October 4, 2016 • 36 mins
Jonathan watched a short experimental video in college in which a little girl sat in silence while her parent sobbed. Now, Jonathan wants to know if that girl is okay.
You can find Maxi Cohen's website here: http://www.maxicohenstudio.com/
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Chris Neary and Kalila Holt. Our senior producer is Wendy Dorr.
Editing by Alex Blumberg and Jorge Just.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Caitlin Kenney, Peter Clowney, Michelle Harris, Dr. Susan Boulware at Yale Pediatric Endocrinology, Maxi Cohen, Jack Hitt, Jack Turban, Lida Drummond, Mario Falsetto, Peter Rose, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Haley Shaw.
Music for this episode by Christine Fellows, with additional music by Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot Sessions, Katie Mullins, Y La Bamba, Stratus, and Matthew Boll. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. What's your favorite movie? I can't talk right now.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm going out for lunch.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Who are you going for lunch with?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
What?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You stand still? You're The sound on the phone is terrible. Carol,
my ex girlfriend, Carol? Is it okay? Do you really care?
Let's say I said no. I don't you know it
affects me. You're not sorry?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
There are many of your ex boyfriends who I was
fond of, and I don't keep in touch with them
because I felt like it would be a disloyalty to you.
Are you going to talk about me?
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Of course? I don't want you to.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
From here, all right, have a good lunch. What are
you gonna order?
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I don't know what. Are we gonna know?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
What we're gonna eat? From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein
and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Tara. During my freshman year,
(01:30):
I wore black turtlenecks. They were meant to let people
know I was an artist. It was easier than actually
making art. I wore them so tight that the outline
of my Adam's apple was made visible when I swallowed
with excitement, and nothing excited me more than art. Hearing
words like kirisciro and trompe lois was enough to set
(01:51):
my adam's apple racing up and down, my turtleneck collar
like an otter trapped and a sleeping bag. Aside from
my own saliva, I also enjoyed swallowing espresso, and in
the back row of my experimental film appreciation class, I
swallowed oceans of the stuff. The back row was an
ideal place to sit, as it was closest to the exit,
(02:15):
so in case I had to get up and smoke
a ghitan or indul ja panic attack about my future,
I could do so unnoticed. Although I knew I was
an artist, I did not know what kind, and so
experimental film felt like a possible calling. I knew I
could never make a movie movie like Raiders of the
(02:35):
Lost Arc or Ishtar, but I could probably get away
with making weird stuff, the kind of films that played
on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at three in the morning
and prompted my father to demand after several minutes in
what the hell happened at a plot, so point a
camera at a sleeping person for ten hours. I could
totally do that in the end, though I only ever
(03:02):
made one single film, a Super eight short that involved
montages of swirling fans and clouds drifting across the sky
and speed it up motion. It was all set to
the progressively jazzy strains of Pat Metheni's seminal fusion album
as Falls Wichita, So Falls, Wichita Falls. I named the
film in Sensito. I can no longer recall why, but
(03:27):
I still loved watching movies in class Window Water, Baby Moving,
in which the director filmed his wife giving birth, and Mothlight,
which looked like a white, scratchy film strip. But of
all the films in film appreciation class that I appreciated,
there's a scene from one video that I still think
about twenty five years later. The premise of the video
(03:49):
was this. In nineteen eighty six, the director put an
ad in the village voice, asking people who were angry
to come down to her studio and tell her why.
The resulting video was simply titled Anger. I've never been
able to find it again, but I remember it clearly.
There were ranting punks, a murder who bragged about all
(04:10):
the murders he'd committed, and victims of violence who laid
out their plans for revenge. But the person I still
think about all these years later is someone who didn't
say anything at all. A little girl. She couldn't have
been more than eight or nine. She sat silently watching
her parent, who described herself as being intersext weep tears
(04:31):
of anger and frustration over how hard her life was.
Then the little girl, with her chin raised, stared directly
into the camera, And this is what I remember so well,
meeting her gaze and how complicit I felt to be
watching her. Why would the woman have brought along a
child that day to hear all this? From the look
(04:51):
on the little girl's face, it was hard to tell
what affect these words were having on her. And over
the past twenty five years, every once in a while,
I find myself worrying about what might have become of
this little girl, and wondering if maybe finding her would
put my mind to rest. I've never been able to
(05:12):
talk about it with anyone, because no one I know
has ever seen the video. Lately, I've been trying to
find it online, but because I don't remember the director's name,
it's been virtually impossible to google. When I punch in
anger plus video plus eighties, my search yields a heavy
metal music video for a song called Anger. In it,
(05:33):
a shirtless viking with a spiral perm wields a cardboard sword.
My middle name is Stewart. I email old film school friends,
but none of them know what I'm talking about. Then
one night I hear back from a retired professor. God, yes,
(05:55):
he writes, even with failing memory, I do believe I
know what you're talking about. He sends a link to
the video on YouTube, where it sits with few views
and not a single comment. I press play, and I'm shocked,
after all these years by how much I remember. For
all you vidiots out there, this one's for you. Step off, yuppies,
(06:18):
step off. It starts with a group of skinheads and
punks giving the camera the finger. Back in the eighties,
giving a camera the finger was a big thing, junk,
and I'm proud of it. There's the wrongfully accused police
detective forced out of his unit amid scandal.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I'm angry enough right now that if I saw something
happening in the street possibility, I wouldn't do a goddamn
thing about it, because it's done on my fucking business.
