Vignette 1: Identity

Pidge: My name is Pidge and I am 51 years old.

Interviewer: And what is your gender identity?

Pidge: I use the word transsexual because I like that it annoys people and I politically organized under that for years, and I know other people ruined it and I don't care.

Interviewer: Okay.

Pidge: And I'm too old to... I like... I use trans, I use trans woman, I use transsexual. I don't... I am too old for the discourse.

Vignette 2: PNW Locations

Pidge: I live in the West of Ireland. I have been here for 10 years. I Was in the Pacific Northwest from 2002 to 2013. I have lived in Seattle. I've lived in Olympia. I've lived in Shelton, WA. I've lived in this rural town in like Central Oregon, near Eugene called Elsie. I've lived in Portland. Portland was my last stop. Yeah. So, like, it's pretty much half city, half rural. I'm originally from Jersey.

Interviewer: How did you make your way out to the West Coast in the Pacific Northwest?

Pidge: My adopted sister moved out there, and the girl I was dating lived out there, and I was like, "Fuck it." I was looking for work. I had just gotten laid off, and I had a job interview out there and I'm like, "Oh, I can find a tech job out here," which I couldn't. So, yeah. I moved out there right after the dot com bubble. Went and popped in 2002, right after 9/11, right after 9/11, actually. So, my first stop was the girlfriend's house in Seattle for a few months, and then we moved to Olympia, and then we were in Olympia for about a year, and then we moved to Shelton, and we were in Shelton for about, I'm gonna say two years. Then we moved out to Elsie for about four, I'm gonna say four. Then after me and her broke up, I moved to Portland. Despised every minute.

Vignette 3: Rural vs City

Pidge: Given a choice, you know, I'm always gonna live rurally. Cities, I've only lived in when, like, I needed employment, and, like, nowadays I work from home, so I don't need to actually live in a city because no one wants me to come into work anymore, they want me to sit at home and work, which is awesome. I'm like, "Great. Fine. Do I have to be in a city and go into an office for that?" "No." "Alright, grand."

Interviewer: What is it about the rural context that is appealing to you?

Pidge: Time moves different, time moves different. That's part of it. Also, I spent 25 years of my life in cities. And Jesus, the amount of transphobia you get in cities is way different than the amount of rural just based on number of fucking people you have. Right? I haven't left my road in like a month. And there's like five houses on my damn road over a kilometer. No one gives me any shit because I'm a neighbor. Right? And like I don't know if they know, I don't care if they know. Whereas in a city, you're always interacting with someone, always interacting with someone. And it's just tiring. And also, how do I put it? And I've talked to like a lot of butch dyke friends of mine. Right? 'Cause there is a difference with women in rural areas that they're allowed to be a little harder. Right? So, like when I go into the shops, into the village, and I wear my wellies, no one looks at me twice. Right? 'Cause everyone else is wearing their fucking wellies. Right? 'Cause I live on a balk. You know, where in like rural areas, especially if you're on a farm, if you're doing any amount of farm work, yeah, you know you don't need to be put together as much. So, there's a certain leeway with the way that women present in rural areas that you don't get in cities. In cities it's very stringent or your othered. And if you're othered, that's fine. But you're going to be putting up with shit because especially in, like, certain cities people just want to put their nose in everyone's fucking business, and I'm really, really a , "Keep your nose out of my fucking business kind of girl." You know, I was joking with one of my neighbors that I come from the land of "shoot, shovel, and shut the fuck up," because you know people... If you wanted people up your ass, you'd live in a city. Like, I lived out in St John's, which is like, you know, the arse-end of Portland versus, like, New York City where I used to live. It's like everyone's up your ass, and it's like... And I don't want to fucking deal with that shit. You know, people live out there for the privacy for a reason. So, you know, they take... Whether people knew I was trans or not, I don't know. I have no idea. But if they did, they didn't bug me about it because they're like, "None of our fucking business," whereas, like, in the city it seems like it's everyone's fucking business.

Vignette 4: Social Life

Interviewer: How did you build, like, relationships or friendships?

Pidge: Down at the seed and feed. You know, and... how do I describe this? I'm not going to find a lot of people in a lot of those rural areas that were going to be buds. Right? We're not going to go out, and go out drinking. And that's okay because, you know, my social life is very small and I don't need it very big. My adopted sister would come over to the house. We'd hang out, we'd go shoot guns, we'd do projects around my place, you know. And like I don't have... I didn't have a lot of social life, you know, having a lot of queer social life in Shelton. I knew one dyke in town, and me and her were joking that we were going to have a pride parade, which was walk from one pub to the next.

Vignette 5: Trans Visibility

I think also, and this has changed in recent years- thank you transgender tipping point- and I'm just going to say this: trans visibility... Visibility is only good if you have agency. If you don't, it's exploitation. And the nice thing about rural areas is that... And I'm going to quote A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett. She talks about this... in this one of her short stories about the Mennonite going to go visit Grandpa up in Canada. We are... in rural areas- until recently- we are so far out of the realm of experience. It's like, "Trans what? No," or "What's that?" Where it's like San Francisco, "Yeah. Bam, bam. Absolutely." Like cis girls don't even pass in San Francisco. Whereas like, you know, Shelton fucking Washington no one. "Trans what? What?" You know, to them a tranny is the thing that's in a fucking car that you fix. Anyhow, they don't know that fucking word. So, like we're so far out of the realm of experience in those places, and even when we're not, most of the time people just... you know, at least years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people would mind their own fucking businesses. Now, it's different. It's different now. It's different.

