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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RAMBLINGS By Cassandra Anne Morrison PROLOGUE: I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish. I have an inner self of which I was ignorant. Everything goes thither now. What happens there I do not know. Writing a letter today I was struck by the fact that I had been here only three weeks. Three weeks elsewhere, in the country for example, would be like a day; here they seem like years. And I mean to write no more letters. What's the use of telling anyone that I am changing? If I am changing, then surely I am no longer the person I was, and if I am something else than heretofore, then it is clear that I have no acquaintances. And to strange people, to people who do not know me, I cannot possibly write. ---Rainer Maria Rilke THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE. Wednesday, April 11, 2001 5:00am. As I sit here in Las Vegas --- sleepless again --- or do I mean still? I reach for my current book. Alas... it's not here. I have carelessly left it on the front seat of my friend's car. Not surprising... considering how many Bloody Marys I consumed at the Free Zone. But now I must wait who knows how many hours until I can see my friend again and retrieve my current escape from myself. Time stretches ahead of me like a long dark, endless, and inescapable prison with only my thoughts for company. The razor beckons. And why not? Always before when confronted with myself I have been able to find solace in the gentle stinging pain it brings as it slices ever so effortlessly and sensuously through my welcoming flesh. But no. No. I have promised my friends that I will not again resort to that method of quietening my mind. It distresses them so to see my bleeding wrists after one of these autos-da- fe of mine that I finally took pity on them and gave my word. It is not that they mind my bleeding, you understand, it is the sight of the blood that makes them uncomfortable. So I sit here, bleeding invisibly, and let the razor alone. After all, one should not lightly break a promise to one's friends. Today is the day I learn the results of my latest AIDS test. I get tested regularly these days. Just as one regularly checks the oil and water in one's car. And for much the same reason. Routine wear and tear on this corporeal vehicle called "the body." I have never yet subscribed to the concept of "safe" sex. After all... it is unsafe to walk down the streets... one cannot even be sure of drawing "safe" drinking water from the tap? Why then should sex be any different. Sex should be an adventure... and adventures are, by definition... unsafe. So alone with my thoughts... I sit and wait to find out whether or not I have this disease. And which answer, I wonder, will displease me least? If I do not have it, I shall be forced to go on living... especially now that I have made that promise about the razor. If the test comes back positive, however, maybe my friends will release me from my vow. Or am I giving them too much credit perhaps? It may be, after all, that they are the sort of friends who will expect me to put up a good fight against this retrovirus. They may be the Dylan Thomas type of friends. The "Get out there and win one for the Gipper" kind of friends. The... not to put too fine a point on it... ANNOYING type of friends. I hope this is not the case... for then I would have to discard them and make all new friends... and that's always more work than it's worth. So is life... when you get right down to it. It certainly hasn't lived up to all the hype in the brochures. To hell with that "rage... rage against the dying of the light" stuff. Bring on the darkness I say. At least it's quiet and peaceful... and free of pain. Life isn't, though... is it? Not when you're an outsider from Day One. Even a short trip down my memory lane ought to convince the objective reader of that. What was the first experience of my childhood, after all... if it wasn't rejection? I was born and my biological mother washed her hands of me as soon as she could. It's really something to grow up knowing that the person most closely related to you by ties of blood wanted nothing to do with you. "Ah... but," my friends say. "At least you were adopted." Yeah... by a couple who couldn't have children and wanted a son to carry on the family name. That went well, didn't it? Imagine how pleased they were the day I announced, "Guess what, folks? I'm really a woman inside this body here... just call me Cassandra. Oh... one more thing... unless modern surgical techniques achieve some new miracles you might want to forget about grandchildren, sorry and all that: but there it is." If that was the best news they'd ever heard they certainly hid it well. Or take that November night when I was sixteen and I decided to venture outside "en femme" for a quick run around the block. It was my first time out except for brief sojourns in the safety of our back yard. Not only did I get the crap kicked out of me by three guys from the High School football team... they also raped me saying that, since I wanted to be a girl they'd help me be one. Or that wonderful day in Colorado Springs when a bunch of guys decided to kick my teeth in because "they didn't like the way I was dressed." (Apparently they were from the Fashion Police). Or all the sneers and jeers and humiliation before, in between, and after the aforementioned highlights of my life. Is it any wonder then that Death is, to me, a friend I long to meet? Death brings forgetfulness, I've heard... and forgetfulness is what I want. I want these memories to go away. Wouldn't you? Of course you would... unless you're one of those brainwashed morons who believes that suicide is some sort of "unforgivable sin." "Sin against whom?" is my question. God, perhaps? But if, as I'm constantly being told, "God is Love," how, then, can He object if we choose to end our pain and suffering by the most direct means possible? And if He does, in fact, object... how, then, can He be Love? "But, Cassandra," the objective reader might interject at this point. "Don't you have any happy memories?" Sure... some. Take last July, for example. When I was so certain that I'd found love at last. I was so certain of it, in fact, that I gave up my apartment in Carson City (and the independence that went with it) in order to move down to Las Vegas in order to spend the rest of my life with the one I loved. Not the smartest thing I've ever done... as it turned out... but I was so starved for affection (and, let us not forget, for acceptance as the woman I've always felt myself to be) that I told all my doubts and misgivings to shut the hell up and went. And, for a while, I really was happy. Oh, our relationship