A Transgender Play
A gender farce in two acts
ACT ONE:
SCENE ONE:
Thomas is sitting on the window ledge of his apartment in a tall midtown building. The wind is blowing briskly under a gray sky. A pigeon is his only company. The pigeon is confused why this rather large bird keeps coming out to sit on the pigeon’s ledge.
Inside Thomas’s head is a MAN (a very strong, rugged, athletic man) who is running around in circles with his fingers in his ears. In the background is a very loud female voice. Even with his ears covered, he still hears her voice. Suddenly there is a loud knocking at the door. He knows it’s her. She is just outside the door, waiting for him. He tries to drown it all out by singing a ridiculous song overly loud and desperately out of key.
While back on the ledge, Thomas continues to numbly stare out while his head is enveloped in its own battle.
(Thomas is a 60-year-old man. Tall, moderately handsome. He is obviously well off but not rich. Thomas is happily married for twenty-nine years. He is currently alone in the apartment. )
The pigeon is patiently sitting next to Thomas waiting for him to either feed her or get out of her way. Thomas finally relinquishes his seat and with a deep sigh goes back into the apartment and closes the window.
Back inside his apartment, Thomas laments: “I have never been suicidal before in my life. I have been totally happy. I have a successful practice, my children have all graduated college, we own this beautiful NYC apartment with no mortgage and have a great home on the beach. What can be so totally wrong?”
He sits down with his head in his hands staring out the window. The pigeon is staring back worried he is thinking of coming out again.
(cut to the MAN)
The MAN is pacing in his own room. The room he is in is a very masculine one with lots of wood paneling, trophies and leather chairs. The pictures are of hunting and fishing. There are moose and elks heads on the wall. He stops to turn to address the audience:
“She just won’t leave me alone. She just won’t stop. She is like a mosquito buzzing in your ear. It’s maddening! She just won’t let me sleep. She is always there!”
MAN throws himself into an overstuffed leather club chair. He starts punching his right hand into his left in frustration.
MAN yells: “What does that girl want? She wasn’t there a year ago.”
Off in the distance he hears a GIRL’s angry voice and he covers his ears.
MAN yells again, louder: “Why can’t she just leave me alone?”
GIRL: “BECAUSE YOU KEEP IGNORING ME!!!” and she starts banging on the door again. (GIRL is a very feminine 14-year-old girl with a very determined look).
The MAN tries unsuccessfully to put two pillows over his ears. The sound of the knocking gets even louder.
Meanwhile, Thomas is frantically pacing his apartment yelling out in emotional pain and frustration: “What is wrong with me!!!!”
GIRL says gently off stage : “Nothing and everything.”
END SCENE ONE
………………………………………..
SCENE TWO
Set in a typical therapist’s office. Thomas is sitting on a couch. The therapist, Liz, is sitting across from him in a chair.
Liz: “So, Thomas, why are you here?”
Thomas: “I am having panic attacks.”
Liz: “Why, do you think?”
Thomas: “I really am not sure.”
Liz: “When did it start?”
Thomas: “Over the last month or so.”
Liz: “Tell me about it.”
Thomas seems at a loss for words. He has never had panic attacks in his life and he has never had therapy in his life. He doesn’t know where to begin.
Thomas: “I have had a great life. I am married to my wife for 28 years. I have two wonderful kids. I have a successful practice and all the things I want in my life…and yet….I am suddenly having these panic attacks.”
LIZ: “Why do you think it started?”
The GIRL’s voice in the background: “Go ahead and tell her.”
Thomas in his head: “No, leave me alone.”
GIRL says in a petulant way: “No I won’t.”
Thomas: “I’m not listening.”
Liz notices that Thomas is staring out the window vacantly: “What are you thinking?”
GIRL: “Yes, you are listening. You hear me just fine.” She says this just hanging over his right shoulder. She is sticking out her tongue at him.
Thomas is blushing. He is squirming in his seat. For the first time in his life he is speechless. GIRL pokes him in the back. She pokes him again.
Thomas: “I think I have a fetish for women’s clothes.” The GIRL loudly smirks behind his back.
Thomas: “I like to wear women’s clothes periodically and now it is getting worse.”
GIRL: “and we need better clothes.”
Liz: “How long has this been going on?”
Thomas: “All my life.”
GIRL says in the background: “All my life too.”
Liz: “Is it just sexual?”
Thomas stares at the ceiling, looks out the window and then faces Liz: “No…but I have always fantasized that I am a girl.”
Liz: “For how long.”
Thomas pauses. The MAN appears on Thomas’s left side and grabs hold of his arm, alarmed, trying to stop him. GIRL kicks MAN in the shins and Thomas shakes off the MAN’s grip. Thomas turns to the audience and says quietly: “All my life.”
The GIRL strokes his hair and says softly: “Finally.”
END SCENE TWO
……
SCENE THREE: A few weeks later in Liz’s office.
Thomas: “I never thought I was going to have to come back. I really thought it was going to be “one and done.”
Both GIRL (standing behind and looking at Thomas) and Liz smile knowingly together.
The room is suddenly crowded with men. Between the GIRL and Thomas there is a football player, a basketball player, a soldier, a skier and a hunter. They stand defensively close together in a blocking position.
Thomas sits with arms and legs crossed: “I am so confused. I have spent the last few weeks tearing myself apart. I realize that my life is like one of those puzzles that teachers give out to a third-grade class around Presidents week. You connect the numbered dots and suddenly you have a picture of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. I have been making dots all my life. Suddenly I connect my dots and realize that my female fantasy wish has been going on my entire life time!”