Vignette 6: Rural Comparisons

I live in Ireland now, and I live in a real rural place. And it's interesting because here everyone's up your ass. Everyone's up your ass, but they're in it in a very nice way. It kind of feels like... have you ever had this very comfortable like, you know, the fluffy blankets that's really comfortable, but you know, you eat Doritos in it, and every now and then, like, a Dorito chip kind of rubs you the wrong way? That's what Ireland rural's like. It's like... perfect example: I had meetings today, but one of the lads I know popped over, which means that right there, like one meeting's gone because he's going to come in and we're going to sit there and chat for 45 minutes. And then the farmer up the road popped in, and we chatted for 30 minutes. And it's just like, people will talk. Like, the coal shed fire. My shed caught on fire, and I didn't tell anyone about it. I put it out, fire department came, they put it out. And I live in a real rural area, like, I can't see another house from my, like... I walk out to the road, I can't see another house. People in the village knew about it, like, immediately, and the village is 12 miles away. Like, people were calling me up, like, within three hours going, "Are you okay?" "What do you mean, 'Are you okay?'" "Oh, we heard about the fire." "How the fire did you hear about the fire?" "Oh, Joel, from up the road, was passing by, saw the fire trucks. We just want to make sure you're okay." And it's the weirdest thing because it's, like, they're up your ass, but for very different reasons. Mainly out of boredom because, like, you know, you're the biggest news on the... because, like, nothing happens here. Right? It's like, "Oh, my God, a blow in." And I'm not even the most interesting person on the road, you know. So, it's this really weird, like, very different experience. Where like in the states, folks leave you alone 'cause they wanna be left alone. Here, they leave you alone a little bit, mostly, but they're always gonna check in on you, see how you're going.

Vignette 7: Cultural Differences

There's a difference between guess cultures and ask cultures. Like, America is an ask culture. You ask, "Can I do this?" And you're told, "Yes," or, "no." Ireland is an absolute guess culture. You need to kind of know the rules, and if you break the rules, no one's going to tell you, you broke the rules, they're just going to talk about it behind your back. So, you know, I'm lucky that my family's from here, so all this insanity is very well understood. But like, you know, if you break the rules here, it's like, you get to talking to. Like someone will go, "Can we go for a pint?" And you know when someone says, "Can we go for a pint?" you're in trouble, you did something fucked up. And it's like... Tidy Towns is this organization that all the wee villages in Ireland have that Tidy Towns, and they all get judged every year on who has, like, the prettiest village. And if you live near the village and you don't cut your grass before the Tidy Towns lads show up, oh, oh, you're in trouble, you're in trouble. So, like, I actually ended up getting a talking to because I didn't... my lawnmower wasn't working, and I lived just literally right outside the village, right next to the sign, "Now Entering." And, like, someone took me to the side and said, "Hey, can you cut your lawn?" I was like, "Oh, why?" "Oh, the Tiny Town judges are coming." It's like, "Oh, alright, grand. Yeah, not a bother." And there's nothing they can... it's not like they can fine you or anything. You're just going to get talked about in the village. And the worst thing is to be talked about in the village.

Vignette 8: Why Ireland

Interviewer: How did you decide to move to Ireland?

Pidge: So, I had to speak the language. So, that was the German speaking countries. the French speaking countries, and the English-speaking countries. Like Belgium, I love fucking Belgium, love Belgium. It would drive me mad living there. Germany would drive me nuts. When you're a New Yorker or a New Jersey-er, jaywalking's the thing, it's a thing. And in Germany you get yelled at. And I'm not a rule follower, I'm not very good at following rules. I lived in London for a bit, hated it. And it turned out, like, when I was living in London, I was spending over all my weekends hopping on Ryanair flights to go to Dublin to hang out with friends. And I'm like, "Well, this is stupid. Why am I not moving- just moving to there?" And I... initially I didn't want to move there because I didn't want to be a stereotype. The Yank that moves back to Ireland. But I was like, "Fuck it, might as well." You know, so, out of all the countries, this one annoys me the least.

Vignette 9: Creating Community

Pidge: Anyhow, I'm not a social creature. Like... Anyhow, I... Folks here know that I throw a party once a year. It's a four-day party. There's no start or stop times. You come, you pitch a tent, you hang out, you eat food, and then you fuck off. And I'll see you next year. I make a joke about it, but it's actually true. Like, I live in Leitrim, and I have left my county five times this entire year. I don't need to leave, right? I used to joke when I lived in St. John's that, like, if they blew up the St. John's bridges, I'd be perfectly fine because everything I need is in that, like, couple square miles, and I don't need to go to the rest of Portland, and the rest of Portland won't come here. So, you know it's like... For me it's like I don't need a lot of people. I need a few people. I need my people. And once I have my people, the entire world can fuck off.

Interviewer: Who are your people?

Pidge: Bunch of fucking weirdos. Let's see. I have the work friends who are all the technology people who are all open-source weirdos. I have the gamer friends who are all weirdos. I have the queer friends who are all weirdos. I have a few of the trans friends, which is... I'm having less and less trans friends as I get older because everyone my age is dead. It's kind of fucked up. I'm 50 and I'm like, "Oh yeah, all the people I know are dead. Great." And, like, I'm trying to not make, like, a lot of the young trans girlfriends 'cause I don't want my trauma to rub off on them 'cause like my trauma is not their trauma. You know, my trauma is very different than their trauma. Like, I had this one friend in Ireland who was like, "Oh yeah, being trans in Ireland so tough." And I'm like, "Oh, really? How many women do you know who've been dismembered? Because I knew three. How many... How many trans women in Ireland do you know who've been murdered? Because I know a bunch and none of them are from Ireland." So, I'm trying to avoid making, like, a lot of connections there because it's, like, man, a lot of times people like the idea of elders. They don't like the reality.