You let another guy handle it. I was never liked
that I loved what I was doing. Now I wouldn't
do shit.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
There's the ethereal young woman wearing a pink sweatshirt with ducks,
who speaks of being attacked at knife point and how
a month later her boyfriend left her.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Everything you do to someone does eventually come back to
everything you do. All actions have reactions, And if I didn't.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Believe that, I would have kissed the detrain a long
time ago. There's the artist couple, once in love but
now filled with raw hatred for each other, who, because
of the realities of Manhattan real estate, were forced to
live as roommates in a small artist's.
Speaker 7 (07:18):
Last night's Can I speak now?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Can I please speak?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
What are you asking permission for?
Speaker 8 (07:24):
Yourn?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Then the scene I've not been able to forget, the
weeping woman and her little girl.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
I went to an drowcinologist, and I found out too
many of the tests that they did that I was
biologically a woman and a man at the same time
I was intersexed.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
In her powder blue knee length skirt and pearl necklace,
she looks to be out of an entirely different era,
like a nun from the fifties. On her day off.
She sits on the stool wringing her hands.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
After two years of constantly crying night after night after night,
and my wife being upset, and my child being upset,
and the constant harassment from people on the job, I
became so helpless, and finally, after seeing many doctors to
(08:26):
try to have some way to have it corrected, it
was an impossibility, and it was a question of being
a circus for the society or choosing to be a woman.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Thought at that time that it was much.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Easier for me to be a woman. As she speaks,
the camera pans to the right, and sitting beside her
is the little girl. She's wearing a purple dress, her
long brown hair pulled back with a headband. She sits
there as though absorbing radiation. It's hard to tell what
(09:08):
she thinking. Yeah, some of what the woman says is
hard to follow. She doesn't want sex reassignment, but she
doesn't want to live in the middle.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
I know about I'm not married to my wife anymore.
We still live together as sisters the child, but it's
a smaller than nine by twelve roup for three of us.
I think that I've worked so hard.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
To try to make a sing sense out of my life,
only to wind up at the bottom.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Seeing the video still makes me feel as powerless as
it did all those years ago. What had their life
been like in that nine x twelve room? And where
was the little girl?
Speaker 5 (10:19):
Now?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
The video, at least the online version, ends just before
the credits begin, so there's no way to know who
the weeping woman and the little girl were. But the
director's name was there, Maxie Cohen, And it turns out
she's not hard to find. Okay, oh hi, it's Jonathan.
(10:43):
I didn't get that, but uh okay. Maxie's place was
just a subway ride away. It turns out that Maxie
hasn't thought about the movie in years and was surprised
by my interest. I guess I assumed an experimental video
director's place would be piled from Florida ceiling with towers
of alt publications, possess a bathtub overflowing with bicycle parts
(11:06):
for future art projects, you know, gritty. But Maxie's place
is fancy. I'm greeted at the door by young interns
who inform me that Maxie will be with me in
a moment. In a moment, well, la di da. It
seems I've caught them just before lunch in the kitchenette,
a meal of kle and beats is being prepared. Maybe
(11:29):
I should have become an experimental film director after all. Oh,
Maxie still lives and works in the same Soho studio
where she filled Anger thirty years ago.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Well, at first they set up a studio somewhere else
because I didn't know if I wanted all these angry
people in my house. But yeah, I just asked people,
what made the mank what were they angry about? That
was really all I asked. And I think the people
that really responded were people who were deeply troubled.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I asked her if she's ever followed up with any
of them, Not.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Really, except about a year later or sometime later. Maybe
it's a year or two later. The commissioning editor from
Channel four in London saw the piece and he was
so distraught that I had made this film. And I
remember the producer from Channel four thinking I was totally
irresponsible that I hadn't kept He wanted to know what
(12:22):
happened to that little girl.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
This sound is an audible gasp. I hadn't told Maxie
that the reason I'd come to see her was specifically
to ask about the little girl. And let's back up.
I have Maxie go back to the day of the
shoot and tell me what she remembers about the little girl.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
She just looked at her face while her mother talked,
her father talked. It all went in and I was
really concerned about her hearing all of this, but her
parent said no, no, no, keep her in the room
like she was just fine there. Now, this is this
(13:09):
is the only person that I did not talk to
before I shot. And I don't even know how it happened,
because all of a sudden, somebody showed up on location
the day that we were shooting, and I had no
idea what I was in for.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So you said that it was a guy from the
BBC who got in touch with you. Was curious about
this little girl.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
He was so disdrawt after watching it, and he why
didn't I keep up with her and what has happened
to her? And really made me feel that it was
my responsibility to do that.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
How long ago was this that he got in touch
with you?
