Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

December 26, 2016 Leave a comment

 

“His first solo album, 1987’s “Faith,” sold more 20 million copies, and he enjoyed several hit singles including the raunchy “I Want Your Sex,” which was helped immeasurably by a provocative video that received wide air play on MTV.

The song was controversial not only because of its explicit nature, but also because it was seen as encouraging casual sex and promiscuity at a time when the AIDS epidemic was deepening. Michael and his management tried to tamp down this point of view by having the singer write “Explore Monogamy” on the leg and back of a model in the video.”

“”I wanted to be loved,” said Michael of his start in the music field. “It was an ego satisfaction thing” said Michael of his start in the music field.””

-above quotes from http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/12/26/former-wham-singer-george-michael-dead-at-53.html

~~~

Have you noticed that when someone dies, the reality of their life goes on?

Reading the above article about the life and recent death of singer George Michael brought back a distinct memory…

 

In 2003 I went with a friend to an LGBT community support group meeting. My friend Sherry asked me to come along. Sherry was transitioning from male to female.  We had known each other for a long time before her transition.

The support group meeting was held on a Sunday afternoon in a community center of a northwestern suburb of Chicago. Sherry had heard about it from another friend. When Sherry mentioned the meeting to me I became curious about a side of life I hadn’t known about, a side of life that was constantly promoted as “gay and proud” in Chicago. In mentioning concern of my uneasiness about attending, Sherry was quick to point out Atticus’ advice to Scout:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”– Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”

 

As a friend, I said “yes” to her request.

After attending church that Sunday morning and then eating lunch at home I went outside to wait for Sherry. The beautiful September day prompted second thoughts about going with her to a meeting. But soon Sherry came by and I decided to do my due diligence as a friend. Without saying so, I believe she was looking for another reference point.

 

Sherry drove us north where, after several times of stopping to ask for directions, we made it to the community center. We were the first ones there and still not sure if we were in the right place. There were no signs posted about the meeting.

After a short while someone came in the front door. I could tell that this was someone attending the meeting, so I asked about the room. Tracy led us to a meeting room and turned on the lights. We introduced ourselves to Tracy.

Tracy introduced herself as the president of the local chapter (not to be named). Tracy wore a thin floral dress over a boney masculine frame. Tracy’s legs were not shaved. We noticed this as she went around the room putting chairs in order around a long wide table. Soon others appeared and they took a seat at the table.

Tracy sat at the head of the table and to her right, as we learned, was Katherine, the group’s secretary. Surrounding Sherry and I were fifteen people, all “female” in appearance – the majority being cross dressers based on a quick look at the number of beards. Actually, I wasn’t sure who was transitioning and who was cross dressing and who was gay. I would find who was doing what after we were introduced to the group and the meeting got under way.

After Katherine read the minutes from the last meeting there was motion to approve them and it was seconded. New business was next.

New business included the day and time of the next meeting and the day and time and whereabouts of the next social. The members were all a twitter. After several minutes their conversations turned from making out in cars at the local forest preserve to “making sure to use condoms” – a community service message, said president Tracy.

Next up:  the topic of today’s meeting.

Because we were using a community building paid for with tax dollars, so Tracy told us, the support group must provide topics on informational health and welfare subjects and report back to the government on a regular basis. (That recollection is a paraphrase from memory of what Tracy said that day.) In other words, as I understood it, the government allowed them to meet there but they must be reminded to be good citizens.

Tracy introduced the speaker for the day’s topic – Randall M. (not his real name). How open-ended the topic and the speaker of this day were was something I would soon find out. As he stood before us the topic was generally described by Randall as “AIDS and protection.” At this point I thought this topic might be of value to everyone in the room.  Me being present with this group and hearing about this topic with them, in a vicarious way I felt that I had “climbed into their skin” as HIV AIDS is no respecter of persons.

Randall talked about his quasi-subject – “AIDS and protection” – autobiographically:  His father left his mother at the age of two; His mother raised him alone; as a young man he worked as a pipefitter; he left work behind and traveled to San Francisco; he became involved sexually with other men; he became addicted to alcohol, pain killers, amphetamines and cocaine; he returned to his mother’s house in Chicago and entered a clinic for his drug addiction; he spent a lot of time in the “Boy’s Town” area of Chicago; he frequented spas and bath houses; he returned to drugs and to multiple sex partners; at one point he was diagnosed with HIV AIDS; he began to take expensive medications to slow the effects of AIDS; he took more illegal drugs and stole to maintain his AIDS medication and his drug habit; he continued to have sex with other men in Chicago’s bath houses. After a hour of relating these things Randall reached the end of his talk.

I looked around me and saw blank faces at the table. Maybe the beards hid their expressions from view. None of us at the table had heard a word of caution or of protection or about taking care of oneself or of redemption. Someone then asked Randall if he knew that he was transmitting AIDS to someone else by having oral and anal sex with them. His reply was criminal and meant to absolve him of any personal responsibility:

“They know what they are doing. They know why they are there.” The breathing in the room stopped with a gasp.

I leaned over to the Tracy and said “Someone in this group needs to report this guy.” Tracy nodded and then asked for more questions.  But the room remained dead silent.  Looking back, I should have spoken up more. But I remember being in such shock and feeling unclean and feeling like a reptile had crawled up inside my skin. I wanted to run to a baptismal fount to have all of the vileness purged from me.

With no further question or comments from the members of the LGBT support group, Tracy called the meeting to a close. Tracy invited everyone to stay and chat with cheese and crackers and lemonade offered on the buffet table. I ended the meeting by leaving with Sherry and not looking back. I had climbed into their skin and they had climbed under mine and it felt inhuman.

