MEMOIR AND TRAVEL
"At about seven years old, I got the notion stuck in my head that I was going to go to jail. I never brought it up because I knew I could offer no explanation . . . the thought kept coming back – it seemed inevitable. As though one day, I would be coloring or building Lego villages, and a police officer would approach and take me by the arm and say, 'All right, that’ll be enough of that, you didn’t really think you were going to get away with it, did you?' And I would lower my head in resignation and say, 'No, no, I knew this was coming sooner or later...'
"...I rationalized that this was normal. People did get sick, after all, didn’t they? And if I got sick a little more often than others, was it any wonder? I hardly slept as I tried to live two lives – a man working a tiring career as a junior high school teacher and a woman who only existed in the moonlight and was determined to make the most of those hours. I smoked and drank and did drugs for two...."
"...If the road tripper explodes outward, Jordan’s curiosity was instead like a collapsing star, drawing everything it saw into its gravity – it’s no wonder that it started drawing in so many people along with everything else....."
"...I would stop on the shoulder and step out of my car, just to feel the pavement beneath the soles of my feet and that strange awareness that in one way or another, through enough twisting and turning, this road connected to every other road throughout the country and even beyond. It made the world seem very big and very small all at once...."
"... I considered my imminent psychological evaluations to be much like any other test, and ever the diligent student, I decided (if you’ll forgive the pun) to bone up. When I started reading, I learned that for decades, a diagnosis of transsexuality was based on a great deal more than simply the unexplainable sense of being born into the wrong body. Rather, we were a group of people defined by negativity and dysfunction of all kinds..."
"... I built two wardrobes, slipped effortlessly between two sets of behaviors and inflections, and while still living with my parents, memorized every dark lot and alleyway across five towns where it was possible to park my car and change my entire outfit and make-up – a feat I could perform with remarkable speed. I call these the phone booth years – Clark Kent going in, Wonder Woman coming out..."
_edited.jpg)
"... The doctor was about to break the news that I would never have a child of my own, and nothing else had ever made it so clear that I wanted one. I really, really wanted one..."