Vignette 1: Moving Beyond Isolation

My life is kind of in a bit of a shift right now because, like maybe six months ago, I would have told you that I was very isolated. I didn't know anybody in town. And I was very frustrated because I was used to, I was used to traveling all over the place and also living in bigger cities and having a lot more community to plug into. I had not quite figured out how to plug in the community here in Walla Walla. So like, you know, maybe 6-9 months ago things started to change and open up, and I started connecting with more people and being involved with more things. So now all of a sudden, I'm just like, doing all kinds of things here locally and not just outside, you know, via zoom. So, I started writing a story, like a fictional story with a self-insert character with the intent that I would like both on a practical level, explore the things I was trying to, you know, struggle with and also on a spiritual, magical level. It was like a sigil to change my life. And sure enough, that not only did like things that I put in the story start actually happening in my life, but also advice that I was writing in the voices of the characters, I would go out and I would follow that advice and then things would happen. And so, it's been a very, very productive fiction project. So one of the main characters is named Morrison, after Grant Morrison, because, it's actually him that gave me the idea. There was a pretty famous talk that he gave in 2000 at the Disinfo conference that you can find all over YouTube if you just look up Grant Morrison Disinfo. And he talks about, he talks about a bunch of stuff but one of the things he talks about is the series called Invisibles that he created it as a sigil to do stuff in his life, and like the positive and the negative sides of that. So, I took the lessons of like, don't give yourself a horrible skin disease in your story. 

Vignette 2: Writing

I have been, I've been writing since I was capable of stringing letters together. Like, when I was a little kid, I wrote a lot of really silly poetry and then very angsty poetry, but also a lot of a lot of short stories. When I was like in 4th grade, I was writing this fantasy story and my teachers coordinated with the kindergartener, the kindergarten teachers, and I would go once a week to read what I'd written that week to the kindergarteners. It was really fun. So yeah, I've been writing forever.

Vignette 3: Walla Walla WA

So, I came here, sort of this incarnation of being in Walla Walla, I came here in 2018. My son, who's basement I am currently in, he moved here to Walla Walla, I don't know, like 2008 or 2009, because he's a winemaker. And, so ever since, what is it, 2011, I've been kind of coming in and out of Walla Walla. Since whenever his, whenever his first kid was born. Right before that, so I had like six months, maybe nine months of just full time traveling before that I had a couple of years where I was living in Colfax, which is kind of where I landed after being at Standing Rock. Because my, I lived in the apartment two floors above my mom, which was the only place I could find where anybody would rent to me. Because I didn't, I didn't just have bad credit, I did not have any credit. Like I, it was as if I didn't exist because I have purposely not had any credit cards at all since the age of 19. And and I've also spent a lot of time traveling outside the US, so I was kind of like, 'here I am. I've got a rent' and everybody's like, 'No, sorry. You don't have any credit history at all, we can't rent to you?' Like 'Wait, but I could give you a bigger deposit.' 'No, sorry.' When it's all owned by corporations, there's no flexibility, right. So yeah, so luckily the building that my mom was in was owned by a person who was able to see that I was, like, actually holding down a job and could pay rent and stuff and was like, 'OK.' So, before that, I was at Standing Rock for six months, and before Standing Rock, there's five years of literally traveling full time. I would spend anywhere from like 2 weeks to maximum three months in a place where I went to the next place working on humanitarian technology projects.

Vignette 4: Home Base

Griff Tester: So, when in 2018 when you made your way to Walla Walla, what was it that pulled your there? 

Elior: Harvest season and the need for a babysitter. So, I showed up and I thought here for the harvest season, but afterwards it just kind of made sense to make this home base. Before the before the pandemic happened, I was still, I was still working with Geeks Without Bounds, so I did kind of make a few sort of outward trips and come back for things while I was still working at Geeks Without Bounds. But just kind of made this home base so that I would be available when they needed me.

