A Strained Week

Last week we had some snow, and then it rained and rained and rained. It was the wettest day in the area in recorded history. Washington has been officially declared a disaster area.

T.'s mom's basement flooded -- over four feet of water. From the stairs, T. and her mother watched the freezer bob about, tethered to the wall by the electrical cord. Sickeningly, her elderly mother had been storing family mementos -- books, photographs, needlecraft -- in cardboard boxes on the floor. Also all her deceased father's tools. All saturated. T. was heartsick and stunned, but sprang into action, procuring two pumps. It took the whole night to drain the basement, and then they surveyed the damage, which was considerable. The insurance company so far is denying all claims.

All week T. couldn't get back to her own home on the peninsula because of mudslides and standing water, so used my house as a base of operations. Within a couple of days she was carting over boxes of photos, slides, and paintings, which I have been trying to dry and salvage.

T. and her brother were at odds as to how to proceed with the clean up, and their mom was being difficult too. T. was exhausted and stressed to the max. So the whole week wasn't an awful lot of fun for anyone.

Adding to the strain was that T. was in full "Tom" mode, with "Tiffany" hardly in evidence. It may seem strange, but I was really missing "Tiffany." Tom is a good man, stoic and hard working, but he's rather terse and often seems tired. Tiffany, on the other hand, is a grand, Auntie Mame kind of broad: spontaneous, fun-loving, expansive. Tiffany is sexually more attractive too, maybe because she is more self-confident and, well, make up helps at our age!

On my end, I have been eating too much, and especially drinking too much, both behaviors I tend to over-indulge when I am around T. And poring over T.'s (wet) family photos was bringing all sorts of stuff up for me emotionally, my own family sadness as well as my strange, unpleasant jealousy about T.'s Life Before Me.

I am angry that that T. didn't "find" me when I was younger and give me the family (children) I wanted. I know this is childish and unreasonable, but especially when I've been drinking, it comes bubbling up. T. points out, "You wouldn't have looked at me back then," and she's probably right. In fact, looking at Tom as a young man, I know I wouldn't have been the slightest bit attracted to him. I would have thought he was too conventional, hopelessly un-hip, and way too goofy looking with his white-blonde hair, gangly frame, and messed up teeth. He didn't go to college; he joined the Navy instead. And this during the Vietnam War!

If I put myself back in my twenties, marriage to a man like Tom would have seemed like my worst nightmare, the end of all possibility. Still, in retrospect, I know that I couldn't have done better than having T. as a co-parent, and if we could have weathered our respective immaturities, we would have been a successful team, because T. is such a sensitive, devoted soul, and could have given me a soft, steady hand as I tried to build myself. So there is all kinds of sadness around this, which is exacerbated by T.'s pity for me: she frankly thinks my childless lot is tragic.

I find myself obsessing about T.'s married state. She points out repeatedly she has to stay married until she is sixty, for the health insurance, and because she can't afford to upset the amicable arrangement regarding their fifteen year old son -- her wife is very flexible about child support, so T. pays what she can, when she can. Court-ordered payments would be a huge burden. Yet it gravels me considerably. I want to be Number One!!!

All this came to a head last night on our way to the Transgendered Party at the Polish-American Center. My dress was too tight, my shoes were too tight, and I had been waiting for T. to get ready for hours... I was boiling with discomfort and resentment, and the buzz I had copped from half a bottle of sherry I had consumed while waiting was wearing off. So I picked a fight in the car along the lines of, Why does everything have to be about you and your appearance? I'm a woman too you know! T. was taken aback, and assured me that was not true: she found me gorgeous, she loved me, etc. I'm prettier than you are! I snarled. Yes, you are, there's no question about that, T. agreed readily, which shamed me into submission.

The party was kind of a bust. It seemed we'd wound up at the wrong party; the "real" wing ding had been the night before. It wasn't awful, but sparsely attended, mostly a sedate, older crowd, and the entertainment -- a German Elvis/John Denver impersonator -- was not much to anyone's taste.