~~~

This is a true story and one aspect of the LGBT community that you will never see depicted on Ellen or All That Jazz or “reality TV.” Instead, related to homosexuality, you will see and hear the words “equal rights” and “love” and sometimes, “I Want Your Sex.”

 

Now, there’s no telling what one will find scrawled on bathroom stalls. And, there’s no telling what one will find sprawled in bathroom stalls. But did you really think that you would find love here among the fetid? Amazing.

 

“I said celebrate the love of the one you’re with

 

As this life gets colder

And the devil inside

Tells you to give up.”

 

“Amazing” Songwriters: GEORGE MICHAEL, JONATHAN SIMON DOUGLAS

Filed under Homosexuality, Transgender Tagged with , , , , ,

Cloture (I.R.L.)

March 12, 2011 Leave a comment

For several years now I have lived as woman. And, riding the commuter to Chicago and back I now and then see people who had seen me while I was transitioning. That time of my life was not a pretty sight. When I do recall it the title of a movie comes to mind: The Phantom of the Opera. Well, as it happens, currently there is one guy who rides the same train and he had seen me back in those days. This guy reminds his commuter friends about “what” I am.

Every week day on the 5:04, he and his friends stand in the train’s vestibule drinking beer. When he sees me he points me out with derision to his beer buddies. I am extremely tired of his jejune behavior. I consider him in the same category as those people who make the snide mocking comment “Well, what did you think.” when I relate to them that some of the people closest to me deride me in their own deprecating ways. Now, I don’t live to be noticed and certainly not in a denigrating way. What part of me don’t you understand?

Some things play out differently. This happened last night.

My week at work finished up nicely. I had completed my projects on time and I didn’t have to bring work home with me. Last weekend, I had worked tons of overtime. But last night I was ready for some time off, for some time to kick back.

At the end of day, I left my desk and got on the elevator. There was a man standing at the rear of the elevator. The elevator doors closed and the man then proceeded to pick his nose from the 24th floor to the first floor. Gross! (But, uncannily, I was reminded what a good friend once told me: “You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick you friend’s nose!”) Fortunately, I walked away unscathed. lulz.

Off the elevator, I walk over to the train. I get on the train and sit down. Soon, a man who smells like he has bathed in urine sits down near me. Then, another man nearby (probably an attorney) is excitedly making sure his law partner (on the phone) understands how things should be handled. I can hear every word. It’s a type “A” conversation. Sadly, these annoyances during the train ride’s lock down are common place on the commuter, but they don’t usually gang up on me.

After an hour and ten excruciatingly long minutes I get off the train and head for a local restaurant I favor. It is a seafood restaurant (not Red Lobster). I am hoping that Jambalaya is on the menu. I had tried their version (w/mussels) on Fat Tuesday. It was superb.

I sit down at the bar and order a Stella. The bartender who served me on my last visit greets me and says, “Nice to see you.” I smile and think, “Nice to be seen”.

The bartender hands me the menu after he reads the Specials to me. I am only interested in the Jambalaya. The chicken and seafood gumbo on the menu would be an acceptable default finisher in the event of a Jambalaya no-show. But, my food thoughts were interrupted. Someone sat down next to me and said “Hi”.

Glancing sideways, barely looking at this guy, I return his greeting. Immediately I realize that it is my old business partner D-. Eeyow!

I began sipping my beer and digging through my purse trying to find my cell phone. I needed diversion!

At this point, I am desperate, anxiously looking for the bartender so that I could order food To Go. I want to get out of the stew I’m in. My bartender, though, is down at the end of a rather long bar. He’s creating frou-frou drinks. So, I began quickly swigging my beer while going through the menu on my cell phone. I check out the Emoticons.

Now, I had known D-. for a long time. D-. reminds me of Alec Baldwin’s Blake in David Mamet’s film version of Glengarry Glen Ross. He is completely self-possessed, obnoxious and arrogant. He could quickly become vulgar and he would verbally abuse you if you get on his wrong side. I know. I worked with him for sixteen years and I was a business partner with him for fourteen years. That was until the day I decided I had had enough. I had enough of him and his angry, demeaning ways.

As a partner with D-. in an S corporation I received a six figure income and plenty of perks including a company car. But I also had an incredible work load. I was the VP of Engineering for our small corporation (roughly $17-20m/yr in sales) and I was on call 24/7.

In those days customers were given my cell phone number to call if there ever was a problem. If the machine we had provided a customer had an issue, the customer would call me. Beyond this, I was flying to different parts of the world such as Poland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, most of the Canadian provinces and almost all of the States to provide support for the equipment we sold. I, in fact, had designed and built major portions of our corporation: I set up the accounting and the computer network and CAD stations, I designed the electrical engineering portion for the equipment we manufactured including the schematics and wiring design. I programmed P.L.C.s and SCADA systems. I managed a group of engineers (16) and dozens of customers. I welded, painted and wired machines. But, this wasn’t good enough for D. Somehow I was lacking in his eyes and this lack usually happened when the bottom line of the P & L took a hit and this due to a stagnant economy. It was then that D-. would often turn his verbal rants onto me.