Vignette 10: Defining Trans Elder

I like trans women community that's from, like, an outlaw biker gang as opposed to, like, you know, an ethnic community. Within ethnic groups, and racial groups, or whatever groups you have elders who are old, and you have young people who are young, and, like, there's an age thing that happens there. I joke about, like, trans girl community is from, like, an outlaw biker gang. Bitch, who put her motorcycle together at age 18, has been riding day in, day out. At 35, she's the fucking president. And the bitch who bought a Harley at 50 and has been riding for a year gets that other bitch a beer because it's time, it's time on the bike. Right? So, I have a friend of mine. I love her dearly; I love her dearly. She's kind of my age, transitioned about 2-3 years ago. And I joke about this, but I'm kind of serious. And she... I was bitching about the trans flag because I hate the fucking trans flag. Pink and baby blue, really? Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? And I was bitching about it at Derry Pride, actually. And she's like, "But I like that." And I was like, "No." And she's like, "What?" And I'm like, "Don't make me get the spark gun out." She's like, "What?" And I'm like, "You don't get to get opinion for 10 years." "Why?" And I'm like, "Because the narrative... the trans girl narrative is #1: focus on those... just fucking transition. And honestly, none of you bitches have nothing interesting to say, absolutely nothing interesting to say. Unless, like, you come from a different demographic that is the normal demographic, right? You can have your opinion about the trans flag all you want. Keep it to your fucking self." And I was joking about it, but I'm not. And it's this problem with communities where there's a coming out process that happens. Everyone's interested in the person who literally has been out for a year, who probably is in their most vulnerable stage, her most exploitable stage. And who honestly doesn't know the community. I mean, this was the thing that drove me nuts about watching Caitlyn Jenner because I'm just like, "You don't know the community. You literally just came out." Like, say what you want about Lana Wachowski. She shut her fucking mouth for 10 years. Like, that I respected about her. She shut her fucking mouth. She didn't say shit. Not a damn thing. And then she started talking.

Vignette 11: Trans Intersectionality

I got in an argument with some kid. She's like, "Do you think I'm a trans elder?" I'm like, "No, I can still see the eggshell on your head." She got really mad at me and I'm like, "Look, you don't want to be a trans fucking elder. Number one, the dental sucks. The pay is nonexistent, and I have to listen to you lot gripe all the fucking time. And look, not to be, 'I walked uphill both ways for my fucking estrogen shot,' but my trauma and fucked-upness is very different from your trauma and fucked-upness. And you know, there's things that I'm going to say that you're not going to understand. Like there's language that we have that like... I can sit there with a woman that I transitioned with- and out of the six I transitioned with, only one's still alive other than me- and she will understand exactly what I mean, exactly what I mean. And you know the other ones... And this is what we fought for." I don't want them to understand this. I don't want them to understand this. I don't want them to be hard like we had to be hard. Right? Like working class trans, like trans women of color, anyone who before they transitioned had a backpack with a rock in it. You know, this is this joke I make. She's like, "They kill us." And I'm like, "Honey, they don't kill you. You lot, you kill yourself." Like, "They kill girls who talk like me. They kill girls who are darker than me. They don't kill you." Because, like, a lot of them, it's like, there's a backpack that they have, and never had a rock, and now it has a rock in it, and "Oh my God, it's so heavy." Where it's, like, a lot of the working-class girls, a lot of the girls of color, it's like, "Yeah, it's just another fucking rock. Yeah, whatever. I'm just going to get a little harder."

Vignette 12: Survive or Thrive

Aunt Jenny was this old trans lady. Way back in the early '90s, we used to joke that she was the cause of transsexuality on the Internet because she was the only one dealing with trans kids. The only one dealing with trans kids, and she transitioned back in the early '80s, and she was kind of my adopted mom. And there were, like, a little group of us who lived in the Philly area who hung out together. And of us, one died of lung cancer. She just died. Julie jumped off a bridge. Chrissy shot herself in the head. The other Chrissy is still alive and up in Canada. Melody died of some diabetic heart thing. Oh, and my mom died of basically trans broken arms syndrome, you know. So, all those women that I knew, like, I joked, and it's not even a joke, that, like, all the trans women I knew for my 20s, that I was friends with, are dead. Right? And when my mom died, I was talking to some people who knew her. So, some women my age who knew her, and one of them lives in Canada, and she lives there undocumented because the United States traumatized her so bad she'd rather live undocumented than go back to the States. She just can't. Can't do it. And she was like, "Well, when do we get to live? When do we get to thrive?" because she's seeing, like, all these trans kids, and I'm like, "Look, how many women Jenny's age did you know coming up?" And she's like, "Oh, none." And I'm like, "You know why? 'Cause they all died." We get to survive. We don't necessarily get to thrive. We get to survive. The next generation, hopefully, will get to thrive. We're not going to see that.

Vignette 13: Coming Out

I came out when HBIGDA... Like, it was HBIGDA still. There was no WPATH, and there were still therapists who were doing the old HBIGDA model, which is you go South, you tell no one. And I did that for 16 fucking years. Like, I only came out at work because I was having a publicly facing job and I knew some fucking shady bitch was gonna fucking out me. And I'm like, "You know what? If I out myself, no one's gonna fucking out me." You know, if you're a software developer, if you're an open-source software developer, everyone knows you now because, you know, you're a public figure, and I'm like giving presentations now in front of like a few 100 people. Someone's gonna put two and two together. Or someone's going to see me and out me or do whatever. I'm just going to out myself. And then this way, there's no talk behind my back. I can deal with it for now. I control the narrative at that point, and no one can hold anything over my head. I mean, I was out in, like, the rural areas and it wasn't like... How do I describe this? Someone asked me. I'm like, "Yeah." I'm not gonna sit there and go, "Hi. My name is Pidge, the transsexual down the road." Right? 'Cause no one gives a shit. I don't care to provide that information, but if someone came out, up and asked me, I'm like, "Yeah, what about it?" You know?

