11 #2
We had two days after the shoot, two complete days, originally scheduled as emergency days, and we completed the work on schedule. So we, Lowri and I, actually were able to relax and enjoy ourselves. Now the other three are with us?
My dad, Ellen, and Byron? Two days of meetings and contract talks.
Looks like I am coming back in the fall for two weeks.
That contract has yet to be negotiated completely.
Dad said not to worry; they have enough oil to afford my fees.
He did add that they are interested in adding Angel and doing some twin shots.
Irish American identical twins who are not identical twins, extremely exotic and cutting edge for Prestige Brands. Exciting.
Dad also told me that he was glad that he came.
Now he is aware of how these people treat models like myself.
I told Dad, “In this business, you fuck over the talent; you have no talent you want to work with. We, at the level I appear to be in, are at the top of the food chain. And Dad, we talk, at times, like in the model lounges at runways, we talk a hell of a lot. That is our shop space,
the time we are together, and if you fuck one of us, we all will find out, and you do not get another model you want, ever.”
I was at the resort when Cosmo came out. They overnighted a copy from New York for me. A courier delivered it from the UAE Embassy in New York to me. One woman the entire way.
That impressed George O’Conner, and he shared that in his career, he had never seen anything like that for anyone he represented.
Then he turned and said, “Daughter, do not get used to it.”
The daughter part was what was important.
His son was not at the resort; that was extremely clear. My dad sees me as a girl, Shannon, only now.
And honestly again, I was not expecting that, and I really do not know what to do with his truth. Now, I already believed my mother was at that place.
But am I?
Hints around the dinner table are about starting hormones. I do not know if this is serious or just a tease.
And yes, hormonal therapy would feminize my body, but not my skeleton, and refine my skin.
Not that it needs refined, but hormones would keep it like it is for as long as possible, and again, how much will I be making in five to ten years per year?
And what if hormones add three to five years to my career?
After one evening of this, when it got to me a bit, Lowri came up to me when I was sitting at the pool, really sitting in the pool, but who is really paying attention.
“Shannon, I know that they are crossing that line again. I can see that this is not a space that you really are ready to enter.”
Liminal spaces are like that. To transition from one space to the second, you have to enter the place where the transition is possible. And this is not just about gender or sex. This is about the universal function of transitioning from one chosen state to another.
OK, sometimes you do not exactly choose to change spaces. But there still is that liminal space where you have one foot in both worlds. That is a hard place to be. That place where you know you have to decide, but are you confident of that decision? Are you ready for that decision?
I am not ready to place myself into that liminal space about a gender transition yet.
OK, I admit that I am not male, but I also am not female.
You can find a definition that proves I am male and another that proves I am female.
I get that. But when you enter the liminal space, you are accepting that it is time to decide.
And that is what I am rejecting: that now is the time to make that level of decision. That is when I have to make a decision.
Yet that evening, Lowri made one very important statement, “Shannon, saving your sperm now is not a decision; it is common sense and insurance. If you save your sperm, then that pressure is off of you permanently. And you have one less consideration that needs to be carried.”
I never said that Lowri was not smart as hell. And she just proved how good a friend she was. This is obviously a Carmine decision. To be honest? I do not know if she wants children, given her life. I would be happy with kids; I always assumed that I would have a family. But as a dad or a mother?
There are questions that I need to ask in conversations that need to happen, and this has to happen soon.
And I, I am terrified of the answers that I think I am going to find. I do not want to know those answers. But somehow, somehow they are being demanded of me. Paths are chosen not when we want, but when we arrive at that threshold, at the liminal space.
We can act the utter fool or the child if you prefer and avoid those liminal spaces.
Or we can honor the agency that we are given in our lives, and openly and with complete openness to the questions being asked, approach that liminal space, that threshold from one room of our lives to a second.
I am at that place and time.
Do I assume the role of the child?
Or assume the role of the adult?
I am going to be brutally honest: assuming the role of the child, of the fool, would be the easy choice.
The coward’s choice.
And since that moment I first met Ellen, I have not taken the coward’s choice through my life.
But now? But now?
Am I ready to admit truths?
Or, perhaps there is some way to just stay in this liminal space until I am ready?
Until I feel that it is time for my decision, and find the strength to ignore those who are demanding it from myself.