I Lied—

… about lying.

Which is to say I thought I’d been lying, but in fact I’d been completely forthright, telling the plain simple truth, yet channeling Cassandra from the very beginning, which—considering LGB has only been societally acknowledged since Stone Wall, and TQ as of barely the early 2000s—means my honesty fell on not only deaf ears but blank mentalities.

Granted, unpacking that will likely feel a bit convoluted, but try walking half-a-suburban-block in my bare, high-arched feet, will ya?

I never lied about being transgender. I never hid it, either. In fact, I realize now I was pretty damn blatant about who and what I was. I asked for my penis. I admitted I didn’t like girl games and girl clothes and girl dolls and girl books. No one believed me.

I repeatedly took the male side in every family argument (in my thoughts; I’d already I learned to keep my mouth shut.)

I radiated different. And never denied it, even though it was equated as “less than” in general society. Being different, I utterly came out as guy to my third-grade class, hedging my admission in what I thought was a pretty darn clever story. No one believed me. I guess no one had capacity to understand what I said.

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

I flagrantly didn’t girl throughout high school for all to see. Okay, so no one did, but there it was. Not my fault, damnit. I wasn’t lying, I wasn’t hiding. I just wasn’t seen or taken seriously. Shit, I couldn’t have Cassandra’d more if I‘d been me on purpose!

If you’re new to Turtle and don’t have access to Google, Cassandra was a Trojan priestess with the gift of prophesy who no one believed. In modern times, she’d be a discounted whistleblower.

I’ve channeled her with death predictions of loved ones quite few times, with the same result: no one believed or wanted to hear what I said. The myths, having been written by ancient men, only note her accuracy about the Trojan horse and Troy’s fall, but I suspect that, like me, she recognized and spoke about other truths as well, only to have them either denied or disregarded. Sometimes, the truth is just too over-the-current-sensibilities-head to be given credence.

CSUF freshman biology and that paper on transgenderism… how was that not making it “lappy” as Milton Berle would say? Being a “diamond in the rough,” having a “great cunty attitude”—non-lying/hiding/denying.

Except to myself, and that was for self-protection.

Never made any bones about being the man in the house, either—not just the breadwinner, but the tool guy, the repairman, the money manager, the tax preparer, the project manager, the crisis resolver, the mover, the baker, the candlestick maker.

In plain sight. For everyone to see. Sans makeup, necklaces and rings, pretty, sweet, or gentle.

Everyone saw it, everyone knew it… they just didn’t know that it/I was. “A strong woman,” people said. Bull hockey! A physically frail guy who bulldozed through every day to protect and provide.

That’s what built my turtle shell, even more than my family/childhood crap: social denial. I was never in the closet to anyone but myself, and that was only because there was no language, no acceptable way to state my reality. Nonbinary, transgender… sheesh the words have been around since forever, but never used above a whisper except in scientific journals and so-called aberrant circles and publications until the 1990s.

My turtle-osity all these decades has been naught but me placating social conventions I not only didn’t realize existed but would have contested if’n I had!

Should I ever grow the balls to publish My Life as a Turtle: How I made it to geezer by lying, hiding, and denying, I’ll have to come up with an alternate title. I didn’t hide my light under a bushel, damnit! I Cassandra’d through my entire existence. For it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been even more blatant—no one would have believed me anyway.

Children know who they are whether you want them to or not.

Insisting that all zygotes be birthed, and that all birthed persons be groomed into compliant workers—heterosexual, cisgender, legal chattel—is the ultimate manifestation of radical right-wing conservative Christians.

So I say unto all y’all bible-quoting white supremacists, go ahead and wallow in the satisfaction you feel from your current power brandishing. But lest ye forget, that coin’s other side is:

"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18.

My Cassandra-sense tingles with truth at the mere thought of a blue wave. As Picard would say, “Make it so.”