Images 29

Chapter 29

I was more than a little bit nervous having the press coming here so I could get the questions and stuff over with maybe. Everyone kind of helped with setting up things with moving the tables and getting everything situated so we could get through this. I’ll admit I’m scared of what the questions might be and the fallout that might come out of all of this but. As much as I’ve changed there are sometimes when the best defense is a good offence.

We get the tables moved taking some of them out back to the storage area and we sort of set things up in the best corner booth for us to sit at. Me and Tay, Mom…Angie, Dad and Hunter.

Taylor and the others have a bank of the tables set together and put up a sign saying press craft services table. That’s Taylor’s idea that we ply the press with free food to get them happily stuffed and less hostile or aggressive at least.

Me and Hunter are actually hiding out back trying to get through the case of nerves that we both have and Mom and Dad are there with us. I’m nervous enough I keep wanting to help set things up but I’m smart enough to let Taylor and the girls and the other staff get talked to first as things are getting set up and the press who have shown up in force.

Well….not force but eighteen or so plus the various bits of crew they have if they need them. Feeding them seems to be a good idea as the food’s going over well with the press and their crews. I see Marley there too and there’s lots of people chatting them up.

Taylor did several pizzas just some easy things but good. Three cheese, pepperoni, veggie, Alfredo with spinach, and a new one called beef en wheck? It’s a horseradish white sauce with shaved roast beef and hot peppers and caraway seeds plus on the bottom of the oven he put more caraway seeds and salt? He did the same around the edge of the crust. It smells good.

There are also sandwiches along with meatballs and perogies and some deserts; cakes and pies plus the rest of my cinnamon rolls are put out, someone made a sign calling them Jenna’s Famous Cinnamon rolls. Oh and lots of tea and coffee plus pop and water.

It takes no time really before it’s time to go out and face the press. Mom got me to wear one of my light blue Nike training tanks; it shows off the bruises I’ve got from the paintballs. There’s an audible hiss of sympathy and a bit of buzz and camera flash as they see it.

We sit down with Mom in the back with Hunter and then Dad on the other side of Hunter but Taylor on mom’s other side because it put’s him sitting beside me and it puts Dad and I out there facing them to better answer questions with Dad there as my legal council. Holly brings up all some drinks. There’s a few camera flashes and laughs as Hunter goes “Oh..oh..chocolate!” when Holly gives Hunter her milkshake. I’m having one too but mine has three shots of Kaluha in it.

I take a few sips and a few breaths before turning in my seat to face them and girl cross my legs. I’m sure everything’s being noted and dissected. I’m wearing just a pair of slacks and sandals.

I try my best smile. “Hi everyone.”

I get a smattering of Hi’s and Hello’s back.

“I wasn’t planning on doing any interviews or to talk to the press so soon with everything going on but since there were some of the press already here when I got here I though it’d be only fair if I said a few things here and answered some of you’re questions.”

“My name used to be J’aime Morgan, but it was also Jaime or mostly James. It’s Jenna now and it was always supposed to be like that. I was fourteen when I started to figure things out and by the time I was fifteen I had been outed and ended up living in a group home where I started my transition. By the time I was sixteen I had moved out and was living on my own then, I ended up meeting my husband on a rainy night not too long ago.”

“I’m not really sure where I can go from here so I’m going to open things up to questions if that’s alright with everyone here?”

I take another drink of my shake and from that point on things kind of get busy and become a blur. I’m not sure who was with who asking what but it went a lot like this.

Q: “When did you know you weren’t a male?”

A: “I was with a girl I’d been seeing and just goofing I tried on her underpants and honestly it just stuck and kept becoming a thing until I tried dressing in some of my birth mother’s things and I saw myself for the first time.”

Q: “What do you mean saw yourself for the first time?”