had its ups and downs... the way relationships do... but I told myself that, in the end, it would be worth it. In the end we would be together. And we were... off and on... right through last Christmas when he asked me to marry him... saying he'd pay for my surgery and all that so it would be legal. Naturally, I said, "Yes." I even spent Christmas with his mother and sister as his, "bride to be". Then he met a 27-year-old dancer (also a pre-op TS) at the Las Vegas Lounge and proceeded to forget all the promises he'd made to me. (It's quite possible he would even have forgotten my name if he hadn't wanted to tell me how she made him feel so young and alive.) The upshot of all this was then he moved her into his apartment. Being aheartless kind of bitch she dumped him as soon as she'd taken him for every cent she could get out of him and left town completely. This made him rather unhappy and he wanted to cry on my shoulder and get sympathy and TLC and everything and this time I said "No." Based on my reaction he decided that I'd never really cared about him at all because I was obviously too shallow a person to know what caring really was and severed communications with me for that time. My response to that was to sever a few of the more... ah... insignificant veins on my wrists. My roommate's response to that was to evict me from our apartment. Such good friends, my friends. "If a friend is having emotional difficulties throw her out in the street... that ought ta cheer her up." It didn't... but what the heck... it's the thought that counts. After a brief stay in a mental hospital, and a short visit with my Dad as my Cassandra self (the first and last time THOSE two will ever meet) I returned to Las Vegas and just about the first person I called was Robby. That was when I discovered that while I was away he'd undergone an epiphany of some sort and come to the realization that he needed the "real thing" in his life. At first I mistakenly assumed that he'd learned to love Coca- Cola... but, no, it turned out that by the "real thing" he meant a "biological" woman... into which category, alas, I did not fall. This put a finale to my latest fling with love. Not with sex, you understand... just with love. Following my return and right up until I moved into my newest place, I was cheerfully having sex with any guy who was willing to buy me a few drinks. I didn't care if they were HIV+ or not... I didn't even ask, nor did I ask them to use any protection. What did I care? So now I wait to learn the results of my latest test. *** The Test was negative... . INTERLUDE: From childhood's hour I have not been as others were I have not seen as others saw. I could not bring my passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved I loved Alone! ---Edgar Allan Poe ALONE. CHAPTER TWO: stillness at the heart of the rose like the silence at the heart of the Cosmos speaks of things unseen yet dimly known unknown yet strangely felt and i clown princess of trans stumbling through life like a drunkard directionless for the most part with only one goal to be whole a goal I shall never reach for those who teach have not learned from the stillness nor the silence at the heart of the god. ---Cassandra Morrison "The Voice of the Silence April 13, 2001 Friday Of late I find myself growing less and less interested in the question: "What causes Gender Dysphoria?" By which I mean that I don't really care whether or not it is a physical problem, a psychological problem, or both. In the end it doesn't really matter because, you see, the fact of my transsexual state is something I have to cope with... no matter what the answer may eventually turn out to be. The question that I am beginning to deal with now, though, is: "Why am I a Transsexual?" In other words: "What did this soul do that it should receive this particular form of karmic retribution during this particular incarnation?" Or more simply: "Why me and not somebody else?" I can't be the first one to have personalized the question in this way... I know... I know... but, then, no one else's answer would or could be valid for me! I find myself in the position of the Christian Mystic who said: "Of what use, Gabriel, is your message to Mary --- unless you bring the exact same message to me?" Or, paraphrasing a question the disciples once asked of Jesus: "Who hath sinned: this girl, or her parents, that she should be born into the wrong body?" Because, when you get right down to it, this is the question that demands an answer. And it is one that never even gets asked... not, at least, at any of the transgender support groups I have been involved with. Everybody there is so concerned with why society treats them like outsiders that they never pause to ask the simple question. "Why was I put in this position to begin with?" Thus: I A sojourner of Night (Afraid of Light) Creature of the lonely ill-lit walks Who baulks At clean and well-lit places (Afraid of Faces) The Blessed Ones Who linger there beyond despair And leave me to my dim-lit walks Where Self engages Self in Talks How my life could run differently (If only I were not like me) Thus: A Cross-Sexed Angel cloaked in Night (Afraid of Light) Concealed from Crowds by fogs and clouds Too proud (Or scared) To talk in shared Confidences of our painful status What Power made us Thus? ---Night Angel by Cassandra Morrison The question begins with a perception, though... doesn't it? The problem wouldn't even arise unless a) I perceived myself as being somehow different from those with whom I came in contact and b) others, in their turn, perceived me as being somehow different from them. Unless these two criteria are met then one can not say that the difference I feel is a real or absolute difference. Others must also perceive it. So, then, do others perceive me as being different? Yes, they do NOW: those who knew me both before and after my transition certainly see me as different. That's not what I'm trying to get at. What I am trying to discover is if they sensed something different about me before my transition began. Did my friends from those distant days of childhood know what they saw when they saw me? "Well, yeah, now that you mention it," Joe-Bob says in answer to my question, scratching his red neck as he launches a graceful squirt of tobacco juice into his nephew's goldfish bowl. "I allus kinda figgered yew-all fer a pansy." Well, there you have it---confirmation of my inner perceptions by an outside observer!!! Now I am ready to confront God. April 14, 2001 Saturday As I clamber up Mount Sinai I realize (among other things) that stiletto heels and fish-net stockings are probably not the best garb for mountaineering, but I press on, nonetheless, for I want some answers here! Ah! There it is: in that cleft just