So Your Loved One is Trans

Taking off the costume.

Today, I waved the Butler off to her (yes, her) coming-out party at work.  Well, not exactly a party.  A meeting where she (yes, she) tells the last tier of her colleagues that she’s gender dysphoric.  

Anyone who says that transfolk are something other than brave, strong individuals, hasn’t a clue what they’re talking about.

I hope to expound on that statement, but today I’m thinking about trans-SOFFAs (significant others, friends, family & advocates).  People attached by a twist of fate to a transperson’s tailcoats, dragged along at full speed through terrain they never imagined, let alone chose to explore. 

People who go through that & still hang on.

Ten years ago, I learned I was a trans-parent, the mother of my lovely FtM, El Punko.  Seven years ago, I wondered if I were trans-contagious when I discovered the Butler is also trans.  There’s undoubtedly a statistical improbability at work here, having a child & spouse who aren’t biologically related, but are both transgender.

Now that the Butler begins her real life test, I’m finally able to speak about what it’s like for transfamilies in this country & this system.  Being a trans-parent has different pressures than being a trans-spouse, but consistent in both cases is that once treatment begins, there’s a bevy of professionals circling your loved one. 

And then there’s you. 

The psych field here thinks there’s something sexy about trans-clients, & by God, the SOFFA should be all things supportive, gracious, even thankful to be aligned with this magical crittur called Trans.  And while you’re at it, please shut up about your boring issues.  (Why are you even in my office?)

In the medical field, no matter that an unpredictable changeling has replaced someone very dear in your life and you think the doctors aren’t doing their best. Whatever treatment they inflict on your adult loved one, it’s none of your goddam business.  (Feck off, Madam No Degree.)  

A normal trans-family

The LGBT community.  Well, there needs to be someone for the parents, the spouses, the wide-eyed chillen of transfolk, but really, between supporting the transperson & storming the Bastille, there’s no time or energy for it.  And indeed, in my experience, the SOFFA’s sometimes considered to be three steps removed from the enemy, politely tolerated or, in rare instances, treated with overt hostility.  (Why oh why won’t you stay in the misguided straight world?)

No wonder some SOFFAs are mad as hell.  I’m not one of them.   

Recently, while shifting furniture, it became clear how much the Butler’s upper body strength had given way to HRT.  It was lift, walk a few paces, rest.  After I set down my end of a behemoth cabinet, the Butler kept shoving like nobody’s business, the behemoth not impressed. 

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I ask.  ‘You can’t do that without me.’ 

‘I’m an eejit,’ says the Butler, ‘but I’m enthusiastic.’

You know, there’s a motto for life.  Any life, really, but definintely the SOFFA life. 

While there are guidelines for transitioning, there’s no Harry Benjamin telling SOFFAs how to do this.  No Dark Lord professionals acting like we’re the One Ring.  No political factions educating us on the appropriate vernacular & what shops to boycott. 

There’s freedom in that.

Don't go stealth.

The trick is to approach it enthusiastically.  That doesn’t mean to ditch the anger, or forget the grief.  Everything you feel, or they feel, it’s real & justified.  What it means is, be terrified when you wait outside a public loo, then laugh about how weird it is that you’re lurking outside a public loo.  Feel embarrassed over their latest ‘new look’, but not too embarrassed to be honest about whether it works.  Don’t go quietly stealth in this brave new trans world.  Face your life & kick anybody to the curb who says you don’t have a right to it.

It may not seem possible to grab with both hands right now.  Not today, when your trans-love has stepped out of a lifelong prison and bolted to freedom, dragging your security and dreams and expectations through the gorse and hawthorn.  Not today, when you don’t believe it’ll get better because how can it be better when the unthinkable has happened?

Being a SOFFA isn't for the faint of heart, but you, who created a space where a trans-person felt they could take the risk, you deserve to stop screaming.  There will come a day you’ll wake up without that elephant stomping on your chest.  It may surprise you how quickly or how long it takes to happen.

