My Uncle Devon Wore Women’s Clothing
Remembering my favorite uncle and wishing I had known him better
My dad’s brother Devon never married. There had been a serious contender at one point right after college, word has it, but his domineering mother had put the kibosh on it. Of the brothers, my father was the only one who had braved her wrath and gone ahead and gotten hitched. Instead, Devon went on to live a much less conventional life. It was only after he died suddenly in 2005, that my mom and I learned things about Devon that none of us had ever guessed.
Devon had been a life-long New Yorker, a charming and cultured man who had once dabbled in acting. I have a large framed autographed photo of Audrey Hepburn that she gave him some time in the early 1950s, although I can no longer remember the circumstances of how they met. Devon worked in publishing for most of his life and although he’d lived with a woman for about 10 years in the 80s after that relationship broke up, I guess we always just assumed he was enjoying the life of a handsome New York bachelor.
Although we knew Devon had been in the same Upper West Side apartment for decades, none of us ever realized that he had a roommate —that is until Mom got the call from him that Devon had died suddenly from a blood clot. He’d always come to visit us for the holidays and the time that my husband James and I saw him in New York, we were staying with a friend of mine and met him out and about, not at his place.
At the time of Devon’s death, my father had already passed on a few years before and his other brothers were gone by then as well. We were Devon’s only remaining family and so Mom asked me if I’d go with her to help clean out his room and assist her with the arrangements. Naturally, I agreed. Devon had been my favorite uncle, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave that task all up to my aging mother. I flew to her place in Virginia and together we took the train up to NYC.
Mom and I arrived at Penn Station right during the evening rush hour. The place was jammed with people but somehow we were able to find Devon’s roommate Ed in the crowd. I was anxious to go drop off our bags, and maybe have a shower, but Ed insisted that we stop for dinner on the way back to the apartment, and so we did. Eventually, Ed was able to work into the conversation about Devon’s effects that he had two closets in his bedroom — one that contained men’s clothing and one that contained women’s. Ed had wanted to mentally prepare us for that before we reached the apartment.
Mom and I were both a bit surprised. It wasn’t something we had ever remotely suspected, but perhaps because we were already so tired and frazzled, we both just took it in stride and went on with our meal. It was only as the weekend progressed that it truly began to sink in how little about Devon’s life we had really known. It had crossed my mind once or twice through the years that Devon could be gay. He always dressed impeccably and had a bit of a theatrical way of speaking but I found him quite dashing and attractive, as many other women seemed to do as well. After all, being well-dressed and well-spoken is not necessarily an indicator of anything.
And, I also remembered visiting Devon in the apartment that he had lived in with his girlfriend Phoebe when I was much younger. I suppose I didn’t care enough about that aspect of his personal life one way or the other to have given too much thought to whether he might be bisexual. What my favorite uncle did when he wasn’t visiting us rarely entered my mind. As a child, and even into young adulthood, I think I was mostly concerned with what was happening that directly affected me.
Starting to go through Devon’s belongings after his death meant that I actually got to interface with what his life had really been like. It seems very possible that Devon was transgender and not just a cross-dresser, although that wasn’t a word that he ever used. I learned that sometimes as a child he would go to sleep hoping to wake up as a girl and that he had a small collection of women’s garments as a teen, which when his mother discovered she attributed to being the momentos of sexual conquests. (I continue to refer here to Devon as he since I don’t really know for sure how he truly identified). Throughout his life, I think that his alter-ego Vicky was more of a persona, an aspect of himself, than who he felt himself to truly be, but again, that’s just my interpretation — I don’t really know for sure.
At the time of his death, Devon had recently begun dating a woman, although there were letters and photos in his room from the men that he had dated in the past. Sexuality and gender are two separate things and being bisexual is separate from being either trans or a man who liked to express and explore his feminine side. I truly don’t know quite how to label Devon, which is fine with me since labels can turn out to be restrictive boxes that we try to squeeze ourselves into for other people’s comfort. But in any case, Devon really enjoyed dressing as a woman at times and even worked for a while on the weekends at a store that catered to those who sought alluring women’s clothing in non-traditional sizes.
His roommate Ed also liked to dress as a woman, and both of them had been featured in a book published in 1989 by photographer Mariette Pathy Allen called Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them. Much of what I later learned about Devon’s life came from meeting Mariette and reading what he had told her about it. The two had become close friends and she came to his memorial get-together, a few months after the initial trip to clean out his room, which is where I received a copy of her book. Of course, Ed and other close friends whom I briefly met at that time also helped me to get to know this part of my uncle.