above and to my right. A bush that burns yet is not consumed. "Yahweh!" I cry. "It is I... thy daughter Cassandra! I would have speech with thee!" I wait half hopefully and half fearfully for a response. Will the old Collector of Foreskins talk to me or will he blast me to nothingness as I stand. Then from the Burning Bush comes a Voice: "We're sorry... no one is available to take your call... please leave your name and number at the tone and We will get back to you as soon as possible... the (ahem) Recording Angel." I am growing old before my time... and it is through no fault of my own... you understand that, right? Right? I mean... for years I was taught that "God is Watching!" He notices even the fall of the lowliest sparrow" I mean... .all that omniscience BS... and then to find out that He's out to lunch! It is aggravating to say the least. Does this Collector of Foreskins really suppose that I have nothing else to do but hang around waiting for Him to finish His coffee break? Spurned by the Bush That Burns I turned back down the mountainside in righteous wrath and much huffiness. For 40 Days and Nights in White Satin I did Wander in the Wilderness surviving on HoHos and Wild Honey and it was during this time that the Devil came to me and tempted me. And some of the time he had the appearance of Brad Pitt... and some of the time did he look like Harrison Ford... but always and always his Voice was the Voice of Sean Connery. "If thou beist Transgendered then command these Tumbleweeds that they be made razors!" "It is written," said I. "That Pre-Ops shall not live by Gillette alone... but by every word of that proceedeth out of the mouth of Harry Benjamin!" Then the Devil took me up on a high mountain and showed me all the Frederick's' of Hollywood. "Worship me," said he, "and all this lingerie shall be yours!" "It is writ... " I began. "Er... did you say ALL?" And the Devil nodded and he laughed... and I laughed and nodded. And I did worship Lucifer there in the Wilderness. I spent the major part of my formative years in fasting and prayer... praying that He would remove these "evil inclinations towards femininity" from me and make me normal! I fasted, I tell you... and I prayed... and occasionally I "sinned" (as the Scripture would have it) by once again putting on women's clothing... after which I would feel guilty, AND depressed, AND suicidal, and I would pray yet again. "Oh, Father, in the name of thine Only Begotten Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, make me normal, I beg thee!" Nothing. Finally, one day, it came to me... God is either: a) Dead, or He never existed in the first place. b) The sort of sadistic monster who sets some up to fail just because He occasionally gets bored. OR c) He, She, or It is not the God of the Holy Bible at all and whatever He, She, or It may be (S)he does not care that I am a Transsexual. In fact, that is precisely what (S)he wanted me to be from the Beginning. Alternative 1: That God is Dead (or never existed). I have no logical reason for dismissing this possibility. It just feels wrong. As I behold the Multiverse in all its beauty and complexity I cannot believe that it was created by that legendary Riverboat Gambler: Random Chance. Alternative Two: God really is the sort of sadistic, etc. etc. If this alternative is the true one than clearly God is not worth wasting my time on. So the hell with what He wants... time to carpe that old diem!!! Alternative Three: There is a God, alright, but She has nothing to do with that book called The Bible at all. She is something entirely different and much more wonderful. (We'll come back to this later). Interlude: Have I said it before am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It still goes badly. But I intend to make the most of my time. To think, for instance, that I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several. There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, it gets dirty, it splits at the folds, it stretches, like gloves one has worn on a journey. These are thrifty, simple people; they do not change their face, they never even have it cleaned. It is good enough, they say, and who can prove to them the contrary? The question of course, arises, since they have several faces, what do they do with the others? They store them up. Their children will wear them. But sometimes, too, it happens that their dogs go out with them on. And why not? A face is a face. Other people put their faces on, one after the other, with uncanny rapidity and wear them out. At first it seems to them they are provided for always; but they scarcely reach forty --- and they have come to the last. This naturally has something tragic. They are not accustomed to taking care of faces, their last is worn through in a week, has holes, and in many places is as thin as paper; and then little by little the under layer, the no-face comes through, and they go about with that. ---Rainer Maria Rilke The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Chapter Three Re: Each morning when you awaken, greet yourself as the beloved stranger that you truly are. With every breath you are transformed - you are not exactly who you were a second before. Fear tells you to fulfill the expected. Love says, "May I have this dance?" ---Emmanuel 17 APRIL 2001 Tuesday It may be that I occasionally suffer from delusions. But the point I'm trying to make should be clear. I would sell my soul to the Devil... or to anyone else who made it possible for me to achieve a unity between my physical and spiritual selves. But there are always issues involved with being a creature like me. About a week ago I was on my way to the store... I was in desperate need of tobacco. It was early... so I didn't shave or do my makeup or anything and this guy who passed me stopped dead and said, "You're a man aren't you?" "I'm sorry," I replied. "That's incorrect. But you do get this lovely watch and a year's supply of turtle wax." At this point his eyes sort of glazed over and he went away without further discourse. Two points for Cassandra, while the Straights have yet to score! Now to some of my sisters (and brothers) that would have been a devastating encounter. To me it was a ho-hum experience. It doesn't happen that often anymore, and, when it does, it's no big deal. I can handle that stuff and, besides, it was my own fault. I should've shaved and put on my makeup before I went out. No... the kind of thing that bothers me is when a straight guy tries to pick me up. Take Antonio, for example. I ran into him at the bus stop last Saturday. We started talking and before I knew what had happened he had his arms around me and was telling me how much he needed me. How lonely he was and how beautiful I was and he gave me his phone