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Performance and poetry

  • Posted on October 30, 2012 at 11:25 pm

Andie Davidson, Polari, October 2012When I began my journey away from anger at aspects of myself and hatred of what felt so wrong about being me, I came to appreciate that just saying what I felt wasn’t really helpful. I say this, you say that, we disagree. I feel this, you feel that and we are hitting each other emotionally. I was not being fact, I was not being statement; I was being something inexpressible, I was being the emotion of self-realisation. We don’t have to go there much, do we? Life works, we sit tight. How could I say what was going on, and why it was becoming so important, so urgent? Poetry for me was a subversion of logic, the unspeakable, said with elegance, read until you realised your answers had already been undercut, and yet the playfulness of the language had strung you along. Maybe I overstate what I was doing. But I’m not so sure.

Last night I had been invited to present some of my poetry at a Polari evening at the Royal Festival Hall. No, not the big one! Just the 100-seater function room overlooking the London Eye, into which some musical performance and applause occasionally wafted. Anyhow, it took me back to my poetry collection RealIsations to select some key pieces along with some new ones. For me the book was a chapter now closed, and interesting to reopen after being left to rest.

The fears, as well as all the hopes, are long gone. I transitioned and began life exclusively as a woman seven months ago, and before that for a year, I had been doing so less and less covertly for at least three days a week. So I was recalling emotions largely dealt with, and able to appreciate the artistry I had achieved in the writing. I couldn’t just stand there and read this stuff: it was laden. But at least now I could get to the end of the poems without tearing up. I am quite new to poetry in many ways. I have written all my life, sporadically, and often wanted to read expressively to convey the intent. And so I am used to thinking about how I read, and how to carry meaning best when, at least in a lot of my work, there are many layers.

My lounge has become accustomed to dance, so without cats to embarrass, I could practice moving towards performance in my poetry. Polari is a somewhat flamboyant context, so all I knew was that this was something I desperately wanted to do, and do well. Did I? It was exciting. It was amazing. To be me as I now am, in this place, with these well-established, award-winning authors, doing this, and hitting the right buttons.

I am sure I can improve; there isn’t much one gets right first time in the creative arts, but it was such a powerful experience for me, I know I really must do this again. I loved it. This was me, reaching my best as a writer, at last, in a place where literature is appreciated, where being transsexual, if not understood, is at least recognised as an accepted minority identity. Other people might use a phrase such as ‘it blew my mind’, but I am less extravagant. It was another piece of self-understanding, that this is actually an important part of who I am.

It has taken me 24 hours so far to try and come down from the high, and I am back at work in the morning working on technical writing and operator manuals and the mechanisms of keeping them well maintained. A world away. But inside here, my heart is beating with the thrill of everyone who showed their personal appreciation of what was, to date, the performance of my life.

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Commitment; a celebration

  • Posted on October 27, 2012 at 5:59 pm

This journey has been described often enough as a roller-coaster, because there really are big ups and downs, certainties and fears, permissions and blockages. It’s inevitable, because you really can’t understand this except from the inside, so people get you wrong all the time, even when they’re doing their best.

This week was a case in point, but more than that, made me think seriously in a way I haven’t had to since transitioning. That’s right, transition. I have done everything that I can do on my own. Just one thing remains that I cannot do for myself.

But first, there I was in the office, surrounded by colleagues including a new starter (with a gorgeous pick-tinted ponytail), and I was accidentally referred to as a man by someone who has never seen me as a man. Woops! Accident, and great embarrassment (not mine). ‘Aaargh! Sorry! I’m always doing that!’

I said the first thing that came into my head, to be reassuring: ‘No, you’re not. You’re doing really well.’ and smiled at him and our new joiner. And got on with it. I guess if it happened much I would get a bit upset. After all it reveals what people really think I am underneath. They don’t naturally think of me as a woman. Yet.

I wasn’t down, or even cross. Just saddened. I have lost everything to become the most authentic I have ever been. I feel fantastic about it, but I can’t put everything right by myself. If it’s good enough to cost me everything, why isn’t it convincing enough at work, where I have never presented as anything else than this?

