Don’t Think Twice: It’s Alright I’m Trans

The minute I was certain Evelyn and I were going to become friends is when she told me she makes her own tahini from scratch.

We had just gotten on the light rail and were headed back to Union Station in Newark to catch trains back home. A group of us from my MBA program had been talking about hummus, which had prompted me to extol the financial and culinary virtues of making your own hummus at home. Evelyn, who I had only briefly said hello to in passing for the first few months we were in school together, agreed and then added in the part about homemade tahini.

I had discovered making friends in my MBA program to be a bit of a challenge. Despite the fact the Rutgers Professional MBA program had once been billed as catering to professionals who had been in the workforce in a while and were now considering a career change, the class I entered the program with was mostly full of students coming straight from their undergraduate careers.  Add to this my being a former English major and a liberal out and proud gay man in his early thirties, I stuck out a bit amongst my 75 other classmates.

So connecting with Evelyn that day on the train was particularly meaningful to me. She was also an experienced professional going back to the school the first time in several years. Over the next 14 months remaining in our program, we became very good friends. We studied together, had lunches together, and did class projects together. We introduced each other to our respective husbands and friends. Evelyn had a big family in the area and we were invited to their birthdays and barbeques. We had them over for our Passover dinner and did a combined graduation party. When I moved to Ohio after graduation, Evelyn and her husband visited me here. Basil and I drove out to Lake George in upstate NY one August so Basil could meet them.

In short, Evelyn was quickly becoming one of the dearest friends I had. When I went through my divorce, her support was invaluable. She had also divorced an emotionally abusive husband in her twenties. She checked in on me constantly, despite her own very busy life, and offered me valuable insight on surviving the process. I felt certain we would be friends for many years to come.

The time during which I became friends with Evelyn intersected a period in my life where I was struggling with when, how, and if to disclose my identify as a transguy. The time when I entered graduate school I felt I was officially leaving behind the last of my awkward transition phase: my chest surgery was complete, I had started to solidify my “look” (hair, clothes, shaving), and I was losing tons of weight thanks to a new vegan diet and a renewed commitment to working out more regularly. I was worried about getting a job after graduate school. But even more than that, part of me just felt like I had finally “made it”, the struggles I had met during my transition were coming to a close, and now I was going to be free to enjoy everything which had come from my hard work during those years.

So despite everything Evelyn and I had shared, I did not disclose my transgender identity to her. First, it really is no one’s business unless I decide it is. Secondly, and more importantly, I did not think it mattered.

This April, I decided to out myself on Facebook as trans. While it would not be a complete disclosure (I am still not out at my current job and do not friend folks from the firm on Facebook), it would be the first time I would be outing myself to people I knew from my previous career in banking and for people from my graduate school program who had friended me on Facebook (a surprising number of my classmates). Responses were positive and I felt like I had taken a step in the right direction by being a more visible trans person.

Despite the fact we talked on the phone every few weeks, it took me a while to realize Evelyn would not have seen this post because she had closed her Facebook account some months before. I also realized since she was still in the New York area and friendly with people we went to school with there might be some chance this would come up in conversation. Not that what I am doing is on the minds of everyone I know from graduate school still living in metro NYC, but I had certainly learned in graduate school gossip was just as rampant in an MBA program as it is anywhere else.

I decided I had to call Evelyn and tell her about being trans. I felt it was what a friend would do. I tried calling a couple of times and was having a hard time getting her on the phone. When she didn’t call back, I decided to send an e-mail instead. It went as follows:

Looking back at this e-mail now, I am disappointed in my tone: I was way too apologetic, already apologizing for my trans-ness, which is stupid because the whole point of my disclosing all of this is to be able to be more proud and honest about who I am. It is clear from how I wrote this e-mail I was still struggling with the possible public perception of my trans-identity. I am already a different person than the one who wrote this message just five months ago: I am apologizing less and less for who I am. Regardless, that’s the e-mail I sent.

If one of us was having a very busy week, it might take Evelyn or I two or three days to call each other back. We would usually text each other right away (“Saw you called–swamped at work–can’t wait to catch up this weekend!”). I waited for a call or a text. A few days went by. Then a week. I realized at some point Evelyn was not taking this news the way I hoped she would.

I can’t remember if I texted her at some point or if she sent a text to me on her own, but it basically said she had spent this time trying to process what I had told her and so she could “decide what to do next”. She then asked me if my ex-husband was also trans. I cannot remember my exact response except I did say, especially now that he was my ex-husband, it was not my place to disclose his transgender or cisgender status. I believe I also asked, “What does it matter?”, although I can’t be sure. I think some days after this she tried calling me, but I could not bring myself to answer. The same day, I sent the following e-mail to Evelyn:

Hi Evelyn,

I never heard from Evelyn again.

I struggled to put myself in Evelyn’s shoes and try to understand why my transgender identity should have caused this kind of response. The situation seemed to imply I was tricking or lying to Evelyn by not disclosing my transgender status to her immediately upon us becoming friends. Following this logic, it could be inferred other parts of my identity are less genuine or less true because I am trans. I did mental backflips and second-guessed myself (as I have often done when I have learned someone doesn’t like me), wondering about all of the things I maybe should have done so the result would have been different.

Talking to Basil about this, he reminded me, “Quit rationalizing their behavior. This is transphobia. Period.”

I realized Basil was right. Because the trans part of me isn’t hidden away, lurking under the surface like a second identity in a spy thriller novel. My trans-ness is fully integrated in me: it is part of the James experience and everyone gets a taste of it every time they interact with me, whether or not I am out to them. You can’t reject the trans part of me or be revolted by it and still get to enjoy the rest of me. And I won’t be sorry about it for one more damned second.

That is the irony of the photo at the top of this post: it was taken when Basil and I were in Philadelphia for this year’s Philly Trans Health Conference, just a few weeks before I would decide to come out to Evelyn. Evelyn and her husband met us in Philly for a walk around Center City and dinner. I wore my ShopFTM t-shirt (as did Basil) the whole day. By all accounts, we had a lovely time. She had already embraced the trans part of me, appearently regretting it only when she came to understand what is was.