Chapter Seven

After Christmas, I got a phone call from my sister. Would Vicky and I like to meet up for a coffee in a local coffee shop? We began to rebuild our relationship. At first rather self-consciously, but then more easily. We began popping into each other’s houses again, sharing Saturday morning breakfasts. All of us. We never spoke about the things both of us had said in the restaurant in Epsom, or about the Christmas we had spent apart. I think it’s better that way. We were both, in our own stubbornness, convinced we were right and there was only one way forward. We were both wrong. If you want to get your family across rough terrain, use a people carrier not a tank. Good advice which I gave to several others but never took myself. Youth may be wasted on the young, but wisdom is, in my hands at least, a huge waste of brain cells that could have been put to good use inventing chocolate that made you slimmer.

If you are anything like me you have now entirely stopped thinking about the complexities of living with a transgendered partner and are musing on the possibilities of prescription chocolate.

Anyway. The list of people who didn’t want to know us anymore diminished daily, and the list of people who did was holding up nicely. I found myself looking at a wedding photo and thinking it looked like Vicky in a trouser suit. So far she had had no surgery and with the honourable exception of her breasts, might have been able to pass herself off as a man in the right clothes. Still, I saw her as Vicky and had no expectation that she would suddenly revert to ‘being’ a man.

We still went to counselling twice a week, Fridays,with Vicky’s transition counsellor and Wednesdays with the relate marriage counsellor. Though sometimes there was a subject that still carried some heat, generally we would find ourselves chatting about our experiences quite calmly. Vicky was still waiting for her genital surgery date, now on the NHS because the financial and practical realities of private surgery in Thailand had put it out of reach for the moment.

In the meantime she was having speech therapy to help her ‘lift’ her voice in to a more feminine range. That was something of an uphill struggle as her voice had always been particularly dark and sonorous, more baritone than tenor. Despite all this in terms of daily life as a family and to the outside world transition had happened and we we’re getting on with life as a trans couple. My son had completely accepted Vicky and was totally relaxed around her. Ellie was 99 percent there. She had been out for the day with both of us and though she still preferred Vicky in trousers, she didn’t mind earrings and makeup being worn so everyone felt respected and accepted. Well, almost. I think Vicky was still looking for the magic happy ending in which everything had changed but nothing had changed. That certainly still carried heat and every now and then erupted into hurt angry confrontation. Part of that hurt was the loss of the ten year old girl she had first known. Ellie was growing up fast, she was, with the exception of housework, ( like most teenagers a keen user of the floordrobe) more grown-up than child. I felt that loss too, but to Vicky it was so bound up with the timing of her transition, that she saw it as a direct consequence of it, rather than an unhappy coincidence. Believing she had triggered it, she thought she could fix it. Put it back as it had been. The last thing a teenager wants is to be pulled back to being a child and they continued to fizz and spar with tiring regularity.

Although my family was reunited and functioning, this didn’t really mean we were all of the same opinion. By March my mother and sister and I were still trying to come to a common understanding of what the hell had happened. At the heart of this gap was the issue of being lied to and it continued to separate me from them in subtle ways. They reasoned that Vicky had known she was female from a very young age, as she had looked on the internet at how to transition, that she ‘knew’ transition was coming before she married me and therefore ‘tricked me’ into committing myself and my children to her. I could understand why they thought that, but I wanted to add, to mitigate this ‘lie’ with the fact that the first person Vicky lied to, was herself. Having made that lie it was impossible she could have told me anything else. A huge huge damn of self denial which had taken the whole last year to work through with therapy and many many tears. How she was supposed to explain to me that she was transgendered before she understood it herself I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t see why they couldn’t see it.

Of course the consequence of all this self delusion was that she wasn’t able to prepare me for the news, and once she’d told me, much like a damn bursting, there was no holding back, waiting or giving me time to adjust. The plans that my sister and I had made when I first told her of Vicky’s condition, and the plans that my mother had made which ultimately saved Vicky and my relationship, were not, of themselves, achievable. With an avalanche the only choice is when to clap your hands, after that it’s pretty much going at the speed it’s going. That first year, post hand clap had been pretty bloody awful, but we got through and here we were, quietly getting on with our life as a devoted couple, facing all the same challenges as every other married couple, and a few extra ones that weren’t in the handbook. My family were supporting us, but that nagging doubt that Vicky could and should have done things differently remained for some time as an unresolved thorn in all our sides.