In the meantime, enjoy the view from the tail of the kite.  Insist that you touch ground on a regular basis.  Don’t let anyone tell you to shut up, or stand to the side.  Be as brave as your trans-person, expect as much for yourself.  Listen.  Love.  Laugh.

Follow the multi-coloured road.

Insist on technicolour.

Beware the Silly Hat in Public Bathrooms

The Itinerant Magpie, aka Aleksei Drakos, guest blogs this week on what it's like to be a scary transman.  You can find his blog at http://saschk.blogspot.co.uk/

New Orleans, 2010.  We’ve been on the road since 4 AM, driving from Savannah to Austin.  Where better to make a pitstop for good eats than Savannah’s free-spirited older sister?  We wander around the Quarter for a bit before ducking into a little bodega just down-at-the- heel enough, you know the food is gonna be spectacular.  We’ve got that delirious frivolity that too little sleep and too much time on the road brings; it lasts right up to the moment we get ready to leave, with a stop at the restroom.

It’s tiny.  One urinal.  One sink.  One stall with a set of saloon doors that barely covers my torso.  All I can think is:  Shit.  What do I do?

“Don’t worry,” Cap says.  “I’ll protect you from any Bubba that walks in.”

And suddenly it’s okay, not just because I know I won’t have to deal with some awkward (and maybe dangerous) encounter with a Good Ol’ Boy, but because with that statement, Cap lets me know he gets it.  He’s a straight, cis-male, but I’m his friend and he gets why something as simple as using a public restroom can be stressful and terrifying for a transgendered person. And he’s got my back.

Some US states are trying to restrict bathroom use by transgendered people.  A small but very loud segment of the cis-world is in a furore over the threat transwomen pose in female bathrooms, despite lack of evidence that the threat is real.  On the other hand, there are plenty of police reports on file that document how using a public toilet resulted in violence for a transperson.

I get it.

Transpeople are super scary.

I mean.  Just look at me.


Absolute menace to society.

You should never trust a person in a silly hat.

When I started my transition at 18, I didn’t feel optimistic about it.  Treatment was expensive, far away, and I had no idea where to start.  The first psychologist I told about it, didn’t know the difference between being transgendered and being bisexual.  She explained that the only reason I felt this way was because I’d been raised by a single mother and felt the need to fill the male role in the household.

Needless to say, I was not impressed by her assessment.

When I moved to Ireland, I expected more of the same.  What I found was completely different.  I was put in touch with a psychologist in Dublin (coincidentally, also an American) who specialised in transfolk.  He was linked with an endocrinologist and a trans support group, as well.  For the first time in my life, I had access to an entire community of people just like me.  (At the time, these guys were the only ones treating GID, so literally every transperson in the country had access to each other.)  It was great.  I started HRT. I completed my Real-Life Test.  I had my chest surgery done.  My alien identification card proclaimed me male (this required some persistence and flat out saying to the agent: “Do you want to check what’s in my pants, or will you take my word that I know what gender I am?”  He took my word for it).

When it came time to return to the US, my doctors gave me all the letters and documentation I needed, and assured me things would go just as smoothly Stateside. I’d already gotten through the hard part, after all. Everything that came next was just maintenance.

You would think.  But Ireland is part of the EU and transpeople are protected in the EU.

Once back in the States, I couldn't get health insurance because I'd already been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and therefore had a pre-existing condition, which meant the $500 a month (easily half my monthly income) for the HRT prescription came totally out of pocket, not to mention doctor appointments, regular blood tests, and trying to track down an endocrinologist who would see me without insurance (who didn't know what he was doing, wouldn't listen when I told him the dosage was wrong - it ultimately took 2 years to get me back on an even keel).

Then changing my birth certificate.  Quick lesson for the non-Americans out there: which state you’re born in matters.  A lot.  Most laws are set by individual states, and they can vary hugely. Having lived outside the US as much as I have, I can see how weird that is - being part of the same country but having vastly different definitions of what is legal and what is not.