Then a friend, who returned their forms to the gender clinic on the same day as I did, received their first appointment (only four months waiting!). Grrr. I decided to call yet again about my change of address, and asked ‘I don’t suppose …?’ And knock me down with a feather – a letter had been posted (to my old address). Suddenly my horizon was visible again. What I really needed was to give someone a great big hug. Never mind!

Do you remember the queue for the water flume? Or the rollercoaster? The joking, the sense of bravery, dispelling thoughts of being scared or sick! Then you’re in. It’s a smooth flat ride. You’re doing fine. Then the ratchet picks your car up with a click and the rumbling starts. Now you are being driven, hauled up and there is a real sense of commitment. What you face, you must face now. It’s serious. That’s what it feels like to have that vital appointment. When I walk in, a woman who transitioned 9 months ago, on illicit hormones and working full-time, I don’t expect a refusal or a doubt, but it is a hurdle to clear. And so I feel I am on track for the one thing I can’t do for myself, with disruption, risk, pain, discomfort, and finally the peace of being complete and right. It certainly focuses the mind.

But it is so very much what I want. I know – from the deep envy I felt when a friend had her surgery this week.

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With my body

  • Posted on October 20, 2012 at 8:33 am

She was infatuated; in love. He adored her. Life was out of this world: made in heaven. They loved, they played, they rolled, they eventually decided. One day, as he was filing her birth certificate, it hit him. This was not her 25th birthday coming up. It was her 23rd, eight years since they first ….

 

They met at a ball. It was a charity do for people who had missing pasts. Children placed in care, often with troubled childhoods, so they had a lot in common. But something, just something, drew them together and they instantly connected. Cautiously, over years, they began to trust, learned to be vulnerable again. Their love was deep, if watchful, so some years later they decided to marry, and work together in the meantime to find their families, or at least their mothers. What a coincidence in the end that they had the same maternal surname. Even born within a year of each other in the same town. The same street.

 

She stared out of the window on an incongruously bright and calm morning. Hints had become games, games had become serious. Not the sex in woods, on hilltops, the lounge floor, at the kitchen sink, to which she had not merely consented but colluded. No. This morning he had gone to work after the most awful weekend. She reckoned up five thousand, maybe more – times they had had sex together. And now he had gone right over the edge and told her that there was no other description for it. He was, in truth, a woman. Wrong body. Same heart and soul, but wrong body. And he, she, was going to start putting it right. What had he known? What might she have known or guessed, in what he asked for, the way he was? Except that if she had known, five thousand time she would not have given her consent.

 

With my body, I honour you

The simplest and most heartfelt of the marriage promises. Right at the centre of nurture, commitment and fidelity. I think I did. In fact I think I did it well, and having heard how others have fared, often better than most. I was honourable in all my loving and cherishing all through, all the way to the very last time. But like the other two stories, it raises the question, not altogether philosophical, of legality. How should each story end? With under-age sex? With incest? With rape?

‘If I had known …’ Of course. And the verdict at this point with each may very well be that, between the consenting parties, no further action need be taken about the past. They are not so different, especially if I am so certain about what I am. But what of the present? How many times was the infringement done? When did one party knowingly act illegally? Is it for any third party to bring charges? A parent? A keen lawyer? And if one party were to be famous, perhaps a journalist should uncover it – in the public interest, of course.

What a dawning realisation it was to me. It’s OK, I have gone through the no-blame bit of counselling, I’ve explained that for 40 years I simply did not know how to describe or understand myself, and until rather late in the day I could always demonstrate doubt, or at least plead duality. But in the case of all three stories, you cannot unknow the truth. ‘If I had known, I would not have consented.’

With my body, I dishonour you

The new truth is that as a woman, everything I feel, desire, do as I always did, thousands of times, had switched instantly from honour (even the old word, worship) to defilement. The welcome of what I offered from my heart, the expression of my soul, the ultimate vulnerability shared, the desire – had become repugnant. I understand. Of course I do (and haven’t I a hundred times mentally switched the roles to imagine how I would feel?) and of course I must, because in the end, if it isn’t my fault, it is my cause.

