WEBVTT - Girl Planet 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.320 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. So 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:12.200 let's let me paint a scene for you. Say it's four, 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.640 I'm fifteen or sixteen years old, and everyone's gone out 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:21.400 for the night. And there I am, this slender, feminine 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:27.560 creature with shoulder length blonde hair, and I'm standing at 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:33.360 a high window in my parents haunted house, big old, drafty, 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:38.160 creepy house in what was once the country around Philadelphia. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:40.880 And I'm standing in a window and I'm looking down 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.880 and I watched the pale lights of my sister, who's 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:46.879 the last person to leave the house. She drives off 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.519 on the Volkswagen. Now I'm alone in this house and 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:56.320 I'm looking at the clock. Let's say it's so now 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:00.240 I've got a couple of hours. So we sweep down 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:02.640 the creaking steps from the third floor, and I grab 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:07.399 a dress and all the kind of body patting that 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:12.480 I'm going to need, and some pantios and some makeup, 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.920 and you put your clothes on quick, and then you 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:19.880 kind of stand before the mirror and you do your 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.360 makeup and you look in the mirror and you know, 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:25.920 I mean I was. I was a very feminine looking person, 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:30.480 even when I wasn't on farm, and you know, for 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:35.120 all the world there's a relatively normal looking and I 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:37.640 know normal is a charged words, so maybe I should 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.520 be careful. But there I am. If i'd left the house, 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:43.440 which I would never have done that I've left no house, 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:46.400 maybe you wouldn't have looked twice at me, like there's 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:50.800 some hippie girl, you know. And I'm just kind of 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:55.000 looking in the mirror with the sense of both profound 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.560 joy because there's the person that I am. There is 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.280 the girl that has lived in my heart but I 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:04.480 never get to see except when no one is home, 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.280 but also profound sorrow because I know I can't be 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.760 this person, because I know I can't live in the 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:20.200 world as myself. That's Jennifer Finney Boylan, writer, professor, transactivist, 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:25.080 author most recently of Good Boy, My Life in Seven Dogs, 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.840 as well as the classic memoir She's Not There. Jenny's 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.160 is a story of the deepest kind of secret, the 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.480 kind that we hold in a wordless place, the kind 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:38.959 that will not let go of us, the kind that 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.880 will force its way out from its depths until we 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:46.200 release it, and when we release it, it finally releases us. 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.800 I'm Danny Shapiro, And this is family secret. It's the 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.679 secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:14.600 from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. It's 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.720 like I've got the nuclear codes here and here it is. 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.160 Here's the way. If I wanted to, I could blow 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:23.320 up my life. All I'd have to do with you 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:27.040 to walk outside, and I'm knowing that, you know, my 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.600 parents are coming back from their dinner with their friends. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.280 My sister might come back. Anything could happen. Maybe my 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:35.760 friends are going to stop by without telling me. Are 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.120 all the doors in the house locked? They might not be. 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.160 And sometimes people would come home and I have to, 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.960 you know, do a quick retreat. But on this particular night, 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.320 let's just say, when all is said and done, they 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:50.000 put everything back, put the earrings back in the mother's 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.840 jewelry box, put the clothes back on the hangars where 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.280 they're supposed to come from. Then I hear the car 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:58.560 coming in in the driveway, and my mother comes up 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.360 the stairs, and of course I've I've now washed off 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:03.160 the neckup, and I've done everything I have to do 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.560 to look like myself again, as if you know, nothing 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:08.960 has happened. And mom comes in, Did you have a 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:13.600 nice night here? Yeah? What did you do? Well? I 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:18.360 watched Carol Burnett show. Okay, we'll see you in the morning, 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:23.920 and that was my reality. You know that I've had 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:29.720 this just unbelievably powerful, both joyful and tragic experience alone 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.159 in the creepy old house, and then everything would have 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.320 to get restored, like nothing had happened to hide the 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.320 scene of the crime, you know, And I'd wonder, was 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:42.520 this dress facing this way or that way on the hangar? 