Now, because I was married at the time of my business relationship, my relationships outside of work suffered: I was either on the phone with a customer or gone somewhere with a customer or simply brain dead after receiving the brunt of D-.’s economic panic attacks. After fourteen years of this I needed out. I didn’t care about the money or perks. I needed relief. So, I gave my notice.

After my decision, D-. came to my house begging me to stay on. I refused. I had had enough. I cut my ties with him and his abuse and the excessive workload strapped to my back. It took months to return to close to an even keel. (The sad irony for me: I had the exact same marital relationship as my business relationship with D. After leaving the egregious business situation for my spouse and kids (and for myself) and being out of work for some time, my spouse decides to separate and later divorce me. Even though I did everything for this person except bear children it still wasn’t enough. During our own tough economic times, the bottom line of our marriage P & L was written in red ink, in my spouse’s view.)

Well last night D-. was sitting next to me, nine years after my divorce from the partnership. I don’t know if he knew that I had re-gendered after my own divorce. He didn’t recognize me, it appeared. But, just in case, I turned and faced the entrance to the restaurant hoping to see a phantom friend enter the door.

The bartender never came back.  I halted a passing waitress and told her that I needed to pay and go. She took the money, gave me the change and I was out the door. Whew!

I didn’t get the Jambalaya I wanted so badly. It wasn’t on the menu. And, I didn’t want to stick around for the seafood gumbo. I sought food elsewhere (fish and chips to be exact) at the local Irish pub. A Green solution!

Presently, I have a job I love and a quiet, peaceful life. My loved ones still avoid, ignore and shun me because of my re-gendering and because I have left over anger from the whole terrible time of the business and the marriage. I am still recovering.

I hope to never, ever see D-. again. I became nauseous while he was sitting next to me last night. I certainly wouldn’t accept any payment to be around him, as before. I would, though, buy everyone at the pub a beer. A Green solution, all around!

© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Filed under biographical, business, Current Events 2011, gender dysphoria, Non-fiction, non-fiction, Short Piece, Transgender Tagged with , ,

Sisterhood of the Traveling Ya-Ya

February 19, 2011 Leave a comment

Dreams serve to help us resolve day-to-day problems while we sleep. Upon waking, dreams most often vanish into cerebral thin air while the effect of the dream, the mind’s resolution, goes on with the person into their day. It is also known that vivid dreaming will often happen during periods of personal emotional upheaval and stress. They have for me. One dream in particular stands out. I am living it.

In 1995 I struggled with the issue of gender-dysphoria. I had struggled with this issue since my early childhood. But that year, the question had become the pea in the princess’s bed: I could no longer sleep, eat or work properly. I was deeply unsettled about the matter. Being in a relationship with someone at that time made the issue all the more acute. When I finally did sleep I had many dreams. One dream stands out as being clearly prophetic in all of its symbolism.

The dream: I am standing at the end of a long dark tunnel, a tunnel deep underground. My sense is that I have been on a subway train for a long ride. I get off the train and was face the exit. Looking up (since I am way below street level) I see light coming through a long rectangular opening. I start walking up the slightly pitched exit ramp towards the light. As I walk I notice, appearing directly in front of me, a tall chest of drawers. I open the top drawer and inside there are women’s things and jewelry. I close the drawer. I feel good.

The closer I walk to the entrance, the better I feel. At last I stand at the large rectangular opening. The dark tunnel is behind me and a bright sunny day is out in front of me. I see tall buildings and behind them I see Lake Michigan. I see myself working in trenches along the shore of Lake Michigan. Unlike the tunnel I just came from, the trenches are open to the blue sky and warm sunshine. I sense that I am extremely happy working in these trenches. I feel a sense of peace. Then I see myself lying in a lounge chair on a sandy Chicago beach. I am looking out at the water, a great open expanse before me. My journey has ended and I have reached my final destination.

This dream, of course, is rich with symbolism. Carl Jung would call it an “archetypal dream” – it is mythic and grand, completely vivid. Within the dream I seek to integrate my feminine and masculine qualities – the anima and animus. Compared to my life at hand, it was the impossible dream.

This dream occurred during a time in the 90’s when I attended a church in the Chicago area. The church was, at that time, coupled with two local para-church organizations. One of the organizations is a ministry directed toward helping homosexuals leave the gay life style. It is led by a former homosexual. The other church ministry is dedicated to the “healing of the soul”. “Healing Prayer” teaching seminars were led, at that time, by a Kathryn Kulhman type figure – a self-styled prophetess.

The prophetess wrote books which were filled with quotes from notable Christians such as C.S. Lewis. Her writings spun off into different directions using her own spiritual experiences to formulate a point. After reading several of her books, I wasn’t exactly sure what her point was. It seemed to me that she tried very hard to appear intellectual and bookish and to be taken seriously. An aura of mystery surrounded her person. This invoked an image of a feminized Elijah who was often whisked away by her crew to pray in the Spirit out in the wings.

