Issue 1

So, you’ve made the decision to land here and read what I have to say.

First of all, thanks!

I’m sure you have some questions about what to expect from this, though, and possibly some questions about me, your humble hostess. So let’s do a quick get-to-know-me before we go on:

• My name is Brie, and I’m a transgender woman (hence the title of this newsletter/blog/thing.)
• I’m a widowed mother of three kids, a professional writer and a long-term citizen of the Internet.
• I will not be sharing everything in my life here, but I will sometimes be giving a deeper peek behind the curtain than on other platforms, as well as trying to be entertaining, thought-provoking, wickedly smart and funny and other things that tend to appear on movie posters.

The Big Story

What you’re about to read started life as the first chapter of a memoir. It may still become so eventually. Even if it doesn’t, it’s still a story that I want to tell, that I need to tell, because someone else might read it and recognize their own experience in it.

It’s a Saturday night, sometime in 1999 or 2000. The specific date doesn’t really matter, the experience is largely the same no matter which weekend it is.

The scene is my bedroom, a moderately clean square box harshly lit from above by a single fixture which has been termed, in modern parlance, a “boob light.” The walls are white and royal blue, reflecting a lifelong fixation with University of Kentucky sports. In the corner, a small television blares the sounds of syndicated pro wrestling, a common soundtrack to the life of teenage me.

It’s past 11 p.m. Through the wall I hear the sound of my father’s snoring from the living room couch that has become his bed as what’s left of my parents’ marriage continues to deteriorate. Great, I think, he’s asleep.

I am sitting in a gaming chair, staring at but not fully processing the images on the screen. As a couple of low-card wrestlers Irish whip and suplex their way through a match the audience in the arena is equally disinterested in, I lift myself up from the chair.

I am a teenager, with the gawky awkwardness that is a hallmark of the age. I raise myself to my full six feet of height, a size which thus far has only proved useful in old ladies asking me to reach the top shelf at the grocery store but otherwise renders it difficult if not impossible to be completely invisible, which I would prefer.

Reaching down, I grab the hem of the oversized t-shirt I’m wearing and pull it up, tying a knot to cinch the shirt tight in a crop top, my midriff exposed. I reach into a dresser drawer, pulling out several pairs of socks, which I neatly roll and fold and stuff under my shirt, creating the illusion of breasts. I reach down and begin neatly rolling over the waistband of my basketball shorts, just like I’ve seen girls do in gym class, raising my shorts to expose the pasty white flesh of my thighs, peppered with thick black hairs.

I step over to my bedroom door, placing my right hand against it as I smoothly, carefully turn the knob counter-clockwise with my left. Gotta be quiet, I think. I swiftly swing the door open enough to lean my head out into the hallway. Dad’s snoring, while thunderously loud, is even and regular. He’s asleep for sure, and not likely to be awakened unless I drop a sledgehammer or slam a door.

A single lightbulb over the cooktop throws an orange-yellow light over most of the kitchen. On the opposite end of the house, a lack of light from under the door means my mother is in bed asleep as well. I swing my head right and peer down. Darkness as well. I’m alone in being awake.

I finish opening the door, careful to gently press it against the wall to avoid letting it make a noise that might betray me. With what approximates gracefulness I step across the hallway, careful to avoid stepping directly in the middle, where the seam that joins the two halves of the “manufactured home” has a distressing tendency to pop and groan at inopportune times. My foot reaches the threshold of the bathroom door, and I finish stepping across, my hand gripping the door frame for support as I hurdle the hallway.

The small bathroom is lit only in a theoretical sense by a nightlight, so I flip the light switch as I carefully shut the door. Finally, alone and confronted by a mirror, I survey the ersatz feminine figure in front of me. The breasts, such as they are, could best be described as lumpy, misshapen and inappropriately sized for my broadening frame. A quick twist reveals that rather than a shapely ass, my shorts contain only the same flat and unremarkable buttocks as always. My face is oily and pimpled, with what is unfortunately a brow that continues to thicken and protrude as I grow older, and rather than flowing locks, my dark brown hair is closely cropped. I do not resemble a woman so much as a misshapen curiosity, an image which in many ways matches my general mood and opinion of the life I live.

Despite that, there’s a fleeting moment of what feels like… happiness? Attractiveness? A furtive, shadowy moment of liking the broad strokes of what I see, while still finding it uncomfortable in ways I can’t fully articulate. I try not to dwell on it too much before a wave of disgust at myself for the whole entire thing takes over, my inner voice scolding me, the weakening but still firm bonds of conservative evangelical theology making me question why I’m doing this while ascribing it to the weakness of sin, of being so fueled by hormonal lust that I’m pretending to make myself a woman to satisfy some base sexual desire.