Vignette 5: Realizing  

OK, so here's a weird thing. I wasn't I wasn't publicly out as trans until, well, like the circle kind of grew and grew and grew. And it became like everybody knows in 2021. But I wasn't really like publicly out, even though I knew since I was 11 that I wished I was a boy, and I when I found out that it was a thing that you could do because my mom and I were watching a documentary about trans people. And I knew trans women. I knew about transitioning that direction, but this was the first time I'd actually heard that it was possible, you know, to transition my direction. That I remember so distinctly thinking, 'that's what I wanna do.' Turning to my mother and thinking, 'Oh if I say this out loud, that's not gonna go well.' And just being like ... But I grew up in San Francisco. My mom hired, this is probably illegal, even back in the 80s, but she preferentially hired gay men as her secretaries. And my father was the president of the Polk District Merchants Association. So, I was literally surrounded by queer culture growing up. And I think kind of as a result of that, wherever I've been, I've always been around queer culture and I've always kind of been the weird man out, as it were, because everybody looking at me was like, 'Oh yeah, that's a straight woman who just kind of hangs out in queer culture.' Right. And I remember once asking somebody like, 'I don't get the thing' and they're like, 'you're just so straight.' And I was like, 'but I'm not. Why does everybody think I'm so straight? I don't get it.' But, whatever, anyway. So, like queer community, just I don't know why it's kind of like gaydar, except I don't necessarily even realize that the person that I'm hanging out with is gay until they say so and then I'm like, 'Huh? Wow, how come all my friends are gay and trans, I don't know?' 

Vignette 6: Trans Documentary

Like I I wish I had enough of a memory of it to put together like search terms to go find it, right. But I remember some specific scenes, like images from this documentary. And I remember this one trans man in particular who was married to a man, and he talked about how when he first called up a a gender clinic to talk about transitioning, they asked if he was lesbian and he said 'no.' And they said, 'then why are you trying to transition.' And he was like, 'because I'm a man and I need to be a man.' And they're like, 'No, that's not, that's not how it works.' And he talks about having to, like, really fight to be able to go on hormones and then like, I think his story in particular kind of made something go ping inside my head that like sexuality and gender are not the same. I was still under the, I was still under the misimpression that you had to choose a sexuality. Because I did actually very intentionally choose to date boys and later men because being a lesbian would be too difficult. Like I heard all these horror stories. I didn't want to have to deal with that. Like, I'm not that brave. I'm really not. I'm brave in other ways, but not that way. 

Vignette 7: Mom

My mom is kind of a conundrum because she's, she's actually super, super toxic and super, super problematic. And, I mean, if you, if you follow the words that she says and the front that she puts up, then that's like actually a really cool person and a great role model. And I think that that person that she was presenting to the world, some part of her knows that that's who she wants to be. But there's this other part of her that is the complete opposite, like the reason why I thought you had to choose was my mother literally going on about somebody who had, you know, dated one person and then another person, and then another person and they were like, 'They have to choose. You can't just go back and forth.' And I was like, 'But why?' 'No, no, you have to pick a team.' And there were other things. You know, I ended up in foster care about the time of my 13th birthday and aged out of the foster care system. So, yeah, there were other problems. And it wasn't wrong. And when I when I finally did transition, my mom just completely ignored it at first, pretended, after we had had that first conversation, that it had never happened. And, as my voice was getting deeper, she started telling me how concerned she was that, like, was I smoking too much or should I see the doctor. I'm on testosterone. One particular hilariously cognitive dissonant moment, we're driving in the car and my mom is just raging about all these laws that are getting passed against trans medical care. And she's like, 'Why are they doing this. People are just born that way,' and then she stops, and she goes, 'Except you.' So, I kind of like pat 11-year-old me on the back and go like, 'OK.'

Vignette 8: My Kids

Elior: I wish that I had trusted the people around me more, including my kids, cause I had my first kid when I was 17, and I remember in college thinking about, thinking about transitioning and also thinking about openly dating women. And I'm thinking I can't do that to my kids because that's gonna make their life harder. And I wish I had just trusted them more. We were in freaking Berkeley at the time.

M. Eliatamby-O'Brien: I mean, it does sound like you had a precedent before you from other, like your mom, and probably other people that was like doing this is going to cause some amount of distress or harm for someone. So even if your kids are totally chilled with it now, yeah, that's hard.

Elior: And my kids, my kids have been amazing, amazing. 