To give you an idea of the confusion that was wrought when she spoke I’ll share with you a conversation I had with someone in the lobby of Wheaton College’s Edman Chapel where she spoke. I was there attending a healing prayer seminar given by this woman. I was seeking some kind of resolution to the gender issue in my life.

During one of the healing seminar sessions, I got up to stand in the lobby. I was tired after sitting for several hours. Out in the lobby I met the doctor who was also attending the session. This doctor had delivered my son. We struck up a conversation.

Like me, he had been sitting and listening and he had also decided to get up and stand in the lobby. Standing in the lobby together, he asked me directly if I knew what the prophetess was talking about and I said, “She keeps saying it will make sense later, but I don’t know. It hasn’t made sense yet” The doctor looked puzzled. He was hoping that I could bring some meaning to the mishmash of words spoken in the auditorium that morning but I couldn’t. In fact, my own confusion was becoming deeper. I gave her the benefit of the doubt because she talked about gender issues and self-image issues, applying healing prayer to wounded-ness.

The soul healing seminars (and books) offered by this ‘prophetess’ would deal with a host of psycho-sexual issues including homosexuality. Many of the people who came to the seminars had been wounded in their youth. The wounding would include rape, abandonment, neglect, beating, mistreatment and even a possible traumatic birth (breach births, cord wrapped around neck, etc.). In essence the seminars were like spiritual LSD. Through healing of memory prayers, the attendees would relive some of the painful memories and then have those memories prayed over and then supposedly vanquished, leaving the person to go on with their life without the burden of the past. At least that was the idea.

Having been around this woman for many years while attending the afore-named church I can say that she is a wonderful person with discernible good motives. She seeks to help others who had been wounded as she had been early in her life. Her seminars bring many hurting people together including homosexuals who desperately want to leave the gay lifestyle. The healing prayers offer a place to start looking at the core issues of homosexuality, issues born out of deep neurosis and family life situations.

Her seminars would talk about the re-symbolizing. Re-symbolizing is important when a person wants to leave a bad pattern or life style behind. It helps someone, with a ‘healed’ imagination, to focus on what is good, pure, noble and true. In this process, re-symbolizing replaces the image previously fixated on and even idolized and gives the person the image of the cross – the suffering Servant, arms open, who seeks to embrace you. This message was always abundantly clear from her talks and writings.

Misogyny, the hatred of women, was one driving motive behind the origin of the ‘prophetess’ healing prayer seminars. As she recalled in one seminar, the prophetess had endured misogyny early in her life. Her mission, she felt, grew out of a need to help others who had endured oppression, hatred and worse from misogynistic people, mostly men, but women could also be misogynistic to other women and to themselves. This calling was made clear from the beginning of her writings and talks. When she related in one of her talks that she considers her misogynistic uncle an “Ass” you knew she has an axe to grind and a hatchet that needed a burial.

What wasn’t clear to me and to others are her words about the “true self”, the “true masculine” and the “true feminine”. She pointed to God as having “the True masculine and the True feminine”. What was the “True self”? What was the True Masculine? The True Feminine? And, why parse things so finely?

Many of the seminar prayers (and writings) included prayers prevailing upon God to bring a person out of their wounded past and into their true self, into a true masculine or true feminine identity. I have since learned that there is no true masculine or true feminine identity, only the sexed body, male or female, that you were born with. Gender identity, though rooted in the sexed body, is fluid and mostly a social construct. Consider these words from Miroslav Volf, a Christian theologian and currently the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School:

“Nothing in God is specifically feminine; nothing in God is specifically masculine; therefore nothing in our notions of God entails duties or prerogatives specific to one gender; all duties and prerogatives entailed in our notions of God are duties and prerogatives of both genders…”
Men and women share maleness and femaleness not with God but with animals. They image God in their common humanity. Hence we ought to resist every construction of the relation between God and femininity or masculinity that privileges one gender, say by claiming that men on account of their maleness represent God more adequately than women or by insisting that women, being by nature more relational, are closer to the divine as the power of connectedness and love.” Miroslav Volf from Exclusion and Embrace, 1995

I attended many of these healing seminars. I did so because I was desirous of walking in the Spirit and hopefully finding a reason for the gender disconnect within. The teaching/healing prayer seminars were described as praying the soul into well-being. The prayers were not a one-shot fix but a starting point from which the soul which had been wounded or cut off from its “true self” would bring God’s touch to a place of deep wounding. Then, the process of healing could begin.

Back to the dream. During the healing prayer seminars participants were prayed over by the ‘prophetess’ and her prayer team. I was prayed over several times with prayers spoken in tongues using holy water and a crucifix. It was during this week of healing prayer sessions that my lucid dream occurred. I considered the dream, at that time, to be symbolic and nothing more. Recently, I now understand the dream to be a prophetic dream. I’ll explain.

Several years ago I made the decision to live as woman. When I did, I understood that God had given me the grace to do this and to be in a relationship with Him. God was willing to embrace me as a woman. God was not threatened or put off by my change. In fact, I have certainly been blessed throughout the process.

Recently, while riding the train to work, my tunnel dream and its fullfillment came to mind: I am a ‘new’ woman; I work (in the trenches) in Chicago near the lake front; I am settled and laid back (as the dream’s lounge chair would symbolize). I am at rest. A dream come true.

