Floodlit

I honestly never planned to become famous.

But I should start at the beginning.

It started when I met Mac, which was short for Macerio Yadell Gica. Yeah, him. His family came to Canada from the Philippines a couple of generations back, and even then he was an amazing performer.

We were both taking music classes at my local college, and for some reason, we really clicked when it came to musical collaboration. Even our teacher compared us to Lennon and McCartney, except I hated performing our pieces in front of an audience.

Which may have been because I was still in the closet trying to be a guy instead of the woman I've known myself to be most of my life.

Our teacher helped us make some submissions to record companies, and so even before we graduated covers of our songs were being recorded by big name artists and we were getting royalties, enough for me to finally take the plunge and start a transition.

I had been mostly holding back by that point because I wanted to keep my writing partnership with Mac, and was worried how he’d react.

As things worked out, I needn’t have worried, he was fine with it. In fact he told me he kinda suspected, since, in his words, I “hadn’t exactly ever came across as a manly man”.

I wasnt sure if I should feel insulted by that or not.

We quickly started using my female name as co-writer on our pieces, but if the record companies noticed they didnt say anything.

Then one of them offered Mac a record deal as a performer, instead of just a writer.

Beling the lovely man he is, he insisted that I get co-credit on all the songs, even though while he was talking to them I was in a hospital in Montreal recovering from gender confirmation surgery.

So as we started banging out an album’s worth of songs. By chance about halfway through the process we realized we had a concept album on our hands, as when we put the songs in the right order they told the story of a romance from first meeting to breakup and the guy starting to recover from the pain and deciding to start dating again.

Eventually we called it “Healing Nicely”.

To say it blew up is putting it mildly. Canada, the United States, heck all over the world, the album sold like nothing else.

Girls and women swooned over Mac, ( and some guys too.), and critics loved him as well.

The trouble started in part because of the tabloids. First they seemed to want to find dirt on Mac, turn him into another Justin Beiber, but since Mac doesnt drink or really do anything but write and practice, they started digging into his “mystery writing partner” - me.

And since my male name was on our early stuff, my female name is on Mac’s album, and my name change is a matter of record, it didnt take Batman to connect the dots.

Now I’ll give the record company credit. They could have thrown me under the bus non the grounds that the “controversy” could impact Mac, but instead they offered me a PR firm to manage my being outed.

Of course the fact that Mac backed me helped too.

Together we came up with a plan. The Canadian Music Awards, also called the Junos, were coming up and Mac and I had a couple of nominations. Normally I wouldnt have gone,as I felt that Mac deserves the lion’s share of the praise, since he not only co-writes out songs but sings them too.

But this time, everybody wanted me to go, and show the world I wasn’t a freak or whatever other nasty term the tabloids were using for me.

Now, believe it or not, up until that point I hadnt spent a lot of money on clothes.Having spent most of my life trying to be a boy I didnt exactly have a lot of confidence in my fashion skills, or even my ability to pass for that matter, so I had wanted to draw as little attention as I could and dressed appropriately.

So it was a completely new experience to be taken to a high end fashion designer, and have a beautiful gown made just for me.

The plan was that during Mac’s performance of one of the songs from the album I’d come out, and we’d sing a little together.

I was pretty nervous, but Mac rehearsed with me until I felt that at least I wouldn’t totally suck.

So as everybody no doubt saw when the clip ran on youtube, in the middle of singing one of our songs, I came out on stage.

As a joke between us, he started playing the music from the old pet shop boys song “opportunities”.

See, when we first realized how well we meshed, even though I had wanted to stay in the shadows and he wanted the limelight, he teased me by singing the song to me.

And so I sang it back to him that night.

“I’ve had enough of scheming and messing around with jerks,
My car is parked outside I’m afraid it doesn’t work,
I’m looking for a partner someone who gets things fixed
Ask yourself this question, do you want to be rich?”

And he replied by changing the chorus and sang,

“You write the words, I write the hooks
We’ve made lots of money.
I’ve been on stage, time you did the same
Share the spotlight my hunny”

We brought the house down.

Then, as a topper, we won for best song, and as part of his acceptance speech Mac introduced me to the world, and saying anybody who couldn't see I was a girl needed their eyes checked.

So after the excitement died down, the record company wanted us to start working on a follow up, and they had one request - that songs be duets, and I sing the girl parts both on the album and in live performances.

And that’s what we did.

I was worried that our audiences would be unhappy about the change, not to mention the fact that while there were love songs and breakup songs on the album, it had other stuff too.

To my surprise it sold even better than our first one.

We toured, I sang, and I guess Mac’s fans have adopted me because the response has been just awesome.

Along the way I also started doing interviews talking about being trans, which led me to the little article you’re reading now inside the pages of the music industry’s bible - Rolling Stone.

Guess it just goes to show you never know how life is gonna work out, huh?

End.