Vignette 9: Finding Community

Here and Walla Walla, I wasn't meeting anybody or connecting with anybody or building any community at all. I felt like really disconnected from everything. You know, I have a habit of like sitting down in coffee shops and meeting people in coffee shops or, you know, things like that. Open community spaces, hacker spaces. I used to hang out in hacker spaces a lot. And the coffee shops here are really not conducive to sitting around for hours and hours working on some project and every so often looking up and talking to the person sitting next to you. They're like, in fact, one of the coffee shops in particular has 1/2-hour limit. If you stay there for more than half an hour and they're like, 'Shoo.' That's like, that's weird. So yeah, so those kinds of things that are kind of places where I met strangers weren't there. I'm not Christian, so I'm not going to any of the churches, which seems to be a major area of social connection in this town. And the synagogue that I go to, when I first got here, they had one Friday night service a month and one Saturday morning torah study a month and that was it. That that was the sum total of the synagogue community, as far as I could see it or you know, figure out how to get involved with it. I'm on the board now and now we have torah study every single weekend. We have things to do every single week. And really, that's because I was trying to fulfill my own needs, but it's ended up being pretty good in general for the community. One of the things that I've heard from a lot of people who moved here, right, right around the time of the pandemic. A lot of people when they moved to a rural area like this, you know, they're older, maybe they're either retired or they're at a point in their life where they can work remotely and you know Jewish people will go, "oh, I can move to this rural area because there's a Jewish community here,' and then they get here and there was just kind of nothing. Like two things you could go to a month and so that there's kind of a group of them that are pushing for, 'let's do more and more' and I'm  all for that. I'm down for that.

Vignette 10: Coming Out

I did go to a funeral down in Nevada, where I saw a bunch of people from Standing Rock. And at that point, I was out, and people would be like, 'Oh, Alicia' and I would say, 'It's Elior now,' and they’d give me a hug and say, 'Oh, Elior,' just like that, just like that meme from Deep Space 9. Like exactly. (M. Eliatamby-O'Brien: Yes, I love that one, that's one of my favorites. That's my transition experience.) And everybody was just like, 'Okay, that's, that's great. Good to know. What pronouns are you using? Excellent,' and, you know, end of story. In the hacker and maker communities, anybody who had anything bad to say to me hasn't said it to my face. And, yeah, I was slightly disappointed when I gave a talk at Hackers on Planet Earth Hope Conference in July of last year. I made a joke at the beginning of it about how I'd been giving talks at every Hope for 10 years but this time it was a little bit different through the magic of testosterone. And nobody laughed. I was like, 'come on you guys.' But aside from the lack of laughter, everybody was super supportive. So, the synagogue is kind of funny because when I called up the President of the Board of Directors at the synagogue, I don't know how long he's been the President, but it's been a long time. He's gay, and he's married to a non-Jewish man. And so, he was the first person that I called up when I was like, you know, 'I'm coming out publicly. I don't know how this is gonna fly in the synagogue community.' And he was like, 'Oh, don't worry, you're the fifth one.' I was like, 'Wait, what?' And then he's like, 'Yeah, didn't you know that this person and this person and this person are trans?' I was like, 'No, I did not know that.' And 'Yeah, there's that young guy. He just started coming recently with his parents. Yeah, he's trans, too.' I was like, 'Wait, what.' So, I don't know, the Jewish community in Walla Walla is extra queer, I guess.

Vignette 11: Being Older, Coming Out

So, and yeah, everybody has been really supportive. I'm certainly the oldest person in the community to transition. And a lot of people have been very interested in that. Like, what's it like already, you know, being a grandparent when you transition. And, you know, I mean, I don't know what it would have been like when I was 30, but I suspect that, in a lot of ways it's the same except, just I'm more middle-aged. I'm on the other side of the hill, whatever.

Vignette 12: Primary Care Provider

So, the one thing that I was really kind of stressed out about was finding a primary care provider, which took me a long time. The primary care provider that I had before I started transitioning, I didn't even have to ask like every other interaction that I had with him told me this is not gonna go well. So, I just basically did not see my primary care provider for almost a year until - and I was constantly asking everybody that I could, 'Who's your primary care provider? Are they good?' It's, you know, I was asking trans people and I found out about a lot of doctors who weren't good in the area and a few that were but didn't take my my insurance. And I had to like, 'Wait, do I switch to insurances to be able to do this?' And then finally somebody recommended - It was so funny because it was on the Ingersoll support group which has been on Zoom for a while. And this young person wasn't even in Seattle, was someplace else. But they had just moved to wherever else they moved to from Walla Walla, which is like, what a weird small world. And they were like, yeah, you should totally check out my doctor. He's actually got a bunch of trans patients and he's fantastic. And so finally I was like, 'Uhhh.' It happened that that guy was actually in the exact same doctor group within, not just within the same hospital group, Providence, which, like I don't know, it feels like 90% of the doctors in this area are all under Providence. But then, like he was in the same like 7 doctor unit. So, when I called up to see if I could change, they were like, 'That's gonna be really hard. Why do you want to do this?' And I told them that I had already transitioned. I'd been on testosterone for almost a year at that point, and I still hadn't seen a primary care provider, cause I really wanted to like a trans experienced care provider and they were like, 'Well, we'll, we'll have to talk to your current doctor to get permission.' And half an hour later, they called back and we're like, 'Yep, let's make you an appointment with the new doctor.' You know, whatever, whatever happened behind the scenes, it all worked out.