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:49.440 Will anyone know that I moved these ear rings? Describe 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:54.200 the landscape of your childhood, Well, I grew up in 0:04:54.440 --> 0:05:00.240 rural Pennsylvania and it was a place where a engle 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.080 road had been carved through a pretty deep pine forest, 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:06.719 and our family lived on one side of the road 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.840 and on the other side of the road. We're just 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:13.280 lots and lots of trees that went on forever and 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.200 through that forest. It sounds very like I don't know, 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.240 Middle Earth or something, but through that forest there was 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.800 an old I guess a cobblestone road from a hundred 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:27.479 years before, and a lot of old stone houses that 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.880 had been abandoned, and on some levels it was like 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:33.080 the coolest thing if you were a kid, to be 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:34.919 able to just you know, get up in the morning 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.040 and disappear into those woods. And sometimes I have the 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:42.240 dog with me. We had a Dalmatian named Playboy, who 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:44.680 was like the worst dog in the world, but you know, 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.880 not to me, and so I would disappear into those woods. 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.200 In some ways, it was very much kind of a 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.960 world of imagination. I was left on my own a 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.440 lot as a kid, and there's a way it's funny. 0:05:57.440 --> 0:05:59.400 It's the one way in which I look back on anything. Wow, 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.200 what a kind of a sad childhood, you know, it 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:04.520 just kind of because I spent most of my time 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.960 kind of alone, wandering around this forest. But on the 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.320 other hand, being alone is just how I liked it. 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.159 It's the place I actually wanted to be. And if 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.400 my parents or my sister had actually asked me to 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.400 take part in their world, which was a really different 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:21.719 different from mine, it would have been have been nice 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:23.800 to have been asked, but then I probably would have 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:28.520 given him the slip. Anyway, Were you and your sister 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:32.360 close in age, Um, she's about a year and a 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:34.800 couple of months older than I am, So yeah, we're 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.120 pretty close n Eche, but very different temperament. You know. 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:41.600 So I was a boy then and and she was not. 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.039 She was a great equestion, She wrote courses. She was 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.440 just brilliant at you know, as a kid. She became 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:50.440 one of the best writers in all of Pennsylvania. And 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:52.640 it was you know, it's kind of like the stories 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:56.120 you hear of people who have a sibling who is 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:00.599 like a gymnast or an ice skater or I don't know, something, 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.120 I was some kind of obscure athletic talent, you know. 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.120 She like she was what's the thing with the brooms 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.800 in the Olympics curling that that you throw of this 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:14.320 little tattle and then people like go ice skating in 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.320 front of it and they're like sweeping the ice. Well, 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.600 it was like that. It was like being the sibling 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:24.280 of a world class curler, and uh, their lives revolved 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:26.840 around that. From the time I was you know, nine 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.520 or so, the family would often disappear on the weekends 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.160 to go to you know, horse shows wherever. My sister 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:39.640 would right around in a ring from and um, meanwhile 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.560 I was out in the woods, living in another world. 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.080 My mother was an immigrant to this country. She um 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:50.520 was born in East Prussia, which is a country they 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:54.000 don't have anymore. She came to this country in the 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:58.120 twenties and her English was not very good. She spoke 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.760 German then, and she to the story of coming back 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:06.040 from church and h she didn't understand. Why did American 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:09.880 pastors say that your head was going to run over? 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:13.000 What is her head running over? And it's like what 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.960 he said, Yeah, he said, my cup runneth over. Well, 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.440 for those of you who don't speak German, whause most 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.880 people copped as the German word for head. So when 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:27.080 she heard mine cup was running over, she was very confused. 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:32.800 She was the second oldest of seven children. My grandmother, 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.880 her mother was essentially a single mother. My grandfather would 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.120 show up every year or so, get her pregnant, and 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.920 then disappear again. And they lived at this kind of 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.200 unbelievably hard life on what they called a dirt farm 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:48.880 in New Jersey. And yeah, my mother had this unbelievable 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.240 safe and optimism and buoyancy. And it's always kind of 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.320 amazed that sometimes we think of people who are kind 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.720 of cheerful and buoyant as people who are superficial and 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:03.120 people who have to them, and yet my mother had 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.360 being experienced about the most shocking poverty and the and 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:10.160 the most shocking abuse from her um father and other 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.600 men in that farm town, responded to all of that 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:18.200 with this kind of steely buoyancy. And when we were 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.840 sarcastic teenagers years and years later, decades later, the worst 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.640 thing that anybody could call my mother was Glinda the 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.480 good witch. That was that was their sarcastic name from 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:32.320 my mother, because she very much had that thing, that 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.640 Billy Burke thing. She was the good witch. My father 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:43.200 was irish. His father died young also, and his mother remarried, 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.800 each time a whole bunch of times, each time more 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.280 disastrously than the one before, And eventually, by the time 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.839 he was nigh school, he was living with friends back 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.120 So both of my parents grew up essentially with a 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:59.960 single parent and raised by friends and or by themselves. 