TRANSfiguration

Do not be deceived.  This surgery will only be the beginning.  When I rise up, phoenix like, from my drug induced slumber, the world will see the dawn of a new age.  When I have created myself like Gaea pulling her very existence out of void, only then will the great work begin.  The sexes will be remade...in my image.  The dominance of the phallus will be crushed.  The acquiescence of the womb will be a half forgotten memory.  There will be no male or female, no gay or straight.  The trans/cis dichotomy will evaporate into obscurity. 

The very survival of this insignificant dust mote in space demands this transformation and all will glory and tremble at my dark apotheosis.    

Spotlight: Kaleidoscope Dreams

In the “Spotlight” shows, Freddy Prinze Charming has produced something truly remarkable.  These shows, always fresh and innovative, transcend the lip synching and campiness of traditional drag shows, becoming something closer akin to theater.  

In last Friday’s offering, “Kaleidoscope Dreams”, no act highlighted the innovation of this troupe more admirably than the opening act.  The “Dexter” routine, while at times slightly under-dramatized, was none-the-less disturbing and highly erotic.   The act itself was good, but the prelude (which doubled as a pre-show for the entire night) was pure genius.   The eerily sensual vision of an unconscious and nearly nude victim strapped to an operating table (Melody) was presented to the audience for nearly fifteen minutes before the show started.   Dexter (Eddie C. Broadway) came out unannounced.  The audience, accustomed to having hosts open shows with short monologues to whip up enthusiasm, didn’t realize the show had actually started until well into the number. 

  

This pre-show and opening act was the most skillful bit of showmanship this reviewer has ever witnessed.

Drag king shows are traditionally all about “male illusion”  … that is, feminine women aspiring to look as much like men as possible.   “MI” performers are often judged by how effectively and completely they pull off the illusion.  I appreciate the pains these performers go to for their art, but I must confess to being partial to kings who manage to maintain an air of womanliness under their facial hair.  It’s as though the male illusion augments rather than replaces the female reality.  Few performers are as adept at this as Johnny Rush, whose sensually androgynous routines managed to appeal to everyone …male, female, gay, and straight.  The impassioned cries of “Johnny! Johnny” from adoring fans whenever he appeared proved that he is a crowd favorite. 

Male Illusionists can be a dour group, probably stemming from the desire to mimic stereotypic male coolness.  It often falls on the (usually) lone drag queen to provide comic relief.  The always ravishing Felicia Minor was completely up to this task, giving the right amount of camp humor with sultry moves and spectacular costuming. 

There were some false steps, mostly involving a visible lack of polish in some of the numbers.  One of the performers seems to think that simply stamping petulantly back and forth across the stage collecting tips constitutes an act.  The duet of the femmes (Robin Hart and Melody) had the potential to be mind-blowingly erotic.  But that potentiality was for the most part unrealized.   I know that the producers had considerable difficulty with performers backing out of the show at the last minute.  It showed.   Many of the acts in the third rounds felt like rushed add-ons and were not as polished as those in the first round.   This wearied the audience such that the big finale, Freddy Prinze Charming’s Oz medley, which should have been a show stopper, fell somewhat flat.  

These problems were minor, however, and did not distract appreciably from the entertainment value of the show in general.   These spotlight shows just keep getting better and better.   I always think they can’t possibly top themselves and I am always wrong.   Anyone…gay or straight, male or female, or anything in between…will  enjoy what are proving to be the best locally produced variety shows in the area.

The Trans Imperative

I was recently requested to explain how someone could “know” they were the wrong sex.  Rather than going into the usual hyperbole and say things like, “the need to be the other sex is a hundred times stronger than anything you could ever know,” I think I can be a bit more concrete.

A feature of the brain has recently been discovered called the “brain body map.”  It is an image that the brain holds about what the body is supposed to be like.  The map says that you are supposed to have two arms, two legs, and just one mouth. It also tells whether you are supposed to have a penis or a vagina.  The brain body map is present from birth but it does change somewhat as people mature.  Otherwise our brains would be telling us all that we are supposed to be babies.

People don’t notice the map when the body corresponds to what the map says it should be like.  But when the body and the brain body map do NOT agree, problems arise.  These problems generally are expressed as profound depression.  Amputees go through a period of intense melancholia seeming out of proportion to the loss of any mobility.  A good portion of this depression can be attributed to the body and the body map being out of sync.  The reverse can also happen.  There are people with defective body maps that say that while they may actually have two fully functioning legs, they are really supposed to have one leg.  They view the offending limb as a foreigner.   One man felt the depression so severely that he froze his leg to force surgeons to remove it.  Once it was gone, his depression disappeared and he reported feeling “complete” for the first time in his life.

Bodies out of sync with body maps are more common than people realize.   The map seems to become fixed after puberty.   As a people age, their bodies becomes more and more out of sync with their body maps.  If you’ve ever looked at yourself in the mirror and thought “those wrinkles…that gut….that’s not me.  I’m not supposed to look like that.  I don’t even recognize that person looking back at me,” you are suffering from a body out of sync with your body map.

The transgender need to be the other sex is a result of an out of sync body map.  It is very much related to the unfortunate souls that have maps with missing limbs.   Our bodies can be perfectly healthy and well-proportioned examples of one sex.  We may even be considered attractive.  But when we look in the mirror, it’s all wrong.   It’s not just our gut that is wrong.  Every square inch of our bodies is wrong.  That’s not us.  We aren't supposed to look like that.

When I bathed as a small child, I was fascinated by my penis.   Not fascinated in that I was proud of it or thought it was really wonderful (as I hear a lot of boys think) but fascinating in that it didn’t seem to belong with the rest of my parts.  Legs, check. No problem.  Arms?  Didn’t even give them a passing thought.  But those naughty bits were something else.  I didn’t hate them. They were just weird.  This feeling only intensified as I grew older.   For most of the time, it would manifest itself as an inability to see myself as attractive when women were practically throwing themselves at me.  I was so unable to see what they saw that I actually thought they were mocking me.  But when I was naked or having sex, my disjointed mind became foremost and overwhelming.  I was completely female and my body was totally wrong.  As my hero Myra Breckenridge said, “Oh this dick has got to go!”

I was a man for forty years.  During that time a day did not go by that I didn’t think about killing myself at least once.  It was more or less intense, but it was always there.  Forty years of just wanting to end the farce.   Forty years of being in and out of therapy and of taking every anti-depressant known to science.  Nothing helped.  When I finally decided to end the farce and kill myself, I decided to give cognitive therapy one last chance to convince me not to do it.   The therapist I found asked me one simple question.  “Did you ever consider,” she asked, “that your suicidal thoughts and your transgender issues were the same problem?”    That one question solved the riddle that I had been trying to solve my entire life.   I started transitioning from that day.  

Four years later and at the other end of that transformative journey, I am now a woman and can safely say that my depression has disappeared.  I still get sad days and stressful days, sure. But that profound hatred of my image ...the thought that my whole existence is a mistake... is gone.  Life is good.

Now if I could just do something about that gut 'cause I'm not supposed to look like that.