Christmas, 1968. Country Club Lane, Atlanta GA.
The air was thick with it—not just the humidity of a Georgia winter, but the static of change. Or, to be more precise: the fear of it. The complexion of our southwest Atlanta neighborhood was shifting, a slow-motion tectonic plate movement that sent my parents retreating into the familiar bunkers of old cultural habits and familial biases. They were bracing for an invasion of those they thought were their enemy - simply because they were "different." And there I was, right in the middle of the living room: a precocious, effete five-year-old. I was the enemy within.
For my second-grade project with Miss Duck, I had composed my Wish List for Santa. It was a short list. A singular list. At the top—and the bottom, and the middle—was “A Crissy Doll.”
Crissy was a mod marvel in a mini-skirt, but her true allure was mechanical. She had a knob in the small of her back. Turn it, and her auburn hair retracted into her torso, wound around an internal spindle. Push a button on her stomach, and the hair grew again. I was fascinated!
I recall the adults attempting the "redirection." The subtle nudges toward the Tonka trucks or the GI Joes. But I was single-minded. I didn't want a soldier; I wanted the girl - or deep inside, did I want to be the girl?
Looking back, I can only imagine the whispered negotiations between my parents. My father had become a ghost in his own house—mostly silent, largely indifferent to my existence. My mother, perhaps sensing the void he was carving into me, drew me closer. She became my protector, my curator. On Christmas morning, her sheer will won out. There, under the tree, was a Crissy Doll. I was overjoyed. I coiffed that doll’s hair, short and long, until the gears groaned. If there was a war of words between my parents or sneers from my older siblings, I didn't hear them. I was fulfilled.
It’s a curious word: sissy. At five, it isn't about sexuality; it’s about affectation. It was a series of signals broadcast to a world that didn't ask for them. And children are, of course, the cruelest of anthropologists. I wore a sports coat and a bow tie to elementary school—my favorite armor—and was greeted daily with sissy and faggot.
But I had been blessed with an ego that rivaled my intellect. I would stand on the playground with Miss Duck, discussing the "silly behavior" of the other children as if I were a visiting dignitary observing the local primates.
The fascination with the feminine persisted. I once offered up an impromptu performance in a girdle, while family was visiting. I stumbled down the hallway and into the living room where my mother was serving coffee—wearing her black patent pumps and one of her foundational garments. There was a gasp, then that terrible, brittle laughter—the kind adults use to mask their horror. I was summarily dismissed. My mother learned to lock her closet before guests arrived; And I learned that in the theater of the living room, some costumes are considered... transgressive.”
By the time my father died, the cruelty of the world had begun to weigh. I began a structural renovation. "I’m not Kelly," I proclaimed. "Kelly is a girl’s name. Dad was John. He’s gone, so now I’m John."
I spent the next few decades transforming myself into what I perceived my world wanted. I became the ideal: masculine, muscular, a "man’s man" in a gay world that had become as complex and judgmental as any European court. I found that even in our community, we, like our parents, had brought bias into adulthood with us. On Saturday nights, I often heard my friends, dressed in their leather finery sneer at the drag performers - "Why do we have to ruin our high with this sissy theater?"
The irony was delicious, if a bit acidic.
In 2002, when AID Atlanta needed a new fundraiser, I proposed the "Atlanta Cotillion." A traditional Southern ball, but with a twist: twelve debutantes, all cisgender men who had never "presented as female," stepping into gowns for charity. I wanted a celebration of the feminine within all of us—regardless of where we sat on the spectrum.
The community was baffled. "Can we come as men if the men are women?" the lesbians asked. Some gay men insisted on wearing tuxedos because "a man, dressed as a distinguished woman is only complete with the complement of a man."
I shook my head. "I’m sorry," I said, over and over in frustration and disappointment. "You’ve misunderstood the assignment."
And I leaned into my own inner female - I stepped out as the Grand Dame. It was my first time 'in face' as an adult, a quiet reconciliation with that little boy in his mother's patent pumps. It was a triumph of identity for sure, but also one of industry; over twenty years, we raised $1.3 million for the cause.
Now, my friends and I are at retirement age. We sit around dinner tables, and the conversation turns to "the kids" and their "new gender spectrum." My friends, the ones who fought for marriage equality, now bemoan the "litany of letters." LGBTQ+ They are befuddled by pronouns, by the "addition" of gender identity to their fight.
We sometimes see Molly (she/her/hers)—beautiful, trans, and "grandfathered" into their affection. She occupies a "cherished category," the singular exception that allows them to maintain their biases against the rest. But eventually, the wine flows and someone gestures toward the horizon with a mix of pity and exhaustion: “Is that a ‘they’ now?”
They squint at the gender spectrum as if it were a foreign map they refuse to read, willfully forgetting that they once stood on that very border of identity—likely clutching a doll.
It is the same bunker our parents built for themselves in the 1960’s. We have simply swapped the fear of a changing neighborhood for the fear of a changing lexicon.
Sean, my No. 6, who is thirty years my junior, often rolls his eyes and leaves the room, weary of the stagnation. And I? I am left wondering how we retreated so far into our hard-won "masculinity" that we became the very gatekeepers we once fled.
I think of the lyrics Madonna whispered at the turn of the century:
“But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading / Cause you think being a girl is degrading...”
I fear we are still struggling with assignment.
What It's Like For a Girl - Madonna
lyrics by Madonna and Guy Sigsworth
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