JO and JAY: a conversation across the generations
by Jo Somerset
creative non-fiction | 27/05/2020
It’s 2020 and we’re talking about things that existed in the last century but couldn’t be spoken. Your voice has dropped since last time we met, only six weeks ago. “How long have you been taking T?” I giggle at the homophone, at an image of delicate bone china being lifted to your lips. I’m embarrassed about being clumsy, old, a klutz with my concepts.
You’ve been injecting for four months. The word ‘testosterone’ sounds clunky, reverberating around the busy café, I revert to ‘T’. I could never say the word out loud before. But there are resonances between our life experiences.
Dear Jay,
You’re telling my childhood story except it’s forty years later and it’s not mine, it’s yours. In grown-up words you describe how your three-year old self realised about gender restrictions, backed off and said, “I’m good.” It wasn’t for you.
You were an only child, with a father you were never close to (and didn’t know after age eight). Your friends were your Grandad, tinkering with car engines in his garage, and your cousin George.
Your mum was unpredictable, your dad was absent, your cousin was younger than you and your grandparents wouldn’t understand. There was no one to talk to.
You retreated into yourself, numbed. Sitting across from me today, you show me how you were as a child: shrugging shoulders, “whatever.” To feel nothing was your defence against feeling the abyss inside. You weren’t living, you were just being alive.
You didn’t particularly want to be a boy, you just wanted to be you. And you definitely didn’t want all the trappings that went with being a girl. Like many tomboys, you played football, did active bodily things.
In year 7 you were bullied for looking like a boy, so you decided to ‘perform’ as a girl. You became friendly with a group of ‘girly girls’, grew your hair and started wearing ‘girly’ clothes and makeup. You passed. Went out on a Saturday night – discos, clubs, drinking Lambrini. But no boyfriends. “No, no, no, no, never,” says grown-up Jay in front of me.
You didn’t go out much. Most evenings you were in your bedroom, painting or drawing. Or living on your laptop.
You gave up the pretence sometime or other before leaving home.
You went to uni, existing in a kind of wordless emotional bubble, knowing about transgender people but feeling somehow separate. Fortunately, uni was in Manchester, a long way from home in Hertfordshire, and it was the start of coming out. You were safe to be yourself.
You had a social life and a girlfriend who taught you words about gender, sexuality and queerness. You bought a binder. It felt good to wear it. She wasn’t so keen, and when you both parted, you decided: Fuck it, no one is telling me how to be anymore. You began to discover yourself, stripping off the numb coating and feeling everyday happies and sads. Your uni fine art degree work concentrated on gender.
You met M___ (female), who encouraged you to go for it, whatever was right for you.
I was a tomboy.
I played with my brother and was the only girl in cops’n’robbers on bikes.
I wore dungarees or a beloved Stewart tartan kilt.
I sometimes dared to play in the boys’ playground at school even though I might get caught. (Don’t listen to stories of what went on in the boys’ toilets at the bottom of the hill).
I grew my hair, wore miniskirts, had 2 close friends, learnt to snog boys and let them grope.
I secretly daydreamed about Miss Walker, gym teacher.
I didn’t.
At age 18 I went 3,000 miles from home. I felt safe to be myself, cut my hair and went back to dungarees.
I came back to the UK, to Manchester uni, had my first girlfriend. I dropped out
of uni – said I’d come back if
they ran a course on
‘sexual politics’, which
eventually happened
in the 1980s, too late for me.
You write down your email address, left-handed, and a current buzzes, a queer kinship across the gap of years, class, region and gender. On the gender spectrum you’re presenting as male and looking forward to shaving more than a bit of soft fluff, and I’m a girl/woman who does many things traditionally reserved for males, but female nevertheless, a breastfeeding mother amongst other things.
(Except I recommend you watch Seahorse about Freddy giving birth as a father.)
We discuss fluid vs. binary. We don’t have the answers but we’re not totally ignorant either, there’s stuff we can work out. I want to talk about body image and the internal journey (conflicts) that make up the lesbian and trans experiences.
You intend to have top surgery
You’re bucking the trans-guy stereotype, rejecting the lean look in favour of softness – it’s you.
You’re shocked.
I think you’re not telling me everything when you look at the photo.
Dear Jay,
My boobs are really annoying, except the brief period when they fed my son. I could do without them but never will, unless I get cancer.
I’ve always ridden my bike, been as physically active as I could. I was simultaneously ashamed and proud about having a strong, muscly body. Now I’ve got more time, I feel good about going to the gym, hardening up, learning boxing techniques.
I wear more women’s (not unisex) clothes and dress up as my version of a flapper (satin jumpsuit) for a ‘20s evening out.
Before the night I go to the barber for a sharp haircut to go with my lesbian 1920s chic image – bare
shoulders revealing new (first) tattoo, long black gloves and teardrop ear-rings and necklace.
We talk about the prospect of passing and wonder if you’ll have the same experience as Jess in Stone Butch Blues (Leslie Feinburg, 1993) who, by passing as male, lost her butch lesbian identity. While no one will ever have your unique experience, you identify as trans male, maybe 70:30 on the gender spectrum. Your whole journey is about being fully you, and the last thing you want is to lose some of yourself. I haven’t asked if you’re scared.
about Jo (she/her/hers)
Jo Somerset (she/her) is a Manchester-based nonfiction writer who found a voice through Northern Gay Writers in the UK. ‘Jo and Jay’ is extracted from Born on 4th July, her auto/history work-in-progress. Jo’s poetry and vignettes have appeared in anothernorth.org, Dear Damsels, Buzzin Bards, The Selkie, and Generations anthology. Other publications include ‘Passion Prioritised’ in the Diva Book of Short Stories (2000) and ‘Pushing the Boundaries of Feminism in a Northern English Town’ (Northern History, March 2018). She has just finished a Creative Writing MA at Salford University.
twitter: @josomerset
website: josomersetwriter.wordpress.com