I was born in Pennsylvania (PA) and lived there a whopping total of 3 years, so amending my birth certificate falls under PA laws.   My doctors prepared a series of emphatic reports stating that it was required for my safety, that my documentation match my gender (changing the F to and M, if you’re having trouble keeping up).  PA decided only a "fully functioning" man is entitled to an amendment.  In real terms, that means having a surgery that was expensive, dangerous, not easily accessible in my area (I'd have to travel to the west coast or Europe) and involved massive visible scarring (skin grafts from the arms) without even ending in a good result.  

Yes, someone in a records office makes medical decisions for transfolk.

My driver’s license had been issued in West Virginia.  I hoped crossing the state line would give a different outcome.  I spent ten minutes arguing with the woman at the counter in a DMV office before they whisked me and my stack of documents to a private room when I showed no sign of backing down. I explained everything to the supervisor.  I showed her my letters.  I showed her Harry Benjamin’s Standards of Care.

She refused.  I wanted to cry.  I walked out with a driver’s license that labelled me female.  I dreaded every time I had to show that ID to someone, because I never knew what they were going to do to this short, weird-looking boy who turned out to “really” be a girl.  WV, if you aren’t aware, is not the most progressive state.

A year later, I sat in a Georgia DMV office, watching the numbers flash closer and closer to my ticket as I clutched my stack of letters and mentally ran through everything I would say when I got called up.  I didn’t expect to succeed, but I was going to try anyway.

God bless the two women who helped me.  They read all my papers.  They checked all the forms.  They pulled out the book of laws and regulations and looked through it until they found the loophole that meant they could change the gender on my license without my birth certificate.  I have no idea who those two women are and I’ll never see them again, but they were the first officials in the US who made me feel like a real person who deserved to be listened to.

My birth certificate still labels me as female; I just don’t use it. Given all the same documentation, the federal government had no problem stamping my passport with an M.  In most cases, because you can’t get a passport without a birth certificate, I get by with my passport and my license (after getting the first one, I didn’t have any further problems getting male ID).  On a funny note, my current license is issued by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and says that I’m male.  But they won’t change my birth certificate.

At this stage, I fly under the radar 99% of the time.  Every new doctor or therapist I see goes through the confusion of thinking I’m starting the transition to female when I bring up that I’m transgendered.  Actually, that happens with everyone I tell.  In that way, I’m lucky. No one knows unless I tell them.  But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier.

West Virginia refuses to take ID photos of transwomen unless they look like men.  Facebook is deleting profiles of gender-variant people over names (meanwhile, my two absolutely fictional alter-egos remain undisturbed).  Texas wants DNA verification of your gender before you’ll be let into public bathrooms.  

Right now, I live in the UK, also an EU member, so my rights and safety are protected by law.  At some point, though, I'm going to have to go back and fight my way through the US system again.  There is no place like home, but for American transfolk, home is not a place of safety and acceptance.  I don't understand the point of being a super power when you stigmatised  and demonise your own citizens for being born different.  But then, I'm a scary transman in a silly hat.

The Cat's FB Page

Calypso

So there I was, trying to get into Calypso’s FB page to delete it.  Why does my cat have a FB page?  Exactly.  Why does my cat have a FB page?  

Anyway, I couldn’t remember the password, so requested a new one, but Yahoo told me Calypso’s email account didn’t exist.  Sensible folk.

That seemed the end of the matter, except that a FB log-in page popped up.  Ever the fat, dumb and happy soul that I am, I hit ‘enter’ and expected to be inside Calypso’s page.

Wow, FB!

Instead, there it was, my deactivated human FB account with a Christmas profile photo.  In reality, I’d logged onto a website, but psychologically, I’d opened a door that’d been closed for three months.  I was alone in a secret place without anyone knowing it.  

I walked round the virtual room, picked up dusty objects, read letters from people who’d been daily present in my life until I shut this door, a door they’d disappeared behind .  I looked through my friends list.  All good people.  Very few who were still active in my life. 

Real friends.

