“Are you a boy or a girl?”: Our trans-bisexual love story

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/are_you_a_boy_or_a_girl_our_trans_bisexual_love_story/


A photo of the author with his wife, Ilona.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve been watching you, and I’m trying to figure out: Are you a boy or a girl?” she asked.

“Me too,” I replied.

Those might not seem like the most auspicious lines with which to begin a relationship, but there we were, leaning over the stern railing of a ship that was slowly circling the Boston Harbor. It was a no-booze, creative-black-tie fundraiser for a queer youth group. Bass thumped from the dance floor and pastel lights strobed out into the twilight.

I knew why I had fled to the back of the boat: I was tired of being on the margins of the dance floor. Not that the space was unfamiliar. I had occupied the margins of every dance I’d ever been to, most of which were in rural Maine. There, I’d grown up as a tomboy named Alice, known as Al to my friends. School dances were painful, especially by the time I reached eighth grade and had grown aware of the fact that I was attracted to girls not boys – a fact that others, based on the names they called me, had cottoned to much earlier.

Here, on this slowly circling boat, I thought the dancing might go better. I was no longer Alice, and I wasn’t trying to negotiate the feelings I had for women. Now 17, I had just come out as transgender, cut my hair short, and changed my name to Alex. But on the dance floor, I stuttered between groups. A gay boy asked me to dance – we stepped to the floor and, over the din, I explained my newfound identity to him. “OK, see you around” was his reply. I danced in a circle of lesbians, swaying to the beat. I had been one of them at the start of the summer, when I joined the youth group. They’d watched my transformation into transgender, into this proto-guy, into whatever I was. I wasn’t one of them.