Vignette 14: Starting the Clinic

My ex was this woman named Chrissy. She's the one who shot herself in the head. She was going to school for environmental science. And she had it rough, which is why we moved further and further out from the, like, cities and stuff. Whether she had multiple chemical sensitivity or not, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I'm not qualified. But she wanted her nice little white box away from, like, anything that would... So, we moved to the farm. Problem with moving to a farm in Shelton is there's no fucking work. And she sure as fuck wasn't going to work. So, I kind of had to. And I was talking to my adopted sister. Now my sister... My adopted sister's a doctor. She's the actual physician. And she's like, "Well, you know? We could just do a clinic here." And she... And I was like, "Really?" And she's like, "Yeah. You want to learn electrolysis? You could do electrolysis here." So, I learned... I taught myself how to do electrolysis. Got myself an electrolysis machine and zapped all the hair off the arm. And "Yeah. No, I got this." And I'm like, "Alright, if we're doing this, we're going to do this so that it's affordable for my people." So, one of the things that was really like this before Obamacare and stuff, is like trans healthcare before all this, that was out of pocket, man. You paid your $45.00 for your fucking estrogen shot once a month, and, you know, your $50.00 an hour for electrolysis because laser wasn't a thing, and then your 17,000 for surgery and all that. And it pissed me off because I come from a working-class background. None of the girls I knew could afford this shit. Like, they were all kind of... They were on maxi-mones. They were. like, kind of hobbling it together. And my sister's from a very similar working-class background. And she's like, "Yeah, yeah, no." So, we looked and found the cheapest orchiectomies that were available at the time, and it was Cayenne, Lake Oswego, who was doing them for two grand. We're like, "Fine. $500." Sliding scale. So, there were girls that showed up that didn't pay shit. We were just like, "Yeah, yeah, no. You're staying for electrolysis." So, we're not going to... You come for 20 hours of electro, you get a free orchiectomy out of it. We didn't do... We did, like, 13 of them. It wasn't like that much. It was enough to kind of keep the lights on in the house, enough to kind of justify doing it.

Vignette 15: Perfecting the Procedure

Now the cool thing is, is that our infection rate was zero. Zero. We learned a lot from my infection. We learned that the orchiectomy procedure is written for cis guys with testicular cancer. So, like, things are different down there than they are for trans women. So, we did an entirely different bandaging procedure. We had drains. We even did prophylactic antibiotics just to make sure 'cause, like, I was talking to a urologist. He's like, "Oh, yeah, my infection rate's 30%." Like for fuck's sake.

Vignette 16: Patient Letters

Now, there was fucked-up things we had to do. We had to require a letter. Why? Because we didn't have malpractice insurance. Right? In Washington state, it was a requirement to have malpractice insurance. So, we just didn't have it. We're like, "Yeah, we can just do this. It's not like any of our people are gonna sue us or anything." We did people all over the country. Like, people would fly out to us. And, like, there was this one girl I turned down and I said, "I feel fucking horrible doing it," because her ID didn't match the letter I got. Her ID was female, the letter was not. And I'm like, "I can't. I can't do anything with this." I need the letter and the shrink wouldn't refuse to put the letter in. I'm like... I felt horrible. I felt fucking horrible about it, but it was, like, I couldn't do anything, right? How we would do this, is initially we just required the letter, and then we had one person who were, like, asking weird questions on the table. Like, "When is my voice gonna raise?" Like, "I don't know. When you go to voice therapy." And I was like, "Okay, this is weirding me out a little bit." So, what we used to do... Or what we... We change our procedure a little bit. Me and the doc would go in. We would have a conversation with the person. We'd say, "Okay, we need you to take these, get undressed," and then me and the doc will go for a walk, and I'd be, "How you feel about this?" "I feel alright with this." You know, there was no one we turned down after we did that but we kind of had to cover our bases, and it pissed me off that we had to. Right? Like, but my job was in part to protect her medical license. And it sucks. But you know, trans doctors aren't allowed. fuck-up. Things that cis doctors are allowed to get away with and do, a trans doctor one fuck-up, they're drummed out. And it's like this in a lot of professions. You see this a lot. One fuck-up, you're gone. So, my job was in part to protect her medical license, and I wasn't going to risk, you know, rando, who may sue us later. You know, doing that. And it's terrible that I had to think like that, but I have to. I didn't have a choice.

Vignette 17: Board of Health

So, my landlord had a tractor barn. It's an open space barn. So, we just closed one face of it up, and built the room, and tiled the room, put electricity in. It was grand. It worked fine. The Board of Health even ended up showing at the damn place. One of the women who showed up went to her doctor, doctor said, "Oh, this was really good work. Who did it?" And she said, "Two trans ladies up Logging Road." While technically true, it misrepresented. It was an actual clinic. So, the Board of Health people show up one day and they're like, "Let's see the clinic." And I'm like, "Alright. Wipe your feet. Don't come in here with muddy feet." It just rained the night before. And they come in, they track mud into the damn place. They're like, "Where's your autoclave?" "Well, it's here." "Where do you keep the narcotics?" "We don't." "What do you mean you don't keep narcotics?" "Well, they get a prescription. They go into town. They get all their prescriptions filled. They take the prescription in front of us." "And where's your business license?" "Ah, in order to get a business license in Washington, you need to make more than 14 thousand" - I forget what the number was- it was like 14,000 a year, "But my business license for the electrology studio is here. But I don't even make that much." And, like, they were on my ass. They were like... So, they ended up dinging the doctor. Even to this day, she has to explain why that little thing is on her record. Because they tracked mud into the clinic and they said, "Yeah, the floor was dirty." I had bleached the floor that morning, so I knew the floor wasn't dirty. They dirtied the floor, and that's what they dinged it. And they dinged it just because they were pricks. Now, here's the funny thing. That room is still in existence. I snooped my old landlord's farm, and it is now used as an organic chicken processing room, which I find hysterical. It is FDA approved.

Vignette 18: Finding and Choosing Payments

Interviewer: How did folks find out about the clinic?

Pidge: They found out about it from Aunt Jenny's website. It was all word of mouth, and, like, my big failure there, it's like look, I'm a white working-class punk girl. So, a lot of white working-class punk girls got their shit, and a lot of communities that it wasn't necessarily associated with didn't. And like, that's I think my biggest failure with that. And, you know, to give me a break, you know, 33-year-old trans girls don't necessarily make really great life decisions. So anyhow, we weren't really like, "Oh, my God. What about all these other communities?" I had to answer all the email. We got some fucked-up e-mail. So, I'm trying to judge people based on these emails that they're sending me and I'm like, "Nope. Nope." Hey. There were folks we had to turn down and I feel really bad about it. There was this one person who sent us an email. He was like, "I have cheated with my brother's wife, and he will not forgive me unless I get my testicles removed. Can you please do this? If you will not do this, I will do it myself." And I'm like, "Sorry, man. can't fucking help you. Cannot fucking help you. Just... Just, I can't. I'm sorry.”