By May, Victoria was on her way to Los Angeles to photograph an off-road racing competition. I dropped her at the airport in the morning, she was looking very feminine and business like, though she hadn’t had time to do her make-up, nonetheless she looked good. She was wearing a pair of corduroy slacks, a coffee coloured knitted top, rather thirties with a bow motive and a bright purple three quarter length raincoat. So much better than the clothing choices she was making six months ago, she looked positively elegant. At check-in the woman behind the desk twice called her ‘sir’ despite Vicky correcting her the first time and despite the rather obvious fact that she had a passport in the name of Ms Victoria etc etc. It does make you wonder why, if they thought she was a man ‘disguised as a woman’ traveling with a woman’s passport, why they weren’t calling security and escorting ‘him’ from the building, or to the nearest police station. If, as the provision of a boarding pass indicated, they accepted this was indeed Ms Victoria Cantons, why on earth did they think it was polite to call her ‘sir’?

I wish I could have done something. I wish I could have stormed down there and demanded they treat her properly. Life was hard enough as a pre-operative transexual without this stupid woman’s extra layer of dumb judgement. Is it really so much to hope that a first world society could try treating everyone with whom it comes into contact with consideration and respect? Even if they are unusually tall for a woman? Like smiling, politeness is cheap and rarer than it needs to be.

I know it’s really important not to get paranoid, but it does seem when part of the interaction involves a passport with a female identity, that any possible confusion should be gone. To then address a customer as sir in direct contradiction of the document in their hands seems to have at least an element of deliberate rudeness.

It is in the little almost imperceptible actions that our society defines itself. The subtle accidental ‘sir’-ing of a transgendered woman is much harder to confront than it’s less subtle cousin - the transphobic comment - but they are the same family and should always be challenged. Both equally dehumanise and that is never a good thing.

Vicky was planning what surgery she was willing to undergo. The genital surgery may seem to the outsider the most blindingly obvious requirement, but it was not the one that would cause the biggest difference to Vicky’s interaction with the rest of the world. There was no prospect of that happening for at least another year anyway, treatment protocols being what they were, and so she turned her attention to the two other areas that could, at a price, be changed. Her voice, and her face.

Firstly, she was being referred for vocal surgery. Despite having worked really hard at speech therapy, there was no getting round the thickness of her vocal chords, so this was her only way forward. Her vocal chords needed to be tighter. The procedure would not involve any cutting of the vocal chords, but instead the pulling apart of the cartilage that held them, which in turn would stretch the vocal chords and raise their overall pitch. The other surgery Vicky wanted to get ‘out of the way’ before her final operation, was facial. She wanted to go the whole nine yards. Brow reduction, cheek implants, jaw reduction, face lift, nose job, lip lift, you name it, she wanted it.

I found the thought of this deeply deeply traumatic. I understood that she wanted to look as feminine and attractive as possible, but we had only just found our balance as a family after a pretty hairy year and Ellie had only just begun talking about her feelings around ‘loosing’ her step-dad. This all seemed horribly familiar, the demanding toddler voice shouting, ‘give it NOW’.

She made what I thought was an initial enquiry phone call to the face surgeon in Chicago (whose name I cannot spell so don’t ask me!!) . Twenty minutes later she excitedly announced she had a provisional date for surgery in 12 weeks time. Back to square one I thought. Once again we were shouting at each other, if you really loved me you would understand, if you really loved me you would wait. I was not happy.

She seemed oblivious to the challenge that radically altering her face would present to the rest of us. I had thought this surgery was about two years away and suddenly it was in a matter of weeks, and in Chicago. I was going to be expected to be there supporting and looking after Vicky, who would doubtless be in extreme pain and pretty helpless. Who was going to look after me? It felt like once again, Vicky had decided what she wanted and that it was impossible for her to wait another second. Avalanche.

In my mind the genital surgery was a necessity, but the face surgery was about a subjective belief that she wouldn’t look good enough without it. I respected her right to make that choice, but I also wanted, no insisted, she at least consider the impact on everyone around her. Our faces are our trademarks, instantly recognizable as us and no one else. Change that and how are you to be still yourself? How are your family to still see the child they raised the partner they love, the parent they rely on. It’s a big ask. This was just a tell.

I really thought Vicky had got to a more stable place from where she was in that first year, but this sounded like a very backward step. There was a level of panic in her decision making process a sort of ‘now or never’ which was once more bringing out the bulldozer instead of the people carrier.

It also seemed to demand my continuing role as logistics manager, trying to bring everyone else along with us as Vicky rushed headlong in to her glorious future with never a backward glance. Did I have the emotional strength to support the children through another radical change quite so soon after everything else. Let alone come to terms with how I might feel about my partner undergoing such a large amount of surgery and having to get used to a very different face from the one I knew. I don’t think any of this has even crossed Vicky’s mind. I was especially worried about my son, his autism made change very difficult for him to process. He had done so magnificently with the news that his step-father was female, but how could he process someone who just looked utterly different. What if he just couldn’t ‘know’ Vicky anymore.

