Wednesday night, October 1993

“We are who we are. We’re just like anybody else.”
-The Other Ones, “We are who we are.”

She told me a story once, about growing up in the boot heel of Missouri, before he became a transsexual. His uncle was a clock maker and repairman, and there were over one hundred clocks in his shop. He visited often, as his uncle was non-judgmental about how he was different from the rest of his family. Sometimes they would wind as many clocks as they could, the alarms and chimes and ticking one giant, cacophonous, beautiful sound.

His family hated the way he was. His effeminate nature, his original thoughts, and his general behavior frightened them. But his uncle was good to him. When he died, he took one of the clocks as a memento.

He tried not to think about growing up in Missouri. This was difficult, though, as those were his formative years, like it or not. He went back a couple of years before, in 1989, this time as a drag queen. The experience wasn’t pleasant. He had not gone back or spoken with his family since.

She had good pot and needed to talk sometimes. She, I, and a guy who had been a professional photographer in New York had come over to the apartment, taking a break from the Wednesday night ritual of dancing at the Copa. She kept rolling joints and telling me about how great Key West was as opposed to the narrowness of Missouri. The photographer sat and listened, contentedly stoned and intrigued about how different life could be in the mid-west as opposed to the East Coast. The photographer had had a promising career until manic depression made him unreliable, not worth hiring.

I was really uncomfortable with my first impressions of the transsexual. She screamed in my face as well as the face of our mutual acquaintance during a drunken introduction. Later I realized it was just her exuberant way of saying hello. “Ahhhhhhh!” She had shrieked, rolling her head around her shoulders, arms extended upward.

She said sometimes she would wind the clock and think of her uncle. She stroked the long blond hair of the photographer who sat next to her, who still listened intently. It was 3 a.m. when we got back to the bar; and most of the people had already cleared out. The transsexual disappeared when the photographer and I went for a drink. I saw her out the next night and asked her where she’d gone. She said she’d gone to another bar, looking for someone. But she didn’t say who.