Vignette 13: Gender Care

For my, for like the gender care piece of it, I just went to Planned Parenthood right from the start. And yeah, most of my care was Planned Parenthood that's been over zoom calls. And when I need to, when I need to do something in the office, there's a Planned Parenthood here in town. Both from talking to lots of other trans people before because, yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of trans friends over the years. So, it was not difficult to find people that I could ask questions. But so, I knew that Planned Parenthood had worked out well for a lot of other people, and also just looking at what was available out here in rural Eastern Washington. It seemed like the best bet that they were gonna actually have experience and knowledge and, you know, I wasn't gonna end up with a doctor who was figuring things out as they were going along.

Vignette 14: Activism

I've really struggled with the fact that there's all this political stuff going on out there. And, you know, before the pandemic, I would have hopped in my truck and driven off to Minneapolis and made myself useful in Minneapolis, and then driven off to Portland and made myself useful there. Like, you know, I would have been setting up, you know, networks or helping people with stingray detectors, MC catcher detectors, or, you know, whatever. And then here I was, just like I'm hearing Walla Walla, and there's nothing going on, and I can't help anybody and like that, like even if I went to protest, who's going to see it in Walla Walla. What do I do? So, I felt really kind of, like, isolated and powerless. I tried to help folks out the best I could, just like over the Internet, whatever. But one of the things I sat down and I wrote a chapter where one of the professors at the university in the book is like having a conversation with the, with the self-insert character, Oreal, about what to do to find the people in Walla Walla who are politically active and doing things. And she gave specific, specific advice about working my way back from like newspaper clippings and you know, bulletin boards and things like that, and finding those people and getting connected with them. And it was literally nothing I had thought of before sitting at the keyboard and typing all this stuff out. Had I not done that, I don't know what process would have gotten me to those thoughts. I'm sure that there's probably some other creative process that would have gotten me to that, ah-ha, that's what I have to do. But it just happens that this is the process that I used, and I literally followed all of her advice and connected in with a bunch of different really cool groups.

Vignette 15: Involvement

So, there's, there's the Walla, Walla Queers, which they need at a a local brew pub once a month and that's been a really good place to meet people and connect, you know, through into other things. Because you know there's like a librarian that goes there and a couple of professors and a couple of schoolteachers and, you know, wine makers. So, there's like people kind of in all of the areas of civic life in that space and of course, they know all the things that are going on in their little corners of the world. I also, I have volunteered, I haven't yet actually gotten into the prison, but I have volunteered and gone through the training to be a chaplain at the prison. There is at least one Jew here in Walla Walla who has been asking for Jewish chaplaincy, Jewish spiritual support for like going on two years now. And I've been trying to get in there for about a year and a half now since I first found out about it. There's a badge sitting waiting for me so that I can go in, but I can't go in by myself and so I'm at the mercy of the professional Chaplain to actually have time and be willing to escort me in or arrange an escort. So that's a thing. But the process of going through that training and getting connected in with all of that ended up connecting me with a lot of other really cool people who are doing cool things in town, you know, good social stuff. So that's been really cool. And also because of that I got involved with Matir Asurim, which is a Jewish, a Jewish abolitionist organization that does outreach in prisons. Basically, at Matir Asurim we kind of consider ourselves to be like a congregation that has members that are on the inside and members that are on the outside. And some of the connection is made through mail and pen pals and things like that. And some of the connection is made through chaplains, whether professional or volunteer who are able to go into the prisons and support people.

Vignette 16: Ingersoll

They have been, they have been really, really helpful to me, among other things, they helped me find, you know, my primary care provider. But they've also been really helpful kind of processing things, figuring things out, getting to hear other people's experiences. with different emotional processes and physical processes, right. Like before I had top surgery, being able to hear other people's stories about surgery was a big deal. It was really, really helpful to me. There are literally everything from teenagers all the way through people in their 60s. So, and there have been times when it was, like almost all trans fem. But I think on the whole it's a pretty good mix. And there are days when it's like almost split in thirds, like the hims, the hers, and the theys. So, yeah, it's been it's a really diverse group. It's also not all blindingly white, which is, it's good because even if you are as pale skinned as I am, it's really helpful and useful to have other voices in the room and hearing about other people's experiences.