And so I defriended at will, leaving only people who’d stuck with me outside FB, plus a few I couldn’t quite let go of yet, until only thirteen friends stayed. 

Nev, on Catfish, says if a profile doesn’t have 100 followers, it’s not real.  But that’s not what I felt when I looked at those 13 names, my friendly coven.  That list seemed very real to me.  These were people to whom I mattered, or who at the very least, mattered to me. 

Giving w/o reciprocity.

It’s taken a long time to understand that people I admire and enjoy but who don’t reciprocate, aren’t really my friends, regardless how much they accept of what I offer them.  And obviously, based on the fact that among those 13 names are people who stayed behind the FB door, I haven’t fully learned that lesson.  But 13 names is a start.

In terms of society, that’s a 20^th century lesson, one that maybe won’t survive the 21^st century.  There’s no qualitative message in that.  People adapt, connect, make reality out of new things, discard the reality of the past.  Me, I’m definitely a 20^th century realist.  An anachronism?  Perhaps.  But life only works when you pay attention to what’s true for you.

Holding onto what's true.

A Virtual Update

So you know that whole virtual learning course I was taking?   With 3 veterinarian events that require house arrest for a certain Doodle, surprising things are happening there.

First off, I’ve spent a lot of time writing in my head.  Many writers do this anyway, but early in the process, I usually need to write things down, have a tangible hard copy to work on.  Being deprived of that seems to bypass my cognitive brain. 

As a result and against my will, my antagonist staged a coup ousting my protagonist and became my main character, bringing a complexity, if not a depth, I hadn’t anticipated to a (third) catalyst character.  

The other consequence of Doodle duty is that my reading assignment is getting done in 2-3 minute intervals.  Thus, passages that I would’ve sped through –­ I’m so smart, I already know all of this – now have my extended attention. 

For instance, I’d just finished reading about outdoor vs indoor scenes when it came time to abandon all hope & cross the threshold into We Do Not Race Maniacally Thru The House Until The Stitches Come Out, i.e. a fortuitous attempt to reduce MY physical world by containing the pup.

My WIP associated with the course, Night Vigil, deals with how our childhood shapes our limitations in adulthood, as seen in the death watch of an abusive man by his wife and son.  Reading about outdoor/indoor gave me the idea of reaching past the stage into possibilities for both son & mother that wait for them after the man’s death.  There are already musical off-stage voices, but I now look for how to extend both the mother and son by being heard off stage , looking out windows, opening doors, as they try to escape where life has restricted them at the moment.

Then props.  I’d written in the father’s violin as shortcut to a lot of his history.  Obviously a prop to look at, especially one connected with a character who keeps his family in its particular status.  What more work could it do besides telling us the father is a musician?  And so the violin becomes an animate thing to the son and his sibs when they were children, and is still a way of knowing if their father were home by its presence or absence. 

Also, like many abusers, this father is charming.  In other words, Voice is a significant aspect.  The violin’s song.  The father’s song.  The choice of melody played,  in this case, one that’s initially playful but has minor tones in it, suggesting something darker even though pizzicatto.  Lastly, holding the violin, aligns any character with the father.

These are more than, Far Out, Man, devices.  Signifying the violin and being aware of the expansion or compression of space both give another tool when developing the plot.  I get stuck, I ask myself where all the characters are, where should they be, and of course, where’s the blasted violin?

As alluded to above, there were two characters whom I always wonder – are they needed?  They were in a first scene at the son’s house, one as the mother’s foil and the other as the son’s ally.  But were they needed for the rest of the play and if not, why introduce them at all? 

But a Doodle Nurse moment collided with a reading section on how silent observers could change what would be a sombre moment into a comedic one.  I’ve had this lifelong fascination with witnessing for people during anonymous but significant life events.  It made sense that the witnessing of any intense moments in a play could change the quality of those moments, and in other directions besides comedic. 