When you are the one turned off, repelled, when your love evaporates in a moment, when you realise and shrink from ever doing again what you once did so urgently, the decision is very straightforward and unequivocal, and you can never again imagine the awfulness of repeating it with the new knowledge.

When you are the one against whom those gates slam, and through which you can still see, it is altogether different, and I cannot expect anyone to know how it feels.

Don’t misunderstand; I do not blame. I just still stand, somewhat bewildered, because all my intent, always, was honourable. It just became inappropriate. It was just wrong. And this is my problem; not guilt, not being let off the hook, but still being the same person: same heart and soul, same eyes and hands, same love and kindness, same need to give.

And I just can’t imagine how life can ever be the same again with this new knowledge. My birth certificate isn’t right. I was born in the same street to the same mother. And I always made love in my heart as a woman. And I want to be made honourable again.

 

In poetry: Losing my touch.

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Who do people say that I am?

  • Posted on October 13, 2012 at 8:07 am

These are not moments of doubt, but such utter self-conviction it matters that it is shared. But can anyone else really understand who I am?

I work in an office of men, so sometimes the conversation is jokeily blokeily. It isn’t offensive, though sometimes a bit close to that edge. Would they really say those things if the majority present were senior women? I find myself reacting not differently (I always hated the way men talk often about women), but more overtly. And it leaves me wondering if I am accepted as being ‘the woman who is really a man’. So it’s OK; she will understand, and maybe join in. She’s been there, she’s not sensitive like real women.

Sorry guys. I am not one of you, and my relief at not being one of you is profound. It is a thankfulness that I cannot describe. I haven’t become misandrist, and I don’t see you as misogynist. No, you are just still in the mindset ‘male as default’ – the obvious supremacy of the male. Women are just like that. Men are just like that. Aren’t they?

I don’t feel humoured, I just know there is a point where people give up following you. For all the courage they say I have to be different (do I have a choice?), or to set an example in going for what is true to myself against all odds, I feel that they will always say: ‘Andie? Yes she’s the transsexual. Used to be a man.’ Not a real woman. Not really who I say I am.

The same happens when people talk about relationships and love. There are those who expect me to seek romance with another trans* person – well it would just be easier, wouldn’t it? And aren’t you being a bit transphobic if you say you wouldn’t? Or those who have said I shall always be ‘somewhere in the middle’. And I try to reply that I am not part of some community that lives together out of a sense of shared identity or for self-preservation; that I am normal, that I am a woman, just one with a different history.

The more I follow my truth, the more my past dissolves. I had a recurrent dream the other night, only this time I was playing the same part as a woman. Even when I have shaken off consciousness, I no longer perceive myself as a man. What could be more lovely?

And yet I still feel, when other people relax their thinking, they do not do the same. They are really very good indeed with pronouns, the acceptance, the inclusion – mostly. And yet am I really ‘one of the girls’ to the women around me? Or still, underneath, ‘one of the men’? Or just an honorary guest for both?

What will it take, I wonder, for people to look at me and see who I am, not as something changed, but as the essential, genuine, whole me? To go beyond their rationalisation of what I have gone through, and not to need a rationalisation at all, just to be seen as who I am.

I have elsewhere remarked this week a shared observation amongst trans friends: that social transition (the whole-life leaving behind of a gender identity you were given) increases your gender dysphoria rather than relieving it. At one level you are doing everything you can and feeling a fulfilment you could never have imagined. You don’t even feel certain parts of your body any more for most of the time, and other parts you become very much more aware of. And then you catch yourself in a mirror undressed and know something is still dreadfully wrong, and can do nothing.

The people I am waiting for at a gender clinic see people like me every day. We are physiological males or females wanting surgery to change that. They see us, they go home, they have lives to live. I don’t think they can imagine what it is like as months and years go by, to feel worse each day we present and live more confidently. Outwardly they see a success; a ‘real life experience’ going well, following the pathway. There are too many of us to cope with, and anyway, we aren’t ill are we, so what are we complaining about? But inside I am thinking: every day you go home, and my referral forms lie yet another day in your intray, waiting for someone to transfer paper to computer, computer to diary, just to let me know the day you will begin to talk to me – a bit of me is screaming louder just to be heard. For who I am.