 Vignette 17: Safety in Walla Walla

You know, when I first came out out here, I was really worried about the physical safety side of things. Because just across the street and and past one house, there's a house that's just got multiple Trump flags and, you know, making very sure that we know where they stand. And I know that a lot of the neighbors that are on this block are nice to us, but also like see my household as the weird, you know - yes, we're Jewish, but also half the family is brown. You know, my son, my son got his Guatemalan dad's coloration, 100%. And so we're like two strikes against us right there and then and then now there's this trans grandpa. Like, we're that crazy house on the corner. But at least for now, a lot of people who I know are fairly conservative are, you know, nice to us and kind to us. I haven't had any real run-ins on the street. Though I have heard of other people having problems. I don't know how much of that is because people tell me that I'm scary and I'm not sure why, but some people seem to think I'm scary somehow, and maybe there's something about that. I don't know. The one thing I have found is that walking around wearing a kippa and very often wearing one of the shirts - like, I've got a shirt that says Ttzelen Elokim, which means in the image of God. And I've got another one that says, 'There's one in every minion.' I've got one, I've got a shirt that says, 'Not a phase,' and it has like moon phases, but it's like pink and blue and white across the moon phases, so it's like subtle, but people who know catch it really quickly. And this like, combination of being visibly Jewish and visibly queer gets me stopped on the street. Ask questions in a positive way. Amazingly often, like, 'Where's the nearest synagogue? Ohh, do you know where I could find this? Do you?' It's like, okay, so I guess this is actually not a bad thing. And the people who don't like me are staying away and not being evil to me, so far.

Vignette 18: Accepting I’m Trans

I so kind of pushed down the, “I want to actually transition,” and kind of just transferred it into, “I wish I was a boy, but that's not possible.” "I don't want it bad enough to be like a real trans person," was kind of what I told myself. Like if it was really causing me serious angst, then it would make sense for me to be a trans person. But, you know, like "you're not like that." But I clearly had all kinds of dysphoria that I did not realize I had until I started undoing it, right. But the things, I mean, first off, the very physical thing of of having breasts always bothered me. Like it, and it did not help that they were extra large, too, right. So, it was very, it was very upsetting, very annoying, and I wanted them to go away. I always wanted them to go away. They were very useful when I was feeding babies. I was very glad to have them for feeding babies. Um, I got to feed my own babies and I got to feed some orphans. Babies are alive today, yay, now the titties can go, right. So, and when I knew that I wasn't having any more kids and wasn't gonna need them for useful purposes anymore, it's just like, just get rid of them. I just don't want them. But of course, that's, you know, that's just not something you're gonna do, right. So, you just gotta live with it and grumble and ... I remember hanging out with trans male friends of mine and talking to them about how, like, "I wish I could be a trans man like you." Because this and this and this would be so much easier and I like this better than that and they just kind of like, "you know, you could be a man." And I'm like, "no, I can't because I'm not trans like you." Like I can't imagine, like, the conversations that they must have had behind my back. Nobody's said quite, "we told you so," but everybody in that category has been very supportive and helpful through everything. But I'm sure that they were like, "wow, one of these days, he's gonna figure it out." 

Vignette 19: A Real Trans Person

The idea ... this is so weird. The idea that I could even call myself a trans man, and not feel like I was appropriating something from somebody else, really didn't come until several months after I was on testosterone. Like I, I knew that I wanted to transition. I knew that I wanted to be a guy. And it ... I spent it, it just kind of like built up and built up and got worse and worse and worse. Like, this is bothering me more and more and more and there was a certain point at which it was like I'm thinking about this all the time. I should really just, just do it, right. Like it used to be something that bothered me, but I wasn't thinking about why it bothered me or how to deal with it. And now, every frustration I'm having is bringing my mind back around to this, "wouldn't it be nice if," and so, just do it. Just do it. But even in that first, that first consultation with the nurse practitioner. She's asking me questions. And I'm like, "So I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm non-binary. I guess cause I'm not like a real, real trans person. It's just that since I started wearing a binder, I feel so much better. And I started taking high doses of pine pollen and like I haven't tested my testosterone levels, but I'm sure that that's raising my testosterone levels and it's making me feel better. And I think that I should just, like, stop playing with the pine pollen and actually just do the testosterone." And she's like, "OK, that's fine. Do you want any surgeries?" "Let's get rid of the tits." She's like, "OK, we'll get on that." 