Then, at the end of May, right in the middle of all this agonizing over the timing of surgery, my son stepped into the road near his college without so much as a sideways glance. He was hit by a lorry. He flew through the air, was knocked unconscious and his bottom lip and chin were badly damaged. I got a phone call as I was on my way to visit my father in Ruislip. I drove to the Gloucester hospital not knowing anymore than that he had not been conscious when he was taken to hospital. When I got there he was having his chin stitched back together. I tried to hold his hand but nearly fainted and had to wait outside. Useless bloody mother. Afterwards, unable to speak, his face swollen and bruised, he stretched his arms out for a hug. Autistic people are not big on hugging, it was, I think the third hug he had ever given me. I brought him home and we fed him baby food and crushed up painkillers drunk through a straw. This, I thought to myself, is what Vicky wants to do to herself on purpose. She will make her face even more damaged than this and for what? To appease a society that can’t understand not everyone gets born just so? It seemed to me very wrong. If society can’t handle your face surely what needs to change is society.

My beautiful boy was miraculously ok. No broken bones and, two weeks later, his face looked as though nothing had happened apart from a very cool scar on his chin, which many a goth would have paid good money for. He still maintained it was the lorry driver’s fault, but it was a forty mile an hour zone and the driver had been doing twenty five. I thank him with all my heart. After two weeks he was well enough to go back to college on the firm understanding that there was a bit more work to do on road safety. We lived to fight another day.

Something was wrong with Vicky. She had got what many a transexual dreams of, a loving and supportive family, normality, and yet she was miserable. Looking at the problem sensibly it became clear that its cause was chemical not emotional. Maybe her hormone treatment was causing her problems. She went for blood tests in August, thanks to our GP who was being brilliant. Vicky was, essentially, depressed. Why she was depressed needed to be looked into. There were several possible culprits, but the spring had gone out of her step and she couldn’t see the positives about her anymore. She was also suffering from night sweats - quite severe, it was like sleeping next to a swimming pool. Oh yes,and hot flushes. She was like a menopausal woman, except transition was supposed to be like puberty. It really did seem a bit unfair that my ‘husband’ had hit the menopause before me.

Alongside all this Vicky had booked her FFS (facial feminization surgery) for the middle of October in Chicago which meant I would be able to be there for the first week and hold her hand. After that I had to get back to be there for my children. A few months after that she would have the vocal surgery to tighten her vocal chords and raise her voice pitch. Now we believed that the GCS wouldn’t be until the following autumn and then, oh then, it would all be done and we could get on with the rest of our lives. No more surgery to face, no more transition, just years and years of nothing much. It sounded lovely.

Vicky was about to prove herself the noblest of step-parents. For months her step-son had been going on about a weekend Goth festival called ‘Bloodstock’. I know. It sounds delightful, I’m surprised you haven’t been. Anyway I had kind of volunteered to go, in a tent and stay in the middle of non-stop grinding goth metal music with my darling child for four days. I was quite worried about how I would cope. It was at this point that Vicky, in an act of beautiful self sacrifice and love, offered to go instead. To a Goth festival for four days. Four days in a tent with an autistic 20 year old who couldn’t stop talking. They say worse things happen at sea. I doubt it. I determined that, should she survive, I would buy her the shiniest sparkliest, most inappropriate shoes I could find. I felt genuinely guilty as I waved them off with their camping gear. Just not quite enough to take her place. It was about this time that Son came up with alternative lyrics to the ‘Addams family’ theme tune:

A step-dad who’s transgender

A son who plays a Fender

A mum who can’t remember

The Cantons family.

I was left to have a lovely mother daughter weekend with my gorgeous girl which I was really looking forward to. We might not have been average, but we were happy.

Finally blood test results showed Vicky had an underactive thyroid which accounted for all sorts of odd symptoms she had been suffering from. Aside from the depression, there was hair loss and dry patches of skin on her hands, not to mention the difficulty she had experienced in shifting weight despite exercising like a mad thing. This was particularly important with major surgery coming up. Once Vicky was reassured that she was not going mad but just suffering the well known effects of a thyroid condition she actually started doing a lot better at regulating her anger, which made it nicer for everyone around her! All treatable thank goodness.