GIRL, behind the line of men, yells out: “That’s what I have been telling you all along!”
The men tighten up their defensive line around Thomas. Behind the line of men, GIRL is leaping up and down in the air yelling: “Here I am. Here I am. Here I am! You can’t ignore me!”
Liz quietly says to Thomas: “What do you think that means?”
GIRL violently starts pushing the men out of the way. She finds an opening and crashes triumphantly in front of the men. She is wearing a ballet tutu outfit. Slowly she walks between Liz and Thomas. She crosses her arms and stares at Thomas, tapping her foot.
Thomas looks GIRL in the eyes and blurts out: “Oh Shit!”
END OF SCENE THREE
…….
SCENE FOUR
GIRL brings out an extra-large biological chart of the male body. MAN is standing in front looking at the chart. GIRL then takes a pointer and points to the penis on the chart. MAN’s face is on it and she announces: “That is you.” She then points to the brain and her picture is on that and says: “And that is me.”
GIRL smiles patiently to him and the audience and says: “Get it?”
MAN says: “That doesn’t make sense.”
GIRL looks at MAN with exasperation: “We have been over and over this endlessly. Gender is how your brain is wired, that’s me,” she says smiling sweetly to the audience, “and sex is what’s between your legs, that’s you. NOW do you get it?”
MAN with an exaggerated look of confusion on his face says: “That makes no sense! I have been a guy all my life. I hunt. I was in the marines. I played football for god’s sense. Jeez just look at me! This is not the body of a woman!!!”
GIRL: “Exactly the problem!”
MAN: “WHAT?!?!?!?”
GIRL says: “But don’t worry, it is something that we can fix.” And she just smiles at him.
MAN instinctively and exaggeratedly crosses his legs.
END OF SCENE FOUR
END OF ACT ONE
…………
ACT TWO
SCENE ONE:
MAN is pushing on the front of a train as hard as he can, trying to stop it as it slowly moves forward. GIRL is sitting comfortably on the front of the locomotive with her chin on her hand, watching MAN struggle and she just shrugs. Behind MAN on the tracks is a large portrait of a family, diplomas, trophies, a car and a home. MAN continues to push back at the locomotive exhaustedly.
GIRL: “When are you going to give up?”
MAN: “I can’t.” as he continues to desperately push back against the front of the locomotive. “If I do, I will lose everyone and everything I love in my life.”
GIRL. sadly: “You can’t win you know.”
MAN, desperately: “I can’t afford to lose. I need to protect everyone. I need to stop this train!”
GIRL: “but you can’t.” Gently, “It is impossible to stop and you know that. Look at the size of this engine. Get on this train. Tell them all to get on the train with you.”
MAN: “I can’t. They hate this train. I hate this train. I need to stop this train!!!” MAN yells in anger as he starts pounding in the front of the locomotive. “I WILL MAKE THIS TRAIN STOP!!!” and he pushes harder and harder against the train.
GIRL says with understanding sadness: “You know in your heart you do not hate this train and you don’t honestly know for sure that they will hate it at all.”
MAN says feebly as he sits down on the tracks with his back against the locomotive he looks back at the portrait of his family: “I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t fail them. I can’t let them get hurt. I have always been there for them. I can’t be this selfish. I can’t cause them this pain. It is all my fault!”
MAN cries out in absolute agony.
GIRL: “You have to stop this. It is not your fault. You didn’t start this train and you can’t stop it either. You need to stop blaming yourself. This is not your fault!!!”
MAN continues to sit weeping into his hands as the locomotive slowly nudges him further along.
GIRL lets out a sigh: “Let me help you up and you can help everyone get off the tracks and onto the train. They all have a choice; they can choose to step aside and let the train pass or they can stay with you and get on the train. What they decide is NOT your fault. This train is not going to stop but your only choice is to either get on it or get run over by it.”
MAN looks up. GIRL smiles warmly with sincere caring softness. MAN lets out a deep sigh. GIRL holds out her hand and gently reaches down to MAN. MAN looks up, smiles weakly, and slowly grabs hold of her hand. GIRL helps MAN climb up on the train.
GIRL hugs MAN and MAN slowly hugs back.
END SCENE ONE
……
SCENE TWO
Liz is looking at Thomas. He is quietly crying.
Thomas slowly sobs: “I never cry. This is so overwhelming!”
Liz: “How do you feel.”
Thomas: “For the first time in my life I feel connected. I no longer feel any shame or guilt. I finally understand that I was wired female before my birth and then just given the wrong body. The body is just a thing the soul wears to get around and I’ve just got the wrong equipment. In my soul and heart, I know I am female but I also like the parts of me that grew up male. I realize that both parts of me are me and I like them both. They can finally get along. I just need to see that female locked away for so long when I look in the mirror every morning.
She is the me that I need to see.
MAN walks over to GIRL, hugs her and, holding hands they walk off the stage together. We over hear the GIRL whisper loudly to the MAN: “Now can I show you the dress that would look great on us?”
The curtain drops.
END OF ACT TWO and the play.
If you read all this I should probably buy you a drink. I wrote this to reflect my own experience and internal battles. They were and still are very painful but I did also see the humor in the experience. I hope you found this amusing. I enjoyed writing it.
Emma Holiday
Please also read:
I have tied all of my stories to the above thread.
Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