Speaker 6 (13:55):
Oh, this was maybe a year or two after it
was broadcast.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It was still the late eadies, was still the late eadies.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
Okay, So I tracked her down.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And what Maxie learned wasn't very much. The woman was
getting used to wearing glouses, and the little girl had
just gotten a bicycle. And at the time, how did
you get into touch with them?
Speaker 6 (14:17):
I guess I have their phone number, which I could
still possibly have if anybody still has the same phone
as they had in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, thirty years later, we don't even have phones anymore.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Right, that's true.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
But you have that information.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
I probably do somewhere.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Because you want to track her down. I don't really
want to. Yeah. When I saw it all those years ago,
she she stayed with me.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
Yeah, well, maybe next week I'll have the time to look.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You still have that stuff?
Speaker 6 (14:51):
I might? I might, I do tend to.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I mean I went through one cleaning uh huh.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
And I can't remember if I got rid of it
or kept it so I could look.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Is that a big undertaking to find it? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (15:05):
All right, well let's see. Maybe if let's see what
time it is, maybe we can no, I could go down.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
I could go down.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
We could go down, and I could see if it's
easier or not.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
The door onto there's a lesson here in the importance
of archiving, we would stay to New York. You know,
where do you put it all? Maxie's basement locker is
filled from top to bottom, and a thirty year old
(15:45):
phone number unless it's been inscribed on a block of
asbestos and Maxi's up for a cleansing fire, doesn't seem
likely to be found. Nevertheless, we go through boxes, some
marked and some not.
Speaker 6 (15:58):
You know, now that I just think about it, the
releases would have people's names and numbers on them, right.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, So we search through folder after folder for release
forms signed in nineteen eighty six. It isn't looking hopeful,
but then.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
There's so much stuff.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
This brings back anger.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
Oh maybe here's are pieces.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, we even find the information for those yuppie hating punks.
Such neat handwriting for punks.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
Yeah, so the woman whose name is Laura, that's the
woman who's intersext.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Is there a phone number there? There is? Wow? This
sound wow is the sound of my amazement. Maxi gives
me the numbers of everyone in the video. The number
you dialed is not in servant. The number you dialed
(16:52):
is not in service. The number you have dialed is unallocated.
I love that unallocated guy. Unsurprisingly, every single number is
disconnected except for one.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Hello, is there a Laura there, Robert. No, a Laura.
That's who I'm calling for.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
That's you. No, I'm calling on now Hello.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yes, Hello, I was looking for a Laura. Oh that's you. Yes, Wow, Okay.
My name is Jonathan Goldstein. And I watched a short
movie that you were in from many years ago, from
the late eighties.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
It's possible that. I mean, it's like I'm seventy six
years old now.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Well, it makes sense because I think in the in
the short film that I saw, you were forty or so.
As I continue to talk about the video, it doesn't
seem to evoke any memory. For the duration of the conversation.
Laura acts like getting a call about an interview from
thirty years ago is all in a day's work, because
I called you just now thinking there's no way that
(18:09):
this person is still going to be at this phone number.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Yep. People are still live in the same place too.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You're kidding. No, what isn't the same is that Laura
is now Robert again?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (18:23):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I just life keeps going
on and on. I just you know, I go with
the flow of things. And that's just.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Wait a second, because okay, in that movie, you had
said that you had made the decision to live as
a as a woman.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
Right, and now I just now I live as a male.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Mall when did you when? When did that change occur?
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Well, that was maybe a couple of years ago already.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
It was only a couple of years ago that you
that you why.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
I don't know, because that's the way my life was,
and I, you know, things keep changing and everything, and
I just made certain decisions and that was it.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Let's recall that this question of gender was once so
crushing that Robert couldn't even talk about it without breaking down,
and now he seems surprisingly at peace. You showed up
with your daughter, do you remember, Well, not.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
That I don't even know, but it's possible.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You were sitting on a stool talking to the you know,
facing the camera, and.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
It sounds similar. You know, we were talking. I'm talking
to somebody on the phone, my wife.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Okay, Hello, yes, hello, Hi, I was just I was
My name is Jonathan, Yeah, And I saw this movie
that Laura was in from the late eighties.
Speaker 9 (19:54):
I don't know nothing about that. But okay, so what
is this about.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Then he came to the movie with your daughter, I
think when he when he went to be interviewed, and
she sat beside him while he was telling his story.
Speaker 9 (20:11):
This was thirty years ago.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Almost thirty years ago.
Speaker 9 (20:14):
Holy smoke. Oh wow, I don't know anything about this village.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
He was talking at the time about having to decide
with his doctor to become a woman.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
Yes, yes, somehow it didn't you know, he decided not
to not to do it. He changed That's why he
changed his name back to Robert.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And do you remember why he decided to change back.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
Well, he would get well, no, he would get up
and age and and he rather attracted two men.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
And you guys, you guys are still married after all
these years.
Speaker 9 (20:53):
We're still married. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
And nowadays, people, some of what he was talking about is.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
More Yeah, now it's more open than it was, like, uh,
thirty years ago. Now it's more open now.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (21:09):
You know what that you can't change the human mind.
You can't. You can never. You can't reverse the human mind.