number and begged me to call him the next day and then the bus came and I got on and I never saw him again. Nor did I call him. I threw his phone number away, as a matter of fact. Why did I do that? A sense of ethics I guess. I mean... he was handsome enough and quite likeable... but he'd been drinking which I'm sure impaired his critical sense. He wanted a companion... but I'm damn sure I'm not the kind he had in mind. He mistook me for a biological female... and I'm not. I'm not. Now, had I been post-op, I'd have gone off with him then and there... but I'm not that either! And I couldn't. Do you have any idea how humiliated a guy can be when he finds out that he's been sexually aroused by someone he would certainly regard as being another man? The answer is: a LOT! I spared him all that. He'll never know what it was he was fondling at the bus stop that day. Not if I have any say in the matter. That's the sort of thing I cry over. The knowledge that I can tempt a man; even a straight man... I just can't have one of my own. And I want one. I want to be loved as Cassandra by a man more than anything else in the world. I just know that it cannot be. Not as long as I'm a pre-op! And then... again... my thoughts turn to my only friend... the razor and I want to cut again... because I'm so tired of trying to live without love when to love and be loved is what I was made for!!! And the razor loves me... this I know... for my scarred wrists tell me so. We concluded previously, did we not, that The Supreme Power, whether masculine or feminine, has no problem with transgendered beings as such, and indeed, manufactures them from the same dust as S/He does heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, platypuses, gnus, and aardvarks, right? But the question comes up again... why? Why did She, He, or It stick me with this role? I mean, if one of the hallmarks of the Divine is a capacity for love then surely it would n0ot saddle a sweet and wonderful person like me with a life that is full of way too much pain. Or would S/He? And if S/He would, what would be the reason? Is it possible that it's just one of those things... a birth defect that happened not because the Divine willed it, but just because birth defects sometimes happen? Yes, it could. But, if this is so, then the persecution we encounter from the Mundanes as we begin to outwardly express our inner natures, is surely unjustified. And if it is unjustified then it must be, mustn't it, that they only do it out of ignorance and all we need do to stop this persecution is to educate them as to the true nature of gender dysphoria. The said education would obviously bring about understanding. Understanding would lead to tolerance and eventual acceptance... and before you know it... all will be corsets and cream cheese for all concerned. Or so some of my activist friends believe. The ones who are fighting the good fight for the Rights of the Transgendered. What they fail to take into account, however, is the nature of homosapiens. When we encounter prejudice from whence does it come? From devout Christians, mostly. Now, not all Christians are militant about it... this is because people function on several different levels of their psyche at the same time. On the one hand they can be very nice towards us, very accepting of us on the surface, all the while deploring our sinful nature and rather sad about the fact that we will all surely burn in hell for eternity. Then there are those few truly honest ones who have a suspicion buried deep down inside that actually the Bible is wrong. That God does not really hate us at all. This suspicion makes them feel like a Christian Scientist with a toothache because their whole belief system is based on the idea that that book is the Word of God and that God has miraculously preserved it, without error, from the time its various portions were written until this present time. For any portion of this book to be proven to be demonstrably wrong therefore would shake the very foundation of their Faith and if they once begin to question their faith they end up naked and afraid, facing a Universe full of questions to which they no longer have the answers. Very few people have the courage to do this. On the other hand... here is the so-called Transcommunity itself. It doesn't really exist in the way that these activists so fondly believe it does. The overwhelming majority of us who are part of this community of their dreams do not, in fact, define ourselves as trans anything. We who are male to female transsexuals define ourselves as women. The females to male define themselves as men. Transition is a process we go through... it is a temporary phenomenon, it is not who we are from everlasting to everlasting. For this reason, then, very few of us actually care about the Rights of the Transgendered because one who needs such protection is, by definition, a failure. It's like this; if they were able to pass as women and men they wouldn't need those "special" rights at all. Would they? This past year I have found myself attending the meetings of a Transgender Support Group here in Vegas. It was something fresh, at first, but lately I find myself attending the meeting out of habit. There is no longer any expectation that the meetings will benefit me in some way. It is understood that no one will discuss the cons of being what we are. Except to brag how they have overcome all obstacles on their marvelous march to womanhood. Which is totally bogus if you ask me. I mean... very few of them even seem to understand what it is to be a woman. The male conditioning which they received in childhood seems to remain unchallenged for the most part and it informs their actions, thoughts, and feelings. Of course, this could be a misconception on my part... it may be that I don't really know them well enough yet to say how they think and feel. Perhaps they are more like me than I give them credit for... perhaps they, too, are afraid to really open up in these groups because they think I might laugh at THEM. That is possible, isn't it? How many modern transsexuals are unacknowledged shamans? Perhaps it is to poets they should go for counsel, rather than surgeons. ---Camille Paglia Sexual Personae, ch. 2 (1990). The Full Moon shall be rising soon It brings the Summoning As Maleness dies... in women's guise Another Self is seen So watch as daylight dims to night You'll hear the gentle hum Of neon signs And power lines That hiss: "Come, Angel... Come Come out into the Full Moon's light Come as a girl arrayed In women's clothes and nylon hose Come join the 'Soft Parade' Make your Fantasy... Reality Let the Goddess be your guide Let the soft caress of that silky dress Set free your 'Girl Inside' A sea-change that is rich and strange And full of