Across The Abyss #3..."The Roberta Thing"...

I've always known I was transgender. Always. Way before I had words to name it.

I remember these feelings as far back as age 4 or 5. I didn't insist I was a girl...but I always felt that I wanted to be a girl. Like so many trans people, I hoped and prayed that some magic would happen while I slept and I would wake up female.

But alas...

I could not accept it. I assumed I was gay...again very early on...because I was attracted to boys. That was bad enough...but it was the less complicated and least devastating answer.

Nothing like this was simple while living in a suburb of Detroit in the 1970s...

I was able to come out to my family as gay when I was 15 years old. To this day, people tell me how brave I was to do that. But, while I was sharing something very important and controversial with them, I still wasn't telling them the REAL truth, which was that I wanted to be female. That, I couldn't say.

I never quite got the hang of being gay. Although I love gay people to this day, I never felt like I fit in with them, especially in places like a bar.

I wasn't one of those young people who was out and proud about ALL of me. People may have known I was gay, but for some reason I drew the line at sharing my trans feelings. I didn't even have verbiage for it until an epiphany at 18 years old.

Whenever I heard about a trans woman...in the news...in a movie...it was enough to send me into a tailspin that sometimes lasted months. I described the feelings as a monster climbing on my back and refusing get off. I became depressed, and thoughts of suicide would creep in, although I don't think I ever would have attempted that except as a cry for help. I don't believe I wanted to die, which made living with the monster all the more horrifying.



By 18 I was finally out of school...partaking a bit in drinking and other recreational substances...and trying to figure out what my life might be. I was cross dressing in secret when I could, but I was so lost in my own closet that it never would have occurred to me to seek therapy or share my feelings.

My sister Victoria had gone away to college at Western Michigan University. In the fall of 1982 I drove the 3 hours across Michigan to visit her and see the band Circle Jerks.

I had recently read or seen something on TV about a transsexual. I had also seen a movie the previous summer that had a huge impact on me (more about that in a moment). I don't know if I was conscious of the monster once again taking up residence on my back. Sometimes it climbed on slowly, landing one claw at a time, gingerly, stealthily. I sometimes didn't recognize what was happening until I was fully it its grasp.

It was happening again. I got depressed. I got drunk. I took some LSD. We saw the band and hung around in Victoria's dorm room. A leather-jacketed punk from her dorm was there. He probably was there to flirt with Victoria...and I know for a fact he didn't appreciate the attention he got from me...my inhibitions down and my libido up up up.

I don't remember much more about that night except one thing. At one point I suddenly came to a mental clearing and found myself in an empty dorm stairwell. Alone. I was crying. Hard.

Like Scarlet O'Hara making a pledge to the heavens I promised myself out loud: "Some day I'll get my operation."

Even through the haze of highness I surprised myself. I knew I had those feelings...and yet I had never verbalized or accept it as such. Hearing it in my own voice was a shock. And it wasn't good news. It certainly was a turning point, however. I would not be able to ignore the issue completely anymore. My carefully constructed shield was gone. I was destined to become more depressed because now I was no longer able to live in the safety of that bubble any more. I had kept myself ignorant...and now I had let the cat out of the bag.

The film Tootsie was released shortly after in December of 1982. This was enough to upset me a bit, to see a man living as a woman...but since it wasn't actually about a trans person, the effect was not detrimental.

I had a much stronger reaction to the release of another film earlier in the year. July 1982 saw the release of The World According to Garp. The week before the movie opened I read the book. I was profoundly affected by the book in general, and specifically I was stunned to find a transgender woman as a prominent character.

The character of Roberta Muldoon was and remains to this day a beacon for me, and John Lithgow's amazingly gentle and sympathetic portrayal showed me for the first time how a trans person could possibly fit into the world. Not a perfect fit, but not a disaster by any stretch. Sometimes when you're transgender one feels that "not a disaster" is the only realistic thing to hope for.


I searched for a scene with Roberta from the film, but only found the following. This is an amazing critique by a trans women named Christianne Benedict about the character and importance of Roberta:



After 1982, my emotionally destructive cycles repeated:

- Cross dress...
- Dream (turning to desire) of taking it further...
- Obsess with changing gender...
- Convinced because of insecurity I can never do that...
- Throw away all female clothing items with a promise to stop...
- Depression...
- Calmness...
- A pause and then cross dressing again...

Sometime around 1985 or 86 I made an effort to share my trans feelings with a friend for the first time. The reaction was less than supportive. I wasn't strong enough to be confident about it...so I dove back into that dank trans closet, a familiar place I assumed would be my home for the rest of my life.

In 1987 I moved to California. In my heart of hearts I was traveling as far as I could from home in order to have the room to find myself. Of course, that still takes courage and hard work...and when I finally did broach the subject with two of my closest California friends, I found myself unable to use proper terms. It was as if the news was less scary or dangerous to give it a code name.

I didn't say "I'm a transsexual"...or anything like that.

I reminded them about The World According to Garp...and I referred to my issue as "The Roberta Thing".

For many years after I was never able to call it anything but.

It seems so immature and quaint now...from this side of the abyss. But back then, my shame and fear ruled everything. I was mortified to be who I was.

This is a great example of why I'm writing this blog. It's important for me to illustrate to myself just how far I've come.

Journal #1 contains no mention of "The Robert Thing", even though I know for a fact it had reared it's head before I started writing in 1988. That was another part of the cycle. When I was overwhelmed by "The Roberta Thing" it was all-consuming. When I was "over it", I needed to pretend it never existed.

No wonder I was insane.

I was prompted to write this post now because I finally ran into the first mention of this subject in journal #2...page 57...Thursday November 3rd, 1988...

I had been living in San Francisco since August 15th. I was working at a clothing store in The Castro. One would think the excitement of a new life in that beautiful city would be enough to keep me distracted for a while. But right there on the page...out of nowhere...but right below the surface:

"I feel The Roberta thing starting to climb on top of me again. What a sick and stupid cycle."


What follows are many pages of questions and self recrimination. That will be the subject of the next installment.

It's hard to read this. It's hard to see how hard I was on myself. But...from this side of the abyss, I'm finally safe. At least from myself.