If you're trying to fight the human mind and forget
about it, you can go crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I talk with Robert's wife for a while, and eventually
ask her what her daughter's name is, and she says
it's Tara. After the break, Tara, I take out Tara's number,
(21:53):
but before picking up the phone, I find myself worrying
about what to say. After all the years of wondering
what had become of her, now is my chance to
find out. All during our conversation, I keep just wanting
to say, how are you? Are you okay? But such
questions are hard to come right out and ask, even
to friends and family, let alone a perfect stranger. Tara
(22:16):
tells me she had no idea that such a video
even existed, and is reluctant to talk about that time.
But maybe she's a bit curious too, because when I
ask if we can meet up, although she's hesitant, she
says yes. I suggest meeting at a quiet place, and
since you can't talk at libraries and a cemetery would
have seemed plain creepy, I rented the conference room of
(22:38):
a local chain hotel. Oh, here we go. So Tara
liked the idea, but when she shows up, she seems
a little nervous. And so there's water.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I have my own water.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
It's okay, And I do my best to put her
at ease. Okay, so yes, but I still somehow feel
like I'm selling time shares in Orlando and this for you, right, Yeah.
Tara's now in her late thirties but looks younger. She
has an open and kind face and still has long,
(23:10):
straight brown hair. She looks a lot like the little
girl from the video, and as we talk, her face
seems to toggle between adult and child. She showed up
with her husband and some photographs.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
This was my first communion, and this is my father
just as a woman.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
He's looking like how you would put it, like kind
of like a like a fifties housewife or something.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
That was his mental picture of what, you know, he
wanted to look like as a woman. He grew up
in an orphanage, raised by the nuns that molded.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
His idea could look like.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, you know, And I told all my friends that
he was my aunt. I understood the situation, but I
never knew what to say. I was always walking on
eggshells because it was like do I say this? Do
I not say this?
Speaker 8 (24:12):
Like what's okay?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
What's not okay? That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Why do you think he brought you with him that
day to the video shoot.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I don't know. I think it was. I think it
was to use me as a tool to have somebody
to have sympathy for sympathy for him, Yes, because in
his mind, I guess, I mean, you know, I have
this beautiful, young, well behaved daughter, and I'm you know,
(25:06):
we're forced to live in this one room, We're forced
to live this way. He's forced to live in limbo,
and you know, all these things. I think it was.
I think it was a cry for help, and I
think he was using me as a tool in his
plea and cry for help.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
In the video, he refers to himself as as intersext.
So how did you how did you understand that? What
to mean from what.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I was always told was he had a medical condition.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
When Tara asks her father about his medical condition, it's
hard to get a clear answer. In the past few years,
he's been diagnosed with dementia, and so there's a lot
he just doesn't remember, and Tara ends up relying on
what she was told as a child.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Lately, in the last couple of years, you know, I
started to just question certain things about you know, how
this whole transition happened, and I did some research and
I found an article that was written by this doctor
from Germany.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
It's not just an article, it's a study conducted by
two German doctors over the course of twenty years, with
Tara's dad as its sole focus. It was published in
a journal called Archives of Sexual Behavior, and in it,
Tara's dad is diagnosed as having common syndrome, a rare
hormonal disorder that, among other symptoms, delays puberty or stops
(26:44):
it entirely. So if your male, this means your voice
never lowers, your body never grows hair. While the video
captures one moment in Tara's dad's life, the article presents
a portrait of his life since childhood, so alongside the
data on his hormone levels are details like how at
the orphanage he was caught spying on the girls and
(27:05):
as a punishment, was forced to dress as a girl.
Was also discharged from the Air Force for concealing female
clothes and his foot locker. The article also documents a
history of misdiagnoses, psychiatric hospitalizations, thwarted attempts at gender reassignment surgery,
and suicide attempts. He'd even set himself on fire. Throughout
(27:29):
his entire life, Tara's dad insisted his gender confusion owed
solely to the commons a physical hormonal condition. Nonetheless, the
doctors he was treated by labeled him with the mental
disorder transsexual, a diagnosis he violently rejected. It's also a
diagnosis that no longer even exists. The article states, she
(27:50):
always refused to consider herself as transsexual. As a result,
she found herself quote stuck in the middle. Because of
this stressful situation, she became emotionally even more disturbed. Tara's
dad was never able to get the life he wanted
or the treatment he needed. After reading the article, the
(28:11):
overwhelming sense I'm left with is that while things are
by no means perfect, the medical community's understanding of gender
has changed drastically, and societies has too. Had Tara's dad
been born twenty five years later, being quote stuck in
the middle might not have been the curse it felt
like back then, and perhaps he might not have experienced
(28:31):
quite so much suffering, and Tara might have been spared
having to witness so much suffering. In watching the video,
it doesn't feel as though you're being protected from any
kind of like thing that is being expressed.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
No, I mean I knew more about this stuff as
a young child than most kids now.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
And was that just a function of you say that
the apartment that your dad describes in the video is
like it's.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Just a room from I believe it was like twelve
by fourteen. Really, Yes, that's what I think the actual
size was. It's very small. I was right in the middle.
