Let Me Tell You ‘Bout the Hair

It’s rather astounding, how powerful a woman’s hair is.  Before officially starting her real life test, the Bit-ler went to work with her B cup breasts and her somewhat androgynous women’s clothing.  She was never clocked as female or even gender fluid.  She was male, full stop. 

More than any other transition accoutrement, she needed hair.

Some trans women have their own luxurious locks; others get by with a bit of judicious styling.  The divide on the Bit-ler’s scalp could only be breached by the wigs she had, none of which fully satisfied her, all of which precluded being physically active.  The Bit-ler reconciled herself to a demure life. 

I, on the other hand, did not think beauty was a good swap for giving up my partner in crime, so I researched the whole thing and found out about hair systems that allow you to do sports and take showers and yes, even wear hats!

At this stage, I’m an enthusiastic, supportive hag. 

And so off to Edinburgh the Bit-ler goes to get a hirsute-ish pate.  I’m left in the new house with the fencing guys who’ve promised they can erect a barricade that’ll keep the Doodle in our garden.  A Doodle, I should add, who has already learned how to open the childproof door locks and escape the house.   Repeatedly.  With a big ol’ grin on her doggie face.

The fence guys themselves were civil enough.  The neighbours were a different matter.  We’d left the land of UKIP-pery and Mad Farmers to join the Uppity Nouveaux Riche too busy espousing capitalism to weed their rose beds.  New neighbours sensitive about property boundaries.  A sensitivity that extends into our garden, apparently.

By Day 2 of making bacon butties for the fencers and failed diplomacy with the neighbours – tasks previously the sole responsibility of the Bit-ler, as legislated by law and gender inequity – I’d redefined her trip north for hair as a luxury spa holiday that left me holding the can, an unappreciated Cinderella SOFFA.

Despite my self-pity, the fence got raised, no neighbours murdered in the process.  The Bit-ler came home looking the happiest I’d ever seen her.  It’d all been worth it.

Until the next day.  The Doodle’s early morning escape from our newly fenced garden required a run to the DIY shop.  Only, the Bit-ler had to get ready so she would pass.   Therein followed a long, drawn out prep that included visual demonstrations from myself.  Amazing, how complicated brushing your hair in a mirror really is.  Something second nature to little girls but that takes a while to master if your first attempt is as an adult. 

The next three days, Doodle found new escape routes, so three more trips to the DIY.  Three more preps by the Bit-ler while I twiddled my thumbs.   On that last trip, I was having trouble with the Sat-Nav.  The Bit-ler looked over just as we came into a curve.  The car drifted toward the centre line and she pulled it back before we crossed it.  I lost the plot. 

For me, losing the plot isn’t telling her she’s a feckin eejit who should keep her goddam eyes on the road.  Nope, losing the plot is taking a sample box from psychiatry’s diagnostic manual and giving her an assessment at 120 decibels.  A little knowledge with a lot of sharp edges.

She says nothing.  In her mind, she has to put up with an outburst like that because she considers me long suffering.

‘I wondered when I’d start shouting at you,’ I said.  A declaration of how long suffering I think I am. 

I eventually apologised like the alleged adult that I am.  The Bit-ler eventually agreed she didn’t have to take shit off me because I’m supportive.  But the first shot had been fired in what probably won’t end at a 21 gun salute to our old way of living.  Everything’s changed, from how long it takes to get ready to go, to what people perceive of our relationship.

And all because of her hair.

The Butler’s Gift

‘Sometimes I fear for your immortal soul.’  The Butler said that early in our marriage before he’d fully grasped what living with a writer meant.  

The morning walk

 And that’s what I’m thinking about while Big Nose sniffs grass beside the path in hope my attention will lag long enough for him to sneak into the verboten copse.  Verboten because local gentry feed pheasants there so they can later blow them to smithereens.  Local poachers feed deer there for the same purpose but tend to leave carcasses behind for Big Nose’s pleasure.  The latter is more a deterrent to me than the former.