But, my dream is used as a nightmare by my ex. In my ex’s hands, my change has become a wedge between me and my children, a way of alienating the children from me. It is my ex’s ‘normalcy’ argument that hammers the wedge deeper and deeper: my ex’s position is that she is normal and that I am not. She tells my children this in so many ways on a regular basis. I know. I hear back from them. Children will learn prejudice from their parent/s over time. This is true wherever there is any off-putting’ of people and groups throughout our world.

My change, by the way, never absolved me from responsibility to my children. I continue to parent my children and give them what they need.

While the attempt to heal the soul is a massive undertaking, I see any desire to heal the soul as laudable. At the same time I am concerned about the specific ideation of the true self, the true masculine and the true feminine identities. These definitions could drive people into further confusion and perhaps into more despair. Perhaps, it would cause a return to a bad or broken symbolization because her teaching embraces the new idols of the masculine and feminine: her teaching identified the “True masculine as the man being the initiator (thrusting, pushing forward, aggressive) while the True feminine is the woman receiving (actively passive), relational and integrating life.” More mishmash. Each of us has masculine and feminine qualities and their amounts are negotiated within the society each of us live in.

On closer examination, the true self, not seduced and influenced by TV and the media, is the person who finds his or her identity in a relationship embrace with Jesus Christ. Gender identity, anchored in a sexed body, free-floats. It can be active and passive, giving and forgiving (think marriage of a male and a female, an Adam and Eve narrative). Harbored in Christ this identity is able to be open to others. It is known for its ability to accept changes in the other and to do justice.

A prophetess, a dream and a reality. The Divine Secret of the Traveling Ya-Ya finally makes sense.

“Now you can understand the quantity of love that warms me toward you, so that I forget our vanity, and treat the shades as the solid thing.” Dante’s Purgatorio 21.132-135

Filed under Christian, Christian character, Christianity, gender, gender dysphoria, Homosexuality, LGBT, Life story, Transgender Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Mirror, Mirror, Not At All

August 27, 2010 Leave a comment

A put down. That was the first thing that my friend Eric said to me when I told him that I was going to start living as a woman. I had called Eric, my long time friend, and had asked him to meet me for a beer at a local micro-brewery. He is a beer fanatic so I thought good ale would help clear the way for my ‘out-of-the-blue’ news. But my words were sobering to Eric. When I told him he grimaced and then, instead of looking back at me, he looked over at the large vats of brewing beer and said, “You’ll never be beautiful. That was the first thing that my long time close friend said to me.

Eric’s response came as a complete surprise to me. I had never thought about beauty in the context of living as a female or as a motive for doing so. The idea of seeking beauty simply never came to mind. I don’t think that anyone wants to be ugly or unattractive so I considered myself as one of these same people. I hadn’t held beauty up as some ideal to reach for or desire. Since I’ve transitioned and have lived as a woman for several years now, I feel very comfortable in my body. I occasionally do hear comments: “Hey, pretty lady.” “Hi, beautiful.” and even “Hi, gorgeous.” I would have to say that those words are nice to hear sometimes but they don’t confirm to me that I am beautiful. What makes me beautiful is that which is transitioning in my soul: becoming less self-aware and more Christ-aware. My validation of beauty comes from within me and not from some mirror of opinion. The view of the latter would be as though “looking through a glass darkly” or just speculation about my outward appearance. I prefer, rather, to visualize the words said by the Real One Who dwells within me:

How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes are doves.
***
Like a lily among thorns
is my darling among the maidens.
***
All beautiful you are, my darling;
there is no flaw in you.

I’ve known two things since my earliest childhood: I am a female and that God is more concerned about what is my heart than about my appearance. I was born with the innate understanding that I was a female despite what I saw to the contrary. I also understood early on that a God Who I could not see is able to see what cannot be seen with the human eye. I learned this from a Sunday School lesson about the lowly shepherd boy David being selected by God to be the king of Israel. It was out of this understanding of God that my faith in God began to grow. By faith I believed in Jesus and by faith, later on, I began living as a woman.

It is faith, according to the Scriptures, that operates on the basis of what is not seen and it is faith that acts in anticipation of what is to be received. Faith doesn’t operate by sight. But, people do. From the same Sunday School lesson I was taught that “man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.” And that brings me back to Eric’s words.

When Eric responded he essentially said that my transition would be some contrivance to obtain beauty. This statement confounded me and hurt me but not for long. The fact that I am a woman is settled for me. The fact that I may or may not be beautiful truly doesn’t matter to me. In this Age of Enhancement, beauty can quickly become the mascara tears streaming down the cheeks of Despair. The issue of beauty is certainly important if you make it important. I do not consider it important. Rather, I am learning to be less self-aware and more Christ-aware. I am continually praying that this transition will happen. This transition is the most important one of all and it is, by far, the most costly.

Sadly, my friendship with Eric ended that day. He said that he didn’t want to watch me make the ‘change’. He went on to say that I must have some horrible psychic pain to want to make the ‘change’. What he didn’t understand was that there had been tremendous psychic pain in avoiding the ‘change’. Eric broke off our long term friendship that day. We finished our beer, hugged each other and then drove off.