It was very hard for them to keep any types
of secrets from me, just because of the nature. There
wasn't any closed doors, there wasn't any escape.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
She remember seeing her father come home with a black
eye from the building he worked at as a doorman.
The other doorman had beaten them up and told him
to never come back.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
There were a lot of people that picked on him
abused him. I think it would have been better if
he probably moved away and started somewhere new with a
new life.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
So why did he stay. At the end of the article,
the author's hypothesized that living in between, rather than, as
they put it, quote a real woman, allowed Tyr's dad
to continue to live with his family. I wrote to
one of the article's authors to ask what that meant.
His explanation was simple. Nowadays, he wrote, we see many
transgender persons who stay together with their spouse and family.
(30:05):
You have to remember that this happened in the nineteen eighties.
If Tara's dad had undergone sex reassignment, he says, it
might have broken up the family, and family was very
important to him. Tara's dad was put into foster care
at age one and lived in an orphanage until he
was a teenager. So maybe this living all together in
one room, a communal bathroom down the hall Tara having
(30:28):
to sleep in the same twin bed as him was
the only way he knew to keep his own family together.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I mean, my parents were very supportive of me and
anything I wanted to do. I went through private school,
even though we had no money. My mother decided to
work saturdays doing their bingo in exchange for my tuition.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
She worked that out.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yes, yes, you know. The only thing I would say
that I lacked growing up in that kind of environment
was having my own sets of privacy. That is the
only thing that I really lacked.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
How did you negotiate that?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
When I was really young, I actually used to go
out into the hallway and they had outlets in the hallway,
and I would bring my stuff out in the hallway
and just kind of make my own little private little
even though you had people that passed by once in
a while, I still had quite a bit of privacy there.
We had at one point we had a small, little
portable TV. I brought that outside. I mean, I would
(31:37):
do whatever. I'd bring my blanket outside in the hallway.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And so is it happy memories?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Absolutely. For Thanksgiving, the tenants would sometimes set up a
table in the hallway so they could all eat together
like a family. Tara was one of the few kids
(32:05):
in the building, so people were often stopping by to
give her little gifts. Even the most experimental of short
videos can only show what lies within the frame, not
what lies outside of it. Neither Tara, her mother, nor
her father remembered the video until I reminded them the
video had been swallowed up by all of their other days,
(32:26):
some bad, some good. There's one last thing that bears
Mentioning about that article, Tara appears in it as well.
The authors write that in spite of the situation, Tara
appeared to be dealing quote exceptionally well. They also said
that to her parents, Tara was a major source of pride.
Tara and her husband are looking to buy a house,
(32:48):
and Tara says she'd like one with lots of space.
They plan on starting a family. When she was a kid,
Tara's family made a couple cross country road trips together.
They lasted almost the whole summer. She says that after
she left their shared room, went off to college and graduated,
she decided to do one last trip with them. She
says she was probably never going to have a chance
(33:09):
to do it again, which says a lot. It's the
kind of thing a happy family does. Chooses to be together,
chooses to be squeezed in close just because they want
to be. Now that the Ferners returned to its goodwill home,
(34:02):
now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage,
the posit this moment to do so if we imagine,
if we trapler Acid Heavyweight is hosted and produced by
(34:30):
me Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila holt Our.
Senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg and
Jorge just Special thanks to Emily Condon, Caitlin Kenny, Peter Clowney,
Michelle Harris, Doctor Susan Bolwaer at Yale Pediatric Ender Chronology,
Maxi Cohen, Jack Hit, Jack Turbin, Leda Drummond, Mario Falsetto,
Peter Rose and my beloved friend Jackie Cohen. The show
(34:54):
is mixed by Hailey Shaw, music by Christine Fellow's. Additional
music for the episode can be found on our website,
Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by
the Weaker Bands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad
music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on to Twitter
at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimbltmedia dot com.
We'll have a new episode next week. And if you're
(35:16):
a fan of Wiretap, the show I used to make
at the CBC, you can now find season six through
eleven on Earwolf's Howl app. Go to Howl dot fm
and sign up for a free seven day trial. Oh by.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Anger is my middle day.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Anger is my middle name.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Oh he Anger is my middle name.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Oh Anger Anger is my middle name.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
That was really pretty. Matthew Boll, lead audio engineer at
Gimblet Media. Thank you, what's your middle name? My name?
Middle name is Matthew well, what's your middle name, Matthew,
you don't have a middle name. No, that is my
middle name. You use your middle name as your first name. Yes,
you know what my middle name is.
Speaker 5 (36:53):
What?
Speaker 4 (36:53):
No, I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
I don't know. Stewart. That's nice.
Pushkin. What's your favorite movie? I can't talk right now.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm going out for lunch.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Who are you going for lunch with?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
What?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You stand still? You're The sound on the phone is terrible. Carol,
my ex girlfriend, Carol? Is it okay? Do you really care?
Let's say I said no. I don't you know it
affects me. You're not sorry?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
There are many of your ex boyfriends who I was
fond of, and I don't keep in touch with them
because I felt like it would be a disloyalty to you.
Are you going to talk about me?
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Of course? I don't want you to.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
From here, all right, have a good lunch. What are
you gonna order?
