Liz in Watermark: Mission: Transition; an interview with Gina Duncan

     I had never met a transgender person before I met Gina Duncan, at least not to my knowledge. Humans aren't peacocks, announcing their gender so definitively that you always know what's going on under their jeans, Dockers, pencil skirt or what have you. I was interviewing Gina for Watermark, about her 2007 gender transition and the first thing I noticed was that she was far more put together than I was. Granted, I had had a tough week, but we all have tough weeks, but you should never show up in Thornton Park looking like it.
     In  a society so glued to the status quo that it failed to adopt the metric system, changing things isn't always that easy and changing sexes is especially difficult, socially, psychologically and physically. Gina's approach to the extraordinary step she took - a modest-yet-ironclad determination to improve her life - is genuinely inspiring.
     So I hope you'll read and enjoy Mission: Transition / Creating a New Normal  along with Tom Dyer's Publisher's Perspective: Sadness and Strength, a powerfully moving view on how difficult and how crucial it is to cultivate -and to love - who you are. After all, if you were meant to be somebody else you would have been.
     Finally, if you're in Orlando pick up a, actual print copy of Watermark this week, all the better to enjoy the terrific photos by MK Photography Studios. I'm so used to online publishing now that having these wonderful photos, in hand, in person, felt like a treat from a bygone era. It made me nostalgic for the glory days of print - just like squinting at CD liner notes really makes you realize how awesome it was to have album cover art.
       Anyway, check it out and I hope you enjoy it!

Comments

  1. MichaelMay 3, 2011 at 10:25 PM

    I was trying to estimate today's corporate executive salary for someone above 200 others from 48 branches. (My Dad was over 91 Engineers in the 1960s-70s & was paid about $70K by a Fed. Govt. Dept.) My guess for Gina's pay is ~~ $180K - $380K ?? (Since Gina "retired" from the corp., it would have been good to include the amount, but I understand the reasons for excluding it.) A bit further down the same column, Gina mentions others who become "destitute". That particularly grabbed My attention.
    I've always been interested in stories or the dispossessed. One of My favorite American Writers is Nelson Algren, whose novels and stories about the lower-caste people in Chicago, New Orleans, etc., are every bit as compelling [sometimes more so] as Fitzgerald's masterpieces of the gilded lives.
    Like You, a fervid imagination helps to sustain Me. People whose $$ resources don't approach Gina's, or aren't close to even mid-five-figures, could face circumstances even more desperate than the old "Dog Day Afternoon" story. Or, perhaps more likely, they never make the transition at all...
    Anyway, I read the article for 2 reasons:
    - Somewhat rare subject matter for O'do/CentFL &
    - You wrote it.

    Stay safe & watch out for bad drivers ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. MichaelMay 4, 2011 at 12:46 PM

    TYPO: ..."stories OF the dispossessed"...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Day at the Races

Image
       So - has anything especially fast, slow, theatrical, queeny, nostalgic, crowd-pleasing, hot, aerodynamic, silly or record-breaking ever happened in your bed? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it has. So the difference between you and this event is that your spectacle (probably) didn’t happen in front of a mob of drunks on as glorious an April day as you could order out of a goddamn Hallmark calendar.       This was the scene at the    Fairvilla Megastore   Conch Republic Red Ribbon Bed Race  down Duval Street in Key West, a benefit for AIDS Help, which took place this past Saturday. More than 20 businesses participated in this charity goodf allism, racing real beds which must be a certain size, have a mattress, four wheels that touch the ground, four runners pushing and be manned or womaned by one person.             Once you get past the rules the cool thing is outfitting your bed for maximum creativity – there was a coffin bed and a bong bed, and pirate
Read more

Say Ahhhhh: Drive-Thru Pap Smears in the COVID era

Image
        Listening to my friends talk about the COVID-19 test I thought it was going to feel like getting a lobotomy.      “They stick a swab so far up your nose, I felt like it was going into the back of my eye,” one said, but when free drive-through testing was offered in my little Florida beach town I went. I can pinch a penny until Lincoln starts crying and if something is free, I’m going to get one, even if it means being skewered like a corn dog.  The test was mildly irritating. You tilt your head back and they do, indeed, poke a swab up your snoot farther than you’d expect it to go. It felt like I’d been bike riding and got ladybug stuck up my nose, a sensation which lasted about 45 minutes after the actual sticking. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, but I’d anticipated getting my eyeballs yoinked out through my nostrils.  Anything else was emotional found money. What left a more lasting impression than the test was the joy of drive-through medical service. Si
Read more

Buy my book: Crazy Little Thing: How Love and Sex Drive Us Mad

Image
       Carl von Cosel installed a phone in his dead wife's tomb so they could chat - he eventually just took her home.      Burt and Linda Pugach married after he did a prison sentence for sending thugs to 'scare' her and they blinded her with acid.     Love makes us all feel insane. If it hasn't knocked you on your ass you haven't been in it.       I wrote Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad several years ago because I wanted to understand why romantic problems had such a stranglehold on me and how people's greatest happiness, the thing we all want, could lead to them killing each other. It was published by Viva Editions just before the explosion of true crime shows like Wives with Knives and Who the Bleep Did I Marry?      My hope for the book has always been that the interviews with everyone from psychologists to felons would help people understand themselves but also that it would be a good enough read to take them out  of themselves, which is
Read more