Come with me on a little trip back in time...
It was, 1987, I think? I was down with the flu for the week, nestled in a pile of blankets in the living room, eating ice cream out of a bowl and, having run out the early AM cartoons and children's programming, found myself watching morning talk shows like Sally Jessie Raphael. I could get away with this because my mom was shopping with my Nana for the day. At first I was intrigued by the parade of freaks that would cause the audience to squirm and get into big yelling matches with other guests. There were even men wearing dresses, heels and makeup but they looked like football players doing drag and spoke in hyper feminine voices which were more than a little comical to my 10 year old sensibility. Forgive me for being >-bleeped-<ty but I was ten years old and thought the world was there for my amusement.
But then I switched channels and I saw her.
April was her name. She was a fiery red head with a curly bob, and she looked like a beautiful porcelain doll. She was a little older than my sister but carried a confidence beyond her years. She reminded me of my friend Beth the way she sat bolt upright in her chair perfectly perched on her seat as if she wasn't really sitting at all. I watched the opening video reel which introduced her as just another girl; she had girl friends, she liked shopping, horseback riding, and watching TV. Then the host of the show dropped a bombshell on the audience: she used to be a boy named Adam. Instantly, I saw myself in this girl. Her before photo may as well have been me; tall and lanky, awkward, with a half hearted grin stuck on his face as other boys got rowdy in the margins. And then they showed the two side by side; unhappy Adam and divine April. The difference was night and day.
I scrambled for my VHS tape (each of us kids had 2-3 blanks we recorded on over and over) and began recording what I thought was a revelation. I listened to her heartfelt story of realizing she was a girl, of telling her parents, of how everyone told her she was ugly and sick, and how her parents had disowned her and she'd had to go live with a family friend, and they painted this bleak picture of what it was like for her to go to school, go to work, and then a ray of hope. The host surprised everyone and brought out her mom and I lost it. She was there to reconcile. She called April her daughter and the host told us that April would begin taking hormones. My mind was blown. Was that a thing?? Could I...?? I was still watching when my Dad came home from work to check on me.
He immediately criticized my choice of TV as "trash" to which I vehemently disagreed saying that it "was really emotional and interesting" In my utter naiveté I summoned him to my couch and told him about April who was still on the screen. I asked him innocently, "Isn't she beautiful? She used to be a boy."
And I'll never forget what he said next, "She's still a boy and she's sick in the head." I really didn't want to cry in that moment but I was crestfallen and I yelled at him, "No. Her mom called April, her daughter" to which my Dad said, "that was just for TV. No parent in their right mind would encourage this. This is garbage and I don't think you should sit there all day watching this. It's going to warp your brain."
I agreed and wiped away my tears. I was ill after all. I would go to my room and curl up with a Spider-Man comic instead, I told him. He patted me on the head not realizing he had just crushed every hope I had of ever being his beautiful daughter. Once he left to go back to work, I watched the tape I'd made two more times and recorded over it and I stopped watching those "silly talk shows," and when I developed a mystery stomach pain that plagued my high school years and kept me out of class 50% of the year, it was because I was suffering a malady, and not because I dreaded every moment I had to spend being a boy going through a male puberty as the gap between who I was inside and who was outside grew into an insurmountable chasm.
When I would tell my father thirty some odd years later that I was transgender, he acted like it was a total surprise because I was so "typically male." Sure, Dad. Whatever you say.
