Alex - my little Aussie digger, my little Aussie battler; my rock, my love, my all. 

Stepping out into a hail of bullets

Sometimes, it seems like my life is like stepping out into a hail of bullets.

During the invasion of Iraq, I remember seeing an image on television which has remained with me, as some kind of metaphor.

A metaphor for my life.

I saw a British soldier crouched behind a pillar, somewhere in Basra, sheltering from fierce incoming fire. I knew that at some point he would have to come out from behind the safety of the pillar, out into that maelstrom of lead and death, face up to his fate whatever that might be.

I thought of the second before he moves…and the second after. The last second of safety, of the continuance of what went before; the next second, the next fateful, heart-thumping, brain-numbing, cold-fear-running second when what cannot be faced is faced, when what comes next…comes next.

The second before…and the second after.

I have been a reluctant and unwilling soldier in this life, cowering behind a succession of crumbling pillars, not-living in the eternal second before…. Before decision, before action, before consequence, before result, before what comes next.

Nine years ago I came to an acknowledgement: that my life was not my life, that my death would not be my death. That I would lie on my deathbed with the thing undone, with my life unlived, dying someone else’s death after a lifetime of not-living someone else’s half-life.

I acknowledged my transsexualism; I acknowledged that I was somehow, someway, some incontestable, unavoidable, ultimately inescapable, refusing-to-go-away way, female. In the core of my being, in the depth of my soul, in the very fibres of my heart and mind…and brain.

It took another six years to get me out from the hiding place that is no hiding place, kicking and screaming. Mother, if it be thy will, let this cup passeth from my lips.

It wasn’t. It didn't.

Three years ago, finally, I stepped out into the maelstrom of reality and consequence. I transitioned. This is your joy…you enjoy it; this is your pain…you suffer it. This is yours…all yours…only yours.

At first, there is only the enormity of what you have done. The adrenalin, the fear, the exhilaration, the release of action, the imagined release of imagined freedom.

Then the bullets start hitting. The realisations, the realities, the consequences. And all my pouches and packs are empty. All my resources were dreamed, all my preparations were made in fantasy…for a fantasy world.

My real hands are thin…and old...and empty.

I used to have a deluded sense of invulnerability, of immortality. I was the reigning queen of distraction, Miss Ostrich 1952-2001.

I was eternally nine.

Now I am middle-aged and my pillars are crumbling, crumbling, fast, oh! so fast.

Once upon a time there was a would-be-if-she-could-be hippie chick who KNEW if she ate enough brown rice she'd live forever...and nothing would ever go wrong.

Once upon a time the future was so big I couldn't see it. Funny how the future shrinks, the gossamer becomes gritty.

Once upon a time I drifted in dreamy currents. Now I strain at the oars, navigating mid-life, tiny safe harbour by tiny safe harbour, dark jagged reef by dark jagged reef.

Then, I tripped flippantly along the cliff-top of my life; the eternal delusionist, pulling eternally painless rabbits out of an eternally blameless hat. The eternal Aussie, “She’ll be right, mate. No wurries! No fuckin’ wurries!”

Now I’m worried.

A light has gone out; the only light I knew how to keep aglow. The light of enforced, obligatory ignorance, of assumed innocence; the light of illusion and delusion. In the dark, damp womb behind my closed eyelids, I lit an imaginary match to light an imaginary path to nowhere.

Now the weight of night, long night, is palpable, pressing hard on the thin, dim end of day. The future is what happens to other people until one day, shockingly and unthinkably, impenetrably and irrevocably, it becomes your own.

Oh! Don't get me wrong! There is joy and wonderment aplenty! Bright precious stones found in the bottom of pinafore pockets. But now you run your fingers over the rough-burred surfaces of both sides of life. Feel them for your own. Gritty, real.

When I smile at you I wear melancholy as a brooch.

How loud is that clock ticking, woman, how loud is that?

Not as loud as the silence that follows.

