So Much Living Yet To Do

On POSE, Trans Rights, and living as a trans woman in 2020 and beyond

After avoiding it for months, I was finally cajoled by my roommate to watch POSE.

The show POSE highlights the lives of trans women in Manhattan in 1987. It shows “mothers” (older trans women — and by older we mean twenties, since life expectancy was 35) and “the kids” — meaning homeless teens who have been thrown out of their homes for being queer. The show how the mothers took the kids in, helped them survive.

In 1985 I was eighteen years old. I walked those streets. I’ve been to those places. I had gone to the seedy peepshow porn places on 42nd street depicted in the show. I saw the trans women working the streets. I saw the homeless kids. I prayed (I believed in magic, back then), I prayed, “please, please let me not be one of THOSE people.”

I wasn’t homeless. I hadn’t come out to my parents. I was doing a decent job at hiding my queerness.

It was late September, 1985 I was beginning to accept myself as queer. I knew my parents wouldn’t respond well, so I had no intention of telling them. I remember dreaming of running away to California. I remember speculating I might be brave enough to join the porn industry in order to afford transition surgeries. I remember being naive, clueless and scared. And a virgin.

Rock Hudson had come out as gay in June 1984. All through that summer, the papers were filled with news of Hudson’s deterioration. His death was announced October 2, 1985.

The awakening of my sexuality happened in this context. Sheer panic, complete terror. I knew with certainty I would end up in a hospice bed, repudiated by my parents, abandoned and alone.

My first sexual experiences just confirmed what I already dreaded. I knew I needed to somehow “fix” myself.

Soon after I left New York, joined a cult, and was celibate for eight years. The cult took my youth, exploited my labor, brainwashed me with totalitarian, toxic ideas which took me years to unpack. (Their belief system wasn’t the problem. Their methods and their exploitative nature were.) I lived in constant shame. Instead of taking breaks to go smoke, I took breaks to go cry. The officials of that cult catalogued me as a “pervert” and wrote up programs to “make me better.”

My twenties were a nightmare. But I survived. I am grateful for that.

I then spent my thirties trying to be “normal.” I tried and tried and tried to be a heteronormative “man.” A father. A husband. I almost pulled it off. I married a cis woman, loved her as best I knew how. We bought a home, had two children, worked corporate jobs with 401k’s and benefits. I was doing well. I never stepped out of line. I was faithful to my wife, a good ‘father’ to my children.

I disclosed to my spouse, very early on in our dating, that I was bisexual, and very confused about gender. Through ongoing negotiations, my spouse and I had carefully delineated what I was and wasn’t allowed to do. My hair had to remain short. My legs had to remain unshaven. The list goes on. To be fair, she was a supportive, loving spouse. But we both saw it as her being “normal” and me being “weird,” and her being kind enough to put up with it.

My spouse kept chiding me about being ‘depressed.’ She said there was a sad quality about me.

The marriage fell apart in 2008. In late 2009, I realized that, for the first time in my life I was “beholden to none.” I was beginning to experience a newfound freedom.

And then my brother died. Nothing makes you more keenly aware of your accountability to your own life than the dying of others around you.

Lying in bed in November of 2009, I came to the agonizing conclusion that I HAD to transition.

When I wrote my letter to my parents in 2010, I had no idea Laverne Cox would break ground as Sophia in Orange is the New Black in 2013. I had no idea who Laverne was. I had no idea Kaitlyn Jenner would transition publicly in 2015. I had no way to know Angelica Ross would be moderating a Presidential Candidates Forum on National TV in 2019. In 2010, I was alone. I didn’t know any trans people. I was the only “freak” I knew.

When I started coming out to my kids in 2012, Obama was beginning his second term. I had no idea that six years later the whole country would be in an uproar about transgender folk in the bathrooms. I couldn’t have imagined a flim-flam conman bolstered by bigots on the religious right would be President of the United States; couldn’t have predicted he’d be pushing agendas to limit (erase?) my existence — appointing a Secretary of Education that stands behind discrimination, a HUD Secretary who refers to my kind as “big hairy men” and limits our access to homeless shelters, nominating judges who would vote to allow employers to fire us just for being who and what we are.

When I began showing myself as Cassie to friends and family, I had no idea what lay ahead.

I started LIVING my life just five years ago. I missed SO MUCH. But I survived. I am grateful for that.

Coming out lost me employment, family, friends. I went from making almost six figures to being in constant danger of homelessness. I’ve been physically attacked, sexually assaulted, deadnamed, ridiculed, spat on. But I survived. I am grateful for that.

And I intend to do more than survive. I intend to thrive. I started living just five years ago. I have SO MUCH living yet to do.

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■ Mariee Juarez Died ■ 15259 — That’s Our Family Number. You Have to Remember ■ The End of White Civilization ■ What Do We Do About Wombs? ■ Men Need Clear Instructions (a #MeToo conversation) ■ Just a Bad Date ■ An Open Letter To A Good Man ■ Gender, Orientation, Presentation ■ Why This Sudden Trans Kids Trend? ■ What Do We Do About Women With A Penis? ■ Trans Women & The Danger of a Single Story ■ Trans Women May Soon Give Birth — a trans woman’s perspective ■ I Wasn’t ‘Annoyed’ at Your Misgendering Me ■ Welcome, Welcome Cassandra! — The Long Journey to Self-Acceptance ■ Coming Out Trans To Your Children: A Step-by-Step Guide ■ Tales of Transition: The Landscaper and the Icecream Man ■ The Day I Invented a Religion for my Children ■ The Things I Can’t Tell You (something of a love poem) ■ Sportsball, Love, Loss, and Friendship ■ Happiness is Magic