Vignette 19: Clinic Duties

Trans health care is like one of those things where it's the most rewarding job, and it's most shit job because you're seeing people at their best and at their worst. And I burnt out of it real fucking quick, man. It was just like, man. Anyone who does this is a fucking saint. I don't want to fucking do this. Hey, I'm an engineer man and I do not want to do this. My job at the clinic was during surgery to hold people's hands, and talk like this, and tell longest, most boring dad jokes that you're not going to laugh about because laughing would hurt right now. But you're gonna go, "Huh, that was funny." And because I'm talking like this and telling you literally an hour and a half worth of dad jokes, you're not paying attention to the fact that you're getting your testicles removed through a wee hole in your sack in a barn, in the middle of fucking rural Washington because I don't want you to think about that right now. I just want you to think about this really bad knock, knock joke I'm telling you. That was my job, and to run an autoclave, and fix anything that broke, and answer emails, and keep the doctor on time, and yeah, that was what my job was.

Vignette 20: Medical Equipment

My adopted sister is an abortion doctor, and she was starting a clinic. Her plan was to start a clinic in rural Montana. So, she was slowly collecting equipment off of eBay and it was all in her storage unit. She's like look, "I can get rid of my fucking storage unit, and just store it here, and you can use it for the electrolysis, and then twice a month I'll come down and do surgery." And I'm just like, "Sounds good to me." So, yeah. No. Like... The electric cautery pad, this thing was like from the '80s. It worked great, but it was from the fucking '80s. This thing was huge. It was this huge, old electric cautery pen machine, and we learned from my surgery don't use the battery-operated ones because they run out real quick because there's a lot of little bleeders down there. So, you don't want to use the battery-operated ones, you want to use a good old fashioned chunky one. I swear to God, this thing had vacuum tubes in it. It was old, it was really old.

Vignette 21: Closing the Clinic

Interviewer: So, did the clinic come to a close because of burnout?

Pidge: So, my sister was kind of ending her residency at around the same time where my ex-girlfriend was going crazier and crazier, and I was like, "Alright, fine. We're going to move into the middle of fuck all nowhere, like the middle of the Siuslaw." So, like, we were moving. My sister ended up moving to Montana for a few years to run the abortion clinic. And honestly, I was burnt. I was burnt. Like, I never want to hang over someone's face again. One of my clients used chewing tobacco, and if you've ever done an electrolysis on the face of someone with chewing tobacco, it's not fun. I never want to hang over someone's face, inserting probes up in their face, no. No, no, no, no, no. My back's wrecked from. My wrists got wrecked from it. And honestly, it's like, no. No, that means interacting with people, and, like, having to be close to... Eww, no. And like, it's not that I'm not empathetic, it's just I can only hear the same "My life sucks" story over, and over, and over again before I'm like, "Yeah, I just don't care. I just want to zap hair off your skin. I just... I just can't. Because you're saying the same shit that I've said. Right? And you know, at some point it's just like, 'Yeah. What are you going to do man?'" And especially because, like, a lot of my regular electrolysis clients were rural trans folks who hadn't transitioned yet. And you know, there's no fucking therapy. You're not getting fucking therapy when you live in fucking Grays Harbor. You're just not. It's not like you're going to find a decent therapist, and I may be the only trans person you fucking know, and that's great and all. But when I'm sitting there trying to solve the problems of a 55-year-old and I'm 32, Fuck if I know, man. Why you asking me? Oh, you have so much more experience. Yeah. I'm just kind of making this shit up as I go along. I don't fucking know," you know. And once I got to that point, I'm... was like, "Ni, I need to find something else to do with my life."

Vignette 22: Unwind Time

So, the majority of my unwinding time was less clinic related and more getting the fuck out of the house. So, I would literally go to the seed and feed, just to hang out at the seed and feed, you know. I'd go there and see the chicks that they got in that week, and I'd pick up chicken food. I would sit in the forest a lot because we were on 255 acres, part of it was forest. Sit right next to the creek and smoke weed, and just sit there and go, " I don't need to be in the house right now. I'm not going to be in the house right now." I had, like, a little, little stump by the thing that they would sit out there and smoke and read a book. I must have read Lord of the Rings about five times, like, in a two-year period. Because a) it's not the easiest book to get through sometimes, and b/ it just takes for fucking ever. And there was one video game I used to play, and I forget the name of the video game. Halo, I used to play Halo. I played a lot of Halo, played a lot of Halo. I would go hunting a lot, which basically meant me sitting in the forest with my gun, not doing a whole lot. I'd be like, "Yeah, I'm going hunting. Oh no, I didn't get anything done today. No, no, no, no, no deer. No deer." And when I did get deer, like, that was like a whole process because I would tan hides, make my own leather. And like, when I hunted everything got fucking used, everything got fucking used from intestines on up. Like, and it wasn't just deer either. There's a number of raccoons that met their end at the end of my bow and arrow. And I love me some raccoon. Raccoon's tasty. I used to do squirrel dead falls to. Those were fun, but yeah.

