Because I Knew You
Because I knew you... I have been changed for good.
Hello, my buddies and beauties and brilliances… Miss Dee Jay here, and welcome to this thankful version of Trans Pirate Radio.
One of the benefits of writing a blog - any blog, really - is that oftentimes I will write something, and then real life will show up and say, “You know, here’s something else you might want to think about…. Also, you REALLY need to brighten up. Yes, the world’s on fire, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dance.”
That certainly happened with the last post, about Trans Day of Remembrance. It can be difficult to be positive during TDoR, amidst so much death, amidst so much hostility. The lives remembered were snuffed out far too soon, and their deaths a stain on the society that caused it. Complicating matters even further is the degree to which trans people throughout the world, but particularly in the US, are being persecuted; it is nearly impossible for us to avoid the possibility that the violence that took their lives could take ours soon enough.
So what did I do for TDoR and immediately after? I first went to the festivities in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then spent the next couple of days with friends. Keep in mind, I don’t live in the Bay Area, but it was very clear I needed to be there, for my own soul if nothing else. I accidentally ended up working security at the march, had a bit of a scare to address as the ceremony progressed, had a job interview the following morning, then went to visit my friends.
A friend, L_____, had her surgery on the Trans Day of Remembrance. There’s something beautiful about that. We’re not rolling over, we’re not giving up; even as this wave of transphobia rises to crash into all of us, we’re not taking things lying down. Moreover, we have things to do; we have lives to live, and days to seize. That somehow she ended up having her surgery on that day of all days was a beautiful touch to the whole matter. I should note that this was not the first time I’d visited a friend post-surgery. I had done so several times before, in some cases even acting as a caretaker. I have also been through my own version of this surgery a couple of years previous. So this was experience I definitely had. Been there, done that, got the really-stretched-out t-shirt.
And… L_____ and I talked. A lot. This was two trans girls talking over the course of a couple of days; we talked about everything. One discussion on coffee - just coffee - took up over an hour. Surgery and recovery took up an hour or two, as I had my wisdom - or, as it happens to be, my lack of wisdom, in a “Don’t do what I did” way - to provide. We talked fashion; we talked about old friends and mentors; we talked about what it meant to be trans in this world; we talked about family and friendship; we talked about relationships and sexuality, and the confusing morass that is the transgender sexual experience; we talked about the current wave of anti-trans moral panic. Though I didn’t initially realize it, I needed that discussion about as much as she did; my own faith in friends, in the trans community, had been badly shaken in recent weeks, and I needed to feel like I wasn’t shunned, I wasn’t hunted.
Later on in the trip, I went to another friend, D_____. D_____ was a mentor to both L_____ and myself, and I told D_____ as much; she had transitioned back when many of us were either still figuring things out or trying to survive in a situation where we didn’t have the ability to transition. I learned so much from D_____ in those early years, when I had no clue about how to go forward. Her simply existing and thriving during that difficult time was a revelation and a hope for so many of us, at a time when many of us had thought such success near-impossible.
We talked on her porch outside, as she is concerned - rightly so - about COVID. We touched on so many things; the old days, my transition (it had been several years, certainly pre-COVID and also pre-transition, since I’d visited in person), work, our families, the existential horror that is existing as trans in the US right now. This, also, was a beautiful experience, even if it was somewhat cold that evening.
It’s these moments that I want to talk about - just chances to talk, chances to be there and appreciate each other for still being here, still thriving, still feeling the joy of existence even as the world tries to snuff that joy out. Another friend of mine, the one who guided me to start posting on Ghost, likes to quote Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, it's not my revolution!” The revolution does no good if no joy can come of it.
And the joy we find ultimately comes from each other.
I have mentioned that I have known I was trans for a long time, but could not transition until later in life. This did not mean that I spent those years idle. I had my mentors in those early years, people I learned from, people I admired. These people transitioned at a time when transitioning seemed near-impossible, and yet they thrived afterwards.
These mentors were the aforementioned D_____, another person, E_____… and Becky.
I feel safe in mentioning Becky by name now, because she has so recently passed, and I think she deserves the recognition. I knew Becky Heineman from circles that seem so inconsequential compared to everything else she’d done; that said, what she had done made her a legend. First person to ever win a nationwide video game competition, in 1980. Reverse-engineering the Atari 2600 and co-founding Interplay in 1983, all while still a teenager. So many video games, from her original works like Bard’s Tale III, Mindshadow, and Tass Times in Tonetown to ports of everything from Baldur’s Gate II to an infamous port of Doom to the Activision Anthology. I first knew her as just another writer in an online community of writers - yes, she wrote... I didn’t know about the video game thing, her life’s work, until a couple of years after, when I found her name on an Activision Anthology disk.
The obituaries say she transitioned in 2003; it feels strange that it is so late, as it seemed earlier than that, though perhaps that is my aging memory failing me. But Becky… hers was the first coming-out letter I ever read, at a time when I needed trans people to look up to. I heard all about her triumphs and difficulties as she transitioned, absorbing every word, every bit of wisdom.
As groups will fade, we drifted in and out of each other’s circles; I focused a bit too much on my career in the 2010s, and didn’t talk to her much then. When I publicly transitioned in 2022, I reached out to her again, asking if she wanted to get together. We kept in touch after; if she had an event in my city or if I was headed to the Dallas area where she lived, we would get together and meet.
The last time I saw Becky was some months after her wife Jennell had died. She was still in grief, still picking up the pieces; there is so much to be done in sorting the life Jennell had made, just as there is no doubt so much work to be done in sorting out Becky’s own life. She at least seemed in good spirits then, even within the grief.
I had hoped I would get one more chance, one more opportunity, one more dinner at the Genghis Grill or someplace similar. Cancer came for her so quickly, too quickly; one month she told us of her diagnosis, and the next she was gone.
Becky… and D_____, and E_____… they provided me with something so critical to a trans girl who couldn’t find a way forward. Hope, and a blueprint. That transition was possible, even if it wasn’t possible right away, was something I so desperately needed to know in those early days, when hope seemed so fleeting, when being trans felt like a death sentence. I took so much inspiration from them just being them, for existing at a time when I couldn’t even perceive existence.
Thank you, Becky. You’re in Valhalla with Jennell now. And we will miss you.
I think I mentioned that my own faith in friends had been badly shaken of late. I messed up, and completely misread some things, and lost friends as a result, hurting them even as I was trying to help them. That, and some events at work, had me leaning heavily on the Wicked soundtrack, specifically “No Good Deed”. Nothing quite like feeling like the Wicked Witch of the West…
But that’s not the song I want to talk about today, because the lessons over this weekend were so important, so critical. As I went through the weekend, as I went through the TDoR march, as I talked with L_____ and with D_____, another song began to express itself, began to sing to me: “For Good”.
We probably aren’t going to know the effect we have on other people. Some are small, random encounters in the street, maybe a moment, maybe a few minutes. Some are larger, maybe a few days. Some are over the course of a lifetime. Regardless, we do our best, sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail, but we try to do good. It's sharing this world with those around us, and trying to make it a place that's a little less on fire, just a little more palatable.
Sometimes, like with Becky, with E_____, and with D_____, people do good through the example they set, showing a path forward when none seems possible, mentoring through survival. Sometimes it’s like the discussions with L_____ in the hospital, sharing time, sharing thoughts, sharing moments. To all of these people, and to other friends with initials going literally from A to Z, thank you for this journey, for so many of these moments.
To all of the trans community I have encountered over the years… thank you. Because I knew you… I have been changed for good.