I then wrote an argument between mother and son that digresses through a momentary crumble in the mother’s cognition, but ends in a loving moment.  Quite a complicated emotional nosedive, but having it witnessed, allowed me to stop the action and give the audience time to assimilate what happened.  I did this by having the son and his ally exit, leaving the mother and her foil alone in an awkward silence, followed by an exchange between the two women that furthers understanding of the mother.

So this play that started as static  –  a mother and son changing their relationship by sitting a death watch  – gets energised via trying to keep a frenetic but recuperating puppy from being energised in my own life. 

Beyond all that I’ve learned about writing plays, I think I’ll slow down my technical reading in future, let things simmer more.  My only complaint is no 3D people to discuss this with!  

Cows at the NHS

A typical hospital outpatients reception area.  The woman at the back of the queue, the one who looks like a doll dressed in bits and pieces of clothing from other dolls, that’s me here to be assessed for a dental procedure.

I’m one of a dying breed of patients who grew up when dental medicine was heartless, children lied about their pain and were dealt with by putting a large, hairy hand over their mouth, only removing said hand for the drill to be applied.  By the time I reached adulthood and a kinder, gentler dentist explained why my teeth were difficult to numb, the emotional damage had been done.

Don’t worry.  No more tales of dental horror.

So there I am, in a place I’ve never been before, a cow waiting to be assessed for slaughter.  Or at least a wisdom tooth extraction.  I give my name and am told to sit down amongst the other livestock.  It seems all potential victims, except for myself, have brought the entire seed and breed of their families with them.  

My name is called with three others, which means about 15 people move forward.  Unimpeded by mobility aids or a passel of chillen, I get to the desk first where a clipboard and pen are thrust at me with an outpouring of gibberish that I assume, based on the flipping of pages and vague gestures, are important instructions.  I do understand when she points, that I'm to go to the waiting room at the end.  There’s no time for questions.  She’s onto the next cow.

Clipboard in hand, I wander in the direction she indicated, come to another, larger waiting area and sit down.  There’s a 4 page form attached to the clipboard.  I get through my basic details, then struggle with a list of medical questions.  Am I extremely over or under weight?  Hmmm . . . I’m fat, but in the extreme?  I’m not sure, but I’ll say that I’m not.  For the alcohol question, I know I’m supposed to put in units, but not much of a drinker myself, I’ve never figured out what a unit was, so I fudge that question and assume the medical people won’t believe me anyway.

Then there it is, across the entire bottom of the page, a rating from 0 to 10, recording my cooperation.  When I rang to make this appointment, the woman on the phone wouldn’t tell me whom I’d be seeing or give me a phone number in case I had to cancel – all that information would be sent in a letter.  Sitting now with my cooperation in question, I was glad I hadn’t cracked a joke about guarding state secrets.  Smart asses tend not to score high on cooperation.

This smart ass is tempted to demonstrate my own cooperativeness by rating my cooperativeness for them, but got control of myself.  However, I do wonder if I should’ve filled out the medical questions, or just put in my details.  And what’s the other part of the form the gibberish lady had gestured to?  I flip through pages and find a second request for my details, so fill it in and hope I’ve been cooperative.

Hope I’m in the right place, too.  At the end of my row of seats, is the man in the wheelchair, called forward with me at Reception.  The man without anyone to push his chair so propels himself with his feet.  Across from us, a family of several females cluster around an older man.  As a nurse rushes by, one of the women waves at her but the nurse is too busy, has to attend . . . A bit of chatter among the women about the nurse’s rudeness, why couldn’t she stop, but the wheelchair man gets called into the corridor to our left, and an impeccably dressed but frail, elderly woman comes in, led by a younger version of herself.  I wonder if she’s a time traveller come to give herself comfort.

The busy nurse comes back to the family across from me.  One of the women explains that their appointment was for twenty minutes earlier.  The busy nurse says that they haven’t reached their 30 minutes yet and sometimes 30 minutes is reached and that’s when they can be concerned but (leaving as she says this) not until they reach that sacred threshold.  The family discusses various medical facilities they’d attended with various long waiting times.  The man with them tries to follow the conversation but is confused and disoriented, his seat among these women, the only thing that grounds him.