It appears that friendship, not beauty, is only skin deep.

Filed under gender, gender dysphoria, LGBT, Transgender Tagged with , , , , , ,

She Loved Much

June 14, 2010 Leave a comment

The Gospel reading yesterday came from The Gospel According to Luke:

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
      “Tell me, teacher,” he said.

 “Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.”
      “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”

 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

 The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

 Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

 

*****

I have shed many tears during my life – tears of repentance, tears of joy, tears of great sorrow and tears of great loss…

 

She Loved Much

Surrounded by those who judge me… at a dinner party given for Jesus…

Tears pour from my alabaster heart,

Onto Your Holy earth-born feet, my kisses removing the clay, the dust;

The earthy/musty scent of my adoration-

The pure nard of my love for You-

Captures the room, pushing fear from my senses,

Permeating the place where You are,

The Place I want to be.

May my love for You, O Holy One of God,

Bring You great joy as You dine among the white-washed tombs.

“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

*****

“What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”  A.W. Tozer

Filed under Christian, gender, gender dysphoria, LGBT, Poems, Transgender Tagged with , , , , ,

Fifty Minutes

July 7, 2009 Leave a comment

 

door 

The clinic’s lobby ebbed and flowed of people.  A mother and her son came in one door.  A teenage girl came out another door and left through the door the mother and son came through.  A therapist stuck his head out of another door and looked around the room.  He saw his next client and said “Hi, come on in.”  A man, his wife and their son followed the therapist through the door.  A woman came in the front door and proceeded over to the glass window to check in with the half-door receptionist.  This flow of traffic continued for thirty five minutes while I read a year-old garden magazine.  I was waiting for my therapist to stick her head out of a door and say “Hi, come on in.”  I was paying her to open the door, stick her head out and say “Hi, come on in.”  She would listen to me.  I paid her good money.  Everyone else I talked to, those I didn’t pay, would just shrug their shoulders and go about their business.  My life had come to this: paying someone to listen to me.  I, of course, didn’t know for sure if they were listening, but at least the door was closed and they faced me while I talked.  They sometimes nodded, too.  They looked like they were listening, anyway. “You get out of it what you put in it.” is what they told me when I began counseling at Hope Well Clinic.

 The door opened and Melody stuck her blond head out the door.  She saw me, smiled and said, “Hi, Denny, come on in.”  I replaced the garden magazine back on the small table between two doors.  I followed Melody and went through the door that separated the outside world from the ’inside’ world.  On the other side of the door was a long hallway with many closed doors.  I knew what was going on behind those doors:   The mysteries of life being sorted into sanity, into something someone could use, something for people to get handle on.  I followed her down the hallway past the closed door sanctuaries and entered her small corner office.  Melody was new to the clinic so she didn’t have a window, just a reproduction of a Kandinsky, Composition X, I believe, hanging on a four foot wide egg shell painted wall.  A floor lamp hung its one light over a love seat. A lava lamp on a small table in front of the Kandinsky provided a pink glow to Melody’s right cheek. I sat down on the left side of the love seat and nestled a burgundy pillow behind the small of my back.  I leaned back into the shadow cast by the lamp and rested my head on my hand.

 Melody is a five-foot-two gorgeous blond with a petite figure that appeared to bubble out from her effervescence.  Her clothes were fashionable, maybe from Saks or Von Maur or Nordstroms.  Her look spoke volumes.  I appreciated the care she took in her appearance.  She didn’t look clinically challenged at all, just “peachy keen”.  A bevy of natural blond hair framed her oval cherubic face.  She appeared so angelic that it was easy for me to ‘see’ her every two weeks.  The visit with her provided for my own emotional ‘face lift’.

 Melody and I had developed some positive transference during our bi-monthly visits over six months   I was able to talk to her openly about most things and yet at the same time I held back on the one piece of the puzzle that confronted my daily life.  The reason for this resistance was the fact that a previous counselor, Jim, at the same clinic had told me that if I wanted to live as a woman and follow through with the surgery the Clinic, the Christian Clinic, couldn’t help me.   They couldn’t say why they wouldn’t help me only that they wouldn’t.  I was left to assume that they weren’t sure what do with the issue or that they just thought it was sinful or destructive. They couldn’t say why.  I later learned that Jim died from lung cancer.  I found this out when they cancelled my sixteenth session with him. That’s when they turned my case over to Melody, a licensed clinical counselor who had just joined Hope Well Clinic.  During my time at the clinic I saw a psychiatrist, too.  His method of dealing with me was to medicate me and then to take five minutes during the next appointment to ask how I was doing and then charge another $250.00 for another script.  I later decided not to medicate the pain. I decided that the financial pain was worse than the emotional pain of not being able to live as a woman. My impending personal financial recession brought about by his incessant billing was causing me severe emotional depression.  I quickly put a lid on the meds.

 There were reasons to talk to someone:   a 14 year long divorce that started as a marriage to Marybeth; my leaving a successful business partnership in hopes of saving the dissolving marriage; the accidental death of our eighteen year old son during the marriage, the everyday loss of my two children to an angry alcoholic woman because of the divorce; the loss of two significant jobs, long term joblessness and the financial collapse of my life.  A page of scripture verses or a bottle of anti-depressants was not what the doctor should have ordered.  Instead, someone just needed to listen to the pain being cast out of me like a demon from the recipient of the personal holocaust.

