The Tale of Ron & Lisa (a t-g story)

THE TALE OF RON & LISA

[Notice: this story contains no sex or graphic content. It's just a story, a real story, of how I became good friends with a transgender man named Ron / Lisa, a long time ago.]

by Kenneth Zevo

Back in the early 1990‘s, when I was still living in St. Cloud MN, I used to spend most of my free time downtown, at a coffee house called The Java Joint. The Java Joint is probably still there, but was eventually taken over by high school students and the college crowd. All the people I used to hang out with; the twenty-somethings, the thirty-somethings, and the assorted free-spirits of all ages common in the 1990s; they have all long since moved on. The whole mood & flavor of the place became completely different from the days when I used to go there to sip good coffee, argue philosophy, and play board games.

Back during those golden days of my youth, I met a person at The Java Joint
whose name was Ron. Ron was one of the first t-g (trans-gender) persons that
I ever got to know well, and eventually become friends with. We did not start
out as friends, though - far from it! In fact, the very first time that I saw
him walk into The Java Joint, my immediate reaction was one of intolerance and
sarcasm. I remember commenting to the person sitting next to me, "There goes
the most badly cross-dressed male I had ever seen in my life." Considering
that I grew up in New Orleans, had seen the Mardi Gras twelve times, and spent
6 months living in and around the French Quarter as an adult, that was not an easy title
for Ron to earn.

Ron had a body that was all male. Physically, he looked like Johnny Cash on
steroids. He stood 6 foot 5 inches tall, had an Adam's apple the size of a
real apple, was solid muscle from head to toe, and had the kind of big chunky
hands that would have looked perfectly at home on either a dockworker or a
heavyweight boxer. His face had a 5 o'clock shadow by noon; and, even if he
shaved again, the stubble would start to return within 2 or 3 hours. I won't even talk
about the hair on his chest, which would have made a grizzly bear gasp in
disbelief. There was no hiding Ron's gender, no matter how hard he tried.

And boy did Ron try! He used a high, lilting voice when he spoke; but no
matter how hard he tried, it always came out sounding a lot like Pee Wee
Herman's. He wore makeup, lots of it (too much, really); foundation to try to
hide his facial hair, blush & shadow to soften the hard angles of his well-
chiseled face, eyeliner and mascara for his eyes, and matching lipstick for
his lips. He always wore a woman’s blouse, never a regular shirt; and
underneath it he wore a bra, even though he had nothing to support. He
favored blue jeans, the kind that were cut and shaped for a woman’s figure.
To this day, I’ll never know WHERE he found them in his size, nor the tasteful
and stylish women’s shoes he wore on his enormous feet. He always had polish,
usually bright red, on his fingernails and toes . He was never without a
purse, always the kind with a shoulder strap, in which he carried around his
collection of cosmetics and perfume, in case he needed a touch-up while he was
out & about town.

At first, I thought that Ron - who insisted that we all call him “Lisa” - was
a severely deranged fag with delusions of womanhood. I would never have had
anything to do with him, except that he had one redeeming grace (in my eyes, at that time):
Ron was a master at playing chess. Chess and backgammon were my twin
passions, in those days, and I prided myself in taking on (and beating) anyone
who sat at my table. Consequently, when this horribly cross-dressed
abomination sat down and proceeded to wipe the board with me, five games in a
row, I went home with both my pride and my ego in ruins.

After a long night spent bandaging my emotional wounds, I returned to The Java
Joint the next day, determined to redeem my honor. Ron wiped the board with
me again, and on the next day, and the day after that too.

I began spending hours at the library, pouring over books on chess; openings,
mid-game strategies, end game tactics, dirty tricks, gambits, the exotic &
unusual; everything I could lay my hands on. As soon as I figured out the
solution for one of Ron’s tricks, he’d switch to another one. It was several
weeks before I was finally able to grind him down to a stalemate, and several
weeks more before my first win. It took another 6 months for me to finally be
able to match him, ability-wise.

