Christina - Eastern Michigan University
“I had a choice of whether to live or die. I chose life.”
From Me, The “Other” film
Oscar Wilde once quipped, “Be yourself, everybody else is already taken.” That’s sound advice, but it’s not always as simple an endeavor to undertake as one might assume.
I’m a trans-woman who, as a 58-year-old, commenced her public transition on December fifth of 2010. As a result, I was eventually fired from my 31-year career of running a division of a construction company. My parents, spouse, and some friends rejected me. I also lost my house as part of a divorce settlement. I couldn’t find another job and became homeless for about four months. By the spring of 2014, while still struggling to overcome these challenges, I decided to stop living my life like a victim, which changed everything for me. I became an unconventional college student (at 62) the fall term of 2014 and graduated from Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work, summa cum laude, in 2019, and I had my Gender-confirmation Surgery on December first of 2020.
My story is multi-layered, and yet it’s primarily about seeking and acquiring self-respect as well as self-acceptance in the face of prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination. So, because I live my life as my authentic self with dignity these days, I’m sure Oscar would approve.
Me at Soberfest, 2013
About two years after beginning Hormone Replacement Therapy, I’d lost about 50% of my upper-body strength—apparently along with my ability to throw a baseball properly. “OMG, what happened? I throw like a girl now!”
While at the Washtenaw Alano Club’s Soberfest, I threw nine baseballs in attempts to hit the dunk tank target. Not one made it that far, even though it was less than twenty feet away. So, I’d say that my throwing like a girl has become one of my more surprising talents. Even so, I enjoyed hanging out with sober friends at the festival that day and subsequent years, till the Covid-19 pandemic hit, because social activities with others in recovery is one of my favorite activities.
Who is a hero or heroine in your personal life?
Although my friend Sharon had a brief relapse when about three years sober, she was one of the most sober people I’ve ever known. She’d been dealing with stage four breast cancer at the time with a level of dignity and grace that I can only hope to someday achieve. We lost Sharon a few months later, but her memory lives on and still inspires me.
Who is an historical figure that you would have loved to have met?
I would’ve loved to have met Maya Angelou because she was a true renaissance woman and humanitarian. As a former painter, I’d have also loved to have met Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage, Mary Cassatt, Frieda Kahlo, and Georgia O’Keeffe—Oh yeah, and Salvador Dali, just because.
What’s one thing that most people don’t know about you?
I’m an open book, however, I don’t often talk about my being a surrealist artist from the late ‘60s till the early ‘80s, and that the Marlborough-Goddard Gallery of Toronto once offered me exclusive representation. Ultimately, I lacked the confidence to accept their offer.
Me Writing, 1970s
My love of writing novels reemerged once I discovered Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. His surreal, semi-autobiographical novel inspired me to try my hand at my own, beginning in the mid ‘90s. Since then, after dozens of rewrites, I completed a trilogy of protagonist-related stand-alone novels in 2020. After writing While Making Other Plansand Living with Imaginary Rules, but before writing What This Could Mean, I also wrote a three-volume memoir called Don’t Get Me Wrong. Since finishing my novel trilogy and three-volume memoir, I have also written what amounts to a tongue-in-cheek, book-length, self-help essay/political commentary, called, How I Became an Authentic, High-tide Clam Despite the Dawn of Trumpism.
What do you do to relieve stress?
Although meditation and yoga are reportedly wonderful methods to relieve stress, meditation puts me to sleep and yoga would put me in the hospital. I take leisurely walks and stay in the moment I’m in. (Okay, so that’s a form of meditation—so, sue me). I’ll read a book, usually a novel, but not always. I’ll also go to support groups (recovery and transgender related). Most of all, though, I’ll lose myself in my writing.
2-Year Old Jason and Me, 1974
My spouse and I helped to raise our nephew, Jason, from the time that he was six weeks old. Because I’d not come out as transgender yet, everyone thought of me as his uncle. This was as close as I would ever come to being a mother, and being a mother had been a life-long dream of mine from as far back as I can remember.
The picture shows Jason and me at the house we rented with several co-workers when we all worked at Browndale Group Homes, Ltd. as “Therapeutic Parents” for emotionally disturbed children. Spending quality time with Jason was a welcome relief from that other, therapeutic type of very stressful parenting. At that time, he was the light and joy in my otherwise dark and disingenuous life of pretending to be a guy for everyone else. We lost Jason to an overdose thirty-six years later, on Christmas Eve of 2010, less than twenty days after I came out as a trans-woman.
My Older Brother and Me, 1954
I was about two years old, going on three, and Victor was around eight or nine in this picture. To this day I do not know why, but Vic called me Bean as a term of endearment. Even back then he was my protector. He always looked out for me and never teased or picked on me.
A month after I turned six, in ‘58, a thirteen-year-old homophobic predator at our school violently assaulted me. (I write about this incident in Volume One of my memoir.) It took me 27 years to finally forgive him. His sexually tinged, brutal attack on me, convinced me that I could never again safely take a chance on accidentally revealing my natural femininity to anyone. This slammed and locked the door on the closet that my mom had shoved me into the year before, and I didn’t escape it until I was in my early twenties. I tried to transition at that time, but after half a dozen years, I returned to that same closet, early in ’80, and I stayed there for another 30 years to appease my parents, spouse, and society.
What’s your favorite movie of all time?
I’ve had several favorite movies over the years: Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Orlando, Slaughterhouse Five, Memento, A.I., Cloud Atlas, A Handmaid’s Tale, Fight Club, Birth of a Nation (the one about the Nat Turner rebellion, not D. W. Griffith’s racist screed), Collateral Beauty, and Her because of her evolution from being a perfect people pleaser to an independent woman who grew into her full potential as a transcendent being, despite being an A.I. computer program originally. Although, technically, not a movie but a series, my newest favorite is Euphoria—mostly because of its unsparing honesty and frank portrayal of a trans-girl who struggles to find and accept her authentic self while negotiating her journey in a dangerously phobic world.
What is your favorite book?
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass introduced me to a world of empowerment through the imagination that allowed me to take refuge from the savage and dangerous world of my childhood. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit presented the idea that even the smallest and meekest among us can be heroic. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Slaughterhouse Five inspired me to become a novelist. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale reawakened my dormant, feminist sensibilities and her Maddaddam trilogy was some of my favorite brain candy. Christopher Moore’s Lamb, the Gospel According to Christ’s Boyhood Friend Biff was by far the funniest book I have ever read. And Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club helped me to feel a bit less like an anomalous freak for having grown up at odds with myself, as a girl in a boy’s body.
What’s your favorite place in the world?
As a young artist, I dreamed of living in a garret on the Left Bank in Paris. A few years later, as a conscientious objector during and after the Vietnam War, I fell in love with my older brother’s new hometown, Toronto, Ontario. However, when I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan from my hometown, Chelsea, in the fall of 1970, I found it a sufficient substitute, feeling comfortable enough there that I stayed for forty years.
My favorite place in the world these days is at any venue where I’m either attending 12-Step recovery meetings, transgender support-group meetings, or else an MTO discussion panel.
Of course, I’d still love to take a few days to explore the Louvre—if only. . .