A: “Well it’s just that. We all for the most part look in the mirror and don’t give a whole lot of thought to who that it. We’ll think about all the other stuff but when you’re transgendered or even differently gendered it’s not what everyone else see’s. I thought I was James, and I thought there was something really wrong with me when I was getting more and more into the cross dressing and things. But when I made myself up it wasn’t seeing myself as made up but this… That’s me moment, when I never seen myself before in my life.”

Q: “Was it a shock?”

A: “Yes a huge one too. I cried all night after the first time I saw myself and James wasn't a person who cried….ever.”

Q: “Is that because of the whole boys don’t cry thing?”

A: “A little bit. But what it really was, is this dis-associative state that I was living under where my brain just couldn’t emotionally process being male so it literally had turned those parts of me down so low because I wasn’t using them. I couldn’t really cry as James it just wasn’t in me to do.”

Q: “So you’re better now?”

A: “Much thank you, the life I’m living, getting my body to match my brain has set everything to where it should’ve been. I’m all over the place sometimes but that’s still a good thing it means I can actually feel things.”

Q: “You said your birth mother. You’re not close to her?”

A: “No Natalie and I will never be close. I guess her cursing me out the dumping a jerry can full of lawnmower gas on me when I was outed might have something to do with it. Looking back on my life and from other things that I’ve found out she wanted James to make it big in football to be her meal ticket.”

I remember that response made a big buzz around things and that began some other questions getting them into bit of and excited gaggle.

Q: “What’s the status between you and your birth mother now?”

A: “None, I don’t really want to see her except during her parole hearing and her court appeal.”

Q: “Court appeal? On what grounds?”

A: “Abuse leading to her becoming mentally unstable. She’s claiming she had Stockholm’s syndrome because of my stepfather’s abuse. She was trying to appease him when she doused me with the gas.”

Q: “Is that true? Was your stepfather abusive to her, to you?”

A: “No, not that I ever seen. He was a great stepfather as long as you followed in his plans for you and you were a good ‘ole redneck just like him. He was great as long as I performed, and I’d been raised that way in this winning is everything this is what a man is environment. She was happy as long as I made them look good and looked like I was heading to the NFL after getting into a good football college. When I was outed he thought he’d rape the queer out of me and she went ballistic because it was already out online all over Facebook and MySpace and she saw her chance at all that money wash away.”

Q: “You seem angrier at her than him, why is that?”

A: “He was my stepfather and to a point just by being who he was he didn’t really betray me as much as she did. He was just another one of those good old boys like the ones that did this to me and wanted to do this to my little sister, he’s not the only one out there. But Natalie, she was supposed to be different, she was supposed to be my mother, the woman who gave birth to me and here she was trying to light me on fire. Trying to kill me because….because she’s a sociopath.”

Q: “You said like the ones who had done this to you and tried to do this to your little sister. Does this mean that the attitude was prevalent in and around the football teams in this country?”

A: “No not this country but in the leagues around here you bet. I can remember homophobic jokes in the locker rooms both home and away and it was only worse in the older grades. Football is a legacy sport around here. There’s a lot, a lot of you scratch my back stuff along with gender bias, homophobia, and even some good old fashioned doses of racism.”

“Just look at some of the teams and the color scheme, anyone of any color has got to be exceptional just to be allowed to play unless you have a few schools with a white ethnic minority. Even then I’d love to see the way the funding for those schools gets distributed.”

“I’m not saying it’s like that on all the teams and I don’t know about the rest of the country but here, here its part of that everything people think of when you think of Western Canadians.”

Okay I’ll admit I ranted a bit on that one. But there was a lot I saw as James that I never even thought was wrong or even out of the ordinary back then. Now after becoming myself and all that time in my head going over my past I remembered things a whole lot differently.

Q: “So you hate football then?”

A: “No, actually I still love football, it’s a great game and there’s a lot any kid can get out of playing sports and being on a team. I just can’t get behind the way that it’s being run in the area and the province pretty much.”

Q: “Are you saying girls should play?”

A: “Girls are playing these sports it’s just they get no encouragement, no funding and in a lot of cases they’re either the tomboys playing with the guys or just getting into backyard games but that’s true of all women’s sports really it’s marginalized and made less important and not just by men.”

