Theories about Bodies and Truth

When I met Lee, he was living as a lesbian.  Now, after finding out that he was born inter-sexed and that no-name, records-lost sexual reassignment surgery happened to him as a baby, he is a man.  He had surgeries.  He takes hormones. 

I believe in bodies.  The way people say they believe in their country, religion, the scientific method, or love – that's how I believe in bodies.  They are the source.  They hold all knowledge.  They contain our past, present, and future. 

I believe in my body – the size three, baby smooth feet, the polio altered spine, the responsiveness of my nipples, the place on one hip that always hurts, the breadth of shoulders, the seldom seen cuteness of my butt, the age spot on my writing hand, the two-curve belly, and the fading strength of my arms.  Sometimes, in clothes, I'm not happy about how I look.  A blouse pulls across the front unattractively, pants never fit right, and this dress looks like a tent.  Naked, I'm fabulous.

Behind braces and crutches, within a wheelchair, my body is often an emptiness to the eye of the beholder.  I have been left on my own to fill the void of outside regard, to inhabit my body as I please.  Set ideas of beauty, of health, of sexy, and of what a woman or a man looks like have less of a hold on me.  I've heard old women talk of this freedom, but I've had it all my life. 

Lee and I have one of those his dog and his girlfriend love me, share rental movies, I think his band is wonderful, clear branches off my roof after a hurricane, wonder what woman's car that was parked all night in my driveway, we like each other a lot relationships.  Why, I wanted to know, wasn't his innate knowledge that he was a man enough?  Why couldn't he be a man with breasts?  I couldn't reconcile being true to yourself with hurting your body with drugs.  And surgeries – I've known the horror of those since childhood.  I believe in the rightness of bodies, and Lee was taking actions that, to me, said he thought his was wrong. 

The most confusing thing was that from the beginning and every moment since, I've known that Lee is right.  I've watched other people, and I've experienced it myself – the excitement and peace of "finding the jewel within" as a friend of mine calls it.  I know it when I see it, and (I say this having been an actual one myself.) Lee is its poster child. 

I'm not confused anymore.  This is the part where I articulate my new theory about bodies and truth and give a linear description of its evolution, but I don't have anything like that to offer.  What I do have are a series of moments...

His girlfriend and I have the knock, open, and yell "it's me" method of entering each other's houses.  After Lee moved in, I often opened the door to him rushing out of the living room because he wasn't fully, I mean fully, covered.  Today, soon after his first surgery, I'm driving by, and Lee waves for me to stop.  He strides down the ramp from his house, shoulders back, no shirt, and the sun gleams black on the curves of his tattoos.  I try to be annoyed about the male privilege of shirtlessness, but that's not really what is going on here.  Lee walks between the stalks of deep purple sages planted to either side of the ramp, and the flowers shake in reflected beauty. 

I drop by to find the refrigerator pulled away from the wall, and tools scattered over the floor.  His girlfriend intersperses not-always-welcome suggestions to Lee about what to do next with telling me about her day at work.  Lee, stretched flat on the linoleum, fiddles with an electrical outlet.  I watch his arms reach and his chest go hard against the bare floor.  A fifty year old scar on the side of my knee aches in response.  "Hey Lee," I ask, "Does that make your scars hurt?"  Lee turns his head, his cheek now pressed against the kitchen floor, and looks at me.  He says, "what scars?"  On my way home, I think about the differences between the loneliness of childhood, scared-every-moment surgeries and an adult making his own choices. 

*

Lee has quit a job that he's hated for years, and we're having a big, blow-out "retirement" party in a friend's back yard.  He passes around all his old work shirts, and many of us do things with them.  I cut out the name tag patch and make an earring – "Lee" in gold, machine embroidered script dangles against my neck.  The bass player in his band wears the shirt as a skirt, and "Lee" stretches over her thigh.  His girlfriend wears the shirt as a shirt.  She leaves it open to show off a sexy bra, and the "Lee" curves and bends over one breast.  Lee jumps in front of her.  He leaps and cavorts and pumps his arms in the air like a happy gorilla.  The old name patch he's wearing like a dog tag bounces on his chest.  It's July and hot.  Sweat shines over his pecs.

I believe in bodies.