It’s As If We Never Said Goodbye

I’m trembling now, you can’t know how I’ve missed you
Missed the fairy tale adventure
In this ever-spinning playground…

– lyrics from It’s As If We Never Said Goodbye from Sunset Boulevard,

Don Black, Christopher Hampton, Amy Powers, and Andrew Lloyd Webber

 

Whenever I dream of the two most-missed beings in my life–DeForest Kelley and Deaken my “serval son”– the time between our last encounters falls away and it’s as if we never said goodbye at all.

 

    with DeForest Kelley

with Deaken

Of course I did say goodbye. In both cases.

 

In both cases, I knew they wouldn’t be with me much longer, so I had the rare opportunity to “show and tell” them what they meant to me. And I took hold of it with my whole heart.

They both knew.

And maybe that’s why they still visit me in my dreams several times a year.  I rarely, if ever, dream of other loved ones who have passed.  But maybe that’s because I only ever felt truly safe and completely understood by these two beings. 

 

I think I’ve been a mystery to most people (never to animals) I’ve loved. Hell, I was a mystery to myself for so long that I did my level best to steer clear of other people! By the time I learned of my “condition” in clinical terms (“transgender”), I was already defined and categorized as something I wasn’t, or ever have been.

 

So, I isolated myself. I didn’t mix or mingle.

 

But when I did mix and mingle, it was with animals, a few platonic friends, and (starting in 1968) with DeForest Kelley.

 

I know what it was about them that gave me permission to be myself: they were themselves, and they were comfortable with me, and I resonated to that.

 

I didn’t seem to be a mystery to them, or to myself, when I was with them.

 

I had no name for it back then, before I ever heard the terms intersex or transgender. I just knew I was probably “the only one” with this rare condition. (HAH! What a joy and surprise it was to learn that  I’m not a freak, that millions of other people are transgender, too.) Before I knew this, I felt I had to keep quiet, remain celibate (keep making excuses and lying about why I wasn’t dating or had never married), and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

 

But I needed affection, too. Animals and De offered that, without expectation. There was no pressure to offer any more than I could offer, which was my essence alone.

 

I’m a loving person. I love lots of people! But I’m also an introvert, mostly by nurture, not nature. Mom and Dad said when I was a kid I was the quintessential “performer”, taking over every room I was in to dance or sing or do whatever it took to bring the place alive, make it vibrate with joy and excitement.

 

It was in being “corrected” by them to conform to something resembling “children should be seen and not heard” and as I grew into this strange alien configuration (an apparent “woman”) that I began to change into a morose, unhappy wallflower who decided “she” needed to hide. (Before the transformation, I’d been all about plastic and actual horses, cowboys, Lincoln logs, train sets, and construction tools.)

 

I became a writer (“show business for shy people”) because I had a helluva lot to say but no courage to say it aloud. And I was angry…fitfully angry and sullen whenever I wasn’t cutting up and making people laugh or writing stories about noble pursuits with bands of noble people. (My idealism alone saved me countless times.)

 

It occurs to me now that I could have used some counseling! But what would counselors have said, back in the early 60’s, when I told them I was a boy instead of a girl? Back then, that was considered pretty much crazy talk. (Penis envy, poor parenting, verbal/sexual abuse, wrong-headed reasoning… certainly nothing normal!)

 

But I did seek counseling on the sly. In scores of books. I read I’m OK, You’re OK, armchair psychology books, and everything else I could get my hands on (including the classic Conundrum by Jan Morris, a transgender woman). I cried buckets when I read that, not yet fully grasping that I was Jan in reverse, a man trapped in a woman’s body.

 

Animals and DeForest Kelley wouldn’t have cared less if I had two heads, no legs, or four arms. They would have loved me anyway.  So, I was able to feel unafraid of them and of myself. I was able to get outside my circumstances and focus solely on the joy of living again, as I had when I was a prepubescent kid.

(Photo: My true essence as a child by Lisa Twining Taylor)

 

I didn’t consider my childhood “sad” to the extreme until relatively recently. I didn’t know anything different, so I had nothing to compare it to. I’m glad mom listened when I fought wearing girls’ clothes and allowed me to dress and act like a boy except in places where such things just weren’t allowed (in school, in church, in public, where dresses or skirts were expected).

 

I’m totally thrilled that so many of today’s parents listen and seek appropriate help when their transgender kids tell them who they are. And I’m thrilled that there are things medics can do to offset puberty until children are old enough to name and proclaim their gender identity, which makes transitioning so much easier than it ever has been before.

 

It shouldn’t take animals or the almost rare-as-hens-teeth enlightened DeForest Kelleys of the world to convince transgender people (or any other marginalized people) that they’re lovable and respect-worthy just the way they are.

 

Because I was loved unconditionally by animals and DeForest Kelley, I survived. I even thrived from time  to time. I realized I wasn’t “damaged goods”…

 

No human being should ever feel unworthy of being loved. But when I see bigoted, far-right, uninformed asses on social media bashing and trashing transgender people, as far too many still do, I know it’s still a big challenge and risk to come out and name and claim it, and my heart aches.

 

Young people who are going through this need encouragement, not stigmatization and bullying. That’s why I wrote Womb Man: How I Survived Growing Up in a  Booby-Trapped World, to educate the fearful, shut down the hateful, and arm transgender allies with the information they need to speak up whenever they hear others bad-mouthing or denying the reality of transgender individuals.  My counselor and doctor are using the book to help the loved ones of transgender people understand, embrace and support them.

 

They need all the support, encouragement and love they can get to offset the “ugly” that gets spewed like vomit in so many places.

 

Wow! I really had no idea when I started this post that it would end up this way. I was feeling nostalgic for loved ones lost as I began to write it, but segued from that to what’s pressing on my heart right now.

 

Right now what’s pressing on my heart is how hard it is, still, to come out without risking the very thing I worried about risking my entire life if people found out about my truth. That totally sucks! Shouldn’t we be farther along than we are in this regard, after almost twenty years of information about the transgender brain and transgender experiences?

 

I encourage people who feel frightened or put off by the term to stop reading and listening to bigots and far-right preachers (one and the same in far too many cases) and study the facts of the matter. Doing so will make you less fearful. more understanding and less lethal to the well-being of the transgender people in your midst. (And there are far more of them than you know. In coming out, I learned of six individuals close to me who are also transgender. They hadn’t felt comfortable letting me know until I let them know. So, you see how that goes…) How welcoming and safe are you when it comes to the transgender loved ones (known and unknown) in your life?

 

Be like De and Deaken. They felt safe with me (you can, too!), so I felt safe with them.

 

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That goes for everybody, not just the folks in your tribe.

 

Try a little kindness. You’ll be amazed how well it works, and how many smiles it brings to the weariest of us in this world…

 

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