story, however.
Before the days when shaving cream came in aerosol cans, he would add some hot water to a little bowl, then whisk his shaving brush around it until a thick lather formed. Dunking the brush in, he’d reach over and dab it liberally on both of my cheeks. I knew what to do next. With three fingers together, I’d rub it around my face and neck, upper lip, and chin, sneaking peeks at him beside me doing the same, making sure I was getting it right. He would always take the last bit on the end of his brush and dab it onto the tip of my nose.
I’d try my best to mimic the upside-down U shape his mouth would make as he shaved his upper lip under his nose. I would use a wooden Popsicle stick as my razor, so I never had to dampen little scraps of toilet paper and dab them onto nicks the way he would when he cut himself, which was frequently. Even so, I’d imitate that, too, wanting to mirror the entire ritual as closely as possible. I’d scrape down on my face and up on my neck, just as he did, then take a washcloth and wet it thoroughly with warm water, rubbing it all over my face to remove the excess cream. My favorite step came last: clapping a splash of Hai Karate aftershave together in my hands before slapping both cheeks gently with it and emitting a satisfied “Ah,” just as Dad did when he finished.
As I grew, I tried to copy everything he did—subtle mannerisms, how he held a hammer, the way he bit his lip when measuring a piece of wood—careful not to appear obvious. He possessed one habit I couldn’t bear: smoking. His smoking was the one thing we could complain about that would get a rise out of him, as though it represented the only harmless indulgence he allowed himself that wouldn’t interfere with being a good husband and father.
I can’t think of anything else he did that we complained about, except his bad jokes. But on summer vacations, bombing down the highway in our ’65 Valiant, his cigarette ashes blowing into the back seat from the driver’s window, I found the one trait of his I never wanted to emulate. As a kid with allergies likely caused by the “cancer sticks,” I hated it.
I imagined myself as a man who would not smoke.
3
RENÉE
(1975–1979)
THE HEADLINE SCREAMED: “WOMEN’S WINNER WAS A MAN!”
I huddled over the evening sports section as I read, afraid someone in my family would notice my keen interest. Devouring the sports section wasn’t unusual for any athletics-minded twelve-year-old and no one in my family batted an eye, but I was so scared of being discovered that I grabbed the paper and ran with it into the bathroom, locking the door. Eyes wide, I absorbed the details of the story: A successful middle-aged New York doctor had voluntarily gone through sex reassignment surgery from male to female and then competed in the 1976 La Jolla Tennis Tournament Championships as a woman. There are other people like me.
My breath came in short gasps. I needed to know everything about what Renée Richards had done. That night and the next, I did not sleep. Determined to learn more, I decided to search the library for information. Our junior high school library contained a substantial and varied collection of books; maybe I could find something there. I searched, using the Dewey Decimal System card catalog as I’d been taught, but information on Renée Richards eluded me. I had no idea what words to use in my search other than her name. Shame dogged my every step, and with it a misguided worry that Melvil Dewey—the man my peers and I had learned created the system—would be disturbed that I was using his book classification system to find writings on such a sordid topic. My familiar sense of myself as unlovable and downright wrong hovered nearby, accompanying me whenever I allowed myself to think too much about pursuing a sex change.
The librarian, an older woman I’d always found to be helpful in the past, approached me in the stacks.
“Can I help you find something, dear?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” I answered, thinking, Would you call me dear if you knew about me?
“Is it about sports?” she persisted gently, as we stood in front of a shelf of sports books.
“Yes! Hockey!” I exclaimed. “I’m looking for a book about Bobby Orr.”
“Hmm. Let’s see.” She picked through several books before pulling out Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins. “Here’s one.” She handed it to me. I pretended to study it carefully, although I’d read it before.
“Perfect. Thank you.” I followed her back to the circulation desk.
“I think there’s a newer one about him out, but we don’t have it. Check the bookmobile, though. It comes tomorrow.”
I slept fitfully that night, reliving my failure over and over in my mind. I knew I should have asked her if she had anything on sex changes, but felt certain she’d know it was because I wanted one. I formed a plan and slept for a couple of hours.
The bell rang and I ran out to the bookmobile, which came to our school once a month with its ever-changing variety of books. The converted yellow school bus repurposed as a library on wheels was jammed full, with little space for browsing. I summoned my courage and approached the librarian, a younger man of about thirty. I blurted out my prepared statement.
“Um, I’m doing a project in school about discrimination in sports and I saw this story about a man who changed into a woman and how they let him—her, I guess—play in a tennis tournament. I’m wondering if her life story is here?” I allowed my eyes to meet his. “Her name is Renée Richards.”
“That’s a toughie,” he answered, walking down the aisle, looking up and down. He stopped and thumbed through a section of books. “These are the sports biographies, and I don’t see anything here on a Renée Richards, but …” he walked to another section and pulled out a hardcover book. “This might give you some good information,” he said, passing it to me. I read the title: Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. I frowned, looking at the cover, which featured a photo of a woman’s face, framed by the remnants of a torn piece of paper. It felt as though he were passing me a message in code. I thought he might tap the side of his nose like I’d seen in a spy movie once. He didn’t.
“Okay, I’ll take this one.”
Huddled underneath the covers in bed that night, flashlight in hand, I read the story of Christine Jorgensen, a Danish American former US Army serviceman and one of the first people to undergo gender reassignment surgery, in the early 1950s. I don’t know what shocked me more: that such liberation was possible or that it had happened over twenty years before I read about it.
I closed the book. I lay there, a Catholic kid in mid-1970s Calgary, tears streaming down my face. I can never do it. This will never happen for me. I berated myself silently for opening this can of worms, for picking this scab, for allowing myself to hope—even for the briefest of moments—that my life could be set right. It felt like I’d opened a gift meant for someone else. I couldn’t figure out which hurt more: enduring the jolts of disappointment after glimpses of happiness or burying my dream of living the life I wanted.
MADAME DUBOIS COUNTED out rectangular name plates made of card stock and handed them out to the rows of students in my French class. I sometimes imagined Madame Dubois being the same person as my maternal grandmother, Marie Antoinette Royal, or “Toni,” as she was known to those closest to her, who had died of cancer when I was six. I vaguely