Vignette 20: Medicalization and Gender Norms

Well, I, I mean, I think that there's kind of two pieces to that. One is this idea, which is really kind of like a medicalized and sort of essentialist idea of what being trans is. That you, it has to be this consuming thing that you're going to commit suicide if you don't do this. Right, like the only reason to be trans, to call yourself a gender other than the one you were born as, is because it's so bad that you would die if you didn't do this. And I'm like, "I definitely don't rise up to that point. There's lots of people who just feel uncomfortable with gender norms. So, what's the big deal, right?" And yeah, "I mean, there's lots of tomboys. There's lots of people who get told that they're not ladylike enough. And, you know, there's lots of people who feel kind of like they clop clop clop around the world and aren't very good at that, that girl stuff. And who can't do their nails and who can't ... don't like looking at themselves in a dress and think that wearing makeup makes them look like a clown. There's lots of people who do that. That's that doesn't make me trans." Right? So, I just had this whole sort of thing built up of what this ... I don't know. This gate that I somehow didn't reach. 

Vignette 21: Community Guest

And then the other side of it is that I spend a lot of time in communities that are that are not mine, you know. Like and some of them, some of them I come to be sort of adopted into them. And some of them, not as much, right. I spent a lot of time around, you know Lakota community and, for a while there, I was speaking Lakota pretty well even. And ... but I know I'm not Lakota, I'm not trying to be. I'm not, I'm not trying to appropriate Lakota culture. I was, I was living as a, you know, a guest, a long-time migrant worker in the Lakota community, right. When I was in Tanzania, I would spend time, you know, with people from different tribal groups. And, you know, when I'm, when I'm with a group, I'm trying to fit in culturally as much as possible, while also recognizing that I'm not of the group, right. And so, I guess that kind of fed into this idea of I'm not ... I'm not really trans. I'm just kind of, I'm adjacent. I'm kind of closely involved in the community, but that doesn't make me this thing, right. 

Vignette 22: Journey to Trans

One of the things that's kind of happened on my journey of transness - the journey into trans - is, is seeing how, how very feminist the idea of this big umbrella trans community is because ... Because it's totally okay to be a woman in whatever being a woman means to you. And you can be a butch tomboy woman, and that's awesome. And you can be a super fem boy, and that's also awesome. There's not one cookie cutter for this or that. It's ... there's, like, all these different spices. And you've got some rice and some potatoes and some protein and you get to mix it all up however you like. And one of them is not superior to the other. They're all equally nutritious. And different people like different flavor groups, and that's great. And, I see how that ... that mental space is also beneficial to cis people, to take the pressure off of cis-men to be a specific cookie cutter version of a man. And for a cis-woman to be a specific cookie cutter version of a woman. That you get to define who you are within the space that you are claiming and holding. Yeah, whether you were born to it or not. 

Vignette 23: Supportive Kids

My youngest daughter and I have had many, many conversations about this over the years and her response was, "ah, finally!" So yeah, Sharif was like, "finally!" And then Noah and Laura, my son and daughter-in-law, they were just like, "That's great. What do you want us to call you?" And, you know, "You let us know. You're allowed to try this on," and like, they knew that I was very nervous about like claiming to be a man, that this was like ... that that made me feel very nervous. And they were like, "You know, it's totally fine. If you decide one way today and decide another way next week or in three months its totally OK. If you want to change your name a few times, that's OK too. We're good. We're here with you through this. Do whatever you want. What do you want us to call you?" And my middle kid, Mara, when I told her she was like, "What? That's so cool." And for the next Father's Day she sent me this great little box with cards and lots of little things. Lots of little dad things. It was really sweet, and each thing had a little note on it. And in the card it says, "Now it finally makes sense why I call you Modrey," which she has always, since she was a kid, spelled MODREY. And she said it's because you are the ray, which means king. So yeah, so they've all been super supportive and pretty great.

Vignette 24: Pampa/Dad

I had told all of them that they could call me whatever they wanted because they feel like, for one thing, the one thing that I actually feel like or felt like before transition was actually feminine about myself was motherhood. So like, "If you want to call me Mom, you can call me Mom. I don't care." Like motherhood, this is a relationship and also like it, it's what you've grown up with. So, it's OK. "Whatever you want to call me is fine with me." And at first, Noah and Laura we're calling me mom and then they kind of pulled me aside, after about two weeks, and they were like, "You know, we've been thinking about this and it just really feels uncomfortable, like we're misgendering you. Is it OK? If we call you Dad?" I was like, "Yeah, I said you could call me whatever you want. It's totally cool." So, then they started calling me Dad. And my youngest has a very problematic relationship with her dad. And we discussed the fact that Dad was gonna be weird and uncomfortable because problematic dad, right. And I was like, "Well, you can call me something else entirely. Like, you know, you could call me Dad in another language." And at the time, we were both, we were separately, but simultaneously binge watching the Expanse. And in the Expanse, in Belter lang father is Pampa, or dad is Pampa. And so, she was like, "I'm just gonna start calling you Pampa from now on." And so, then that's stuck. And sometimes the other kids call me Pampa now too. 