Q: “Are you saying that women are a part of why women and girls sports aren’t as equal to the men’s teams.”

That’s from one of the lesbian writers she looks pissed at me even for suggesting it.

A: “Yes, in my opinion as a woman and a former athlete that women and girls see even liking sports as un-girl-like and they don’t really support the sports or the teams or the games.”

Q: “Oh really and you’d know this because of your vast experience as a woman.”

A: “Actually yes, as far as I’m concerned. I am a woman, in my heart and my soul and my head I’m female as much as any other woman out there. And arguing the point is just as useful as trying to tell a gay or lesbian person they have to sleep with the opposite sex because they’re a biological fit.”

“But that’s not what I was getting at before we get into a whole other thing. What I’m saying is no. Women are often their own worst enemies. Take the W network on television, the women’s network or it’s supposed to be. I’ve never seen any female sports on there. Why? Because they’re not popular, why because liking sports in ungirl-like and we fall prey to social peer pressure. It’s not just Men holding us down anymore.”

She looked pissed but she held her tongue. I had a feeling that she was wanting to turn this into a lez vs. trans thing but there was too many other press here and a few of the other alternative media members were shooting her looks too, like those shut up looks.

There’s a few questions from the others about Hunter and how she feels about the whole thing.

Q: “Hunter how long have you been living as a girl?”

A: “Duh…always, it’s more like when did I stop pretending to be a boy.”

Q: “Do you have any other trouble like this at school?”

A: “Sometimes but not really, there was some but it was like the parents of some of the other kids and one of the teachers. They said that I was breaking Gods laws and stuff but it’s not really true because there’s lots of stuff in the bible that says we’re supposed to do but we don’t and some of it like slaves and stuff’s against the law. You shouldn’t get to pick ‘n choose just because you don’t understand something.”

Q: “Do you find the stuff they’re saying upsetting.”

A: (Sniffles.) “Yeah because they don’t know me they just hear things that they think is wrong and they judge me ‘cause of it. I don’t know them and I don’t hate them and I’m not their child so why are they so freaked out at me just fixing a mix up.”

Hunter then hid into Mom’s side and then the asked a few more questions to me.

Q: “Jenna, are you pressing charges against Troy Mathews?”

A: “Yes and I’ll be taking him to court over the malicious website that he had put up as well.”

Q: “What’s your reaction to his rant, I know you were there for it but it has been played repeatedly on the new channels and You Tube.”

A: “Well honestly it’s kind of pathetic bordering on insane. He went that far to make sure that I never played football ever again? Just so he could take my place in the districts number one spot? That’s nuts. Who does that?”

“The fact that I’d been out would have tanked my playing alone, nothing more had to be done past that point. The funny thing is I’ve been gone almost for two full seasons and he still hasn’t gotten to where I was ranked.”

Q: “What are you’re plans now? Will you be returning to school and to football?”

A: “My plans…well first I’m going to take some time and actually enjoy my life and settle into things. After that maybe enjoy a honeymoon with my husband. But going back to school? I’m not going to go back to my old school, not after everything that had happened and the total lack of support there from people that I had thought were my friends back then.”

“I’ve been either thinking about getting my GED or going to take some classes at night school and after that I’ve actually got my mind set on going for my Culinary arts degree. It turns out that I really like cooking and feeding people.”

Q: “So no plans on playing football then?”

A: “No, I won’t be returning to football, besides my bra would likely get caught in my pads.”

Q: “But you were quite passionate about the game earlier.”

A: “And like I said I still love the game but there’s not much likelihood of me playing on a regular division team or getting back my scholarship chances I’m not exactly what they’re looking for anymore but I’d consider it if I was offered there has been a lot of girls that have played the game all over North America. I’d love to be able to say that I’d go back but my heart just wouldn’t be into playing anymore. My life’s turned too many corners and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead in my life.”