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.040 And my mother had said she would never get married. 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.440 She just thought there's too much evil from men. And 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.880 then she met my father. She was I think almost forty, 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.400 she'd become a book buyer. She finally got out of 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.400 New Jersey and invented a life for herself what was 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.760 then called a book buyer back when books were sold 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.200 on the first floor of department stores. She was the 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:25.679 person who chose what books were for sale. And so 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.160 she had this kind of glamorous publishing career in her 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:31.520 thirties where she would take the take the train to 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.360 New York City and have lunch with Bennett's surf. And 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:38.839 she gave all that up when she was I think 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.880 almost forty. My father was almost thirty. But there was 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.400 like eleven years apart from them, and so here's this 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:50.440 German woman marrying this Irish intellectual. Even now I still 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.040 look at I think, what bizarre marriage. But they just 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.520 a journ each other. Their names were Dick and Hilda Guard. 0:10:56.679 --> 0:11:00.280 I think that's probably important dimension. Also, I remember, as kneeds, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:02.960 You're being a little stone lying on the couch one day, 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:08.319 thinking my parents are named Dick and Hilleguard, like there's 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.320 no hope for me. Like my parents are Dick and 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:18.120 hillde Guard, like whoa man. They had my sister and 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:22.800 they had me, and we lived in the country in Pennsylvania. 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.640 My father had wanted to be a medieval historian, but 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:28.400 you know, there was no money for him to go 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:32.240 to grad school, so he became a banker, and banking 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:36.320 never I think quite treated him with the same love 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:38.640 I think that medieval history would have. But he was 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:43.760 the kind of quiet, quietly, funny, bookish men, and he 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:47.120 loved his wife, he loved his kids, and he loved dogs. 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:52.600 We had one terrible dog after another. So your father 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:57.360 passed away when you were twenties six, I think, yeah. 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.480 He had he had melanoma. He first got it when 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:02.800 I was in uh, I think ninth grade, and they 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:07.200 had a mole taken off and he was okay for 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.640 six or seven years, and then another mole taken off, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.079 and then he was okay for three years or four years, 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.439 and then uh and then the last time you got it, 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:17.079 you know, as the saying goes, they didn't get at all. 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.160 And so he was in remission I think three times, 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:23.120 and then when it finally laid him low, he was 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.319 he was gone within the year. So yeah, it was 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.520 in my twenties. Do you ever think about what it 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:33.280 would have been like to come out to your father, Um, 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:35.600 I guess I've thought about that. I think it would 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:40.240 have gone badly, so I don't think about it a lot. Um. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.880 He was an open minded man, but He also had 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.679 a very strong sense of the consequences of your decisions 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.280 and if they affect other people. One of his best 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:52.920 friends from high school who was called my uncle so 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:54.679 and so, you know when I was a kid, that's 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:56.440 he was one of those people that you weren't related 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.679 to that you called your uncle. Um divorced his wife 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:05.320 and married someone else midlife, the way people do. And 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:07.600 my father never gave me and never spoke to him again, 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.080 like it was dead to him because he had four children. 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:13.679 And my father just felt, you know, you've done you've 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:16.160 done the wrong term, so he cut him off. I 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.160 guess that's a fine line between having between morals and moralistic. 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.080 Also in their circle that you know, they just didn't 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:25.560 know gay people, they didn't know queer people. It's a 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:29.000 very repressive culture. And um, I mean they had a 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.240 two or three friends that were just obviously gay. You'd 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.160 have to be completely blind not to know that these 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.079 men were gay. And yet nearly to her dying day, 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:40.559 and my mother would never would always say, oh, well, 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.840 I hope ed finds the right woman some day. I'm like, um, 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.320 but you know, I guess that's just the culture that 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.320 they grew up with in the thirties and forties. You know, 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:51.000 my life is not easy, but it was a lot 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:53.320 easier than it would have benified grown up in that era. 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:59.640 I know you've said that when you think about your childhood, 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.280 you do you think of it as a boyhood? Do 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.440 you still feel that way or The reason that I 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.199 always tiptoe around that is because, um, I'm aware that 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.800 for other transgender women, they have a narrative which I 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.400 respect and which is real, and the fact that my 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.600 experience is a little different doesn't mean that there's should 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:22.560 not be respected. You know, there are a lot of 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.120 transgender women who would say I went through transition when 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.600 I was thirty, but I was always a woman, And 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.200 I mean, and that's true for me also in a 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.440 kind of spiritual a in a kind of private way. 