girlish fun From Masculine to Feminine Come out, Night Angel, Come!" Cassandra Anne Morrison THE SUMMONING CHAPTER FOUR. "When one dons femininity There is a certain style An aura of infinity A thought-provoking smile. "With which the role must be equipped" The ageing Drag Queen said "A softer glow' she slyly quipped Or else one WILL get 'read'. Now when one wears a pretty dress Then car-repair is out And football too (and this I stress) These Rules you must not flout! To chew tobacco's ill-advised You must sit down to pee Or else they'll know that you're disguised And you may have to flee. Keep knees together when you sit And do not spread them wide Or else your gender you admit (They'll see the thing you hide). Please keep these simple rules and few And, ladies, you will find That as a girl they will treat you Which I don't think you'll mind! ---"The Rules" Cassandra Morrison So we go to the bars... and there we drink... and listen to deafening music... and sooner or later some man that we have never seen before (and will, most likely, not see again) begins to tell us that we are beautiful and desirable and soon we are fondling each other and kissing each other and, perhaps, we even go off with each other. Either to his place, or to ours. or a motel, or an alley... and engage in a little casual sex and that we count as success of a kind. And, after all, is it not better to sucCEED, than to suck eggs? And I, who claim to prefer the life of the mind, am no more immune to this pull than the rest. Physical contact, physical touching... this reassures me for a time... and, for a time, it quells the insistent whispers of my oldest friend... The Razor. Drink, and dance and laugh and lie, Love the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.) ---Dorothy Parker THE FLAW IN PAGANISM I have often wondered if happiness can be found in the bottle. Surcease of sorrow for a limited period is there for the imbibing... but what about real happiness? I fear that only those who have succeeded in drinking themselves to death can truly answer that question. It is always possible that I shall someday acquire an immunity to this weakness as well... but I doubt it. I love a man's caress too much to easily give it up. As for the alcohol... that too has its place. Loosens me up. Don't you know, makes it possible for me to assume all kinds of positions that I would otherwise believe to be physically impossible for an ageing gender mutant like myself. This makes my boy toys very happy indeed. But let us return to our muttons: What defines a transperson? Does the word have any absolute meaning? One could argue, for example, that all people are "in transition" in one way or another. After all, the Buddha has taught us that "Change is inherent in all things." That which does not change is DEAD. So, the first thing we have to do is to create a glossary of terms so that, for the purposes of our discussion, we know what these arcane terms mean. Otherwise, we'll never get anywhere: "So first your memory I'll jog, and say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG ." "Transgender" is better. "One who is in the act of crossing over from one gender to the other." As a general term that includes both transvestites and transsexuals it will serve our needs well enough, I think. But let us agree to discontinue the "transperson" nonsense we have no use in our discussion for terms which are so all-inclusive that they are meaningless. Many people (especially among the religiously-oriented) want to class us with homosexuals. I personally have no problem with being so classed... I am , in fact, quite honored by this. To be classed with such personal heroes as Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp does me no harm. But it is not quite accurate. At least, not completely so. There are male-to- female transsexuals who are lesbians, just as (I suppose) there are female- to-male transsexuals who are gay but one's sexual orientation is really different from one's gender and we should try to remember that. I, myself am a heterosexual woman... I like men. (It's possible I've mentioned that before). But it bears repeating. Not least because I do not define myself as a transsexual at all... but as a woman. This is important also. Being a "transsexual" is not my goal in life... being the woman I've always felt myself to be inside is! So this is this, and that is that. And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT. ---T. S. Eliot And now that we've agreed upon a terminology we can all use we can get on. Labels really are indispensable, you know. True, they've been misapplied in the past and misused as well... but that doesn't mean we can just do away with them. Anymore than we can do away with names because we're p***d off that our parents gave us the wrong ones. After all, I am not "The Male-to-Female Transsexual Formerly Known as Greg". Anymore than I would answer to "Hey, you!" My name is Cassandra... that is the right name for me. Why is that the right name for me? It's simple really... the names that we give to ourselves are the name that our souls respond to. They are the names that vibrate within our hearts and minds and to which we must respond and without which we cannot live! *** As most people know that "heterosexuality" definition was one of the last lies I was telling myself. Since I abandoned that and embraced my "Lesbianhood" I HAVE found happiness with a partner... but this will be dealt with in its place. *** March 4, 2002 But once you know who you are you find that that is still only half the battle. Because the question is not only who ARE you but whom do you trust? Who, in essence, do you serve? Well, but I knew that too, didn't I? From 1992 to 1998 I was the Bard of Swan's Inner Sorority (a TG/TS Support Group headquartered in San Jose, California) and there I wove my rhymes and told my tales and gave to my sisters (and brothers) the gift of laughter which I have always had in my keeping. INTERLUDE: WISHCRAFT. Know then, O Queens, that in the early days of the 21st Century one Milo Percival Entwhistle stood on the Bridge of Sighs Doesn't Matter and gazed morosely at the dark, slowly rolling John Waters beneath him. "Apr'es moi, lez deluge," he mumbled depressingly, as he climbed up on to the chest-high Barricade Mysterieuses that had been put there by foresighted bridge builders in order to stop people from doing precisely what Milo was about to do. But, just as he was taking one last look at this world and all the misery he had found it to contain, a Truly Wondrous Thing Happened! Suddenly (and for no apparent reason) the Moon began to glow with a curious golden glow and a thin shaft of light shot out of the Sea of Tranquility Base, the Eagle has Landing right at a point about three