The wheelchair man returns and walks himself into the corridor behind us.  The old woman and her younger self are taken into a side room.  An equally ancient man comes out the left corridor with a young woman who sits him behind the family across from me, then stands herself in the aisle, folding his many layers of clothing needed to face a trip to outpatients.

The walking wheelchair man is back, embarrassed because he’s lost.  He flags down a passing nurse who grabs the handles of his wheelchair and pushes him up the corridor to the right, the man apologising for getting himself lost and the nurse telling him to pick up his feet so she can push him faster.  The old woman returns with a nurse who's explaining in a lacklustre apology that the woman’s been taken to the wrong place.  The family across from me is called into the right corridor and the ancient man stares at nothing, his eyes lined with tears, his carer nowhere to be seen.

My name is called and I go into the corridor behind us where the wheelchair man got lost.  The clipboard is confiscated, never to be addressed.  I’m weighed and measured while fully dressed with my winter coat and shoes still on.  Just approximate, the nurse says.  I wonder if the contents of my pockets make me extremely overweight and hope that the heels of my boots compensate for the excess.  I say nothing because I want to score 10 out of 10 in cooperation. 

The dentist uses her first name when she greets me but grimaces when I use it in my response.  (8 out of 10 in cooperation.)  Before my extremely overweight ass hits the seat, the dentist asks how I’m paying for this.  The nurse hooks me up to a blood pressure cuff at the same time the dentist lowers the back of the chair and I’m trying to cooperate with having my arm torn off while opening wide.  The dentist’s hands are in my mouth when she asks several questions about why I’m having this tooth extracted as an outpatient instead of by my dentist who, from her tone of voice, is probably a blacksmith on the side.  I remember I’ve forgotten to brush my teeth in the dash out of the house.  (Five out of ten.)

They tell me I need to be accompanied by someone who can stay at the hospital through the whole procedure, then tell me the date.  I explain that I need to confirm the Butler can be there.  (Three out of ten.)  The dentist tells me to do this immediately because this type procedure can't be scheduled at short notice.  Time to pay and I put the card in backwards (1 out of 10) and then I'm shoo-ed down the ramp, past the ancient man, his mouth dropped open in horror.

Mooooooo!

Virtually Delayed

So there’s me, popping up my head after my writing winter of discontent.  It wasn’t writer’s block.  It was writer doesn’t give a fuck, heels dragged through my last draft of the novel about characters and themes I loved, absolutely loved.  And I didn’t give a fuck.  Emotively, I did.  Cognitively, I didn’t.

Once the novel was done and sent away to be slaughtered, deadlines for two plays waited my attention.  One play, an old friend who needed cosmetic surgery.  The other, only an idea.  Deadlines don’t understand winters of discontent.  I needed a kick in the ass, so decided to take a writing course.  Bit of structure, the fizz that comes from being around other writers, copacetic.

We have universities to the left of us, universities to the right, here I am, spoiled for choice of where to go.  On the home front, various things are being juggled (none of which understand winters of discontent, either, needless to say), so I opted for an online course.

This is a pretty funny idea because  2015 was going to be the Year of the Real.  Besides that, I’m not terribly visual.  In fact, I probably have a visual processing delay.  (When it’s going to arrive, is anyone’s guess.)  Which means that my photographer son and resident hooligan spent a lot of his childhood amusing himself by playing visual tricks on me.  Why I thought learning visually without the very necessary 3D contact with my classmates would work . . . well I wasn’t thinking, was I?  But I am nothing if not a slow learner, non-attendant of the obvious.  Off the money goes and I wait to be inspired to greatness.

It didn’t occur to me that I was in trouble when feedback for my first submission honed in on my use of accents in the dialogue.  (What accents?  thinks me.)  Some feel it courageous I’ve attempted accents.  Some, that I shouldn’t be taking on airs, using accents without a DRAMATIC REASON.  Oh, and did I know that certain (low brow) Dubliners might use the word ‘feck’ but certainly never ‘wee’.  That’s Northern Irish.