While we were playing, we also spent quite a bit of time talking. Over the
weeks and months, I slowly learned the history of the man behind all that
makeup. In my opinion, Ron was a textbook case of the often-heard phrase, “a
woman trapped inside a man’s body”. He had known what he was from an early age,
when he found he preferred toy dolls to toy guns, and enjoyed a game of “dress-
up” more than a game of baseball. He spent most of his life fighting these
inner feelings. He forced himself to go on dates with girls, and to join both
the football and wrestling teams, while he was in high school. When he
graduated, he joined the Army, hoping they would be able to finally “make a
man out of him”. He volunteered for Airborne School, and eventually entered
the Special Forces - the “best of the best”, in the Army. After much hard
work, he earned the right to wear the coveted Green Beret, but even that was
not enough to conquer "the woman within". In a last, desperate attempt to
overcome his feminine urges, Ron decided to take the ultimate step in his
quest for manhood and got married. He even had 2 or 3 babies with his wife (I can‘t
remember how many), but still could not change his feelings. Through all that
time, and all the various successes in his life, he always knew he was “just
going through the motions”. Inside, he wanted none of it. Inside, he wanted
to live his life as a woman, not a man.

Needless to say, as I heard more and more of his story, I began looking at
Ron - sorry, Lisa - in an entirely new light. I gradually began to realize
that Lisa had a disability, not a perversion. She was every bit as incapable
of living a "normal" life as a person who'd been born deaf or blind. She had
no more control over her need to think, act, and feel like a woman than an
epileptic has over their shaking fits. Slowly, over a period of months, I
came to realize that Lisa was deserving of my pity, not my contempt;
of understanding, not prejudice; and of encouragement, not ridicule.

[ I’d like to take a moment here to clear something up. Ron/Lisa was NOT a
homosexual, at least not in the common sense of the word. This is a popular
misconception that some people have had about transgenders, in general.
What sets the t-g crowd apart from homosexuals is that transgenders (that I
have known, in MY experience) identify themselves completely with the inner
gender of their mind, rather than what they have between their legs. T-g people, like Ron,
don't think of themselves as a homosexual man who is attracted to other men;
their self-image is that of a heterosexual woman (in a man's body) who is
attracted to men in the same way that all heterosexual women are. Lisa said that, when she
made love, and felt love, she did so as a woman; and she wanted her partner to
be a “normal” (i.e. heterosexual) man, not a homosexual. Needless to say,
this causes some intense difficulties for such t-g individuals, and those around
them, until such time as the body can be surgically altered to agree with the
gender in their brain. ]

As bad as my beatings at chess were, my most enduring memory of Lisa will
always be a sort of tragic-comedy morality play that went on between her and
the other male citizens of St. Cloud.

To give a little background, St. Cloud MN is located just a bit more than an
hour’s drive up Interstate 94 from Minneapolis. During the early 1990's, when
all this happened, St. Cloud was going through a sort of "urban puberty". It
was small town that had suddenly become a large town, and was well on it's
way to becoming a small city. In spite of all it's sudden growth, though, St.
Cloud still had much of it's original "small town" flavor, including the usual
assortment of redneck prides and prejudices.

One of the prides of St. Cloud is the local university, St. Cloud State. It
is located just a few blocks on the other side of the main street from the
downtown area. On evenings and weekends, large numbers of college students
can be seen wandering around the downtown streets, hitting the various bars
and taverns. They spend their time eating pizza and burgers, drinking
pitchers of draft beer, playing darts, listening to loud rock music or the
occasional live band, and mixing with the locals, before finally staggering
off into the night & returning to their dorm rooms.

Most of these fine young adults are from rural Minnesota, and have lived all
their lives in small farming communities. They tend to come from good German
Lutheran backgrounds, where the sternly conservative German side of their
nature is tempered and softened by the comparatively liberal leanings of their
Lutheran faith. Anyone who has ever listened to Garrison Keillor on the radio
or read his book, "Lake Woebegon", knows exactly what I mean. Although these
people often have strong personal opinions about what is “right” and “wrong”,
they are generally very “live & let live” when it comes to other people‘s lifestyles.