feet in front of him... whereupon it coalesced into a Shimmering Feminine Form Divine. "Hi, there!" the S.F.F.D. said brightly. "You must be Milo Percival Entwhistle!" "Er... that's right," said Milo. "Who are you?" "I'm the Fairy of Tranquility," she said, rather tranquilly. "You may call me Cybele, if you like, although that isn't my name and I almost never answer to it. I am here to grant you Three Wishes: One for the Maiden... One for the Mother... and One for the Crone." "Oh," said Milo, who was somewhat flummoxed by this but, nevertheless, determined to obey his sainted mother's precept about not looking Gift Horses in the Mouth. "Okay... er... let's see... " And Milo Percival Entwhistle began to think. And he thought, and he pondered. He ratiocinated and he conceptualized. He reasoned and he cogitated. He ideated and he lubricated. In short: he put his thinking cap on and he cerebrated like anything while what's her name waited. Tranquilly, of course. And, finally, Milo had an Aha experience of samadhi proportions. "I know what I want," said he. "Good!" said She Whom We Will Call Cybele (for the sake of convenience) Although It Is Emphatically Not Her Name. "And what is it you want?" "I want to be hugely popular among men!" cried Milo. "Done!" said Cybele and there was a flash of lightning, an almost deafening ssswhwwwhhhhooosh, and Milo suddenly found himself standing on a stage wearing nothing but pasties, a g-string, and nine inch heels. Before him were what seemed to be hundreds of drooling men, all whistling and applauding and stamping their feet. "More!" they cried. "Take it all off, baby!" "What the..." he began, and stumbled, for his voice, which had formerly been a deep base was suddenly a light contralto. Suddenly a pair of hands (invisible to all but him) steadied him. "Hush," Cybele hissed in his ear. "But what..." "You are no longer Milo Percival Entwhistle," Cybele explained. "I'm not?" "No." "Then who am I?" "You are Denise Diamond, exotic dancer and B movie Queen, and you are adored by men as far as the eye can see... see?" "I see," he said as his (I mean, her) soft and shapely hands came up of their own accord and stroked the 44 double D's that adorned her formerly flat and manly bosom. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind." "No?" Cybele inquired. "No." "Too bad." "So how about getting me out of here?" "Are you crazy?" Cybele demanded. "You are the Star of the Show... and you know what they say about the Show?" "Er... it must go on?" "Right. I'll meet you in your dressing room later and we'll talk," she promised and, with that, Cybele was gone. Milo (now Denise) paraded around the stage, bumping and grinding to the best of her ability (and she was pretty darn able when you get right down to it) until her number was over. At which point she left the stage to a standing (in more ways than one) ovation and hurried to her dressing room. While her maid drew her a nice hot bubble bath, Denise pinned up her long flaxen curls and removed the remainder of her skimpy attire. "What do you think, Miss?" the maid inquired. Denise inspected the picture thus presented to her gaze. "Beautifully drawn as usual, Estelle," she said then. "Now how about running the water?" "As you wish, Miss." Denise turned back to her mirror as Estelle went into the adjoining bathroom. "Damn, I'm fine!" she said to herself, caressing the nipples of her beautiful breasts, then spreading her legs wide, the better to see her vagina. "I wonder if I'm a virgin?" she said, inserting one long and shapely finger into... "Still dissatisfied?" asked Cybele, materializing from nowhere in her usual way. "Huh?" said Denise, whose thoughts were on something else entirely. "What? Oh! Good Heavens no!" "I'm glad to hear it. Now for your Second Wish... what would you like?" "Your bath is ready, Miss," Estelle called from the other room. Denise Diamond rose from her dressing table and undulated towards the bathroom. "Ah... can I get back to you on that?" she said. "You see, I have a date with this really important Producer later and... well... I just don't have time to think about that right now." "This is most unusual," said Cybele. "But, I suppose... " "Thanks awfully," Denise interrupted. "I promise I'll think about it tomorrow!" she said, as the bathroom door started to close behind her. "After all tomorrow is another day!" she concluded in a sudden burst of originality. As it happened, though, neither on the next day (or on any of the days that followed) did Miss Diamond find any use for her other two wishes... which surprised Cybele (not her real name) not at all. Which means that the tranquil Fairy of Tranquillity had two whole wishes just sitting around in her wish hamper gathering pixie dust. As for what she did with them and who got the benefit of them... that, I am afraid, is another story. Which I will most likely tell you another time. For now, sweet dreams, dear ones, and flights of fairies (and other equally improbable creatures) sing thee to thy rest... ---"Wishcraft" c. 1994 by Cassandra Morrison CHAPTER FIVE RE: There in the darkness Unseen but sensed Dwells the thing I fear I have spent The major portion of my years Fleeing the Thing in the Dark I found ways of diverting my thoughts Some successful Some not And when they were not Then did I embrace my death For death was not the thing I feared Death dwells not in darkness But in Light... But I had not earned his embrace Not earned his tender kiss And so I lived (if "living" describes it) And still at times I shook with dread For sometimes I would catch a glimpse Of the Thing in the Dark... And then one day Not long ago There came a day when I could not run When there was no place left to hide No sanctuary to take me in And I came face to face with the Thing I feared (That day I gazed into my mirror) And saw my soul without its mask... I found at last the "I" in "me" I saw it was no cause for fear Instead my fear now fled away... Cassandra Anne Morrison Saturday, November 30, 2002 12/7/02 6:30 AM There has been something of a hiatus in this journal. Probably just as well... hindsight gives us insight you know. MUCH has happened since my last entry. For one thing: I am no longer in Las Vegas. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota these days... let me see if I can recall the incidents that led up to this. Following my last flirtation with the razor (see the earlier portions of this journal I left the apartment I'd been sharing with Cynthia (and where most of the early portions of this journal were put into their final form) and went and stayed with Jennifer for awhile (until her sister needed that space) and THEN I moved in with Cathy. It must have been around August of 2001 then. Because I was certainly living with Cathy when the terrible events of September 11th happened. I don't suppose anyone who witnessed the events of that day will ever be the same. I have never felt such rage in my life as I did towards those inhuman monsters who caused such death and destruction. It helped me to understand what my parent's generation must have felt after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Grief, and helplessness, and intense rage all mixed together. I don't ever want to feel like that again. INTERLUDE: I cannot believe the anger in me The rage that's there for all to see What can this thing inside me be? Some demon seeking to be free? It came upon a September Morn When the winds of war did blow When Murder came on deadly wings The blood of the innocent began to flow. I learned again what I knew so well Men are slower to love than they are to hate Shattering dreams that it took decades to build And now my fury won't abate. Bin Ladin you made this anger in me This rage that's there for all to see A demon seeking to be free And so I'll send it back to thee. Now war once more will rule the world And thousands more will die And all these deaths are at YOUR door Accept them... don't be shy. Don't be bashful Bin Ladin---Take your place Like the cowardly butcher you are Like Hitler, Attila, Hassan bin Sabbah I hope you like your war. Copyright (c)2001 Cassandra Anne Morrison Anyway, there I was at Cathy's and, for the first time, I was staying with someone who genuinely liked me and wished to help me instead of just use me... I owe Cathy a LOT because she gave me something I so desperately needed. TIME. Up until I got to Cathy's I had been reacting to each situation as it arose since all hopes of a reconciliation with Robbie had disappeared. So I gathered my wits, began writing again, and took a deep breath. And then I did something I had been wanting to do for a VERY long time. I changed my name. Now, at last, I was Cassandra Anne Morrison. Everything said so... my driver's license, my social security card, my library card, my bank account... even my birth certificate. True, the gender marker on my driver's license was still that much-hated "M" (Nevada being one of those backward states that refuses to acknowledge us for what we are no matter how much medical and psychological evidence you throw at them) but, hey... one thing at a time, right? You change the things you can and only THEN do you worry about the other stuff. And I had a feeling things were going to work out for me SOMEHOW. I didn't know how... but I was strangely optimistic. Strangely for ME, anyway. Because pessimism was more my thing. Even my name should tell you that: "Cassandra" after all, is a synonym for "pessimist", "Doomsayer", "Party- Pooper" and even "Anti-socialite". And that was all true for a VERY long time (to be perfectly honest I still haven't shed all my pessimistic tendencies... but they no longer control my life as once they did). But I shall get to what I believe to be the MAIN reason for this later. Let us just pause here to acknowledge that it was Cathy's willingness to just BE a friend that began the change in me. Her kindness gave me time to take stock of all that I had been through and all I had learned since Robbie. And there was a LOT. The main lesson (which was one I HAD actually learned before but had forgotten) was that there is ALWAYS a way. Even when things seem darkest... even when it seems that "there is no way out, or round, or through" (as H. G. Wells so succinctly puts it in MIND AT THE END OF IT'S TETHER) there is, in fact, a way. Things have a way of working out. But there are some rules for accessing this "Fairy Godmother Factor" as I choose to call it. Although it is not really something outside ourselves but rather a faculty we ALL possess but which we may not be able to activate consciously. But it DOES sometimes come into action independently of our conscious control when the safety or survival of the organism is threatened. What it seems to do is open doors that did not previously exist. We will discuss this later at more length but for the here and now I will just state that I was beginning to recognize the existence of this phenomenon. And for that reason I was absurdly confident that all the other things that I wished to accomplish along this path from changing the gender marker on my identification to changing the gender marker on my flesh would somehow be made possible. It was during this period that I set up the Transgender Support and Advocacy web site for the support group there in Las Vegas. And then there was the time I spent working with the HIV/AIDS Community Planning Group of Southern Nevada. Most of those involved with this were from the GLB portions of the GLBT Community. I was the only Transgendered Member of this group and I soon found out that my inclusion was merely because they needed a token Transgendered presence in order to guarantee their funding. It became quickly obvious that they had NO intention of listening to any of the suggestions I might make. By the time the first recommendations were made official the needs of the Transsexual portion of the (falsely so-called) GLBT Community had been dropped to the bottom of the list. And yet I had demonstrated with statistics from San Francisco and New York that the Transsexual Population is very MUCH at risk But, since I could produce no statistics from Southern Nevada their contention was that the need for intervention was quite small. "So why didn't you produce statistics from Southern Nevada?" I hear you ask. I couldn't. No study had ever been done. No one involved with AIDS prevention and control had ever bothered to interview the TS population. And even a look at the KNOWN AIDS cases wouldn't give a correct estimate of the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among transsexuals. The reason for this is quite clear to anyone who is familiar with our rather peculiar subculture. It is all about the nomenclature. "Labels! Labels! Get yer red-hot labels!" When you are ready to interview the TG/TS Community WHOM do you ask for? "Transsexuals?" "Genderqueers?" "Transgenderists?" "Bigenderists?" "Women?" Womyn?" "Shemales?" The problem is that it really depends on who you're talking to at the time and which label is popular that week. Almost everyone in this group will respond to a different terminology and unless you KNOW the terminology your words will fall on deaf ears. Another thing to remember when approaching this group is that the majority of the MTF Transsexuals see themselves as engaging in heterosexual sex when they have sex with men...whether they have had surgery or not. While there are those who see themselves as engaging in LESBIAN sex whether their partner is a genetic female or another MTF transsexual. And