“Do you think I’m trans?” I’d asked a close friend. They answered hesitantly, knowing no one can come to that conclusion for someone else, but they looked at me with a quiet recognition and said, “I could see that…” A sturdiness shining through, a light from under the door.
Then there was the time where I wasn’t the one to bring it up. I was having a small party, people jumped in the pool and huddled together on outdoor furniture. My friend Star and I sat off alone, catching up on the patio. I’d met Star while filming the first season of Gaycation, our fourth episode being set in the United States.
We interviewed Star in San Francisco at a clinic run by trans women where she worked offering health care and support for those in the LGBTQ+ community who don’t have access to such resources. The clinic has since had to move; Twitter bought the block.
Star and I connected, in that way where the future flashes, an auspicious beginning. We stayed in touch, became good friends. Star has experienced far more obstacles and barriers than I have, yet she holds space for me, supports me, sees me. I remember being mesmerized by her voice when I first listened to her eponymous album, Star. The lyrics of her song “Heartbreaker” were on repeat in my mind for weeks after:
I run away from feeling too good
I’m scared as hell you’d leave me if you knew
I run away from feeling too good
I’m scared as hell you’d leave me if you knew
We sat together on an oversize chair, the splashes and music blending together in the background. We spoke about gender, I shared the degree of my discomfort, how even when I was playing a role, I couldn’t wear feminine clothes anymore. How I always struggled in the summer when layers were not an option and the presence of my breasts under my T-shirt forced me to incessantly crane my neck, sneaking quick peeks down. I would pull on my shirt, my posture folded. Walking down the sidewalk, I’d glance at a store window to check my profile, my brain consumed. I had to avoid my reflection. I couldn’t look at pictures, because I was never there. It was making me sick. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be lifted out—the gender dysphoria slowly crushing me.
“It’s a role, you’re an actor. Why are you complaining about such a thing?” people would say.
“I would wear a skirt,” a straight, cis man had said to me, playing devil’s advocate. I kept trying to explain the difficulty I was having. But he kept spitting out his unwanted opinions while then berating me for getting “too emotional.” “Hysterical” I believe was the word he used.
These words triggered a deep shame I’d held since I could remember. I was puzzled, too—invalidating my own experience. How was I in so much pain? Why did even slightly feminine clothing make me want to die? I’m an actor, there shouldn’t be a problem. How could I be such an ungrateful prick?
Imagine the most uncomfortable, mortifying thing you could wear. You squirm in your skin. It’s tight, you want to peel it from your body, tear it off, but you can’t. Day in and day out. And if people are to learn what is underneath, who you are without that pain, the shame would come flooding out, too much to hold. The voice was right, you deserve the humiliation. You are an abomination. You are too emotional. You’re not real.
“Do you think you’re trans?” Star asked me, locking eyes.
“Yes, well, maybe. I think so. Yeah.” We exchanged a soft smile.
I was so near. Almost touching it, but I panicked. And it burned away like the joint I was smoking, becoming an old roach left to rot in a forgotten ashtray. It all felt too big—the thought of going through this publicly, in a culture that is so rife with transphobia and people with enormous power and platforms actively attacking the community.
The world tells us that we aren’t trans but mentally ill. That I’m too ashamed to be a lesbian, that I mutilated my body, that I will always be a woman, comparing my body to Nazi experiments. It is not trans people who suffer from a sickness, but the society that fosters such hate. As actress and writer Jen Richards once put it:
It’s exceedingly surreal to have transitioned ten years ago, find myself happier & healthier than ever, have better relationships with friends & family, be a better and more engaged citizen, and yes, even more productive … and to then see strangers pathologize that choice. My being trans almost never comes up. It’s a fact about my past that has relatively little bearing on my present, except that it made me more empathetic, more engaged in social justice. How does it hurt anyone else? What about my peace demands vitriol, violence, protections?
Sitting with Star by the pool, I couldn’t quite touch the truth, but I could talk about my gender without bawling. That was a step. It had taken a long time to allow any words to come out. When the subject came up in therapy, my reaction felt inordinate, lost in sobs.
“Why do I feel this way?” I’d plead. “What is this feeling that never goes away? How can I be desperately uncomfortable all the time? How can I have this life and be in such pain?”
Not long after my thirtieth birthday, I did a U-turn, I bailed, I stopped talking about it. I closed my eyes and hid it away. Somewhere I’d never find it. It would be four more years until I disclosed who I was.
I met my ex-spouse, Emma, around the same time. Meeting Emma let me leave it behind, a foggy memory. Falling madly in love, the energy was indisputable, just a hug would make my body shake. I threw myself in, and we got married quickly.
If a part of you is always separate, if existing in your body feels unbearable—love is an irresistible escape. You transcend, a sensation so indescribable that philosophers, scientists, and writers can’t seem to agree on what the fuck it even is—if it even is. I often wonder if I have actually experienced deep love. I feel as though I have, but is it real if you were never there? When you have numbed yourself to the truth?
Love was unwittingly an emotional disguise, and my relationship to it is another muscle to be transformed. I don’t want to disappear. I want to exist in my body, with these new possibilities. Possibilities. Perhaps that is one of the main components of life lost to lack of representation. Options erased from the imagination. Narratives indoctrinated that we spend an eternity attempting to break. The unraveling is painful, but it leads you to you.
During my marriage I ignored therapy, and when we moved to New York City from Los Angeles at the end of 2018, I virtually stopped going to therapy altogether. It wasn’t until our relationship was falling apart two years later and my gender dysphoria so extreme that I sought out someone in the city. I was ready to talk.
I could barely find the words, but I did. As if they moved on their own, wriggling through and up my body, pouring out. My body knew, deep down I knew, and something had shifted. It was now or never. It was alive or not.
24
YOUR HEAVENLY DADDY
In the aftermath of coming out as gay in 2014, I wrote a list in my head of experiences I was unable to have before, certain activities that, regardless of desire, felt important to embrace. I had a burgeoning sense of ease in the world, a confidence. It was not ultimately where I needed to be, but I felt brave, properly so, for the first time in a long time. At that point in my life, it didn’t really feel like a choice, there was no other option. I had to choose to engage as my authentic self, or die not trying. There was a swell from somewhere else, inside, but beneath it all—a voice. One that would whisper again close to seven years later.
This is your life. You don’t need to believe their stories. Those are their narratives. This is your career. Why are you agreeing with them? Trusting them? They aren’t the right ones. They, in fact, are wrong. You don’t believe them. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is your life.
Not long before my heart was shredded by “Ryan,” I saw the superb, painful, and infuriating documentary God Loves Uganda, a film by the astounding Roger Ross Williams. The doc examined the role of American evangelicalism in Uganda, its ties to a recently introduced bill, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act—which then suggested the death penalty for LGBTQ+ people—as it gained serious momentum. It follows missionaries, evangelical leaders, and the LGBTQ+ people of Uganda who fight for their right to exist.