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.040 But you know, I also I lived in the world 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:38.640 as a boy. I mean, I knew, I knew what 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:41.240 the truth was about who I was from a very 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.480 very early age, but I didn't tell anybody because I figured, 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:46.480 I don't know, like, I didn't have the language for 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:48.880 it. It It just seemed insane, and there were I just 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.520 didn't know that there were other transgender people in the world. 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.080 So I kept it private and I lived as far 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.080 as the rest of the world could see as a boy. 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.320 And I didn't go through transition until I was prety, 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.440 you know, So I did live in that body for 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.960 all those decades and socialized male. That doesn't make me 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:12.040 less of a woman now post transition, and there's nothing 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:16.600 to apologize for. But I do think of it as 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:19.760 a boyhood, you know, not a boyhood like the other 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:23.000 boys that I knew, that's for sure. But you know, 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.480 it was what it was, and it wasn't the life 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:27.600 that I wanted, and it wasn't a life that I understood, 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.800 and it just felt weird, man, I mean it was. 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.320 It was a really strange way to be in the 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.640 world because not only do you have the sense of 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:37.240 yourself of being different and having a problem that you 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:39.960 can't solve, but you also have a pretty big secret. 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.960 You have a an atomic secret that you don't have 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:46.200 a language for. You don't know how to to share 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.160 your what's in your heart, your most fundamental truth with 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.720 the people who love you, and it's a pretty hard 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.640 thing for an eight year old to carry around on 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.920 their shoulders. So my way of dealing with it was 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:05.920 just to become this tremendously hysterical person. You know, I 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:09.240 was disruptive in school. I was it was pretty funny 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.040 at times. Some of my material was pretty good. But 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.880 I also I was just kind of driven to constantly 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.560 be creating, you know, b Arnie hand over foot. You know, 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:22.040 I would make up songs, and I make up stories, 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:24.440 and I would go charging off into the woods and 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.200 invent you know, a whole other other worlds that felt 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:32.440 like a safer and more forgiving place to be than 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:38.960 the world I lived in. We'll be back in a 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:50.160 moment with more family secrets. It's so interesting, Jenny, because 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.920 you're talking about in not having the language for something 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.440 that is so huge, but literally does not having the words, 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:04.680 not having ing the terms, not having access to being 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:09.359 able to describe it, not just two other people, but 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:13.240 to yourself. It strikes me listening to you that that's 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:16.520 also the birth of a writer in a certain way, 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:18.680 because at least the way that I always think about 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.000 the impulse to write is finding the words, finding the language, 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:28.000 or intervening in the dynamics of loss or or childhood 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:33.320 where there wasn't the ability back then too to speak, Yeah, 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:36.239 and to and to find a narrative of your own 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.800 life that makes that makes sense, that can actually change 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.840 the payoffs of your the life that you're experiencing into 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:50.359 something that has form and function and logic. It remains 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:54.480 to this day a very difficult thing to explain to 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.000 other people who don't feel the thing that you feel, 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.520 and so because they don't feel the thing that you feel, 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.560 they assume that what you feel must be something you 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:05.679 don't feel, or it must be something that that is. 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.720 You're just crazy, you're just wrong. The experience of a 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:11.240 lot of transgender people, you know, it reminds me of that. 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.800 There's I think it's a heny youngman joke where guy 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.080 isn't it the doctor and he says, doctor, doctor, I've 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.280 I get a terrible paint every time I go like this, 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:21.840 what should I do? And the doctor says, don't go 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:26.840 like that. You know, you know, and people will argue 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:29.720 with you. They'll say that, well, your chromosome says you're this, 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:34.600 so that's that you should I've been tweeting with you 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:36.760 for thirty seconds. But I understand your life, but I 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.639 than you do. I think to some degree, there's also 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:44.120 a desire to to explain things to other people. And 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.080 I think in my my first memoir, Um, She's Not There, 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:51.159 which is an account of transition, there's a tone and 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:53.520 I mean I wrote that book going on twenty years 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.520 ago now, but there's a there's a feeling to that 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.879 book now when I read it, I feel a tone 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:04.760 of apology or justification to it, because you know, in 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.199 those days, you know, twenty years ago, there was so 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:13.919 little um discourse around trans identity that you know, I 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.760 think people felt like I'd made the whole thing up myself. 