1584

"I think we can leave it there", say I, closing the book and placing it on the table next to me. "How did she get to be a priest?" says Erik. "Anglicans don't have any issues about trans people", says Carl. "And the Catholics?" "Next question , please", quips Francois. Jesús has come out of his room during the reading and has joined us. I wonder what this trans priest and Stella would make of each other", say I. "I would love to be as fly on the wall", says Carl. To Erik, he turns and says, "And now you are finally with us..."

The Peacock 1583

I just had coffee yesterday with Philip. He asked me a very leading question "If, thirty odd years ago, you knew then what you and I both know about gender, would you still have gone through with it?" I asked him to give me time to answer, because I had never really thought it through. This actually kept me up half the night. But now I think I can answer it, and here it is. The answer is no, I would not have bothered, because I need not have bothered. Do I have regrets? None at all. My anatomy, my balance of hormones really play but a shadow role in this ongoing Shakespearean drama about gender. And one does have to reckon with that the gender binary has always been part of our human biology and history, since long before our earliest ancestors left Africa...

1664

"Where was your mother's father", asks Erik. "My grandfather died when we were seven but he was quite wealthy and left his family a generous annuity. In the meantime, my mother married the same young man who had led her to the beach house, who also insisted that he was not our father, but that his identity must remain a secret. Mother did everything in her power to get out of this arrangement, but her hands were tied. She was sixteen when we were born, and Sweden back in that era was a velry patriarchal society. But when I was three, something very odd happened, and that is also the first thing I ever remembered from childhood. His face is still engraved n my mind, though I have had a number of meetings with him over the years. A teenage boy, very beautiful, with dark golden hair and green eyes..." "Dressed in a white shirt and blue jeans", say I. "Yes, you know him." "The teenage Jesus", says Carl. "How did you come to know him", says Stella, her face rapt with wonder...

The Peacock 1582

While I was a boy, then a man, I felt I was living a lie. I still believe I was living a lie as a male. But I thought that transitioning would solve all my problems. And it has solved some of them. I no longer occupy a body that doesn't feel like it is the right one for me. But that doesn't make me a woman. DNA doesn't lie. I am still and always will be a man. And I will always be a woman. Funny, it has taken going through the process of transitioning to bring me to this kind of full awareness. Well, not full, perhaps, more nascent. I have always been a woman. I have always been a man. And I have always been... neither?

The Peacock 1580

Before I continue, please let me make one thing perfectly clear. To this day, neither myself, nor Philip's ex-husband have any regrets at all about transitioning. But from my conversations with Philip following their divorce, it did become evident that we, the three of us, share many of the same unanswerable questions. Primarily, this: What is Gender? Julian, shortly after the stillbirth, as he was retransitioning his gender, often asked this same question to Philip, and Philip simply echoed back to him that same question. But neither parent recovered from the stillbirth, and that proved to be an irrevocable wedge in their marriage. Julian blamed both of them. Philip would blame neither. I asked him if he ever had thoughts himself about transitioning. I am using the masculine pronouns because that is how he references himself. He simply replied that either way, male or female, he would be telling himself a lie. Julian felt the same, but this simply worsened his depression and now he is under permanent psychiatric care...

The Peacock 1579

They were wanting a child, and after exhausting all avenues for adoption, since trans and same sex couples are to this day still discriminated against for adoptions, Philip's trans-husband, Julian, decided to halt his hormone therapies long enough to regress back to being a woman, in body if not in mind or spirit, and so they became pregnant, carried the child to term. The baby was stillborn, and Julian fell into a deep and suicidal depression, which he never recovered from. Soon after, the marrriage ended. It was during a succession of intimate coffee chats when Philip filled in some of the blanks for me...

the Peacock 1590

He seemed ovrerjoyed to hear from me and the following week we met for coffee. He really doesn't look that much older, and appears to be one of those blessed souls who will never have to look their age. He now manages a bike shop not far from where we go for coffee and is himself an avid cyclist. He is divorced now from his husband, and really has quie a tale to tell. It was apparently all over the news and I am amazed and a little embarrassed that I never knew anything about it.