The truth, of course, is none of that, but teenage me doesn’t know it. Teenage me, in fact, knows that what’s happening is of course that I’m a horny teenage boy so desperate to touch a breast that he’s pretending to have his own. Teenage me is an idiot, as all teenagers are in ways large and small, about themselves and about the world. I don’t have the words to describe my thoughts and feelings yet, partially because I haven’t found them and partially because at this point, they don’t really exist. At least, not in a rural farming community where “diversity” means that there are evangelicals AND Catholics.

I flip the light off and cross the hall back to my bedroom. Two wrestlers are exchanging blows on the TV as I remove the socks from my shirt, return my shorts to their normal length and untie my shirt. I flip off the light and turn off the TV as I climb into bed. In a few hours I’ll be awakened to put on a nice button-down shirt and jeans for church. As I drift off to sleep, I contemplate what I was feeling for a minute, thinking. It would be interesting if I was a girl, I think. I would put on a really cute outfit and look pretty. The hormonal teenage brain chimes in. “And experience what it’s like to have sex as a girl, don’t forget that. I shake my head at myself. Yes, sure, that too. But it’s not possible.

Musical Interlude

To properly set the mood for the first edition, I can think of no better way to start than with a song that has some of the deepest personal meaning for me.

I first discovered LCD Soundsystem what feels like a half a lifetime ago, when “North American Scum” heralded the start of another episode of “Ron And Fez” on SiriusXM. My love only grew from there, as I devoured the entirety of “Sound Of Silver,” still one of my favorite albums of all time.

Today’s selection, though, comes from the follow-up to that album, 2010’s “This Is Happening.”

“Home” is, at its core, a song that is a nod to the Talking Heads classic “This Must Be The Place,” another song and band that I love, but lyrically it’s much deeper than I wager even James Murphy realizes.

There was a time in my life where it was a literal lifeline for me, a way to express emotions and sentiments I couldn’t put into words as a marriage and a life were flying apart at the seams, but in the aftermath of Janie’s death and my own transition journey, I’ve found new meaning in the words.

When James sings “if you’re afraid of what you need / if you’re afraid of what you need / look around you, you’re surrounded / it won’t get any better,” I used to hear a command, an imperative to accept life as it was and make peace with Janie, make peace with the course of things and just accept them.

Now, though, it’s a cry of liberation, of encouragement, to step out of the closet and be myself. There’s a reading of the whole song that frames it as the kind of conversation I had in my own head as I debated accepting who I was as a trans woman.

The opening verse begins: “Just do it right / and make it perfect and real / because it’s everything, though everything / was never the deal,” and girl if that isn’t a mood for someone trying to take their first steps into womanhood at 40.

The third verse, though, is what really drives it home for me: “Forget your past / this is your last chance now / And we can break the rules / like nothing will last / you might forget / forget the sound of a voice / still you should not forget, yeah, don’t forget / all the things that we laughed about.” Just a dagger to the heart, because once you know that you’re trans… every day you’re not actively transitioning feels like you’re missing your last chance to be yourself.

I got to see LCD a little while ago thanks in no small part to the generosity of some of you reading this very newsletter, and I would be lying if I said that dancing and singing along to “Home” with a couple thousand of my friends wasn’t cathartic for me. It felt like… freedom.

So play it loud.

Good Eats

Feeding three picky kids is hard. I don’t just mean “picky” in the “doesn’t like to eat vegetables” sense, either. These kids won’t eat rice. They won’t eat beans. One won’t eat hamburgers. That makes finding a dinner menu that gets everyone a full belly is sometimes harder than differential calculus.

Finding ways to get around that can be a fun challenge, though. That’s what led to the invention of Chicken Parmesan Casserole. Here’s how to do it yourself:

Chicken Parmesan Casserole

• 1 bag chicken fries (you can also sub popcorn chicken or even chicken nuggets)
• 1 box mini penne or other small pasta
• 1 jar spaghetti sauce (the kind with extra veggies is a great way to get some bonus nutrition)
• 8 oz. shredded mozzarella (bagged is fine, but shredding your own works too)

1. Par-cook pasta in boiling water for 1-2 minutes less than package directions. It’ll finish cooking in the oven, so no need to get it done here.
2. Mix with sauce until coated.
3. Grease the bottom of a 9x13 casserole dish, then add a layer of the pasta-sauce mixture. Cover with half the cheese.
4. Add a layer of frozen chicken fries, about half the bag.
5. Add a second layer of pasta.
6. Add a second layer of chicken, then top with the remaining cheese.
7. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until cooked through and cheese has melted and browned.
8. Let stand 3-5 minutes to solidify, then portion and serve.

In addition to being a great and fairly low-impact dinner, this is a fantastic meal to make if you’re taking a dish to someone, because it’s filling and keeps well in the fridge.

End Transmission

That’s all for the first issue. What do you want to read from me going forward? More horrifyingly intimate personal reflections? Current events commentary? Comedy third option? Let me know what interests you.