Still, we managed to enjoy ourselves.

Afterwards, we had drinks with a couple 0f T.'s friends at Martin's. When they left at 11:30, I didn't want to end the night I had been ancitipating all week. We ordered another round and I resumed my carping about her being married. T. was still being patient, but becoming frustrated, and underneath, I was appalled at my own behavior. What is the matter with me? Can't I let things be and enjoy the moment?

"If we got married, I could insure you," I said.

"We've known one another for three months," T. responded. "Are you really ready to talk about that?"

No, not really. But maybe I will be in a year's time!

"We don't know where we'll be in a year's time," T. said. "We might still be together, we might not. I love you. And whatever happens, you'll always be in my heart."

Well, that sounded like T. was getting cold feet about me, which was sobering... I panicked a bit, I've really fucked things up now.

"Well, here's the deal," I dogged plowed on. "We are going to be together until one of us dies."

"We are, are we?" T. looked bemused and slightly skeptical. And then finally, blessedly, I let the whole matter drop. I really don't want to blow this up. I'm so scared I'm going to be hurt, that in a year or less, T. will abandon me and return to her wife. Then what will become of me? I don't have another fifty years to spend finding another T.

"I'm just saying, this is it," I said. "If things don't work out between us, I'm giving up. I'll join the Sisters of Mercy."

T. laughed.

"I'll write to you from India," I said, milking the laugh. Then I burst into tears, my head burrowed in T.'s chest, smearing greasy sparkles all over her cleavage.

When we got home, we slipped into bed, exhausted, and hardly touched until morning, when T. surprised me by fucking me "like a man." It was a little awkward, but perhaps it was her way of restoring my equilibrium, of telling me, I know you're the woman.

Later we were talking, and I got agitated again. The conversation started by my recalling a younger tran's conversation with T. at the club, and her ambivalence about dating and relationships: it seemed this youngish (38, but she looked 22) tran wanted to be with a straight man, but feared the impossibility of developing a healthy normal heterosexual relationship with one. She was afraid of men, the potential for violence from them. She was more attracted to men, but felt safer pursuing intimacy with women.

I said nothing at the time, but I thought, with a kind of cruel satisfaction, Welcome to the reality of being a woman, fella. I thought of all the times I've experienced male aggression, all the ugly forms it has taken, from attempted rape to sexual harassment to merely being dismissed in professional contexts.

"It [womanhood] is not all pink and pretty and pastel, you know," I said. I was thinking about the t-girls traipsing about in their heels and rhinestones like pre-pubescent make-believe princesses, their endless delight in prancing and posing. "There's a dark, bloody, painful part too." I was thinking menstruation, the gripping cramps of a uterus full of fibroids, the terror of unwanted pregnancy, the terror of infertility, and the shame and self-loathing women are taught to feel about their genitalia.

"I know," said T. Then she said something to the effect that even that was something she wished she could experience, that the inability to "feel life growing inside you" was a pain she, as a genetic male, shared with me, a barren woman. That observation sparked another wave of rage. Our situations didn't seem in the least bit parallel to me. For her, pregnancy -- wanted or no -- was a theoretical concept. For me, on the other hand -- at least until my forties -- it seemed absolutely possible, even inevitable. If she felt nature had dealt her the wrong hand, I felt I had been given the right cards, but had played them poorly. Anyway, she had children -- four biological children in fact, and now beautiful tow-headed grandchildren too -- her genetic heritage had merely incubated in her partner's womb. I, on the other hand, will never have anything more than my Dream Babies.

But I let her comment slide, and let my anger slide away too... I knew that this was something we could never really understand about each other.

Still, T. seemed subdued the rest of the day, and I felt less sure of myself, her love, our future as a couple.

"It's been a strained week," we reassured each other. "Next week will be better."