Vignette 23: Never Eat Badger

I think for like four or five years, I didn't buy any meat ever. I just went and shot it or picked it up from the side of the road. There was a lot of roadkill I ate. Like, I actually prefer a roadkill more than I do regular hunted deer. Roadkill's like eating meat that's been soaked in meth because when a deer gets hit by a car, it runs off and then all the adrenaline starts pumping in. Because the thing... the poor thing didn't die immediately. It just got hit by a car, broke its leg, laid down in a ditch, and took like four hours to die. So, like, whenever I've eaten roadkill, I'm like wide fucking awake, you know. So, I've eaten, like, weird shit, too. Never eat badger. Trust me on this. Now, one of my exes found a badger. She knew that I like tanning hides. I did a lot of brain tanning, and she brought me a badger home. It was frozen. And I'm like, "I've never had badger before." There is a reason no one eats badger. It is not tasty. My dog wouldn't even eat it, and that dog ate from the cat box. The fur's nice and soft, but no, no, no, no, no. There's nothing to do... be doing with that meat, nothing to be done with that. That goes right in the trash can.

Vignette 24: Choosing to Transition

Pidge: I was living... I was living south of Philadelphia. Well, I came out when I was like 20. Twenty, yeah. I came out at 20 and I transitioned, like, it's hard to fucking tell. Like, what's the date that you count on that? Let's say 23. Let's say 23. Twenty-three is the safe bet. 

 Interviewer: And how did you get to that point? 

 Pidge: Well, I sat in a bathtub with a razor blade up against my wrists, and I'm like, "I have a choice." And this was right after Rita. Was it Rita Hester? The one who started Trans Day of Remembrance. Well, her murder, her death. She was the one that was in a car accident and the ambulance driver just basically laughed. And I'm just like, "Well, I have a choice." Either I kill myself, in which case, you know, all is over. Or I say, "Fuck it. They're probably gonna kill me anyway." So, basically, like, every day since that day has been bonus time. So I basically say, you know, "That's the day I should have been dead." And every day since then has been a gift. And life becomes a lot different when you're just like, "Yeah, I shouldn't have this time. This is time I'm stealing. I'm stealing this fucking time." And you become a lot less scared of things, you know. There's not a whole lot of things I'm afraid of anymore because, you know, shit. What's the worst they can do to me? Can't take the last 20 some odd fucking years of my transition away from me, you know. What are they gonna do? They've taken everything else. Like, all my friends are dead. Right? You know, my family's gone. What are they gonna take from me? There's nothing lot more you can fucking take, you know. So, at that point I was about to take my own life. I had a choice. I chose not to. And you know, not every day has been fucking perfect since. But, boy, man, I'm sure glad I made that fucking choice. 

Vignette 25: Resistance

Right, this is this thing that I keep reminding cis people. If you make us illegal, we're going to do illegal things. And when you put us up against the wall, we just don't have... we don't have a reason to give a shit anymore, you know. And that's a that's a dangerous position to put people in. Right? So, it's like how many trans people do we know who are getting their fucking medication by hook or by crook, you know? I know where my estrogen comes from. A nice lady who used to live in the Ukraine but no longer does. Mixes it up on her fucking table in her kitchen. Why? Because trans healthcare system is a piece of shit.

Vignette 26: Support Groups

So, I tried transitioning in college. First off was the student health service, and they're like, "We don't deal with this. You need to go to the big city for this." And I went there, and they made me go to a support group, and I freaked out. Absolutely freaked out. There's a support group in, like, the Philly area called Renaissance, and someone was like, "Oh, you should go to that meeting." So, let me paint a picture for you. I'm going to use dated terminology. Forgive me for this. So, here's little me who's like, 20, walking into a room with. 40 or 50 crossdressers. All dressed like they're about to out on a night out on the town. Some of them got their wives there. And there's racks of clothes, and me dressed down in a hoodie. They're like, "Oh, yeah. You're in the back." And I go back there, and there's this wee room with like 12 transsexuals smoking. We're all smoking like crazy and like, being the absolute sad sacks. And like, the joke is, when you go to a mixed support group, how do you tell the transsexuals? We're all dressed like shit. And it's like, "Okay, yeah. This is kind of fucking depressing." And like, you have your queen bee, trans lady there, and I'm just like, "Yeah. I'm not... I don't want to be here." So, like, yeah. I would go to those things and be like, "Yeah. I've got a punk show I'm going to go to. You guys..." But sometimes I would go meet people there, and the last time I was there, I was like... I was 28. Because a friend of mine was, like, in town, and she's like, "We can meet at Renaissance." And I'm like, "Fuck. Sure, let's meet at Renaissance. This will be gas." And I showed up there and some fucking crossdresser walks up to me. And I'm like, "Where's the toilet?" And he asked me, "Post-op or pre-op?" And I went, "Not that it's any of your business, but let's just say pre-op. Just because I want to hear what you got to say." "Oh, then you gotta use the men's." And I'm like, "The fuck. The fuck. Get to fuck. That's not going to be happening." And I walked right into the women's rooms. Like, I haven't seen the fucking inside of a men's room in fucking years. And I got kicked out, and I was just like, "Yeah, go fuck yourself, dude."

Vignette 27: Medicalization

I feel bad for a lot of the women who got medicalized because they didn't know anything better. Right? It's one of the things that annoys me about, like, sometimes the kids use the word "truscum" and I hate that. I hate that. Because, man, these women are fucking victims. Fucking victims. And if you can't... Like, I get it, I get it. You got your fucking estrogen from Planned Parenthood. You're in a nice liberal city, but these women had nowhere. They got told by their psychiatrists, "This is what you need to be to be trans," and it... and yeah, they believed it. Yeah, you know what? If I was in their position too and didn't have, like, whatever it is in me that makes me hate authority, I would have fucking believed it too. I would have fucking believed it too, and I would have grasped onto it, too. Because the entire medical profession has been playing Tranny Highlander can only be one true transsexual. They've been playing this since the DSM fucking 3. Right? DSM-3 had it, you know, primary transsexual, secondary transsexual. And then DSM-4 had it with the different fucking things. Now DSM-5. And then Bailey Blanchard Lawrence with homosexual, transsexual, and autogynephilia. It's the same fucking Tranny Highlander they've been playing since DSM-3. And yeah, some women are going to believe it because the one person in their life that they can talk to all their shit has told her, "This is the way it is to be."