Unfortunately, that did NOT include homosexuality (in THOSE days), and most especially not
when it came to those gays who are daring enough to “come out of the
closet“.

The only concept of homosexuality that these fine young adults have ever seen
is the highly mythical stereotypes shown on TV and in the movies, in books &
magazines, and so on. Unfortunately for all involved, Ron/Lisa’s appearance
and personality fit those negative stereotypes to perfection. The fact that s/he was
transgender was unimportant to them; “he” looked and acted like a “flaming
faggot”, therefore “he” must be one of “them“.

And so, about two or three times a month, while Lisa was walking downtown at
night, she would find herself suddenly confronted by yet another group of
drunken college boys (usually three to five), who were intent on doing a
little “gay bashing” - with their fists.

Having been a Green Beret, Lisa would inevitably wipe the street with them.

They never stood a chance, and being drunk certainly didn’t improve their
odds. By the time the cops showed up, Lisa would usually be calmly and quietly
smoking a cigarette, surrounded by a circle of foes, all of them knocked out.
She usually pressed charges; and so, to add insult to injury, these fine young
adults all had to go to court and pay a fine for committing criminal assault,
on top of having the shit beat out of them by a “flaming faggot in full
uniform“. [Lisa‘s words, not mine] By the end of her first year in town,
Lisa knew the first name of every police officer in St. Cloud, as well as all
the judges down at the courthouse.

One time, Lisa came into The Java Joint with a cast on her wrist. When I
asked her how she got it, her casual reply was, “The usual. Three guys jumped
me last night, while I was walking across the parking lot. I fractured a bone
in my wrist, when I punched one of them in the face.”

Exactly one week later, Lisa came into The Java Joint with a new cast - one
that went all the way up to her elbow. When I asked about it, her reply
was, “The usual. Same three guys again, too. They all rushed me, as a
group, and I had to use my cast as a club. I busted one of them’s nose, but I
fractured another bone, in my arm, doing it. What a drag!”

Needless to say, an uneasy truce slowly developed between Ron/Lisa and the
other males of St. Cloud. Word eventually got around, and the regulars to the
downtown bar scene all knew to let “her” walk by, quietly and without comment. Occasionally,
some newbie college students that hadn’t yet gotten the word, or some hayseeds
from out of town, would make the mistake of trying to teach “him” a lesson.
The usual reward for their intolerance was a short nap, and a free trip to
either the city jail or the city hospital.

I don't know if Lisa ever got the surgery she needed, so that she can have the
body of a women as well as the mind and soul. I hope she has, though I doubt
it. She was poor and the operation is expensive. Even if she does go under
the knife, she will always look like a badly cross-dressed male, at best.
There's only so much that can be changed with surgery and hormones, especially
when you stand 6 foot 5 and have a body like Arnold Schwartzeneggar's.

I do know that, by the time I left St. Cloud in 1998, the attacks had slowed
to a trickle. I don't know if it was because word had gotten around about
Lisa's fighting ability, or because the city of St. Cloud had finally "grown
up", and become more tolerant of those who are different. I do know that,
the last time I saw her, Lisa said she believed there would eventually come a
day when she would no longer have to send the local college boys to the School
of Hard Knocks, for a class in Tolerance 101.

I hope she's right, for all our sakes.


The End

Author's note: I hereby give my permission for this story to be shared and transmitted freely, and without any payment to me, so long as the person(s) doing so:

1. attaches this permission onto *some* part of this story (preferably the beginning or end)
2. does not fundamentally edit or change my story (except for abridging / shortening; and correcting spelling, grammar mistakes, and other corrections)
3. does not publish this story for profit, without getting my written permission first & paying me a cut of the profit

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