 “How are you doing this week, Denny?” Our dialog began with Melody’s opening line.

 “Alright, I guess.  No major tragedies the past two weeks.”

“Good.”

 “Marybeth is being a jerk again.

 “How so?”

“You remember how I told you that always threatened me that she would take my kids, take 28% of my income and make me pay?

 “Yes.”

 “That is what she is trying to do right now in the divorce agreement.  She wants me to agree to this arrangement and I am saying no.  It is costing me a small fortune to pay a lawyer to fight this.  My own lawyer keeps telling me that I can’t do this and that I can’t do that.”  My own lawyer is pretty useless if you ask me.  My lawyer expects me to just lay down and give Marybeth sole custody and I refuse to do this.  These are my children, as well.  I lived full time with my kids until this… this…this person decided to break up our marriage and our home with her perfectionism and her alcoholic rage.”

 “I thought last time that we agreed that we weren’t going to keep talking about Marybeth.”

 “I have to.  I am so angry at what she has done to our family, to the kids and to me.  Now she is living with some guy who looks like her father.  All of this in front of my two kids.”

 Melody lets me talk about the Marybeth situation but I realize that she has an agenda and is waiting to move on.  She just nods and looks dolefully at me while placing both feet on the floor in front of her rocking chair.  Her feet didn’t touch the floor unless she rocked forward to make a point.

 “I would like to get a different lawyer but I can’t get the retainer money together again.  I am deep in debt because of this whole divorce business.”

 Melody leaned forward.  “Yeah, that is hard.”  “Well, we have to get you through this, past Marybeth.”

 I leaned toward Melody and spoke directly to her large green eyes:  “I don’t understand it when people make vows and then they don’t fulfill them and just walk away from them.  How can you just walk away from a vow?”

 “”It happens every day.”

 “Then it isn’t a vow, is it?” Denny crossed his arms against his chest.

 “It is at the time.”

 “What?!” His threw his arms open into a wide questioning flare.

 “People say things and things change.”

 “What?! “For better or for worse” are the words we said to each other.  “To death do us part.”

 “Things change, people change.” Melody uncrossed her legs and then crossed them the other way.

 “Vows don’t change.”

 “Let’s move on and get past Marybeth.  You have to go on with your life.”

 “My vow to her was my life!”

 “That has changed.”

 What?!” Denny was incredulous.

 “The divorce is going forward and you must get past this and move on with your life.”

 “I can’t get past this.  Vows are serious things.”

 “She is with someone else.  You can’t make her love you.  You have to let go.”

 “I didn’t want the divorce. I wanted reconciliation.  I wanted to work through these things.  She was always pointing her finger at me and she never once took responsibility for our marriage.  That’s why I went to counseling in the first place.  She said that I was the problem. I was supposed to please her and if I didn’t then she said I was the problem – because she wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy but I thought I had a vow to fulfill and that I must keep working at it.  Happiness would just have to wait.”

 “People sometimes need to go away to realize what they left behind.”

 “What?!”  Denny’s face was bright red, flushed with anger.  “Once she sleeps with this other guy, her father, it is over for us.  I don’t want that to happen. We had children together; we have fourteen years of trying. We made vows.”

 “She changed her mind.  I don’t know why.  Let’s move on to talk about you.”

 “This is me!” Denny returned.

 “OK, but she is not going to change.  Let’s talk about what you can change instead.”

 “She and I were one.  How can you change that except by splitting one into two?  Don’t you understand?  We are getting a divorce because she is not happy!  That’s the reason!”

 “I understand.  She has changed for whatever reason.”

 Denny fell back into the glow of the pink lava lamp, his cheeks flushed red against the soft rose light. He knew that Melody’s ‘agenda’ took precedence over anything that he had wanted to say regarding Marybeth.  He had come through the labyrinth of doors, rooms and hallways into her office so that he could talk to her about these things and she had already moved next door.

 “Denny, remember when we first talked and I asked you about the Healing of Memories Prayer?  We talked about what it was and about bringing up the past.  You said that you were open to praying with me this prayer.  Is that still the case?”

 Denny shifted his legs and then leaned forward putting his hands on his knees.  “Yeah, I’m open to that.  I don’t see why not.”

 “Good, well if you are in a good place then we can try it today. I wanted to make sure there is enough time to pray and to work through whatever comes up.”

 “Alright.”

  … My previous therapist, Susan, was a psychologist.  Her office was in her home in a northwestern suburb of Chicago.  Susan was very friendly and approachable.  So much so, in fact, that she saw me once a week, charged me only $30.00/hour and we talked for two to three hours at a time – costing me only $30.00.  I would not call her a typical therapist but we did enjoy talking with each other.  We talked about everything:  her dog, her son, her friends, her life, church, spirituality, movies and so on.  I didn’t know who was more pixilated:  me or Susan.  After a year or so of sessions with Susan I traveled closer to home, to Hope Well Clinic in Wheaton.  I did that for post-marriage counseling and because I was giving Susan more counseling then she gave me in return.  I later found out that Susan had some serious health issue that resulted from her breast implants leaking silicone.  The silicone had affected her brain.  She became mentally handicapped as time went on.  During one session with Susan the year before I learned that she had dated a plastic surgeon and that he had done her breast implant surgery.  That relationship apparently had deteriorated over time…

 “Why don’t we pray and see what the Lord brings up from the past.  Are you ready to have these things come up?” “Do you feel OK about this?” Melody leaned toward me and folded her hands.