Vignette 28: Rejecting Authority

I was talking to a friend of mine who I have known since I was six. We were talking about how, like, I was treated in school, and I was treated like shit in school. Like, the principal told me, "People wouldn't beat you up if you didn't act like such a faggot." Hey, this would have been 1982. And I got the shit kicked out of me continuously and all the people in authority, over me, who were supposed to protect me didn't. Not a one. And at that point, I'm just like, "Oh, these people have power because they gave themselves power." And I would see the hypocrisy of it because I was raised Catholic. It's like oh, "You'll be judged how you treat the least among us." Motherfucker, I'm the least among you, and I know how you're fucking treating me. And on top of that, I hear what you're saying about black people. I hear what you're saying about gay people. And especially, this came really into focus during the AIDS crisis because, you know, I was a little, very obviously queer kid. So, if you're a Catholic in that neighborhood with a very obviously queer kid, you send them to the all-boys school, straighten them out along with everyone else who has a slightly swishy son. All the parents decided, Oh yeah, we're going to straighten our kids out, yeah." He sent all the queer kids to one school, lads. Did you not maybe fucking think this through a little bit? Good, good on you. Good on you. But I graduated right at the height of the AIDS crisis. And I was very... I knew what I was when I was nine and I knew that the people that I was kind of in community with were all dying. And I was like, hopping the fucking subway to the city, and I was seeing these guys die, you know. There were people that I would hang out on park benches smoking weed with and one week that he'd be there, and the next week he wasn't there anymore. And it'd be like another two weeks and then I find out, "Oh, he's dead." So, you know at that point, that fucks you up. That fucks you up. And you're like, "Well, all the people who are supposed to be protecting these people are fucking letting them die." So, why should I give a shit about authority? I'm getting my ass kicked by the cops. I'm getting my ass kicked at home by my parents. I'm getting my ass kicked in the school. The people who are supposed to be protecting me in school are doing fuck all. So, why should I give a shit about what any of these people fucking say?

Vignette 29: The Library

You know, I started reading a lot. I spent a lot of time in library. Why? Because the librarians were the only ones that protected me. Because librarians are going to put up with no fucking rough housing in the fucking library. "No, you leave that kid alone. You get the fuck out of my library." Librarians are fucking hard ass motherfuckers. I learned at a very young age, if I wanted to be safe, I made my way to the fucking library as fast as fucking possible. Because librarian is going to put up with nothing, nothing. The only adults I ever trusted were fucking librarians as a kid. 'Cause I could go in, everyone will leave me the fuck alone because they knew if they fucked with me and made just a peep above silence the librarian would be like, "Shh." So yeah, I mean that's where I started reading, like, a lot of lefty books.

Vignette 30: Understanding Intersectionality

I grew up around, like, people of color. My dad's best man was black, my Uncle Butch. My dad's business partner was black. That was my Uncle Carl. I didn't know what any white people until I was 16. Because there's a difference between lowercase white and capital white. You know, we had to kind of learn what cap "W" whiteness was. Where it wasn't this thing that was instilled in us. You know, I grew up in a multiethnic neighborhood. And I like joking that intersectionalitese or anti-oppressionese is this very nice language that middle class white kids learn to talk about oppression in university that they've never actually experienced. Like, first time someone explained intersectionality to me I'm like, "Oh, it's like my family and the Owens down the street." I knew that there were certain neighborhoods that my Uncle Butch couldn't go into because he was black. If he did, he'd get fucked with. I knew that. Didn't need that fucking explained to me. But my neighborhood, it was kind of this transitional neighborhood. I was Irish. As far as I knew, I was Irish. There were the Italian kids, the Jewish kids, the German kid, the Portuguese kids, the Ecuadorian kids, the El Salvadorian kids, Brazilian kids, and then the black kid. So, like, you know, it was this kind of weird tribal thing because we were all fucking Catholics. Right? Like, I didn't realize until I was 16 that, like, the rest of the world wasn't full of Catholics. There were Catholics, there were Jews, and there were the few weird guys that had a church with a red door on it., and there were some Muslims, and that was it. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were things that lived down South and they didn't make sense to us. So, like it was this weird fucking post-60s where, like, racism was a thing but we all kind of fucking hung out with each other. Because we were what a friend of mine calls the lesser whites, the ones with vowels at the beginnings of our names or at the ends of our names. You know, we didn't give a fuck what race you were just as long as you weren't a fucking cunt. If you were a dick, fuck off, fuck off. Like, and part of this was I had a Catholic upbringing. Right? You were judged by how you treat those least among you. Like, you know the whole Irish slave myth thing, right? Like, the takeaway when I was a kid was, "Yes, we were slaves once and this is why we don't side with slave owners. We don't side with these people, ever, ever. We take care of our own and our own is your Uncle Butch, your uncle Chuck Carlton, the lad across the street even though he doesn't speak English." That's who our own was. That's your fucking take away. That is your fucking take away.

Vignette 31: Liberation

It's always been this thing that, you know, when it comes from as fucked up as the Catholic Church is how you treat the least among you. Right? And it's like, look, my liberation is not going to be won by treating people who have it worse than me like shit. It's a thing that you see over and over again in politics. Like, you know, I remember when Sylvia was throwing an absolute fit over New York Pride going, "Oh, yeah. We're going to drop trans people out." Now, you don't work from the top down. You work from the bottom up. You know that joke that, "Oh, the black midget, lesbian, trans." No. You work for her fucking liberation first. Because if you get her liberated, everyone else is fucking liberated. Right? So, like, to me it it's all come from, you know, growing up in that environment and seeing how, like, people who are different than me were fucking treated. And realizing that, you know, like we're all in this fucking together. And the rich motherfuckers in the fancy houses, with the nice cars, would kill every single one of us if it meant that they can make a little bit more money.