That brings the angry lez back around on me. Q: “So you’re saying that you’re going to give up one football because of what happened? I thought you were in favor of having women in sports and yet you’re not willing to stand up for it.”

A: “Honestly I love the game and I’d go and watch a girls game hell if there was a better women’s football league I might get involved and I’m saying might because when I was James, I was good at the game. But I also never really had a choice in the matter once they saw I had talent in it. I was pretty much forced into the game and not given the choice. Seeing as I wasn’t really able to touch my real feelings back then it wasn’t like I was able to say that I didn’t want to do this. Now I can, I can say no to being pressured or coerced into things that I don’t want to do.”

I looked pointedly at her. She’s sort of glaring back at me. Q: “What do you say to those who say that you’re not a real woman?”

A: “Well I try to be a decent person about it and let it go. I really don’t need the pain and aggravation in my life but it hurts like hell on the inside. And it’s a pain that sits there with a lot of us.”

“What bother’s me the most is the times I get that from people who have just been put into boxes like I have.”

Q: “Well what about those people that say that transgendered people are just messed up gay people, that it’s all in your heads.”

A: “I’d say that they’re prejudiced and uninformed. Are you a messed up straight person? Or does you’re sexual preference come right from your soul? Do you know you’re a lesbian or do you have a male soul that’s coming through that body?”

She stands up off of her chair. “I have a female soul and yes I know deep inside that I love women. How dare you say that I have a guy’s soul!”

I look at her and sigh. “Look I didn’t say it I asked it and how do you know what your soul’s gender is? You can’t see it or measure it, so how do you know?”

“I just know! I don’t have to defend who or what I am to anybody!”

“I just know too, and I know just what you mean by not having to defend who I really am to anyone. I’m glad we’re on the same page about this stuff. Mizz. Novak.”

There’s a few claps and she looks around and she blinks and turns red faced and sits down a few minutes before getting up and heading to the ladies room.

I answer a few more questions and some of them are even funny stuff like my take on several of the teams and schools in the league and they’re surprised that I follow things enough. I talk sports with some of the reporters and sexuality and gender stuff as I see it with some others as well as bits about food, clothes and make up but after about fifteen minutes I excuse myself and head into the bathroom.

It’s busy considering the turn out and our ladies has only two stalls and one’s got Mizz Novak in it. I slip out hit the kitchen and come back. I knock on the stall door.” Mizz Novak are you okay?”

“No…I…I made an ass out of myself out there.”

“Oh yeah, and for my part in it I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Why? I’m the one who was harassing you.” (Sniffle.)

“Here.” I kneel and slide a milkshake under the stall. She takes it.

“Thanks, what’s this?”

“Chocolate milkshake with a shot of vodka and three shots of kaluha in it.”

(Slurping sounds, then a sniff.) “Thanks…why are you being nice to me I was a bitch to you.”

“I’m not in a bitchy mood. Oh I can be a total cunt when I’m in the mood for it. Can I ask you a question?”

“Okay?”

“Why do you have a problem with me, or any other trans girl for that matter?”

“I don’t know? I mean it actually be that some of what you said it there haunting me in the back of my mind. That inside of me there’s something that’s not a real girl, I mean not like the straight girls. Or that I might have a thing for T-girls but I don’t want to because I’m a lesbian.”

“There’s a lot of T-girls that are lesbians.”

“I know and there’s a lot of lesbians that like that. And it’s like those of us who don’t have that something extra are getting shafted by guys in a whole new way. It’s like nothing we have is really sacred anymore. It’s like you guys are poisoning what is supposed to be a sisterhood thing.”

“Well I’m not a guy and really I never was. But I get what you mean, it’s part of the whole gender divide. Guys have been pissed for ages that the laws are making what used to be guy things only available for women. This is a twisted up version of that because most guys don’t want to be included into things that are traditionally women things. But those of us that are women inside hold every little scrap of being a girl and a woman to heart because that’s been denied to us just by a simple biological fact.”

