28
This is not what I expected. No one warned me.
I was told about the fame and the fortune, but never about the cost and the loss of self and privacy.
I can not help but wake up in the morning knowing full well that there is a world of people ready to guide and help me.
“But I was not prepared for that either.”
But I was not prepared for that either.
You live, you grow up, you imagine life, but for the vast majority of us, some are different.
I acknowledge that, but for most of us, that is a solitary life.
You, yourself, alone in your head. You do what you do for your reasons, what makes you feel good about yourself.
What makes you happy? What promises more of the same?
You make deals with the world and yourself.
“If I go to school and study this, I will make more money. If I make more money, I get to buy a car I may want.”
That is a deal with the self. Or for a younger kid, “Mom and Dad will punish me if I skip school, so as much as I want to go fishing, I am going to go to school.”
That is a deal with yourself. You agreed to do something that you did not want to do and bypass something you wanted to avoid something you did not want.
Everything we do in our lives is a deal just like that.
The key is, for the first part of your life, for virtually all of us, you are dealing with the singular, with the I, for the me.
However, there comes a time when we fall in love, and we choose to expand that from the singular to the circle that includes the family.
Or at least that is what we are supposed to do.
Back at that point in a bit. Let’s take my father.
He went from the singular, George, to the couple, Elise and George, to the family, Elise, Angel, Claire, and Shannon.
That was the progression of his circle. And he made his decisions based on what, at the time, he felt was best for that family.
And studying law, a great career, taking a position with a big firm, a good decision, and working for full partnership while developing an aspect of law that his firm had not serviced, contract law, took a tremendous amount of his time and energy.
But it rewarded him with the knowledge that by doing so, he was taking care of his family the way he wanted them taken care of.
This is not his fantasy; this is his reality. Dad sacrificed himself for us. His wife, my mother, got to live her dream of raising dogs and horses because Dad did what he did to make that happen.
Now, some men and women do not take that view, and they never accept that they have to care for the larger circle. They stay with the singular.
And well, you can see the results in the world around us.
Now me. I was raised in a privileged world, and only after I met and fell in love with Carmine did I realize what that really means. Carmine was not raised in a world I can really relate to.
But I want her to have going forward what I had in my early life.
And then there are our kids. We both want them.
Once Carmine finishes her schooling, then she wants to settle as my parents did and give the kids the life that I had, absolutely not the life that she had.
Carmine loves the rural lifestyle we live in my parents’ home, and we are extremely happy here.
We do not need our own place, as there are zero issues in our being here.
But what about me? What about my circle of responsibility?
What I have found is that I am not responsible for just myself and Carmine and for our future children, but for all those who have established dependencies on me.
I am responsible for Kelley and Sarah. They are far, far more than just employees.
I am responsible for Lowri, who keeps me sane when I am working.
And for the studio, for the Rho house, for the athletes who put aside traditional beliefs and came to my aid when I transitioned at Mercer.
Who stood behind me when the religious wrong attacked?
I am responsible for everyone who uses my image and needs more time with me before the camera.
I have accepted responsibility for all of this.
And I never saw it coming. I never saw this all changing.
Last night I was told that Dad put a bid in on a new jet, new to me anyway, a twelve-passenger that is at the weight limit of Grove City Airport.
He also signed a contract for a hangar with housing to be built on the airport.
The housing is an apartment in the hangar for the crew who flies for me. There are three normally.
I was not brought up to be taught how to handle this, nor do I have a clue what I am supposed to do.
I just show up and do the best that I can.
Still, all of this impacts my choices moving forward.
The decision to allow the fashion world at the wedding means that I will be seen as a supermodel before the fall shows, which means that Ellen will use that to pressure a far higher rate, meaning that Ellen is even happier with her decision a year ago to force me into hair and makeup and to,
in essence, feminize me.
But what about me? Am I at a place where I can not leave if I want? Have I made commitments to a future that is not the future that will be best for me and those in my circle of concern?
Should I be studying medical or electronic engineering, as was suggested to me by someone, because the world needs engineers to design the interface between the human body and the computer? Is that what I should be doing?
Or do I acknowledge publicly who and what I am and become an icon around the world for kids who are either intersexed or transgender and show them an example of someone who did make it?
A year ago, I had no clue that I was intersex. Or that I was transgender, and I have several diagnoses, so get over that. I just choose not to write about that as it is too personal for me. Too invasive.
I am Shannon, a fucking mess worth a ton of money and no clue where I am going.
There is one word in those last few sentences that was not there twelve months ago: “Her,” the self-acknowledgment that I know that inside, I am female. And now, I don’t know if I was ever actually male.
That thought plagues my mind constantly. Was I always wrong? Was I that blind to who I was and am supposed to be?
Or did this last year somehow change me on a deep level in a manner I can not clearly see?
I got home occasionally that summer. Mostly life was on a plane with Lowri.
Again, thank God for Lowri. I often wondered why someone would need a PA or personal assistant, but not anymore.
I am so bloody dependent on her. Because of her, I can concentrate on what I need to, like the color of my nails and whether I am going to have to have that redone for the next shoot.
It is supposed to be on-location and in an outdoor setting, so...
But seriously, Lowri handles that. Me? I keep my pretty little head empty of all administrative tasks, and women, why the hell have I done with my life?
I mean, yeah, that is very easy to see on the one level, but on that deeper, more primitive level?