Vignette 25: Aging

Aging is just as much of a weird black hole to me now as it was before. Not because I can't like ... Not because I think that I'm going to just suddenly die or whatever like that, but just because I've always looked younger than I am and I've always kind of hung out with people that are younger than I am. And so, this idea of getting old just seems foreign to me. I just feel like aging is just continuing to be what I am right now as time moves forward. And I Intellectually know that that's not exactly how aging works, but I mean ... there are stories of my great grandmother, when she was in her 80s, late 80s, talking about how she was gonna go to the nursing home and see the old people there and keep them company. And I kind of... if I have any vision of what aging is gonna be like, that's gonna be me. I'm gonna talk about how I'm gonna go visit the old people and make sure that they're not lonely. Because I can't imagine ... I can't imagine the internal feeling of being old. 

Vignette 26: Joy

Sunsets means something completely different to me now. Every time I see the sunset, I'm like, "See, God says trans rights." Yeah, so some of the things are like little silly things like that. There's a lot of stuff ... I mean top surgery. I can't tell you how many times a day I'm like, I'm like, "Oh, this is so good this. This is great." And I actually, I notice I have a habit now like I ... when I stand up from my chair, the first thing I do is like put my hand on my heart. And then it's like, "I feel good, I feel really good. This is good." And it's so ... it's hard to explain to somebody like my mom, who feels ... she really does feel like I've mutilated my body and I feel like I've liberated my body. It's so ... I feel so much better. I can't even put it into real words. I could say lots of words, but they won't get close to how it feels. It's very, very euphoric. There's been some other ... some other kind of joys and euphorias. A lot of stuff that just has to do with feeling less awkward. I mean, everybody feels awkward about stuff sometimes, right. Like, it's not like all awkwardness went away. I'm still captain awkward, but I don't feel awkward about some of the things I used to feel awkward about.

Vignette 27: Dating

I only discovered after I'd been transitioning for a while that one of the reasons that I never dated a woman on my own - that wasn't also dating the man that I was dating, if that makes any sense - was because I felt kind of awkward, like I was like this big hulking person next to tiny proper lady person. Like this is what a woman is supposed to be like and I'm failing at womanhood. Ohh, right. It just felt wrong. And then in transition like I'm I'm dating a really sweet lady now and I'm like, "This is nice." Well, it wasn't that I felt like we were at odds. It was that I felt like like I didn't fit, like, like it made me feel more, you know, more like the monster in the attic. As like not seeing her in a bad way, you know, whatever platonic female we're talking about here. But just seeing myself in that situation, feeling more awkward. And since I'm not trying to fit myself into a box that I don't fit in anymore, that feeling of being awkward has gone away. 

Vignette 28: Makeup & Dresses

I've always really appreciated makeup and dresses and all of that pretty stuff on other people, you know. And I appreciate, I appreciate dresses on men. Other men. I would kind of like to be able to ... be able to wear a dress and feel good in a dress, but it just isn't me. But I love seeing them on other people. I love seeing makeup on people. And again, you know, it would be kind of cool if I could do that and it would feel good on me. But it just really, it doesn't. But I get to enjoy it on other people and that's great. And one of the things about transition is that it's kind of allowed me to not feel like I have to fit that thing that is cool for other people. That I can just enjoy it through them. I can have like the vicarious pleasure of their dressing in this way, and they feel great. And also they look great. And that's so cool.

Vignette 29: Walking at Night

My daughter-in-law was talking about how she doesn't feel comfortable walking around at night and I was like, "What the heck. Like this is Walla Walla. Nothing's gonna happen to you walking around at night. Why in the world would you feel uncomfortable walking around at night?" And she was like, "Yeah, but you're a man." And I'm like, "But I wasn't always. I would have always walked out here at night." And she was like, "You're a man! That didn't change just because you started taking testosterone." Like, "Oh, maybe you're right." I used to like walk alone at night in Glasgow and people would be like, "Aren't you scared?" And I'd be like, "Why? I used to live in Oakland, CA. It's got a higher murder rate than Glasgow. What?" And people just thought I was crazy and now I ... well, yes, OK, I'm crazy. But also, I wasn't thinking in the same light that they were thinking in. I wasn't thinking like, "I'm a vulnerable girl." I was thinking like, "Yeah, fine, come at me." And I think that attitude when you're walking around at night, kind of help. I mean, I don't walk around all the time, like trying to pick fights, but if somebody's like looking scary at me, then I ... I'm not gonna like back down and whimper.   