It's little things. Like sore, old neglected paper-thin feet, like a mouth half-full of neglected decay.

It's big things. Like glaucoma, like blindness waiting in the wings to sing your swan-song. Like the slow, persistent creep of muscular dystrophy, laying claim to the love of your life.

It's irrevocable. Like the criminal record of a lifetime of betrayals, deceits. Stamped, recorded. On your deathbed, or mine, you will remember what I did to you. And so will I.

It's intrinsic, endemic. Like the fear that's knotted tight and hard into the structure of your being. For always, for ever...you.

How could this life happen to that young girl, I might have been, in the Annie Oakley hat with the fake plaits, sweating in the damp summer swamp of her cowboy tent?

How could this life happen to that girl that I never was, who was never a girl but woke up one day in middle age, whose might-have-been menarche went unrealised and unbled until it withered into a quasi-menopause, barren and dry? Like discarded driftwood. Unblossomed and unborn. For ever more.

When I was young, I could run, god! I could run! Could outrun my crimes; and my sins. Greased like a hillbilly hog, I slipped the net of consequence and accountability; pulled off stunt after stunt.

Yeah, I was the stuntwoman - nothing was real. Now someone has stolen away my hidden mattress; now falling is hard, REAL hard.

When I was young sometimes I attended AA. I wasn’t alcoholic – that was someone else. I was the helpless, hopeless one, instead. No that’s not true, they were helpless and hopeless, those men and women who got up and faced us, faced themselves and did the first step. I never did the first step, took the first step.

There’s no hope until there’s no hope.

They gave me a gift, though: “One day at a time, sweet Jesus”. Sometimes I have my own version: “One second at a time, sweet Jesus”.

Life is what you live, clinging to the edge.

Thank god for Alex!

Web Weaver

Your window of opportunity

Hey!
Grab hold of this -
Your tiny, brief
Window of opportunity.

Plant out the moist dark earth
Of its window-box
- heritage green -
In sweet, dappled apple-mint
And pretty heartsease -
Sunny yellow
And velvet purple.

Polish round squeak, squeaky clean
Its thin, wavy window panes;
Reflecting in dark liquid
Pools of glass
An indigo blue sky and silver'd clouds.

Drape it within in snowy white
Curtains of lacy net
Embroidered with fairies.

Wash out your hair in
Chamomile and nettles,
Hang it loose, fly it free;
Henna and auburn,
Like a dark river of secrets
Stained tea-tree and golden;
Eddying, murmuring.

Hum haunting snatches
Of Patsy Cline
To bemused passers-by.

Let lazy summer evening breezes
Softly tink tinkle
Cut-glass crystal wind chimes.

Fling out the warm, sweet, spicey
Smell of ginger muffins,
Fresh-baked and steaming
Under a red check table-cloth,
Enticing lovers loitering in laneways
With dreams of domesticity and bliss.

Do all of this!
Now!
Please!

For fleeting is the moment,
Like a pale moth against dark night;
Flittering, fragile;
Tiny, temporary;
Dancing lightly, forever out of reach
And gone tomorrow.

Winter morning's brief patch of sun

We squatted down
Side by side
You n’ me
Soft n’ young
Hard n’ old
Tiny n’ big.

In winter morning’s
Brief patch of sun.

We cracked open oranges
N’ giggled.
You shaking your plaits,
Me shaking mine.
We drank their liquid flesh;
Their blood spilt,
Gold’n on our hands,
Sticky n’ good
Amid heartsease n’ boronia.

In winter morning’s
Brief patch of sun.

My darling Pussma with her four babies. 

River Cat

I’ll call you River Cat!
Your fur a river of dark dappled with light.
Scintillating sunlight, molten, golden,
Glistening, gliding,
Sliding into shifting shadows
Of tea-tree, umber and amber.

I’ll call you Audrey Hepburn Cat!
Your slinking, sinuous, sensuous limbs
Gloved in black velvet.
Where is your Cartier bracelet?
Where is your diamond tiara?

