Lorimer Shenher - This One Looks Like a Boy: My Gender Journey to Life as a Man

Copyright 2019 by Lorimer Shenher

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Greystone Books Ltd.

greystonebooks.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77164-448-8 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-77164-449-5 (epub)

Editing by Jennifer Croll

Copyediting by Alex Kapitan

Proofreading by Stefania Alexandru

Jacket design by Will Brown

Text design by Nayeli Jimenez

Cover photograph courtesy of Lorimer Shenher

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Greystone Books gratefully acknowledges the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples on whose land our office is located.

Greystone Books thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada for supporting our publishing activities.

For Dad.

CONTENTS

I have chosen to change my appearance, something many people do in many ways. From my perspective, my gender has not changed; I have simply made its message clear.

JAMISON GREEN, Becoming a Visible Man

INTRODUCTION

THERE IS A line in one of my all-time favorite films, Moonstruck, where Ronny Cammareri (Nicolas Cage) tells Loretta Castorini (Cher), Come upstairs! I dont care why you come! I feel the same way about you, dear reader. I dont care why youre here, Im just very glad that you are holding this book, and I thank you.

I am just one transgender man. I dont speak for everyone, nor are my experiences more universal than anyone elses. I can only speak for myself, although Im sure some stories in this book will resonate for others like me.

Perhaps youve picked this up because you read my last book. You might be the parent of a child questioning their gender and youre looking for guidance. You could be an old fossil like me, wondering if its too late in the game to find some happiness. Or you might think this gender transition stuff is just so much garbage, the product of an over-indulgent age.

Welcome, everyone. Sincerely. I mean it. We will never show ourselves if we dont talk to each other, even in our difference.

And if youre that kid reading these words underneath the covers with a flashlight, terrified of what you think you might be, this is for you.

Theres hope for you.

Your journey wont be easy, but you will never know the heights you can reach if you dont stick around to find out.

I wrote this for you. I was you, once.

No one but you can know your inner world or your sense of self. No one can take that discovery from you. Some may tryout of a misguided notion of love, out of fear for you or themselves, in the name of whatever God they think they know the will of, or in the name of what they like to think is normal in this world. Let them try. Give them an honest hearing, but never let them kill your spirit.

Be strong.

If I made it here you can, too. I lived to tell my tale. And so will you.

LORIMER

TWO LINEUPS

(19641969)

MY EARLIEST MEMORY is of the first day of kindergarten. We were told to get into two lines: one for boys and the other for girls. This was the first time in my young life Id been presented with such a choice, so I walked to the boys line and quietly took my place. Our teacher, Miss Olson, stepped to the front of our two lines and surveyed us, counting to herself. She rested her kind gaze on me as she instructed all of us to get our coats on for some outside playtime.

As I fumbled with the buttons on my coat, she knelt down beside me and spoke softly, her words burning into my memory.

Lorraine, is there a reason you didnt stand in the girls line? she asked, her eyes warm and caring. I knew it was safe for me to speak honestly.

Im supposed to be a boy, I answered. I dont belong with the girls. She stayed like that, crouched down beside me for a few moments, her comforting hand on my shoulder.

I understand, she said. Do you think that could be something private you only share with really good friends? She nodded encouragingly. I am very happy to be your friend and I think it would be best for you to line up in the girls line, but know in your heart how you feel. She smiled warmly. Okay?

I nodded and forced a small smile. In that moment, a few months shy of five years old, I understood how it was. She was so kind to me. She knew Id be pushed in a ditch if the other kids knew what was up with me.

MY PARENTS HAD braved a blizzard early one December morning to drive to the hospital for my birth. The evening before, as shed sat in her sewing class, labor pains had gripped my mother. She and our next-door neighbor Sarahher intrepid companion on various self-improvement courses such as Chinese cooking and knittinghad cut the night short and ventured home through the Calgary snowstorm, Mom wiping the fogged glass as Sarah drove, peering through the windshield. The sewing lessons never translated into any inherited stitching or mending expertise, but tales of Mom drinking copious amounts of stout while she was pregnantthanks to a Dr. Spock recommendation for anemic expectant mothersleft me convinced I came by my love of beer and later alcohol troubles honestly.

I also credit my ability to fit in anywhere to Mom. Whether it was cooking or sewing classes with Sarah, annual summer family camping trips when my brother, my sister, and I were kids, or tolerating the eight-hour semiannual drives to spend a week with Dads mother and many siblings in rural Saskatchewan, Mom did it with aplomb, even if her apparent enjoyment may have lacked sincerity. Had she participated in these activities grudgingly or as if they were beneath her, I might have defined her as a snob. But she dove in, if not quite with gusto, then at least with a good college try at merriment.

Shed been born into the role of outsidershe grew up in a rural Alberta town among farmers as the daughter of the bank manager, accustomed to visiting without pretension among the locals in her formative years. Perhaps it was her generations awareness of manners, rendering her loath to rock the boat or draw undue attention to herself, but I believe she carried a comprehension of how unique she was and accepted that her differences would be more difficult to bear if she bemoaned her pedestrian life.