Oh.  The ‘accent’ is my husband’s speech pattern.  Oh.  Okay.  Light bulb moment.  They don’t know I’m not British.  Telling them once, doesn’t make much difference.  Telling them three times does.  And this isn’t a reflection on them.  It’s a reflection on virtual learning.  In a 3D classroom, they’d hear my voice week after week.  Online, I’m letters on a screen.  They aren’t here to get to know me.  They’re here to learn scriptwriting.

I did, however, understand immediately the difficulty from most of the course examples being culturally embedded.  (I may be slow, but I've been an ex-pat for a while now.)  We read this script, watch that film, my classmates are in stitches or deeply moved and I’m all WTF?????  Without the cultural context, my learning skimmed across the top, no  conversations where the Brits explained things to me about their home grown drama, heard my reflections as an outsider.  

My visual son says he doesn’t think creative coursework can be taught virtually.  Indeed, it would take a lot of online chatting for this group of dispersed learners to become a real writing group.  To be honest, there hasn’t been a week yet when everyone gets in the written assignment for the rest of us to give feedback on.  If life intrudes too emphatically for them to get their work done, they most likely don’t have time to chat either. 

It’s not been a total loss.  We’re covering ground that I’ve not covered before and my two plays show the results of this.  But it’s feckin hard work.  (Yes, I’m low brow.  No, I’m not from Dublin.)  If I’m lucky, I may get a small paragraph of feedback from one or two of my classmates, an equal offering from my tutor.  There’s no discussion.  There’s no listening to discussions of the other plays.  There’s me.  Squiggles on a screen.  And waiting.  Waiting for their assignments.  Waiting for feedback.  Some of which never come, followed by more waiting.

So never again, unless I’m too frail to venture forth and annoy the Brits.  Hats off to those of you who can learn virtually, but for this anachronistic speaker of crass dialects, 3D is where I stay.

Dear Friends

2015 is my year of the real in friendships.  So here’s goodbye to friends I didn’t want to let go, but who went anyway.

Glencoe

Dear Friend, the rambler who plotted out gentle slopes in deference to my decaying hip then took my hands when I wouldn’t let these old bones stop me from seeing what grew under the bridge.  You introduced me to the disconcerting call of stags.  When inexplicable dread and grief chased me off a Scottish mountain, you told me the history of where we’d been, the lives lost at Glencoe.

You imposed celibacy on yourself to protect women because innately, you felt you were selfish.  It became a joke between us, you the flirt who always wanted to hear stories of my sexual conquests.  I secretly believed that you could care for someone more than you did for yourself.  When I met someone whose most intimate moments I kept private, there were no more gentle slopes with you. 

Dear Friends, the gregarious who slept in my beds, drank my grog, soaked in my Lush baths, cooked so I wouldn’t and wore fancy dress with abandon, decorated for parties and helped in the garden, slept in the hammock and sat round the long table, talking and laughing, brought out the fiddle, shared your writing, bolstered my off-key voice with your own.  We shook the trees and ate all their plums, trespassed on Lord Muck’s land, sat in the dark, nibbled by midgies as we waited for owls.

When the Butler deployed, you filled my rooms with your children.  I felt myself uniquely blessed by each and everyone one of you.  When that house and that garden were gone, you couldn’t answer an email or meet me for dinner or lunch or a drink or even wave from the window as my train went past your home. 

The Liffey

Dear Friend whom I’d see in the halls at work, all tall and thin and beautiful.  I didn’t know you.  I only knew all the men wanted to fuck you.  Some of the women, too.  Then the boss sent us to Dublin.  We stayed too late over dinner, ran under street lamps by the Liffey, laughing and running and missing the train, talking all the way home in the back of the bus.  Our birth of friendship.

When you hanged yourself on the back of a door, they never forgave me, you know.  I never forgave me either.

Dear Friends, is it a wonder that now I hesitate to risk, and conclude that it’s me?