The Peacock 986

 "There was a movie made about a pregnant man", say I, closing the book and setting it back on the coffee table.

"No kidding?" says Francois popping a grape into his mouth.  He is reclined on my father's sofa like Cleopatra barging up the Nile.  He looks so funny I want to laugh right out loud.

"I think I heard of it", says Carl.

"The Rabbit Test", say I, while holding out my palm to Francois for a few grapes, and he indifferently drops five into my hand. "Joan Rivers directed it."

"She was...?" says Francois

"Would you like me to peal you a grape, Francois?" says Carl.

"Oh, would you please, my dear boy", he says, passing him the remaining bunch from the bowl nestled like a magical egg in his lap.

Carl breaks off a small bunch and greedily pops them into his mouth.  Then glancing at Francois, says, "Oops.  Sorry."

"I wouldn't worry about it my little man", replies Francois.  "Good help is hard to get these days."  And now we're all bursting out in laughter....

The Peacock 985

 The tests were conclusive.  I really was, and am, a woman.  The uterus, the belief that I could menstruate, were not hallucinations or delusions, but the very frank expression of my interior female identity.  Even though there was otherwise not one single traditionally feminine trait or characteristic in my character.  Nor was I really masculine.  Gwen did tell me that, but for her being a biological woman, she otherwise could see absolutely no difference between us as two women.  And Gwen, though not a lesbian, was hardly what anyone could call a stereotype of conventional femininity.  We actually through this process became great friends, and to this day we are still in contact with each other.  I actually had mixed feelings about the hormonal treatment.  I didn't care much about changing my voice, though for a male, my voice had always had a higher than usual timbre.  Nor did I particularly want to grew a set of breasts, and really, the modest gains from the hormones have left me appearing one could say, rather deficient in the chest department.  Honestly, all I wanted was a uterus and the ability to conceive and bear a child, something which not even God was about to do for me, which comes as no surprise, given that my case would have been even a greater challenge to the architect of the cosmos than Jesus being born of a virgin...

The Peacock 984

 "I arrived in Toronto June 30, 1991.  Classes were to begin in September, giving me a couple of months to get on with the therapy.  I was assigned to a psychiatrist specializing in gender reassignment.  It was expensive, but I had managed to bank a good load of savings over the years, plus I had also been enrolled into a special program for financial assistance as needed.  My psychiatrist, Gwen, was a particularly frank and direct kind of woman, no beating around the bush with her. She was well in her fifties, and as a thirty year old I would have to struggle not to place on her any maternal expectations.  She was a hardass from start to finish, with a wicked wit and no patience for idiots.  I had already begun living as a woman, as Karen.  Gwen was puzzled that I did not wear dresses or makeup, nor that I seemed interested in doing anything with my hair, which fortunately was abundant.  I had grown it to just cover my ears, but I otherwise had little interest in looking like a traditional woman.  My uniform was no different from when I was Kevin.  A few random T shirts and blue jeans.  And running shoes.  She later confessed that on our first visit, upon giving me the once over, she almost told me to leave her office.  But when I spoke of having a uterus, of believing that I was menstruating, despite the absence of blood every month, she put me through a whole battery of of tests and questions.  This went on for the whole summer.  Then, as my classes were about to begin in September, I began taking hormones.

The Peacock 983

 "It wasn't too long before I discovered that Moira, my wife was having an affair.  We had known him in high school.  Ted, a truck driver and recently divorced,  It had not escaped my notice that there had long been a spark between them.  I had already been accepted into theological college in Toronto, and so we were already prepared to end everything.  Still a difficult process, for both of us.  As dead as our marriage had become, there was something about all the years we were together that had created and nurtured in both of us a deeply imbedded love or connectedness. We both decided to be adults about it.  And plus, and this I dd not reveal to Moira until several years later, I had also been accepted for gender reassignment therapy, also conveniently in Toronto.

The divorce was quick and relatively seamless.  Months later, Moira and Ted, her lover, were married.  I consigned to him all paternal rights over my three boys, one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do.  I couldn't face the coming reality of having to disclose to my children that their father was really a woman...."

The Peacock 982

 Karen Wilson's book is in easy reach on the coffee table.  I turn to the page where we left off last night. 

 "Becoming".