I’ll call you Furr Bear and Purr Bear!
And bury my troubled head
In your warm belly fur.

I’ll call you Womb Cat!
And you’ll enfold me
In your primal mothering.
One paw over me,
Protecting.
Fur belly rising,
Fur belly falling.

I’ll call you Dream Cat!!
And you’ll draw me deep
Into your eyes.
Eyes of inscrutable clarity
Eyes of glass, eyes of jade.
Golden and green,
Unfathomable, beckoning;
Entrancing, enslaving.
Those eyes where there is
No thinking, no feeling.
Only being.

And I’ll call you Gone Cat!
And you’ll be gone
And I’ll be gone
And we’ll be as
Faint wind whispering in fur
Faint wind rippling on water
Fading, then forgotten.

Tall Woman Blues

I'm singin' the Tall Woman Blues.
Ain't singin' 'bout high-heeled shoes.

Singin' 'bout the way I was born,
Feelin' a freak...an' forlorn.

A funny thing happened to me the other day. I was shopping in the supermarket when another woman turned to me and said in an exasperated but matter of fact tone, "Would you get that fabric conditioner down for me? It's supposed to be on the lower shelf but it never is!" I smiled and got the bottle down for her. She said, "Thanks" and just walked away.

Now, being asked to get stuff down from tall shelves is a common experience for me and I really don't mind but usually people express a bit of embarassment and are rather gushy in their apologies and thanks. This woman was entirely matter of fact - as if I was an employee. I had on a patchwork floral skirt, witchy-poo shoes and a shopping basket over my arm so I don't think she mistook me for a Coles lady!

Maybe I just had some tall person's duty statement stamped on my forehead: "Tall Woman - able to reach high shelves in a single reach"! I dunno. Puzzling!

Anyway, it got me thinking about what it's been like these last three years as a really tall woman (6'4") on top of a lifetime of being a really tall person.

My endocrinolgist got out his tape measure when he saw me the first time; checking my measurements and thumb joints and sternum for signs of what he quaintly called, "Arachnodactylia", an old term for Marfan's syndrome.

He doesn't believe I have enough symtoms to "qualify" but when I saw the photograph my friend Belinda took of me at the beach I knew why he'd thought I might have. My arms and legs are disproportionately long. They are like great spider limbs; like vaccuum-cleaner hoses coiling and writhing out into the world; my hands and feet - much too big I think - like great attachments on the end.

I grew up dealing with being really tall and the taunts that came with that by becoming separate from my body. "Oh! That body, never seen it before in my life". I think I was in my mid-forties before I ever really saw myself in the mirror.

Now, however, I have "grown into my skin"; now I am me, right through. There's no where to go; no escape.

So, anyway, I was thinking I might jot down some experiences peculiar to being a very tall woman.

Children
Children are very observant of difference - they are discovering all the wondrous diversity of life for the first time; raw, barely obscured by their parent's prejudice. They stop and look up and stare. "Mummeeeee" (urgently tugging mum's skirt) "mummmeeee!! Look at that very tall lady!" "Yes! C'mon we're in a hurry!"

Other women
I don't especially think of other women's height - except when we're together in some close personal space - like the close physical interaction of a workshop or group. Then I feel like a great giraffe hulking over their 5'4" "normalness".

Other tall women
There's not a lot of women my age who are my height but increasingly I come across young women over 6' - some my height or nearly so. For a few seconds I walk alongside them, my spirit soars, "I am not alone". I feel my grateful heart bob along behind them like a momentarily happy balloon, And then they're gone, into their own world of tallness in the midst of "normal"

Men
I feel a certain protectiveness or momentary obscurity when tall men walk by; feel self-conscious in a lift full of shorter men. Vulnerable. How will they cut me down to size, safeguard their ego? This time. In the mall, I pass a group of what I call "socially disadvantaged males" They look at one another and smirk; miming the motions of climbing a ladder. Their generally unspoken, but not always, words declaim, "You'd have to climb up a bloody ladder to root that". Perhaps, being transsexual, I should take such ignorant misogyny as a compliment (?)!