“You sound like you thought about this stuff a lot.”

“Mizz Novak, there isn’t a T-girl out there that hasn’t self obsessed and read up on this stuff until it hurts even more. No matter how much you get it and can reason it out it’s not making you a girl anytime faster.”

“I get that. There’s a lot of lesbians that have turned research into culture. By the way I’m Anne.” (Sniffle.)

“Nice to meet you Anne, I’m Jenna.”

“I really feel like a douche for what I said to you, hounded you out there.”

“Well you really were being a douche so…”

She gave a watery laugh and came out of the stall. “You’re not cutting me any slack are you?”

“Hell no. and would any of your friends cut you any slack for doing that.”

“The few I had would have been cheering me on for trying to out you as a non-woman. But I think you’re actually a pretty decent girl. I just can’t see someone who’s faking being a woman being here and talking to me because I’m upset. You’re just too nice a girl really. God Jenna you make me feel like I’m not girl enough.”

“Oh that’s not it that’s just our typical female crazy. Over think, over emote, over analyze and then conclude that we’re not as good as the next person because of whatever reason.”

We actually burst out laughing together.

“Oh some hardcore lesbian feminist I am.”

“Anne honestly hardcore and feminism are oxymoron’s, like Military intelligence. If feminism is feminine then it should be strong not hard. Guy’s are hardcore women should be strong. We should be like silk.”

“Silk?”

“Silk. Look silk is soft, it’s something beautiful all of it’s own, it’s natural but also as much as it’s all that it’s delicate, it can be easily damaged but at the same time when wet, like when we cry silk can become so strong. We should be like silk, stronger because we can be empathic and care about other people.”

“Wow…I never thought of it like that.”

“I think about that stuff all the time. It’s all tied up with who I am and my faith and everything else.”

“You’re religious?”

“My Stepfather was Christian, my birthmother was Catholic, My real dad is just lapsed but that side of the family is United church…Me I’m Christian but with a strong leaning to God too. I’m not sure that I really have a religion but I’ve got faith, I’ve got lots of faith.”

“How can you believe in god with everything that goes on in the world?”

“Most of the stuff that’s gone on in the world is our own doing. From the wars to the weather it’s all on us and he’s not getting involved in a lot of it because of free will.”

“Free will.”

“Yup, you tell me if we made a non-faith choice to stop being assholes to each other, stop money grubbing and actually help our fellow man and neighbor then what would be the world then?”

“A whole lot different.”

“Exactly, free will. We could but for whatever reasons people have they won’t, or a lot of the time can’t or just refuse to.”

“Free will. But earthquakes and the weather. All those horrible things that just happen.”

“We’ve damaged the environment so there’s a lot of this on the human race and that goes towards free will. There’s places were it’s be smart for us as a species not to live but free will and the side effects of money, costs and all those factors are part of that too. And the stuff that just happens, that is God’s will, well those are opportunities for us to make ourselves better and we keep flunking the tests.”

“Huh?”

“If mankind could stop fighting globally just decide to stop and take all those resources and all those people and put it into disaster relief, medicine, world hunger, education…again it’s up to free will. Those disasters that happen shouldn’t just be sad things but times where the human race should just stand out and shine.”

“You do have a lot of faith.”

“I have to. Every time we do something where we can lead by example and just be decent to each other that closer I think we all really get to where God want’s us to be.”

“You gave me a lot to really think about Jenna.”

“Good stuff I hope?”

“I have no idea, actually a lot of it made sense and a lot of it is really kind of scary too. I’m not sure how I’m going to look at things after this. You’re really a lot smarter than the average eighteen year old girl.”

I hug her. She blinks a few times and the she seems to get why and smiles. I smile too and wipe at my own tears there.

“Anne, I honestly hope that no one ever has to go through the stuff I’ve gone through just to get to this point. I just want to get on with my life. I might be eighteen but I feel older sometimes.”