Who do you say that I am?

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Learning and forgetting

  • Posted on October 7, 2012 at 10:17 am

I love my new flat. It’s bright, it has a feeling of space about it, and apart from one ochre wall behind me, is mercifully tolerant of all my colours. Already it feels like home, a few friends have been round, and I’ve made it my own. At the same time all the most useful small boxes for books have gone to my storage cupboard ready for the next move. I have no idea how long I shall be here, but if they offered to sell, I’d stay.

I have peace, I have colour, and I have a home that feels like it only has female presence to it. I love it.

This is where the learning starts. I am finding out all sorts of things, like where I put things after arriving, why have I still not found the teaspoons, did I really not buy mushrooms?? Until my brain maps onto this new way of living, there aren’t the right places to keep certain things! I’m learning all the trivial things too, like the smoke alarm is easily triggered long before anything burns, and doesn’t appear to have a reset button. Or like when the bins are emptied, because nobody here seems to flatten their recycling. And thirty steps up means it’s better to use bags than crates at the supermarket!

I am also learning that partnership, whilst it has a bit to do with sexuality, is a lot more to do with helping each other out, and, in my case, being told to sensibly stop, rather than carrying on until very late at night, just because stuff needs doing. And that it might feel more finished to end up cooking at 10 pm, but 8pm is better for the digestion. Partnership is about parallelism, working alongside. Single is serial. However good I am at multitasking, it’s threading tasks in turn, not actually being able to do twice as many things in the same time. It isn’t actually a good idea to use an electric hob whilst building shelves!

I’m also learning that many friends are families and partnered, most are easily as busy as I am with other things, and that when you most need a hug, it just isn’t there. A snog? Forget it. So one thing I still haven’t learned is where on my shelves to place The Art of Loving. I left all the sex books behind, because I think I can still do all that pretty well (if ever I get the chance again) and wouldn’t learn any more from reading (if I ever did). But loving? There must be something I didn’t quite get right there.

Emma Cantons has just published her book If You Really Loved Me about her life with Victoria, who has finally gone through her gender reassignment surgery this week. I am also about to publish with Bramley Press, Laura Newman’s A Love Less Ordinary, which questions and answers the roots of love, the possibilities, and about finding yourself, your real self, and knowing that you have made the choice to be authentic (and that’s Laura, not her trans* partner Nicci!). Each is a life story about partnering and staying with a trans* lover. Special stories maybe, but not unique. A special love certainly, where sexuality is questioned, where love exceeds the power of norms, and where a realisation that something about the other is greater than the personal challenge.

The art of loving has been very close to my heart for a very long time, and I am faced with it by these new books. They are such an antidote to all the others that tell you relationships cannot survive, or that relate appalling accounts of rejection, violence and hate when a married person responds to their trans* identity and gives up fighting against themselves. But there is a message that is really important to all partners and family members of trans* people:

“If a trans partner or family member is prepared to face all the challenges of being trans* in a cis world in order to be authentic, how much am I prepared to discover myself by stripping away my own conditioning of who I am and how I fit in the world?”

Recognising and responding to your innate gender identity, with all the challenges, pain, expense, loss, all of which are huge in themselves, is one of the toughest things you might ever have to face. People look at me, how I am, how positive, happy, outgoing, how supremely confident about my gender I am, and they express a deep respect. But I wonder how they might re-examine any aspect of their own lives and respond to any truth they might find. We think we know who we are because we fit. What if something you’ve taken for granted all your life as the way to be, to relate, to express yourself, even the way you understand love, were, on closer inspection, found to be more about societal expectations than about your true potential? Would you dare, as trans* people do, to undergo a radical reassessment, and in front of all the world, be different?

I still haven’t worked out where to put The Art of Loving so I don’t lose it, but I do know I still have a lot to learn. I have moved on, and whenever I find someone to learn with again, I hope that we shall both be incredibly daring.

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