hysterectomy at a very early age. There are women like Dolly Parton, who rejoice in femininity and sequins and sponge cake; and then there are women like my friend Laura, who can open beer bottles with her teeth.
There are an infinite number of ways to be female on this planet, just as there are an infinite number of ways to be human, and my belief is that all of them are cool. If my experience and Janet’s, for instance, are very different, that makes neither one of us one speck less—or more, for that matter—female.
If there is room for Dolly Parton, and room for my aunt Erna, and for Janet, then surely there ought to be room for me.
I mention all of this because I admit I grow weary with clever theories about transgender people, as if our identity is part of an argument that anyone might win or lose. If you have a complex theory about gender that does nothing to reduce the suffering of a group of vulnerable, maligned souls, maybe what you need, above all, is a new theory.
Or maybe the theory that you need is simpler than the one you’ve been working on. You want a theory for understanding people whose lives are fundamentally different from your own? Here’s mine: Open your heart.
Does a strategy for understanding others truly have to be more complex than that? I don’t know: if you have one that works for you, I’m glad.
As for me, I’m sticking with Open your heart.
It got me this far.
* * *
I walked down the stairs. I had to hold on to the walls because I did not know how to walk in heels. They were size twelve.
It had taken me over an hour to assemble myself, what with the makeup and the padding and the wig. I was like a human version of a piece of Ikea furniture. I wasn’t happy with the results, in the end: I looked like a circus clown, although—you’d have to admit—a very glamorous one indeed.
The problem was that I didn’t really care a whole lot about being glamorous. I didn’t give a shit about being pretty, and fashion itself mostly struck me as a bore, a whole language that adults had invented that was really just an overly elaborate way of judging people by their appearance. Now, here I was, walking the runway in my giant shoes and false eyelashes. My breasts were water balloons. This gave them a fairly appropriate weight and form but also created a kind of live-action drama, on the off chance they might suddenly explode.
When I arrived on the landing I saw Lucy-dog standing there at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me. The hair on her back stood up and she curled her lip. She snarled at me from somewhere deep in her dog throat, and then she barked angrily.
I knew that bark. It was the one she used when there was an intruder.
She put a paw on the stairs and barked again, more aggressively this time. I’d never seen her like this. After all these years, I thought, I’m going to wind up killed by my own dog.
“Lucy,” I said, once more issuing a Word of Command: “No.”
The dog cocked her head, uncertain. Her tail stood erect, and the hair on her back remained all bristled up.
I took another step down the stairs toward her.
Then the dog made a soft weeping sound. She wagged her tail back and forth once, then twice.
Oh, she said. It’s you.
* * *
I sat there on the living room couch for a little bit, the dog at my feet. The couch was white with blue vertical stripes. It was made of mattress ticking. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself.
After a while I decided to take a walk outside. This was a risk, because dear God: What if someone saw me? And yet, I wanted to feel the sun on my face. I wanted to exist in the world. I asked the dog, “Do you want to go for a walk?”
Lucy lifted her head, uncertain. That’s what you’re wearing?
I went out the back door, past the porch Deedie and I had built, past the hot tub where on cold winter nights the two of us sat together, drinking glasses of champagne beneath the stars. I walked through the squashy place in the backyard, past the place where we once had a garden, and entered the woods. There was a path that led