I received both callings simultaneously: to study for the priesthood, and to change my gender.  Not one first, then the other, but both.  Simultaneously.  I found this as perplexing and troubling, every bit as it was also gratifying and comforting.  I didn't know who to turn to.  Here we were living in this small town in northern Ontario, my wife and I, raising our three sons.  I worked in the bank.  She was a house mom., and we were both secretly miserable.  We were like two tiny uninhabited islands with a narrow strait of water between them, no bridge, no boat, nothing to connect.  We had long accepted bed death and simply no longer desired each other.  Perhaps we never did.  In small towns and in rural communities people still tend to marry out of a sense of obligation and tradition, not necessarily for love, and if one or both partners is queer, so much the better to have a good cover.  We eventually went from separate beds to separate bedrooms.  Curiously, I didn't even feel at the time any particular attraction to men.  I still don't, and have since come to accept and embrace my asexuality.  But as a woman, I don't think I was particularly feminine, and to this day I still prefer to walk around in T shirts and jeans over adorning myself in dresses and high heels.  But there was this other anomaly.  I couldn't shake the sense that I really did have a uterus, the capacity for becoming pregnant, conceiving and carrying a child and giving birth.  As absurd as my male anatomy made the proposal it became for me the very ground of my being, this being a woman, completely and fully.  I even felt a strange urge to menstruate, and every month would check my underwear for blood.

The Peacock 981

 This time we let Carl pick up the tab, as consolation for not wanting. to spend the day with him tomorrow.  He has an obsessive need to give and share, which I should find inspiring, and in a way is inspiring, but there also appears to be a lot of neediness behind it.   Well, why not?  How much opportunity has he really had to develop any healthy close friendships with anyone.  And I really don't know what I could possibly offer him.  Francois, yes.  He appears to be the least damaged of us three.  But he also really wants to get on with his life.  I imagine we are all like hostages, thrown together by the great Divine Kidnapper Himself.  Hardly more than one or two inconsequential sentences have been exchanged between us since leaving downtown and now we are pulling into the driveway of my father's house.  Sheeba the cat awaits us at the front door, and just after stepping inside the house she rubs furiously against my leg.  I pick her up, a purring, delighted mass of dark fur.  While holding onto her I slip off my shoes and carry her into the living room where she sits contentedly on my lap.  Francois is in the kitchen and not even the sound of kibble being poured in her bowl appears to be enough to motivate her to leave me.  He brings her bowl of food into the living room, places it at my feet and down she jumps.  After a few courtesy mouthfuls, she jumps back onto my lap.

"Do you think someone's been feeding her?" I ask.  "She doesn't appear to be hungry."

"Maybe she found something to kill", says Carl.  "Shall we read a bit?"

"Oh, I don't see why not", says Francois, now stretching himself fully on the couch....

Yhe Peacock 980

 The Thai restaurant is pleasant, not brightly lit and the food is exquisite as I inhale both through my nostrils and mouth the steaming red curry on my plate.  We are all quiet, each enfolded in his personal thoughts, or fog.  We have spent so much time together and I think that now even Carl is exhausted from having to talk.  My hope is that we can all get home soon, make it an early night, even skip the obligatory nightly reading time or bedtime story  Well, maybe a bedtime story.  A short one.  I noticed that my Winnie the Pooh books are still in the den.  Maybe something from the House on Pooh Corner.  But really I want time alone.  I need time alone.  I just received from Erik a text.  For sure he is going to have to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival here tomorrow, which gives me a reprieve.  Tomorrow, I am going hiking in the forest, alone, and plan to spend the whole day just like that, alone.  Francois and Carl can take care of each other or themselves.  I really don't care.  I am so overstuffed with human companionship, and have noticed that I am getting notably edgy and irritable.

"What is the plan tomorrow?" says Carl, and of course Carl, being among us the most sociable and the most codependent.

"I move that we all have a free day tomorrow, and just do whatever the hell we want." say I.

"Okay", he says, "Where should we all go."

"Wherever the hell we want, but I am spending tomorrow alone."

"Me too", says Francois.

After briefly drinking from his water glass, Carl, deflated, says, "Alright then.  It's probably a good idea.  But what about your ex-brother in law?

"Tomorrow when he arrives he begins his fourteen day quarantine..."