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I don't know what. Are we gonna know?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
What we're gonna eat? From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein
and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Tara. During my freshman year,
(01:30):
I wore black turtlenecks. They were meant to let people
know I was an artist. It was easier than actually
making art. I wore them so tight that the outline
of my Adam's apple was made visible when I swallowed
with excitement, and nothing excited me more than art. Hearing
words like kirisciro and trompe lois was enough to set
(01:51):
my adam's apple racing up and down, my turtleneck collar
like an otter trapped and a sleeping bag. Aside from
my own saliva, I also enjoyed swallowing espresso, and in
the back row of my experimental film appreciation class, I
swallowed oceans of the stuff. The back row was an
ideal place to sit, as it was closest to the exit,
(02:15):
so in case I had to get up and smoke
a ghitan or indul ja panic attack about my future,
I could do so unnoticed. Although I knew I was
an artist, I did not know what kind, and so
experimental film felt like a possible calling. I knew I
could never make a movie movie like Raiders of the
(02:35):
Lost Arc or Ishtar, but I could probably get away
with making weird stuff, the kind of films that played
on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at three in the morning
and prompted my father to demand after several minutes in
what the hell happened at a plot, so point a
camera at a sleeping person for ten hours. I could
totally do that in the end, though I only ever
(03:02):
made one single film, a Super eight short that involved
montages of swirling fans and clouds drifting across the sky
and speed it up motion. It was all set to
the progressively jazzy strains of Pat Metheni's seminal fusion album
as Falls Wichita, So Falls, Wichita Falls. I named the
film in Sensito. I can no longer recall why, but
(03:27):
I still loved watching movies in class Window Water, Baby Moving,
in which the director filmed his wife giving birth, and Mothlight,
which looked like a white, scratchy film strip. But of
all the films in film appreciation class that I appreciated,
there's a scene from one video that I still think
about twenty five years later. The premise of the video
(03:49):
was this. In nineteen eighty six, the director put an
ad in the village voice, asking people who were angry
to come down to her studio and tell her why.
The resulting video was simply titled Anger. I've never been
able to find it again, but I remember it clearly.
There were ranting punks, a murder who bragged about all
(04:10):
the murders he'd committed, and victims of violence who laid
out their plans for revenge. But the person I still
think about all these years later is someone who didn't
say anything at all. A little girl. She couldn't have
been more than eight or nine. She sat silently watching
her parent, who described herself as being intersext weep tears
(04:31):
of anger and frustration over how hard her life was.
Then the little girl, with her chin raised, stared directly
into the camera, And this is what I remember so well,
meeting her gaze and how complicit I felt to be
watching her. Why would the woman have brought along a
child that day to hear all this? From the look
(04:51):
on the little girl's face, it was hard to tell
what affect these words were having on her. And over
the past twenty five years, every once in a while,
I find myself worrying about what might have become of
this little girl, and wondering if maybe finding her would
put my mind to rest. I've never been able to
(05:12):
talk about it with anyone, because no one I know
has ever seen the video. Lately, I've been trying to
find it online, but because I don't remember the director's name,
it's been virtually impossible to google. When I punch in
anger plus video plus eighties, my search yields a heavy
metal music video for a song called Anger. In it,
(05:33):
a shirtless viking with a spiral perm wields a cardboard sword.
My middle name is Stewart. I email old film school friends,
but none of them know what I'm talking about. Then
one night I hear back from a retired professor. God, yes,
(05:55):
he writes, even with failing memory, I do believe I
know what you're talking about. He sends a link to
the video on YouTube, where it sits with few views
and not a single comment. I press play, and I'm shocked,
after all these years by how much I remember. For
all you vidiots out there, this one's for you. Step off, yuppies,
(06:18):
step off. It starts with a group of skinheads and
punks giving the camera the finger. Back in the eighties,
giving a camera the finger was a big thing, junk,
and I'm proud of it. There's the wrongfully accused police
detective forced out of his unit amid scandal.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I'm angry enough right now that if I saw something
happening in the street possibility, I wouldn't do a goddamn
thing about it, because it's done on my fucking business.
You let another guy handle it. I was never liked
that I loved what I was doing. Now I wouldn't
do shit.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
There's the ethereal young woman wearing a pink sweatshirt with ducks,
who speaks of being attacked at knife point and how
a month later her boyfriend left her.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Everything you do to someone does eventually come back to
everything you do. All actions have reactions, And if I didn't.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Believe that, I would have kissed the detrain a long
time ago. There's the artist couple, once in love but
now filled with raw hatred for each other, who, because
of the realities of Manhattan real estate, were forced to
live as roommates in a small artist's.
Speaker 7 (07:18):
Last night's Can I speak now?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Can I please speak?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
What are you asking permission for?
Speaker 8 (07:24):
Yourn?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Then the scene I've not been able to forget, the
weeping woman and her little girl.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
I went to an drowcinologist, and I found out too
many of the tests that they did that I was
biologically a woman and a man at the same time
I was intersexed.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
In her powder blue knee length skirt and pearl necklace,
she looks to be out of an entirely different era,
like a nun from the fifties. On her day off.
