I was at a local Chicago hang out sometime in the early 80’s. I was standing by the doorway, drinking and puffing away waiting for my girlfriend (another Transsexual) to finish chatting with this cute brown haired guy with a strange and unfortunate lisp. Suddenly, out of nowhere, she came running past me, like Wile E Coyote, heels blazing and lips flapping, screaming at the top of her lungs:

“He found out! Clear the way!”

She was like a Transgendered choo choo train.

It was kind of hilarious at the time, simply because she was normally very sedate and calm and sweet. But at that moment, in that bar, she was running so fast I felt a breeze as she flew past my left shoulder.

What she meant was, apparently someone had told the lisping boy that my girlfriend was indeed, born male. My girlfriend was drop dead gorgeous. Brown hair, a magnificent face, huge brown eyes with naturally huge lashes, and a body to die for. She had men throwing themselves at her in droves. She also had that little giddy girlie laugh I was never able to obtain, and was very, very smart. She really had it all.

And she was a blithering idiot.

She lied all the time. She made up a past. She lied about her present. She never told any man she ever dated who she really was and what she had really been through. With all her bravura and all her book learnin’, she was one of the dumbest people I ever met in my life. But we remained friends. She was hilarious and when we sat down to chat, we could talk about everything from Maybeline to The Civil War. Great mind, she just didn’t use it wisely.

Here’s an interesting case.

I don’t know that I believe the Transsexual lied. If he did, then I have no sympathy for his situation. But, and I’m guessing here because I don’t know anything for a fact, that his wife certainly knew. The only reason I say that, is that they were married for 17 years. How can you be married to someone for 17 years and not know the sex of your partner? Exactly what were they doing in bed? Hovering over each and taking dirty? It simply makes no sense. I think since they divorced, the woman knew her husband’s secret would be public knowledge and decide to play dumb. That’s more likely the truth.

But let’s just for argument’s sake say she didn’t know. He lied then. He lied like my friend and like may Transgendered people do. They erase their past and claim total innocence.

I asked my girlfriend one day why she did what she was doing. Why she lied.

“Because no one will love me the way I am.” She said simply.

I never lied. Well, I never lied about that. I lied all the time about everything else, but never about that. That doesn’t make me a better person or even a more honest person; I simply mean I was too frightened to do anything else. Lies are difficult things. Once you lie, you have keep up the lie; continue the lie and most of the time make the lie more real than your actual reality. I only know this because I’m a professional liar. It’s still an addiction I fight to this very day.

That was hard for me to write, actually.

I remember telling a guy I met in the library in the in eighties that I was a Transsexual.

“I had one of those once. It wasn’t a four wheel drive though. Is yours?”

I swallowed a giggle, and said slowly:

“Yes. Yes it is.”

Back then, it was a complete and utter mystery. No one got it. I still don’t get it. They tell us now we suffer from Gender Dysphoria. I’m not sure what the heck that means, and I’m not sure who makes the rules, and I’m not sure why they think we’re suffering, but what do I know? I still think Cher should have won the Oscar for “Suspect”.

About 10 years later, after I left The Baton, I heard through some of my friends that my tight lipped, brown eyed, intelligent girlfriend was dead. She was shot in the head at close range as she was getting out of a cab in New York one rainy Friday night. Someone walked right up to her, in the middle of Midtown, and shot her in the head, and no one saw a thing. Not even the cab driver. No one was ever prosecuted and the police dropped the case. It was not an accident, that’s the only thing they knew for sure. Someone murdered her. And I knew why.

What I am is either an oddity, or a punch line. I get that. I’m okay with that. I have no problems with that as long as it’s my joke we’re all laughing at. Quite frankly, I’d rather be alive and laughing, than dead and beautiful.