Here is some of what he told Mariette:
Since sex has been taken out of the equation due to the AIDS epidemic, much of the enjoyment of impersonating a woman has become kind of academic. I’m not a queen, but I hate the words “transvestite” or “crossdresser”, they are too clinical. People probably think of me as a snob, but I like being a whore too, being very sexy and running around in a transparent blouse.
Devon’s alter ego Vicky (Victoria West) had even been added to his bank account back in the days when you could do that without a social security number. This made it nicer for Vicky when purchasing feminine clothing but it also made things quite tricky when trying to settle his estate. My mother spent an entire year getting that all sorted out. We used to joke that you should never die in the state of New York without a will, but having a female alias only compounded those problems.
Mom finally got it all straightened out, in part due to Mariette’s book, which supported the fact that Vicky was an alias and not a live woman who needed to be contacted before the account could be closed out. Devon was an artist and he had even developed a separate, more feminine signature for Vicky, but between Mom’s persistence and clearly non-fraudulent demeanor, and the photos in the book, she finally got the bank to agree to release his account.
In Mariette’s book, Devon/Vicky also talked a little bit about how Phoebe had been OK with him dressing at home but became less comfortable about Vicky going to Mardi Gras and to balls, all dressed up and looking more glamorous than she felt herself to be. She also envisioned him off flirting and having sex with men and began to wonder if she were perhaps a lesbian. It got to be stressful for her and we broke up. I don’t blame her, Devon said.
Devon/Vicky went on to talk about the lack of acceptance he felt even within the gay community, something which eased only slightly in response to the realities of AIDS.
Because of the epidemic, there’s a dearth of sexy socializing, and drag has filled in more and more. The Halloween parade is bigger. Gays are wearing drag on Fire Island. Before, they looked down on it. Just as my girlfriend was, gays are put off by femininity, the lack of the macho image. It’s not exclusively an aversion to heterosexuals, it’s an aversion to homosexuals, too, but now since they’re not having sex, it’s not as upsetting. Lingerie becomes a play item.
What kills me is that gay people have forgotten the accomplishments of the Stonewall riot, a turning point in gay history. Coming out, year after year, unaware that transvestites were the ones that started the riot. I’m not political, but I very much admire those who are, and I believe that transvestites should be proud and should be honored for what they’ve accomplished. Because when you do drag, when you dress to express yourself as a woman, you’re totally without facade. You’re utterly vulnerable, you’re not protecting yourself. You’re carrying your feelings not only on your sleeve but all over you.
Devon was an alcoholic, I think perhaps because of the many ways that his feelings and the reality of who he was had been trampled through the years. I knew for a long time that he had some issues with alcohol, but I just never knew why until we went to clean out his room. A lifetime of feeling like he had to hide who he really was, even from the family who loved him, clearly had taken its toll. It broke my heart that he wasn’t sure whether or not he could trust us. He already knew that he couldn’t trust the world.
I honestly don’t know how my dad would have reacted had he ever found out. He was a very straight-laced guy, but he also loved his brother, who was the closest sibling to him in age. I was incredibly proud of my mother, who was in her 70s when all this happened. She took it all in stride, and rather than focusing on Devon’s unusual lifestyle, chose instead to focus on the person that we had all loved.
Mom had been very close to Devon from the time that she, my dad, and Devon had all been poor grad students. They used to eat together often, pooling their meager resources. At the time of his death, Devon had been in my mother’s life for over 50 years. When it came down to it, she cared a lot less how he had lived than that he had died so suddenly and that we had never gotten the opportunity to tell him that he didn’t have to hide who he was from us.
Mom had probably never even met an out gay person before, but at the memorial get-together, she treated Devon’s friends, including the transgender ones, like any other person she was meeting for the first time — with warmth and genuine interest in who they were. She swore me to secrecy as far as letting any of her other friends and neighbors know, ostensibly to protect Devon’s privacy, but as far as her own level of acceptance went, it was unequivocal.
I wish that I had been able to show Devon more support and acceptance when he was alive, although he certainly never heard me say anything disparaging about non-cis or non-hetero people. Still, I was pretty sheltered in 2005 and certainly had no inkling that I would later discover myself to be polyamorous or pansexual. I had a few gay friends and even went to a few same-sex commitment ceremonies but at that point still knew nothing really about the New York gay scene or anything but the most superficial aspects of non-traditional life.
Finding out about Vicky threw me briefly for a loop, simply because it seemed so unexpected and it made me feel like my relationship with my uncle had been a facade, but in the end, it didn’t change the way that I thought or felt about Devon. So, he liked to wear women’s clothing, so he may have been transgender — I realized that none of that actually impacts who Uncle Devon was for me in my life. I’m glad that I eventually got to know more about who he really was and what made him happy. I only wish that I’d been able to do it sooner — when he was still alive.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2021 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.