She sits on the stool wringing her hands.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
After two years of constantly crying night after night after night,
and my wife being upset, and my child being upset,
and the constant harassment from people on the job, I
became so helpless, and finally, after seeing many doctors to
(08:26):
try to have some way to have it corrected, it
was an impossibility, and it was a question of being
a circus for the society or choosing to be a woman.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Thought at that time that it was much.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Easier for me to be a woman. As she speaks,
the camera pans to the right, and sitting beside her
is the little girl. She's wearing a purple dress, her
long brown hair pulled back with a headband. She sits
there as though absorbing radiation. It's hard to tell what
(09:08):
she thinking. Yeah, some of what the woman says is
hard to follow. She doesn't want sex reassignment, but she
doesn't want to live in the middle.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
I know about I'm not married to my wife anymore.
We still live together as sisters the child, but it's
a smaller than nine by twelve roup for three of us.
I think that I've worked so hard.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
To try to make a sing sense out of my life,
only to wind up at the bottom.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Seeing the video still makes me feel as powerless as
it did all those years ago. What had their life
been like in that nine x twelve room? And where
was the little girl?
Speaker 5 (10:19):
Now?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
The video, at least the online version, ends just before
the credits begin, so there's no way to know who
the weeping woman and the little girl were. But the
director's name was there, Maxie Cohen, And it turns out
she's not hard to find. Okay, oh hi, it's Jonathan.
(10:43):
I didn't get that, but uh okay. Maxie's place was
just a subway ride away. It turns out that Maxie
hasn't thought about the movie in years and was surprised
by my interest. I guess I assumed an experimental video
director's place would be piled from Florida ceiling with towers
of alt publications, possess a bathtub overflowing with bicycle parts
(11:06):
for future art projects, you know, gritty. But Maxie's place
is fancy. I'm greeted at the door by young interns
who inform me that Maxie will be with me in
a moment. In a moment, well, la di da. It
seems I've caught them just before lunch in the kitchenette,
a meal of kle and beats is being prepared. Maybe
(11:29):
I should have become an experimental film director after all. Oh,
Maxie still lives and works in the same Soho studio
where she filled Anger thirty years ago.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Well, at first they set up a studio somewhere else
because I didn't know if I wanted all these angry
people in my house. But yeah, I just asked people,
what made the mank what were they angry about? That
was really all I asked. And I think the people
that really responded were people who were deeply troubled.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I asked her if she's ever followed up with any
of them, Not.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Really, except about a year later or sometime later. Maybe
it's a year or two later. The commissioning editor from
Channel four in London saw the piece and he was
so distraught that I had made this film. And I
remember the producer from Channel four thinking I was totally
irresponsible that I hadn't kept He wanted to know what
(12:22):
happened to that little girl.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
This sound is an audible gasp. I hadn't told Maxie
that the reason I'd come to see her was specifically
to ask about the little girl. And let's back up.
I have Maxie go back to the day of the
shoot and tell me what she remembers about the little girl.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
She just looked at her face while her mother talked,
her father talked. It all went in and I was
really concerned about her hearing all of this, but her
parent said no, no, no, keep her in the room
like she was just fine there. Now, this is this
(13:09):
is the only person that I did not talk to
before I shot. And I don't even know how it happened,
because all of a sudden, somebody showed up on location
the day that we were shooting, and I had no
idea what I was in for.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So you said that it was a guy from the
BBC who got in touch with you. Was curious about
this little girl.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
He was so disdrawt after watching it, and he why
didn't I keep up with her and what has happened
to her? And really made me feel that it was
my responsibility to do that.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
How long ago was this that he got in touch
with you?
Speaker 6 (13:55):
Oh, this was maybe a year or two after it
was broadcast.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It was still the late eadies, was still the late eadies.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
Okay, So I tracked her down.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And what Maxie learned wasn't very much. The woman was
getting used to wearing glouses, and the little girl had
just gotten a bicycle. And at the time, how did
you get into touch with them?
Speaker 6 (14:17):
I guess I have their phone number, which I could
still possibly have if anybody still has the same phone
as they had in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, thirty years later, we don't even have phones anymore.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Right, that's true.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
But you have that information.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
I probably do somewhere.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Because you want to track her down. I don't really
want to. Yeah. When I saw it all those years ago,
she she stayed with me.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
Yeah, well, maybe next week I'll have the time to look.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You still have that stuff?
Speaker 6 (14:51):
I might? I might, I do tend to.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I mean I went through one cleaning uh huh.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
And I can't remember if I got rid of it
or kept it so I could look.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Is that a big undertaking to find it? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (15:05):
All right, well let's see. Maybe if let's see what
time it is, maybe we can no, I could go down.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
I could go down.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
We could go down, and I could see if it's
easier or not.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
The door onto there's a lesson here in the importance
of archiving, we would stay to New York. You know,
where do you put it all? Maxie's basement locker is
filled from top to bottom, and a thirty year old
(15:45):
phone number unless it's been inscribed on a block of
asbestos and Maxi's up for a cleansing fire, doesn't seem
likely to be found. Nevertheless, we go through boxes, some
marked and some not.
