information on Renée Richards eluded me. I had no idea what words to use in my search other than her name. Shame dogged my every step, and with it a misguided worry that Melvil Dewey—the man my peers and I had learned created the system—would be disturbed that I was using his book classification system to find writings on such a sordid topic. My familiar sense of myself as unlovable and downright wrong hovered nearby, accompanying me whenever I allowed myself to think too much about pursuing a sex change.
The librarian, an older woman I’d always found to be helpful in the past, approached me in the stacks.
“Can I help you find something, dear?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” I answered, thinking, Would you call me dear if you knew about me?
“Is it about sports?” she persisted gently, as we stood in front of a shelf of sports books.
“Yes! Hockey!” I exclaimed. “I’m looking for a book about Bobby Orr.”
“Hmm. Let’s see.” She picked through several books before pulling out Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins. “Here’s one.” She handed it to me. I pretended to study it carefully, although I’d read it before.
“Perfect. Thank you.” I followed her back to the circulation desk.
“I think there’s a newer one about him out, but we don’t have it. Check the bookmobile, though. It comes tomorrow.”
I slept fitfully that night, reliving my failure over and over in my mind. I knew I should have asked her if she had anything on sex changes, but felt certain she’d know it was because I wanted one. I formed a plan and slept for a couple of hours.
The bell rang and I ran out to the bookmobile, which came to our school once a month with its ever-changing variety of books. The converted yellow school bus repurposed as a library on wheels was jammed full, with little space for browsing. I summoned my courage and approached the librarian, a younger man of about thirty. I blurted out my prepared statement.
“Um, I’m doing a project in school about discrimination in sports and I saw this story about a man who changed into a woman and how they let him—her, I guess—play in a tennis tournament. I’m wondering if her life story is here?” I allowed my eyes to meet his. “Her name is Renée Richards.”
“That’s a toughie,” he answered, walking down the aisle, looking up and down. He stopped and thumbed through a section of books. “These are the sports biographies, and I don’t see anything here on a Renée Richards, but …” he walked to another section and pulled out a hardcover book. “This might give you some good information,” he said, passing it to me. I read the title: Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. I frowned, looking at the cover, which featured a photo of a woman’s face, framed by the remnants of a torn piece of paper. It felt as though he were passing me a message in code. I thought he might tap the side of his nose like I’d seen in a spy movie once. He didn’t.
“Okay, I’ll take this one.”
Huddled underneath the covers in bed that night, flashlight in hand, I read the story of Christine Jorgensen, a Danish American former US Army serviceman and one of the first people to undergo gender reassignment surgery, in the early 1950s. I don’t know what shocked me more: that such liberation was possible or that it had happened over twenty years before I read about it.
I closed the book. I lay there, a Catholic kid in mid-1970s Calgary, tears streaming down my face. I can never do it. This will never happen for me. I berated myself silently for opening this can of worms, for picking this scab, for allowing myself to hope—even for the briefest of moments—that my life could be set right. It felt like I’d opened a gift meant for someone else. I couldn’t figure out which hurt more: enduring the jolts of disappointment after glimpses of happiness or burying my dream of living the life I wanted.
MADAME DUBOIS COUNTED out rectangular name plates made of card stock and handed them out to the rows of students in my French class. I sometimes imagined Madame Dubois being the same person as my maternal grandmother, Marie Antoinette Royal, or “Toni,” as she was known to those closest to her, who had died of cancer when I was six. I vaguely remembered her kindness toward me, her teaching me French words. Still, I didn’t pick up much French before she passed away. Most of us in this class were beginners, but we had learned the basics, such as colors and numbers, quickly. Soon, the paper cards made their way down the rows, and I took mine.
“Alors, students,” she began, “we will now make ourselves name plates to announce our French names.” Murmurs of excitement and uncertainty filled the room.
“Ah, bon,” she smiled. “It is exciting, non? You will address each other in this class using only the first name you choose for yourself today. This is your French name. Votre prénom Français.” She walked to the overhead projector and turned it on to reveal a slide of French names—one list of boys’ and another of girls’. Immediately, the name “Sebastian” drew my attention. Just as quickly, I realized I couldn’t choose it. Resignedly, I focused on the girls’ list, hoping for a neutral name like Kelly or Lindsay, but there were none to be found. My friend Lynn leaned over and whispered in my ear.
“Hey, you can use ‘Lorraine.’ You’re lucky.” I shook my head, indicating I disagreed. “How come?” she frowned.
“I’m gonna go for something different,” I said casually. Internally, I recoiled the way I always did at the mere sound of my first name, which I’d informally shortened to Lori years before. My parents had often told the story of how they’d been certain throughout Mom’s pregnancy that I would be a boy and had already chosen Peter for my name. When I was born, they’d briefly considered Joanne—Dad’s name was Joseph and Mom’s was Suzanne—or Josephine, after Dad’s twin sister. But, in one of those name-your-baby parenting fails, they inexplicably settled on Lorraine, despite neither of them knowing anyone named Lorraine.
I wrote “Renée” on a scrap of paper and passed it to Lynn. She raised her eyebrows and nodded approval. She wrote on the paper and passed it back to me. I opened it to read “Brigitte.” I gave her a thumbs-up.
Our family friends, the Smiths, had a daughter named Renée far younger than me. A shy, quiet blonde, she struck me as a girl I should model myself after—except for the blonde part, since my hair was sandy-colored. My plan also didn’t work in another key way: Renée Smith wasn’t into sports.
I made an executive decision that my Renée would be a sporty girl. In the ’70s of my youth, it was clear to me there were very rigid definitions of girl and boy; female and male, but I didn’t fit into either of them. I observed others working hard to fit into them, and I saw a few examples of boys in my class who were brutally treated because they were “soft” or “weak” in comparison to the rough and tumble “normal” boys. There was no space to be a sporty girl or a sensitive boy in those days. Gender roles were etched so deeply into my peers and me from birth that I still carry many of those attitudes with me today and have to work to confront them.
While I knew that hobbies and activities didn’t make a person a boy or a girl, as a boy going through life as a girl I felt I had to pick my spots. Making my Renée sporty was a political move, my stab at a world I thought should exist for me to test out, even if ultimately it might not end up a fit for me. Negative attention made me intensely uncomfortable and aware of my thin skin, and I feared that if I acted like myself, I’d be discovered as the imposter I was. On the other hand, I had a sense that I needed to act bravely so I could feel less miserable in those days of severe gender rigidity, and sports were my salvation. Such was the balancing act of my young life.
“Renée” would be my alter ego; I would become Renée. She would represent the girl I wished I could be, the girl comfortable in her gender—comfortable as a tomboy or as androgynous—who would make all the female puzzle pieces fit and take away my longing. I wrote “Renée” on the card and added a small drawing of a horse, the way I’d seen other girls in class do. As Renée, I would fake it until I made it.
THE DESMONDS