Relationship
I do not know what it is like to have my man's largeness loom over me, surround me, protect me. I do not know what it is like to lean up against my man and only come up to his shoulder, even in high heels. What would this statistical height difference do to my consciousness; if I had always experienced that? What does it do to my consciousness to almost always be taller than the men around me?

My boyfriend
When I wear flatties Alex quips, "Hi! shortie!" but I am still a bit taller than him. I ask him if it worries him; he says, "No" - he's the original Mr Natural! Alex has muscular dystrophy so his side of the lounge is propped up with extra cushions so he can get up easier. That makes me lower and I get to rest my head in the soft hollow of his shoulder. Oh! That dear friendly spot!

Supermarkets
See comments above re tall woman's appointed duty to other shoppers!

Check out chicks
"Orh! My Gord. You're so tall! I would so love to be that tall!" Say no more!!

Clothes shopping
When I walk into a smaller shop, like Katies or Sussan's, I catch myself involountarily cringing, imagining the staff thinking, "Who's she kidding, she's not going to find anything to fit her here!" Do they ever think that? I dunno. The thought just comes and goes. I still go in and shop. Life...and shopping must go on!

Pants
Fergetit! Ain't nowhere in the known universe where a gal like me can get pants off the rack that are long enough. Target have a so-called Tall range...Ha! That's not "tall", that's slightly less short!

Dresses and skirts
Mmm! Works both ways. I've had to learn to be able to judge the length of a skirt hanging on a rack or mannequin. Knee length on normal inhabitants of planet Earth is gonna show my bony knees! On the other hand ankle length skirts that often look frumpy on other women come to below my knees and show enough leg to be stylish (well that's what I think - let me have something, pleeeeaze!)

Shoes
Fergetit doubletime! I take a 12 in sandals or a 13 in court shoes (altho' you never can tell- sometimes 111/2 is just right and 13 is too big). There's only three shops in all of Sydney that have my size. Considering that such shops tend to get one or maybe two of any size and style I've got to wlak in on exackly the right day and time to beat every other long-footed woman to the punch (pump?) Another woman might have to choose between numerous variations on a white sling back mid heel. Me I've got to take the only style in white-slash-beige-slash-pale black they've got - even if I hate it! You know it puzzles the crap outta me how manufacturers of longer sizes in women's shoes (listen, we don't say 'bigger' - right?!) seem to assume that I don't want to wear exactly the same styles as every other woman. Hey! Guys! My feet are different - not my bloody brain! Things are getting better - it is now possible to buy size 12 or 13 shoes which are definitely not PC (that's Podiatrally Correct!) Hey!! if I can cripple my feet like every other woman things must be lookin' up!

Buses
Now they make buses high enough to stand up but to compensate the seats are now closer together! Can't win! I love the older buses with roomy seats. Isn't it strange that just when women and Asian people are getting taller, they make the seats closer together! Oh! I shouldn't complain, think how many more troops we'll be able to send to Iraq if we put the seats closer together!

Trains
Double-decker train roofs are embarrassingly low. I wait till the last person is stepping down the stairs before I get up to get off. Especially, if I'm on a train full of school boys. A self respecting tall woman should not offer herself up as cannon-fodder to the neanderthal!

Beds
No problem! I'm terminally foetal.

Love Lies Broken

our love lies
broken
down
old dodge, clapped out
abandoned
by the side
of a cracked and tortured road
way of the cross
from a dustbowl of lies
to some implied
california
of wasted dreams.

faded blood stains the dust
dully
my heart bleeds
feebly
from a damp cardboard suitcase
barely
held together
with too thin string.

your heart, I guess, is splintered
you bear its wooden burden
as a cross
heavy, hurting
heaved high
with moral indignation.

This poem is personal but was inspired by seeing an exhibition of the acclaimed American photographer, Dorothea Lange. SEE HER WORK PLEASE!