My remaining concern was that, despite our best efforts, there was no one to come to Chicago with us for Vicky’s eight hour facial surgery. I would have to sit that one out on my own and the prospect of it frightened me. In my darkest moments I imagined something going wrong and finding myself having to phone my mother in law and tell her her child was dead. I did not want to be alone. I also could not begin to imagine what Vicky would look like. Immediately of course, she would look like she’d been attacked with a baseball bat, but later, when the swelling had gone down. Would she still look hispanic, like a member of her family? Would there be anything left that I could recognize of the person that I’d fallen in love with? There just wasn’t any way of knowing. I think Vicky was scared too, but she wasn’t letting on.

It was hard for both of us. Some people have suggested to me that it is harder for a partner. I think it’s hard but I have no idea what it is like to be transgendered. I think maybe one difference for a partner is that you have a choice which your transgendered partner doesn’t. You can leave. Choosing not to leave can bring down the wrath of family and ‘friends’ who think they know better than you what you should do. It’s that element of choice, especially if you have kids, that makes other people feel entitled to shun you when you don’t do what they think is best. That is hard. For everyone.

The American surgeon came to London to meet with all of his prospective English patients. The event, and it felt like an event, took place in London. A combination of past and prospective patients, it was the largest number of transgendered women I had ever met. There was a private meeting with Doctor. D. where we were shown the physical realities of what could be achieved, grinding down bone and repositioning skin and cartilage. We asked lots of questions and learnt a lot of things I’d rather not have known about plastic surgery. I can see why Vicky would put herself through this, but I will certainly be growing old as nature intended, saggy and wrinkly. Gorgeous.

After the one on one meetings we gathered for a presentation with slide show, showing past patients, some of whom were actually there. We met Sarah, a young transgendered woman with both her parents there. Due to go over to Chicago in a few weeks time, she was slim and gentle but her face was so masculine, prominent Adam’s apple, large pointy nose, obvious masculine jaw and brow. I felt so sad for her and all that she would have to face presenting as female, but looking so obviously male. Still she had the love and support of her parents and that was wonderful, Maybe it would be enough.

Some of the transgendered women were fervent in their support of Doctor. D. The transformations he had achieved for them were almost unbelievable. First we would be shown the picture of a transgendered woman, looking no more female than Sylvester Stallone, then the ‘after’ picture, they were not all beautiful, though some were, some of them were plain, but they were all female, and they looked happy. Beautiful men, I realized, make beautiful women, and plain men make plain women. You can switch your perceived position on the gender continuum, but not on the beauty line. There, your position is fixed. It was quite a realization. I am as beautiful as I will ever be and as I ever was, no more and no less. Age won’t have anything to do with it, I will be this level of lovely (or not, Vicky thinks I’m beautiful and that’s enough for me) whatever I look like. What a strange way to learn such a lesson. What I really understood at that meeting though, was that this was really going to happen, Vicky was going to be one of those ‘after’ shots. How would I even recognize her?

It was the beginning of October. Vicky was only two and a bit weeks away from facial feminization surgery in Chicago. It was estimated that it would take eight hours to complete the operation, maybe longer.

Ellie had begun telling more and more friends about her step parent, most were lovely and not bothered at all, but one day she came and told me that one person she had spoken to had elected to tell everyone he knew in the ‘OMG’ style, that there was a ‘tranny’ living in the area. Once he knew it was a transexual and her step-parent, the boy refused to speak to her. He and his friends had, according to her, been having a good laugh at her expense. Though you might argue such a boy was no great loss as a friend, it was very upsetting. I felt so useless. Unable to undo the hurt that had been caused to her or stop such cruel behaviour by young people I’d never even met.

The timing was awful. I was completely torn between wanting to stay and help Ellie deal with such a horrible situation and the knowledge that if I didn’t go to Chicago in a couple of weeks leaving Ellie to handle all this on her own, Vicky would be amongst strangers at one of the most difficult moments of her life. My consolation, and really the saving of the situation, was that my twin sister reassured me she would be there if needed for Ellie.

I also talked to Ellie about the difference between being a prat and hate crime. I explained to her that she didn’t have to put up with taunts anymore than she would if it were racially motivated or to do with sexual orientation, I was still worried though. It was a lot for a 17 year old to deal with. Even when she had found it hard, she always knows what was right and stood up for her step parent in the face of such nastiness.

As she said to me one morning, ‘you can’t have everyone arrested who isn’t nice to me’. Well no, even over protective me realized that! On the other hand, I didn’t want her to accept transphobic abuse as just ‘one of those things’.

Vicky and I went to Chicago. At the airport she showed her passport. The next time she showed her passport in this country she would need a doctor’s letter to confirm it really was her.