Vignette 30: Rural Living

I like playing a role within this Community. In this, you know, small community in which I can bring my talents and my skills to bear to help out and do stuff, right. It's really nice. I think that there are a lot of reasons ...There are a lot of great things about being in the city, but there are also a lot of great things about being in a more rural area. And honestly, I hope, and this isn't just me, my son and daughter-in-law have talked about it a lot. Like, I hope that we can actually move slightly further outside of town so that we can have like acreages and like maybe a horse or something. That would be cool. We have other friends who have horses and goats and things like that. And my daughter-in-law grew up like doing 4H and all that jazz, so that would be super nice and super cool. And I I think that no matter where you are, not everybody can live in the big city. So there's ... there are going to be queer people around. There are going to be trans people around. And I think that it is more comfortable when there are at least a few people who are willing to be visible for other people to be visible as well.

Vignette 31: Visibility

The issue of safety is something that I think ebbs and flows. We're kind of in a time right now where just in general throughout the United States, throughout a bunch of places, it's becoming more dangerous to be trans. It just, it is. And this cycle will reverse at some point. Hopefully it will reverse sooner rather than later. Hopefully it won't get a whole lot worse than it is right now before it gets better. But there always has to be some people who are willing to be out there and stand and be visible. And for better, for worse, that's kind of the person that I am. I'm willing to be visible. I'm willing to ... not go stealth. For one thing, having transitioned as late in life as I did, if I tried to go stealth, I would be erasing my entire career, which would make everything else much more difficult going forward. You know, if you're 20 and you have to erase like four years of your life in high school, it's not really all that hard. You just get, you know, depending on what state you're in, if you can get your diploma reprinted with your new name on it. And just move on and pretend like nothing happened. But there's videos of me giving talks from before I started testosterone. And even ... I've got like articles published online and even in at least two cases, the publications that said that they were going to change my name in their system so that it would show my correct name... in at least two cases when they changed it, they didn't change it everywhere. So now one place the byline says Elior Sterling, in another place the byline, says Leisha Sterling. So, like whoops. So like, I guess, because of that I I can't really be stealth, so I figure I might as well extra lean into being visible. And hopefully I can use that to make more safe space for other people. You know what they say about people trying to heal in the world the things that they've got broken inside themselves, you know. So, you know, in my younger life there were a lot of ways in which people did not stand up for me and did not help me out, but then there'd be like the one person who actually stepped forward and made a huge difference. And in my life, I want to be like that one person who stepped forward and made a huge difference. I don't want to be like the people who just went and stepped back and let me crash. 

Vignette 32: Queer Rurality

Before the pandemic ... so this must have been like a Pride 2019. Here in Walla Walla, on the day of the Pride parade, I was walking downtown. And I had seen a bunch of people getting ready for pride stuff, right. And here's this truck coming down into the downtown area and it's one of those big trucks. Those like, you know, you know that they're gonna be flying American flags. And not just that, but the driver inside is like, very bearded and very kind of like ... This dude works on a farm. You know that that truck actually gets used for work and stuff, and he's tough and all that jazz, right. And my first reaction, as I'm seeing the truck, and the guy inside the truck was like this minor panic that he's driving right into the area where the Pride parade is getting ready to happen. And then as he drives past the back of his car has two trans flags on it. The back of his truck has two trans flags on it, and it was like, "Oh! Alright then." And you know, I just felt really great for that guy because that guy was just, like, embodying his whole self. And, you know, there's a a lot of people in rural areas, whether they're really into farming or whether they're really into, like, around here wine. Viticulture, enology or whether they just like the other aspects of being in a more rural area. There's a lot of reasons to be in a place like this and you don't have to leave parts of yourself behind. It is a struggle to stand up and say this is who I am when other people who are really close to you aren't willing to see who you are. But, sometimes, not always ... Sometimes after those people who are close to you see that the people who are like steps out away from your family are accepting you for who you are. Then those people who are close to you will come back around. And the ones who don't. I don't know. It's hard. So much.