My attention is diverted to the other side of our path where a track runs through knee-high crops.  In the middle of that track, what looks like a large bird.  Not the right colour for a pheasant – about the same shade of L’Oreal that I use.  We’re a bit far afield for my neighbour’s chickens, but the oval shape and colour, a chicken is what my brain tells me it is.

Said chicken turns its head and transforms into a fox, oval because it's sitting down.  A cool metaphor, but my optical prescription’s a bit hefty, so I give the image a moment to settle and yes, it’s definitely a fox scanning the field, unaware we stand thirty yards away.

Big Nose's moral dilemma

Big Nose catches the scent and tracker extraordinaire that he is, dashes into the off-limits copse.  A cue for any responsible dog owner to bring her Big Nose into line.  Right.

Sometimes I fear for your immortal soul.  

Granted, I was plotting someone’s murder when he said it, but even so, not what you expect from a lay person. I laughed.  Not in derision, but in the pure joy of how wonderful that remark was.  Kinda sweet that after the long years of knowing me, he still believed I had a soul. 

More remarkable that he believed in any god, let alone an all-loving one, because his work routinely had him with a weapon between his legs and the hope between his ears that his aircraft wasn’t shot out of the sky a la pheasant before he could help put Humpty Dumpty pieces of young people back together again.  Or watch Afghan children die. 

So the two of us together, the Butler and me, I knew my compromises, all the pheasant and fox hunts I didn’t moon, all the plants in neighbours’ gardens untouched by midnight relocation, all the people who’d caused him pain still taking in air when I knew of places on the moors . . . what was the Butler’s experience, sharing space and a life with someone like me?  And if a wife’s plotting turned into murder, how would the Butler respond?  How would anyone?

Fortunately for the loathsome in my life, I explore these type questions via my writing rather than scientific method. 

Conor (played by Gary Goodyear, Cats in a Pipe, 2013)
Photo by SiniHarakka Urban Photography

 I created Conor O’Donovan, Irish Catholic ex-pat in a country where not his skin colour but his accent makes him a target.  Where being called his nationality equates roughly with being called stupid.  He’s the second of nine children, his mother’s favourite until his youngest brother dies.  Then he becomes the sin eater for the family.  And he continues to be the sin eater for the rest of his life because hard as he tries, he can’t be heterosexual, he can’t meet his children’s expectations, he still believes in immortal souls and an all-loving God who says if only he were a better son, a better doctor, a better officer, a better father, a better partner, everyone else around him would actually stop all this sinning.

Bert (played by John McMahon, Cats in a Pipe, 2013)
Photo by SiniHarakka Urban Photography

Enter stage right, Bert Statler, Conor’s shadow.  Bert’s also gay, but from a US military family, in the Navy himself during the death throes of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell, so still living stealth.  His long-term partner has recently transitioned male to female, and though they’re still together, Bert feels abandoned.  But to Bert, that’s life, isn’t it?  You’re created by a fuck, spend your whole life getting fucked, and your funeral costs fuck someone else out of their inheritance.  The world doesn’t suck because of Bert, but because the world sucks.  Sometimes to dilute the suck quotient for someone else, you have to sin.

Conor is who we’re all told we should be.  Bert is the part of us we never admit out loud, sometimes not privately to ourselves.  Their friendship in some measure, represents the polarities between the Butler and myself, but also a polarity intrinsic to me as well – my struggle to be socially acceptable (stay out of jail), contribute to society (be able to afford the things I want), continue to grow as an individual (find new ways of staying out of jail and getting what I want).

The irony is that, before I married the Butler, I wrote about other people, my keyboard the conduit for stories gifted to me as a trauma therapist.  Once my life was shared, my writing became about me.  Disguised as a tall, lanky gay southern male who cuts people open for a living, I finally tell the truth.  And I’m able to do that because one day a long time ago, the Butler feared for my immortal soul.

The Butler & Big Nose, on the fox track headed toward the Verboten Copse