āI identify as a trans woman, or just plain woman. In everyday life, of course, itās woman, but if people ask, I tell them Iām trans. I donāt hide it exactly, but I donāt wear it on my forehead either. The first time I realized there was something fishy going on was in second grade and we were having a school play and doing Heidi. I wanted the lead part and the teacher said, āNo, thatās only for girls.ā And of course I knew I was a boy, but I didnāt realize that boys couldnāt do things like that. At the age of fourteen, I was left alone in the house for a summer and went up in the attic and found some of my motherās old clothes and discovered I enjoyed dressing in them. After college, I went abroad to Denmark and decided to try denial. You just get busy with other things and then you donāt have to worry about your identity.
I met a woman that summer, Edith, that I eventually married. After we were married for about a year and a half, I realized, āThis is not working, I need to be who I am.ā So I outed myself to her. In those days, of course, the only label we had for it was transvestism. By 1980, when I was forty years old, I knew I wanted to transition, but I didnāt tell Edith. Somehow I got wind, I think through a television show, that if you wanted to transition you are required to get a divorce first. They didnāt want to foster lesbian couples being married legally. So, I wasnāt going to do that. I was too much in love. The two of us were married altogether forty-six years. So I waited, and then in 1993, she found out she had cancer. Of course, then I knew that this was not a time to transition. She died in 2008. I came out publicly as transgender in 2012.
After Edith died, I was alone here in the house. It just got empty, very empty, very fast. And so I knew I needed to do something. I met Stephanie, a transgender woman, at the Emerald City Social Club. She was homeless at the time, so I said, āWhy donāt you move in?ā And then we started taking in other girls, too. Since then, Iāve had over thirty girls go through the house at one time or another, some for shorter periods, others for longer periods. I think itās a worthwhile effort. Iām trying to give people a little bit of safe space and respite from the anxieties of homelessness.
As you grow old, you fear the unknown. You can end up needing care. By inviting people to come stay with me, I have someone to at least look after me on a daily basis and make sure that Iām not falling through the cracks. This whole house has served in some ways as a model because, as far as I know, itās the first trans house. The model is simple: if you can, open your house to others. As I say, we donāt have a homeless problem, we have a hospitality problem. We can still be effective doing what we can even if we regret itās not enough.ā
Amy, 77, Seattle, WA, 2016
