little perturbed that she saw so quickly what I was; I was a little frustrated by the fact that I had so clearly failed to pass.

  "Is it really that obvious?" I asked.

  "Oh, don't be upset," she reassured me, and she smiled at Allison. "It's your friend's nails that gave you away. They're just bitten to shreds."

  When my sister, Isabel, was four and five years old, we'd act out fairy tales together. She was always the princess--Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty--and I was the appropriate heavy. The Hag. The Stepmother. The Witch.

  We'd find a shady spot by the palms in our yard, or we'd play inside in the den. For some reason, we never played in Isabel's room, and I have memories of lugging the trunk in which she kept her stash of dress-up clothes all over the house. I was only nine and ten myself, of course, and so half the time I had to drag the chest like a body through the hallways, or along the cement that bordered the pool.

  I was already too tall for any of the dresses, but I would wear the big, loopy clip-on earrings and the scarves and the shoes my mother no longer wore. Isabel would get to wear the shiny polyester gowns with the pouf ballroom sleeves, and the diminutive wedding dresses with scooped necks.

  Then, depending upon the role, I would stamp my feet and whine, or I would snarl and hiss and shout. I spent a lot of time seething, and Isabel spent a lot of time collapsing and pretending to cry. It was a good arrangement.

  To most of the world, I probably looked like a patient and imaginative and exceptionally loving older brother. How many ten-year-old boys, after all, are willing to drape a nylon scarf over their heads and pretend they're the evil fairy Maleficent? How many male fifth-graders are content to spend time casting spells on poor little Aurora, a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose/Kid Sister Izzy?

  Sometimes Isabel would grow bored of the games before I would, and I would have to return to a world in which I was supposed to care about Little League baseball, books about tank battles, and loud, smelly go-carts.

  Over dinner those nights, my mother might mention how I had spent my day, and my father would mumble distractedly, "You're a good brother."

  "Yup."

  "Want to go see the Dolphins this Sunday? The Jets are in town."

  "No, thank you. I have a ton of homework to do."

  "Okay. I'll take Jack," he would say, referring to one of my cousins who lived in West Palm Beach. Jack was in high school by then, and played tight end on the football team.

  And so a few days later, while my father would be watching a football game with a boy who understood and appreciated the rites that accompany an NFL Sunday, I would be alone in my room, probably waiting for my sister to return from a play date so I, too, would have someone to play with.

  NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO TRANSCRIPT

  All Things Considered

  Tuesday, September 25

  CARLY BANKS: The costs mount quickly in Trinidad, especially if the transsexual is having more than genital surgery: a tracheal shave, for example, or a nose job. Dr. Meehan's fee begins at a flat $7,500 and starts climbing from there: $2,900 for breast implants, $2,250 for a rhinoplasty, $1,800 to reduce the appearance of the Adam's apple.

  In addition, the anesthesiologist will charge between $1,300 and $1,800.

  And then there are the hospital costs, which begin at $6,200 and often reach $10,000--even when there are no serious complications.

  Moreover, it is unlikely that any part of the operation will be covered by insurance, and neither Dr. Meehan nor the hospital accept personal checks. The business runs almost entirely on cashier checks and cash.

  Chapter 18.

  allison

  WHEN I AWOKE IN THE HOTEL SATURDAY MORNING, without thinking I reached under Dana's nightgown and cupped the penis and balls I found there in my hand. I did the same thing on Sunday, though this time I was very conscious of what I was doing. I wanted reassurance. I wanted to know they hadn't disappeared in the night.

  We lay there like spoons, Dana inside my arms, the palm of my hand and my fingers protecting testicles and spongiosum and glans.

  On Monday we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and then we drove into the town we'd gotten to know well over the weekend. We were able to get a parking space right in front of the building
in which Dr. Meehan had his offices, and then we rode the antique elevator to the fifth floor.

  Dana's surgeon had the weathered skin I'd expect on a cowboy, but his hair was thick and full and the color of sepia ink. I guessed he was in his mid to late fifties.

  He told us he'd been an army surgeon in Vietnam in the early 1970s and wound up in southeastern Colorado after he was discharged because he'd fallen in love with a nurse in his unit whose father had run one of the last remaining Trinidad mines.

  "I didn't study this at medical school," he said, smiling. "But I learned from the best," and he motioned toward a photograph on the wall behind his desk of the founder of the Waterman Gender Clinic.