again, the factor of whether or not EITHER partner is post-operative is largely irrelevant to this self- designation. The danger enters where the FTM has a genetic male partner (particularly when that partner is NOT transsexual, because the extreme likelihood is that that partner will be bi-sexual and bi-sexuals tend to spread STDs more than any other group. And this includes HIV/AIDS. But, as I said, the Planning Council of Southern Nevada wasn't interested in any of this so I gave up that battle because I'm really not very interested in bashing my head into brick walls. This failure on my part to get help for my sisters would have bothered me much more than it did but for one factor which I have hitherto left unmentioned. ROMANCE!!!! I was in the process of falling in love with someone I had met while on-line. "Oh, NO! Not AGAIN?" I hear you cry. Well, I'm afraid so. She called herself Jagdpanther12001 and from the moment we began conversing I kind of new that THIS was the one. I mean the way we clicked it was as though we had known each other forever. But more about THAT in our next chapter...this one has run on long enough. As I look back upon my life Upon the years of pain and strife I see ONE thing so clear and plain I know I'd do it all again. I know you're wondering just how I can dismiss them lightly now The reason for that is plain to see It has a name...my Stephanie. She came on-line one day to chat We spoke of this---we spoke of that The more we talked the more I knew This would be the Love that's True. It was a year before we met A year I do not now regret Because it helped us both to know Our love would last---our love would grow. And it's grown stronger every day It's turned to bliss---What can I say? To be with her is pure delight Like Sunrise after Endless Night CHAPTER SIX---re: December 7, 2002 Today is Pearl harbor Day...one of those days of the year I am used to calling my Dad and chatting with him and listening to some of his reminiscences from his experiences in the Pacific Theater. (His stories tended to be more about the friends he made then...some of whom made it home again...some who didn't...then about the dangers of war...but I think he was wise to remember the good things). And, of course, his birthday is on December 25th. But he passed away this year and I cannot call him and hear the old stories ever again. It is strange to me how such happiness as I have found with Stephanie should have been mixed with so much sadness. I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2001 and New Year's of 2002 in Carson City with my Dad and his girlfriend and then I rushed back to Las Vegas to meet Stephanie for the first time on January 7th of this year. She made a whirlwind flight from Minneapolis to meet me after a year of talking to each other on-line and on the phone. And when she left the idea was that I would wait in Las Vegas until she wound up her business in Minneapolis and then she would come back and we would be together from then on. That plan lasted about a week after Steph left Las Vegas. We soon realized that it would take much longer for her to wind up her business in Las Vegas than either of us really cared to spend apart so we borrowed enough money from Cathy to get me a one-way plane ticket to Minneapolis and that was that. Or almost that. Before Cathy bought the plane ticket I called my Dad and asked him if he thought he's be needing me again any time soon. For much of the time I was in Carson City over the holidays he had been in the hospital with pneumonia over his emphysema and I had really been working my butt of taking care of him while he was home. Keeping his oxygen tanks changed, his laundry done, his meals fixed, and generally watching over him because his condition was not all that good even after they sent him home. My Dad had rather a bad habit of signing himself out of the hospital as soon as he could function at all because they wouldn't let him smoke there. I almost called Stephanie to have her postpone her trip to Vegas so I could stay on in Carson City and I would have had not his girlfriend suggested that maybe I was doing more harm than good by being there. She felt that my Dad would never realize just how serious his emphysema was getting. So I returned to Las Vegas. But now I was getting ready to move to Minneapolis and instead of being only about 340 miles away I would be 1868 miles away (more or less) and getting to him if he needed me would be next to impossible because of the cost involved. So I called him and asked him if he thought he'd be needing me. He said "No." So I flew to Minneapolis. I was here about two weeks before he called asking me to return to Carson City saying he needed me. And this time I turned him down. I looked at it this way: Stephanie and I were just beginning our life together and our relationship needed nourishing... my whole future was here and leaving then could have ruined everything. We needed time to grow closer. So I said no. I did finally fly back to Carson City in April but by that time he was unconscious and never knew I was there and it was left to me to provide "comfort care" (as they call it) while Sandy took a much needed rest. Comfort care is where they take care that you are as comfortable as possible while you are busy dying. So I was the one to find him dead. Not something I really wanted to do but there it was. I was checking on him just before I laid down to grab some sleep and realized that he had stopped breathing sometime in the half hour since I had last given him his medication (which was administered into his mouth with an eyedropper). So I felt for his pulse and there was none and that was that. MY FATHER---A REFLECTION He never understood me Not really Not too well And so of late we were not close (There were more than miles between us) As a father he asked what I could not give To be his son and carry on His name I could not do it That would have meant to deny myself To slay my soul and never be whole In mind and body And this I could not give him And yet always inside I hoped I dreamed That someday he would recognize a daughter who loved him Very much But that was not to be you see He died on April 5th. ---Cassandra Morrison April 25, 2002 After his death I returned to Minneapolis and to my Stephanie and it was her love and her strength that kept me together over the hardest part of the grieving process. And, no, I didn't turn to the razor then nor am I tempted to turn to it now. For I will not be alone this Christmas...I will be with my family...my new family...my beloved wife for our love is still as intense as it was when we first met and although I miss my parents and I feel sad that they are not here I can handle that. For there is a good deal of joy in my life now too.