 “I’m not worried about the past. I’ve been there before.  It’s right now that has me bothered.”

 “OK, let’s get started.  Father, we pray for Denny.  We ask that You would bring Denny to a place in the past, a place that You want to heal.”

 We waited in silence.  The room was quiet except for the low hum of the lava lamp.  The hallway was quiet except for the closure of a door somewhere.  I didn’t know what was going on in the lobby.  I was deep in thought and the prayer was reaching even deeper into my soul.  After ten minutes of silence I began to see an image in my mind:  I was standing in the doorway of my bedroom.  The bedroom was in the house I had lived in since I was eight years old.  I understood that the house was empty, no furniture and no people.  I was alone.

 I began to cry softly.  The aching pain of being alone had followed me throughout my life.  A rush of sadness came to my head and poured out into tears which fell from my bowed face. In my vision I stood in the doorway looking into the bedroom.  It had now become pitch black.  I was enveloped in darkness within an empty house looking into an empty room.  It was then that I heard a voice say to me, “Run free.”  I instantly saw a little Indian boy running around without a shirt.  He was happy and utterly free.  He didn’t have a care in the world.  I knew then that the Lord had given me this understanding because this vision was so intimate to my understanding.  This image of this shirtless Indian boy was something I had immediately recognized in my spirit.  I realized that God had set me free from my past and had given me freedom to go forward with my heart’s desires.  Only the Lord knew exactly what was in my heart – the desire I had not mentioned to Melody or to anyone since I told Jim.  The spirit of the little boy now lived in me – the spirit of freedom.  The past no longer pinned me down.  People would no longer be able pin me down with their prejudice and fear.  I was free to go forward with my life.

 Melody asked what I had seen and I told her about the empty and dark bedroom in my childhood home.  She asked me if I had heard anything and I told her, “The Lord said, run free!”  She looked at me quizzically and I kept my thoughts to myself.  She asked if I was OK and all I could say was, “Yeah.”  I knew that if I had told her my understanding of the vision that she would seek to negate my vision and suppress my perception of it because of a Hope Well Clinic policy based on ignorance and bias and, perhaps, fear.  My heart was dancing but my eyes didn’t move from staring at the floor.

 I wiped my face and fell back into the loveseat with a sigh.  I sat in her office with a red face and a growing smile.  I knew that I was loved by the Lord and that I was heard by Him.  I was not alone anymore in my very personal struggle.  The session ended with Melody saying, “Well it’s time.  Let’s get together in two weeks and see how you are doing.”  I went through her door again, down the hallway of doors and into the lobby of many doors where I paid my bill.  I left the clinic and found my car in the parking lot.  I would return just two more times to see Melody.  Everything had a different perspective now.  The Lord had heard me and He had answered my prayers. I had gotten out of it what I had put in it.  And, more.

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christian, Depression, gender, Human Interest, Short Story, Transgender Tagged with , , , ,

Together Life

June 30, 2009 Leave a comment

Together Lifepenguin_pair

 (Living with gender dysphoria) 

Born one way,

          Alive another.

Dysphoria.

Neurosis?  No.

Psychosis?  No.

Gnosticism?  No.

Birth trauma?  No.

Original sin network? Probably.

Original child?  Yes.

Anomaly?  Yes.

Why?

Womb designed:

“You have possessed my reins, You covered me in my mother’s belly.”

Estrogen informed inheritance now a

                                                Concave mystery.

The diagnosis     outside the womb:

I am defined by anger-

                    “We don’t like what we don’t understand.” And,

                    “This must be sin, a mental malady.”

We need a label for this can of worms.

          Black and white must exist as separate strata.

          Grey must be painted black.  Restore order.

                    “Things must be done decently and in order.” And,

                    “We’ll call it homosexuality, perversion, lack of truth, neurosis.”

A preconceived label reveals the toxic ingredients to the weak of heart and stomach.  Not socially viable. 

-I find a new family,

 Formed with friendships,

                   Extending beyond the continents of fear.

 It draws me into uncrossed arms

 Nesting my being,

 Wombing me.

-Grace and mercy now affix their approval onto my head with a kiss.

          (My Lord accepts me as His daughter.)

 He has many names for me.  These endearments are hush-hush.

 These names and many other things are spoken from His lips

 To my understanding

 To my DNA:

          A shepherd boy, a shepherd girl-

          “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

          A shepherd girl slays the giant red dragon

          With a slingshot of prayer and stones of faith, faith in the one who is immutable,

           Yet, He changes m  a  t  t  e  r before our eyes.

“Man by the pool, what do you want?

“I want to be whole, Lord.”

Symbiosis?  Yes.

Living from inside out

Life aligned.

Whole.

          Dysphoria dies, yet

I am alive, as one reined in and re-knitted.

Heaven undisguised.

***

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christian, gender, Human Interest, Poems, Transgender Tagged with ,