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.960 So a lot of that book, a tone of it 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.160 from author to reader, is a tone of someone saying, 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:29.440 please forgive me, I'm so sorry, uh for for being 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.120 myself and for feeling the things I felt. I hope 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.640 you'll toss this out with me. And it's the thing 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:38.520 looking at it now seems really I don't want to 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.440 say dated, but it's certainly I wouldn't write anything about 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:46.280 translegdentity with that attitude. Now now I've my attitude be 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.760 much more like, well, I'm here on the planet. Isn't 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:53.119 this great busness a gift? How lucky was I to 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.480 experience the world and in these different ways? And if 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:00.960 you can't ride on this train with me. Well, that's okay, 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:03.760 we'll stop the train. We'll throw you off. When a 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.280 difference twenty years makes well, I think it's just the 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.200 result of people coming out. It's the result of more 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:14.160 and more people being known. It's the result of their 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.960 being more different kinds of transgender people in the public eye. 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:21.679 I mean, it used to be that kind of nice, possible. 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.520 Middle aged white ladies were the only transgender people you saw, 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.320 except for drag queens who interacted with the world in 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:30.679 a very in a very different way. But you know, 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:33.320 now we've got all kinds of trance stories out there. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.560 We have a saying, um, if you've met one transgender person, 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:42.439 you've met one transgender person. And I'm not ignorant, I 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:44.600 know that this is all still really new for a 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:46.439 lot of people, and a lot of people are still 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:51.200 catching up, but increasingly and to our children's generation, um, 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:53.520 this is this is just kind of the way things are, 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.320 and it's just not that big a deal. And in 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:58.080 a way, that's sorrel. I always wanted to live in 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:03.320 a world where I was born, where it was just 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.760 not that big a deal and I could just be 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.400 myself and no one would have to have a heart 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:13.639 attack about it. I've often thought that the change in 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.800 my life was not a change about going from male 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:20.400 the female. The thing that changed me was going from 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:22.880 a person who had a secret to a person who 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:26.800 doesn't have a secret. And if you have a secret, 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:32.760 it is like having a Saint Bernard. It's something like 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:37.919 an invisible Saint Bernard that that follows you everywhere, like 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:41.399 you can't leave the house unless the secret comes with you, 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:43.800 and the secret has to be tended, you know. I 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.320 remember being in like a social situation when I was 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:50.800 like sixteen, and somebody mentioning um a transgender person, although 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:54.200 that wasn't the language that was used back in those days, 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:58.119 but someone would say that word and I would freeze, 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:02.600 and my heart beat a triple and sweat would start 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:05.960 to pour down the signs of my face because I 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:10.120 knew that I then had to imitate a person for 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:15.520 whom this topic was of no special interest, and sometimes 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:18.200 it was very hard to remember what those people acted like. 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:23.320 But it means you're also not telling the truth of 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:27.280 the person that you love by the person you love. 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.760 Jenny's referring to her wife. Did the two of them 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.640 have been together? Well for a very long time, and 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.760 what a ride it has been. I mean, so I've 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:41.040 been married now for what thirty two years I think 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:43.880 now um Dee and I have been been together, so 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.359 it's twelve years as husband and wife and twenty years 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:51.280 as a wife and wife. Well, for the twelve years 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:54.040 that I was married before I came out, my wife died. 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:58.479 Whom I love I did not know because how did 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:00.280 she not know? Because I didn't tell her? Why did 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:02.320 I not tell her? Because I didn't tell myself because 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:04.800 I didn't want it to be true, because I figured 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.560 if I said this out loud, it would open the 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:13.680 door to a life of marginality and suffering and violence 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:17.840 and possibly murder. I mean, in the stories of transgender 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:20.719 people that I knew. That's what happened to people. I 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:22.840 didn't know there was a way of being in the world. 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:27.919 So I had to keep the secret from myself. But 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:30.159 it also been keeping the secret from the person that 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:34.679 I love. You know, the whole point of being in 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:38.240 love with someone and embarking upon the adventure of marriage 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:41.640 and sharing a life together. It's pretty hard when you're 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:44.880