And it is not just “who am I?” But also, “Who could I become?”
And that is the hard one.
I began to see my life before intersex and after intersex. Or BI or AI, and I know the AI is a bit confusing, but it works for me.
BI, before I was told and shown that I am intersex and the complications laid out for me, I was cool with everything.
I understood that what I was doing was free choice based on the economic reality of the fact that there was absolutely no way in hell anyone was ever going to pay boy Shannon this much money, and that in the brutal end, I had the option of just saying no.
Sounds, well, quaint and archaic now, does it not?
Just say no. Like drugs or sex or anything else that is fun and good but that some grody two-shoes wants you to say no to.
You know, “Join our moral movement and say no to homosexuality. Even if you are miserable because you did what we wanted, we will be happy and so should you.”
And that was what cross-living felt like at first. I was sticking it to the people like my mother’s extended family, who do not believe in personal freedom, but only in people making them happy and making themselves miserable, which really makes the right happy.
But now, I am having to work into my inner discussion the fact that I was not LGBTQIA.
In truth, I was always the I, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.
The problem with the “I” part is that it carries a life sentence of having physical disabilities and issues to some degree or another.
Mine was so mild that at birth, there was no indication.
And my childhood was filled with the normal medical exams.
My parents took damn good care of us. And my dad went back and reviewed all of the notes.
Not one single time did any medical doctor infer or even wonder if I was intersexed.
I just squeaked in under the detectable limit. Until the damage had started and it was too late for easy solutions, if there ever were any.
And now, I am not Shannon, male, cisgender, and heterosexual. Instead, I am Shannon, intersexed but XY, with conditions that make it unclear if the intersex condition is controlling gender and sexuality or not.
And that means I do not know if I should be blaming the intersex condition for my behavior.
What behavior? Well, the decision to cross-live and earn a fortune as a female runway model and potential supermodel. But always knowing that inside, I am really a male, allowing this all to happen.
Am I?
Am I really a male inside?
Is my gender actually male?
Would an intersexed individual who is not transgender also allow themselves to be seen and known as a woman professionally?
Historically, especially in entertainment, there have always been men in female clothing.
And this apparently dates back to at least Greek theater and those that were carried into Roman theater and into Shakespearean times.
No women were allowed to perform in public, like ever.
It was not allowed. And even into the early 1800s, female authors were assigned male names so that they could sell their work.
There is a contested history of female dressing as men for military campaigns.
Joan of Arc comes to mind, and she was burned at the stake as a witch for that stunt.
And in Vaudeville, it was extremely common for men and women to cross-dress.
Early cinema was filled with cross-dressing, usually in comedy, but not always.
And early television. How many male comedians appeared in skits as men, and Carol Burnett did more than one male-dressed skit?
It was common, OK. You saw professional cross-dressing everywhere you took the time to look.
And then came modeling and the preference for the male skeleton, meaning narrow hips, primarily, but not always, in fashion.
And in Europe, some estimate that twenty to thirty percent of female-appearing models are trans women or just men who cross that line, cross that threshold.
That is where I thought I belonged. That was what I felt I was doing. I was making a deliberate choice to present as female, and I got this bloody fucking kick out of it. It was fun. Screw with everyone’s head and see how much money I make.
And then, things started to change well before the intersex designation.
Talking with people like Jack, who wanted me to join the LGBT campus community.
And then the sorority and the cheerleaders asked me to join them, not as a male, no, but as a female, someone whom they saw as another female, even if that person did not realize it at the time.
And my mother? That night, she pinned me into her sorority with so much pride that finally, one of her daughters had joined her. And the pride I felt in reverse?
Who was the cisgender Shannon that night? And the night that Carmine and I went to the spring final, and I wore the gown from the UAE? You really think that I was cisgender that night?
Really?
That was a cisgender Shannon?
And the night in the jail in Florida, I was convinced I was going to be sent to the male jail and raped before morning. And I am still, I have said this before, there are things I choose not to share that are too private. I am still seeing mental health people regularly working out that nightmare.
OK, I am going to say one thing about that night. Until today, I am not sure if I would have been as upset with being raped as a woman vaginally as I was at being raped as a man anally.
I don’t know. I can not get that straight in my mind. It haunts me at four a.m. and wakes Carmine up when I cry. Lowri has even packed baby monitors for us when she has to sleep in a separate room from me because she knows how bad I get when those nightmares hit.
Is that cisgender? Or is it a fear of being cisgender? Am I more afraid of the rape? Or the discovery that I am plumbed as a male?
If you know the answer to this question, can you call 1-800-555-1212 and let me know?
For the record, 555-1212 is the traditional number the phone system used for directory assistance. You have to pay for the service now. But it is a safe number to give out in literature.
The bottom line is, I do not know any more who or what I am, and I do not know who or what is making these decisions.
And yes, I am terrified, not scared. I can deal with fear, but terrified. Because for most of the decisions I am facing right now, they are a one-way street. Hormones are saving my life, but they will also feminize me in ways no one can predict.
And what about additional surgery? Do I want it? Or do I need it?
There is a massive difference between want and need.
And I am sitting on a threshold, trying to determine what I want and what I need.
And I know damn well that I can not ask for help.
I can not seek opinions, because to allow anyone into this specific mental room takes away my decision.
And this has to, absolutely has to be my decision, my defining want and need.