ACCOZZAGLIA

Angela resents trans women who’ve completed genital surgery. Her reasons are legit. I mean, it’s painful to not have a way to get there even as everyone else around seemingly is. It can be demoralizing. I know this, because that was me a decade ago before something really unexpected fell into my lap.

This is one of those inheritance stories, but not exactly as you’d expect. My grandfather died and left behind a will. There wasn’t a lot of money in his estate, but the sale of his little bungalow was divvied up among relatives: 30 per cent for each of his two kids (my dad being one), and the 40 per cent remaining was divvied between all of his grandkids (which totalled four: me, my sister and brother, and my cousin). So in the end, there was 10 per cent with my name on it — to be precise, my dead name.

Thing is, he died and I didn’t know about it for four years. I was a runaway, and for nine years didn’t have any contact with family. My dad, who was the reason I got the fuck out of the house at 13, died of cirrhosis — wait for it — four years after my zayde kicked it. My sister somehow managed to find me on my web site, despite my total name change (she recognized a piece of art I’d made when I was still living at home). 

She wrote and said that our dad, the poor bastard, died in hospital alone, because no one wanted to be near him toward the end, seeing him for the feeble, drunken, bitter man he always was. No compassion. He’d withheld from everyone what our grandfather’s estate bequeathed. So when Constance wrote that email, she mentioned that there was about fifteen grand left to me. Zayde never knew about me being trans, and I’ll never really know how he would have taken it anyway.

I wrote back to Constance. She was terse, but decent. She said that there was some extra legal stuff I’d have to do because my name and legal change of gender sort of complicated matters in Ohio. I wasn’t born there, but they don’t recognize trans people’s changed birth certificates.

That nightmare went on for nine months, but in the meantime, I began looking for a surgeon to do what I simply couldn’t afford from working two retail jobs in the country’s most expensive city. Eventually, after legal fees and currency exchange, the amount left me with about $8K. I scrounged together the remaining $2k from favours and busting my arse with overtime and went to Thailand about three months later.

I was not about to tell Angela any of this, because she wouldn’t give a damn. She’d just hold me with contempt. She only met me two years ago. Mercifully, she never asked me about my body, probably because we’re only casual friends at best. We see each other maybe three times a year, usually with friends — such as tonight at this fake Aussie bar in, of all places, Granville. Like, they have all this tacky shit on the wall — kangaroo crossing signs, license plates from all the states and territories (except A.C.T.), and the crappy beers on tap. And yet, their jukebox has only one song from Oz: “Back in Black”. WTF, no.

But in the middle of someone singing karaoke, “Baby Baby” by Amy Grant, Angela exploded when she heard that Madison was in Montréal and couldn’t make it. Montréal, in the company of trans folk, is a metonym for Brassard. Dr. Brassard. “Oh look at her, so fucking privileged because her sugar daddy bought her surgery. She didn’t even say anything beforehand.”

Actually she had — just not to Angela. Everyone around Angela looked at one another a bit anxiously.

I took a chance to say something. “I know it’s hard for you to hear, because you feel like it’ll never happen for you…”

“EIGHT YEARS, Etta. Eight FUCKING years!” Some cis dudes by the pool table looked up and murmured something to each other and giving her that eye which says, “We’re onto to you, you fucking tranny.” They couldn’t say much, though, because we outnumbered them 3 to 1.

“Like, why don’t you ever get angry when this comes up?”

“Uh, because being angry is pointless? Because being happy for our friends is what we’d want from people for us when it’s our turn?”

“So you’re peachy with just watching everyone go by you as you’re stuck in the mud, eh?”

I looked at Kasey, who knew the minefield we were heading. She knew I hated lying, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. “Probably no less peachy than me, Ang.” Kasey, like Angela, hadn’t completed genital surgery, despite her wanting to. I know this because we dated last year.

“You didn’t answer my question, Etta.”

“Must I?”

“Fuck it, I’ll come right out and ask: have you or haven’t you?”

I looked at my beer. “Dude, I don’t want to have this discussion. My body is private to all but my doc and partner.”

“Answer the fucking question!”

OK. She’s going to hate this.

“Seven years ago.”