Misunderstanding of Assignment

Christmas, 1968. Country Club Lane, Atlanta.

You could sense the static of change. The complexion of our southwest Atlanta neighborhood was shifting—a slow-motion tectonic movement that sent my parents retreating into the familiar bunkers of old cultural habits. They were bracing for an invasion of “different.” And right in the middle of the living room stood the enemy within: a precocious, effete five-year-old.

At the top, middle, and bottom of my Santa list was Ideal’s Crissy Doll. She was a mod marvel in an orange mini-dress, but her true allure was mechanical: a knob in the small of her back wound her auburn hair into an internal spindle; a button on her stomach released it to grow long again. The adults attempted the usual redirections toward Tonka trucks and GI Joes, but on Christmas morning, my mother’s sheer will won out. There Crissy was under the tree. I coiffed that doll until the internal gears groaned.

Childhood cruelty arrived quickly. Wearing a sports coat and clip-on bow tie to elementary school made me prime playground quarry, though I took refuge beside my teacher, discussing the other children’s behavior as if I were a visiting diplomat observing local wildlife. But the living room was less forgiving. The afternoon I stumbled into coffee hour wearing my mother’s foundation garments and black patent pumps yielded a room full of brittle, horrified adult laughter. My mother quietly began locking her closet door.

When my father died, the weight of the outside world set in, and I began a structural renovation. “I’m not Kelly,” I announced. “Kelly is a girl’s name. Dad was John. He’s gone, so now I’m John.”

I spent decades building the ideal armor: masculine, muscular, moving through a gay community that had developed its own rigid social castes. On Saturday nights, men in full leather finery would sneer at the drag stage: “Why ruin a good buzz with this sissy theater?”

In 2002, when AID Atlanta needed a fresh fundraiser, I launched the Atlanta Cotillion: a traditional Southern ball where twelve prominent men who had never touched a pair of heels stepped into debutante gowns. The confusion was immediate. Lesbians asked if they were allowed to wear suits; masculine men insisted on tuxedos to “balance” the women. Stepping out as the Grand Dame in full face was a quiet reconciliation with the boy in the patent pumps, but it also raised over a million dollars for care.

Now, around dinner tables, my peers bemoan the “litany of letters” and squint at shifting pronouns as if looking at a foreign map they refuse to read. They make a singular exception for our longtime trans friend Molly, keeping her safely “grandfathered” into their affection while shutting the gate behind her. They willfully forget they once stood on the very same border of identity.

We have simply traded our parents’ fear of a changing neighborhood for the fear of a changing lexicon. We retreated so deeply into hard-won respectability that we became the very gatekeepers we fled—still terrified of the assignment. 

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 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 the assignment.

What It's Like For a Girl - Madonna

lyrics by Madonna and Guy Sigsworth

Atlanta Cotillion