Vignette 32: Mainstay Support

My friends are my mainstay of support and it's mostly cis queers at this point because, like, Ireland is weird because trans people left. Like, we didn't have the AIDS crisis that New York had, or London had because all the Irish queers left because they just couldn't breathe here. Now, that's changed quite a bit in recent years. But, like, I don't know of many trans women in Ireland who are pushing 30 years. You know, we've actually asked around. I think I may be the longest transitioned person in Ireland, which is terrifying. There is one person that we know of who's slightly longer than me. But outside of her, you know, there's a few pushing 20. There's a lot pushing 10, but none with that number of years under. And that's just like, you know, that's another fucked up thing that, you know, I don't have trans elders. I don't get to have trans elders. I get to have a few trans peers that I talk, like, once every two years to and that's about it.

Vignette 33: Publicly Discussing the Clinic

So, me and my sister never talked about this. Like, publicly we didn't talk about it. And I'm always am uncomfortable talking about the clinic. It's funny but it's whatever. Part of the reason why we started talking about it is that there is this hidden trans lady history. Like, God, so much of our radical history has been lost. So much of it has been lost. And you know, I don't believe in heroes, like, look, if you're looking for heroes, just don't because everyone's fucking imperfect, and you're all gonna get your fucking hearts broken. And it's, like, ll that radical history gets lost and I'm like, "Alright, you know what? I'm going to tell this story for Trans Day of Visibility on Twitter because it's kind of fucking hysterical in a way." And I went, and I talked to my sister, and I'm like, "Look, could... do you mind if I tweet about this?" She's like, "No. Just don't mention my name." Like, she doesn't give interviews about it. So, like, we were kind of... There was this both uncomfortability to it because we didn't want it to be about us. Like, it's not about us. I don't care if no one ever knows my fucking name ever, ever. Like, there's activism shit I've done that I don't talk about because it's not associated with my name. Because it's about the fucking work. If you're doing this for fucking head pats, and kudos, and thank you notes, then you're fucking doing it for the wrong fucking reasons. If you're doing it because you're morally fucking outraged. There you go. You're doing it for the right fucking reason. Wonderful. Good. Grand. Go pick a fake name and do it under that because no one should ever fucking know. But it was, like, a friend of mine had just died, one of the people I had transitioned with, and I'm like, "We're going to start dying soon." And then this is lost This. is gone. And we have all these kids who are kind of coming up going like, "Oh, the older generation was a lot more conservative." I'm like, "Honey, I will tell you all the stories about all the fucked-up shit that a group of trans women that generation older than you fucking did." Because we did some fucked up shit. Like, I used the fucking pressure cooker as an autoclave for surgery, so. Let me tell you stories. So, like we had this conversation and it's like, "You know, this history is gonna get lost." And, like, a lot of it already has. A lot of it already has been lost. And, you know, the kids need to kind of know this.

Vignette 34: Inspiration to Do Better

And the thing is, is that our idea wasn't even our idea. We stole that directly from the Jane Collective. That was direct from the Jane Collective. Like literally, they were the ones that kind of inspired us. And now you see like trans kids fucking brewing their own fucking estrogen. Which I'm just like, "Go, you. Get that chemistry degree," you know. And they're literally doing this in the UK now. They're brewing their own fucking estrogen and it's like, "Fuck you guys." You know, and it's... in a way, it's nice to see that they're getting inspiration from it. Like people have told me that, like, Yeah, no. I'm doing this thing because this thing." And I'm like, "Great. Just no fucking hero worship. No, no, no. None of that shit. No, no, no. Don't do that crap. Just get the inspiration and fucking do better than I did. That's the only rule: do better than I did. If you can do better than I did, we're moving in the right direction." You know, and they are. They are. I'm fucking, like, hey, Gen Z, I have so much fucking hope for. I have so much fucking hope for. Because, like, they're like, yeah, they don't take any shit. It's fucking beautiful. It's fucking beautiful.

Vignette 35: Hope

Interviewer: You talked earlier about the gift of time. When you think about the next five, 10, 15 years, what makes you hopeful? What do you think about moving forward?

Pidge: I'm going to read a quote. It's one of my favorite quotes. And Max Brod was the biographer of Franz Kafka. I forget the context of the quote. So, "Outside this world manifestation, which we know, would there be a world that knows hope?" And Kafka said, Oh Hoffnung genug, unendlich viel Hoffnung, — nur nicht für uns." "Oh, there's hope enough, infinite hope, — just not for us." You're hitting this point in the states where so many people are fucked. That it's not just trans people that are on the pointy end of the stick. It's not just black people that are on the pointy end of the stick. It's middle class people that are on pointy end of the stick. A lot of these folks, they're just not buying this anymore. They're just not buying this fucking lie where if we just vote the right guys in, they'll take care of us instead of exploit the fuck out of us, you know. And I think that a lot of the trans kids don't buy it anymore. They do not believe it, and I think that's fucking wonderful. I think that they're learning not to have fucking heroes, and that's a good thing. I think they're learning that if we want to stop shit, we need to just fucking stop shit. Because the adults in the room are idiots. And I'm really hopeful for the next generation kind of learning that. And they're learning a real fucking soon because the generation before them... I mean, how many millennials do you know that can afford a fucking house? They're in their 40s now, for fuck's sake, and they can't afford a fucking house. And Gen Z doesn't have a fucking hope. There's no fucking hope for them, so I am praying that they just tear it the fuck down. I think if there's any hope for fucking humanity, I think Gen Z is it, and especially the trans kids fucking getting it. Like, they're getting it more than my generation got, more than the generation after me got. They are fucking getting it. Like, yeah, okay, sometimes they get lost in the weeds in the fucking discourse and shit. I sit there, and I watch, and I go, “Okay. Okay. Not gonna step in. They need to figure this shit out for themselves." But they are fucking getting it. I am so proud of them. Like, I had no hope whatsoever until I started seeing these kids come around and I'm just like, "Yes. Yes." And like, yeah, if I have hope, it's because of them. I don't have hope for much else. Those kids, I think got it. I think they got it. You know, them, I have a lot of fucking faith in. So, I have some hope there.