She looks me hard in the eyes like she’s looking for something there and she hugs me again. I hug her back then we stop and we fix out make up. Well I do, I don’t wear that much… ever but apparently Anne wears even less.

We hip hug like old girlfriends and head outside and we even get a few looks as what once was us not getting along seems to have switched around. I talk to a few more people and Anne seems to be surprising people by talking to some of them too in a whole lot less angry way. It all ends up getting done by nine twenty with a lot of them taking off to meet deadlines and I make sure all the leftovers from the stuff that was set out gets sent with these people in take out bags and lots of out flyer styled take out menu’s

***
I should be crashed, I’m sore and I’m beat and I just want to crawl into bed with Taylor and have the world just go away. But I’m also way too much of a masochist to not see what’s going on online and what they’re going to say about me and everything that’s gone with me and Hunter and Troy on the news.

I’m surprised at the lack of news on the subject. I mean I’m on there and the whole thing gets cover on the local channels for like a ten minute or so bit but they focus on the interviews and the comments about what happened, the You Tube stuff and there’s some comparing my chasing the car down to me playing football. There’s a side by side picture of me too and that was kind of wow because. One I look nothing like my old self and that me as James had such a resemblance to my Dad it’s kind of cool.

I snuggle into Taylor on the couch as they mention the fact that I’m married and to Taylor and there’s even some wedding photos of us.

So on the TV there’s not that much but on the computer there’s lot’s of comments and stuff on the various stories done and the blog-casts and online replies to the TV stories in their chatrooms and there’s a lot of activity and my Facebook page goes nuts and so does my PM boxes on some of the sites that I’m a member of.

I’m still answering PM’s and chatting and fighting in the online flames going on when the morning news comes on talking about Troy’s assault in the city jail and him being taken to a hospital in Calgary for his own protection…that’s what his lawyer said into the camera’s I reached over to the couch and shook Taylor away so he could watch the TV. He kisses me and gets up and heads to get cleaned up.

“Tay? Was that…?”

“I don’t want to know Jen, and neither do you.”

He’s right and part of me does and part of me doesn’t and god forgive me but I just can’t bring myself to care that Troy got hurt like that. I know it makes me seem like a bad person. I feel worse about not feeling that upset about him reaping what he had sown.

I close things down saying my goodbyes and go and climb into the shower with Taylor. I’m really beat but we’ve got stuff to do and them some plus I kind of want to see what’s in the newspapers and stuff. But it’s going to be a really long day.

***
There was more in the papers than what was on the news there’s a lot more of myself quoted in the articles and it’s a little odd seeing so many people here with their noses in their newspapers.

It’s strange and yet the tips are great but it’s a busy, morning with a lot of traffic in from people who are new to the place. I feel a bit like there are a lot of people here to catch a look at me and see me up close and personal. I’m really tempted to get something thin on and go braless but I’m too tired for any of that stuff.

One thing that’s filling up fast is these three big blue water jugs with a picture of Me covering Hunter and their on jugs with End violence against women on them and various shelters and like projects. By ten their a third full and I see bills in there too with a lot of big change, there must be a couple of hundred in each one.

As sore as I am the charity bit is a nice silver lining to all of it and I take some of my small change in tips and put money in the other jars that aren’t getting attention. Nin and Holly, Dallas and Kendal are doing the same. Kendal’s shaking her head.

“What?”

“It’s this, doing something like this and living as myself and I’m waiting tables and I’m making more here than I was down home in my old life. I must have made forty bucks so far just in tips today.”

“Yeah, I get that. I’m still not used to the money either but I’ve seen the books and you know how bust we are.”

“Yeah, it’s just weird but in the best way.”

“I know.”

I just get done busing my tables and get ready to start the prep for lunch when Billy and Davey come walking in through the doors looking tired and like they’ve been through the ringer.

I know what they did.

I don’t care because I’m around the counter as fast as I could get and I’m hugging both of them like the big brothers that they are to me.

Because like everyone knows, real family is what you make of it.

And Family is everything.