Speaker 6 (15:58):
You know, now that I just think about it, the
releases would have people's names and numbers on them, right.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, So we search through folder after folder for release
forms signed in nineteen eighty six. It isn't looking hopeful,
but then.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
There's so much stuff.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
This brings back anger.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
Oh maybe here's are pieces.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, we even find the information for those yuppie hating punks.
Such neat handwriting for punks.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
Yeah, so the woman whose name is Laura, that's the
woman who's intersext.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Is there a phone number there? There is? Wow? This
sound wow is the sound of my amazement. Maxi gives
me the numbers of everyone in the video. The number
you dialed is not in servant. The number you dialed
(16:52):
is not in service. The number you have dialed is unallocated.
I love that unallocated guy. Unsurprisingly, every single number is
disconnected except for one.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Hello, is there a Laura there, Robert. No, a Laura.
That's who I'm calling for.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
That's you. No, I'm calling on now Hello.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yes, Hello, I was looking for a Laura. Oh that's you. Yes, Wow, Okay.
My name is Jonathan Goldstein. And I watched a short
movie that you were in from many years ago, from
the late eighties.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
It's possible that. I mean, it's like I'm seventy six
years old now.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Well, it makes sense because I think in the in
the short film that I saw, you were forty or so.
As I continue to talk about the video, it doesn't
seem to evoke any memory. For the duration of the conversation.
Laura acts like getting a call about an interview from
thirty years ago is all in a day's work, because
I called you just now thinking there's no way that
(18:09):
this person is still going to be at this phone number.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Yep. People are still live in the same place too.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You're kidding. No, what isn't the same is that Laura
is now Robert again?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (18:23):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I just life keeps going
on and on. I just you know, I go with
the flow of things. And that's just.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Wait a second, because okay, in that movie, you had
said that you had made the decision to live as
a as a woman.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
Right, and now I just now I live as a male.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Mall when did you when? When did that change occur?
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Well, that was maybe a couple of years ago already.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
It was only a couple of years ago that you
that you why.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
I don't know, because that's the way my life was,
and I, you know, things keep changing and everything, and
I just made certain decisions and that was it.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Let's recall that this question of gender was once so
crushing that Robert couldn't even talk about it without breaking down,
and now he seems surprisingly at peace. You showed up
with your daughter, do you remember, Well, not.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
That I don't even know, but it's possible.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You were sitting on a stool talking to the you know,
facing the camera, and.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
It sounds similar. You know, we were talking. I'm talking
to somebody on the phone, my wife.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Okay, Hello, yes, hello, Hi, I was just I was
My name is Jonathan, Yeah, And I saw this movie
that Laura was in from the late eighties.
Speaker 9 (19:54):
I don't know nothing about that. But okay, so what
is this about.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Then he came to the movie with your daughter, I
think when he when he went to be interviewed, and
she sat beside him while he was telling his story.
Speaker 9 (20:11):
This was thirty years ago.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Almost thirty years ago.
Speaker 9 (20:14):
Holy smoke. Oh wow, I don't know anything about this village.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
He was talking at the time about having to decide
with his doctor to become a woman.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
Yes, yes, somehow it didn't you know, he decided not
to not to do it. He changed That's why he
changed his name back to Robert.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And do you remember why he decided to change back.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
Well, he would get well, no, he would get up
and age and and he rather attracted two men.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
And you guys, you guys are still married after all
these years.
Speaker 9 (20:53):
We're still married. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
And nowadays, people, some of what he was talking about is.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
More Yeah, now it's more open than it was, like, uh,
thirty years ago. Now it's more open now.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (21:09):
You know what that you can't change the human mind.
You can't. You can never. You can't reverse the human mind.
If you're trying to fight the human mind and forget
about it, you can go crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I talk with Robert's wife for a while, and eventually
ask her what her daughter's name is, and she says
it's Tara. After the break, Tara, I take out Tara's number,
(21:53):
but before picking up the phone, I find myself worrying
about what to say. After all the years of wondering
what had become of her, now is my chance to
find out. All during our conversation, I keep just wanting
to say, how are you? Are you okay? But such
questions are hard to come right out and ask, even
to friends and family, let alone a perfect stranger. Tara
(22:16):
tells me she had no idea that such a video
even existed, and is reluctant to talk about that time.
But maybe she's a bit curious too, because when I
ask if we can meet up, although she's hesitant, she
says yes. I suggest meeting at a quiet place, and
since you can't talk at libraries and a cemetery would
have seemed plain creepy, I rented the conference room of
(22:38):
a local chain hotel. Oh, here we go. So Tara
liked the idea, but when she shows up, she seems
a little nervous. And so there's water.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I have my own water.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
It's okay, And I do my best to put her
at ease. Okay, so yes, but I still somehow feel
like I'm selling time shares in Orlando and this for you, right, Yeah.
Tara's now in her late thirties but looks younger. She
has an open and kind face and still has long,
(23:10):
straight brown hair. She looks a lot like the little
girl from the video, and as we talk, her face
seems to toggle between adult and child. She showed up
with her husband and some photographs.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
This was my first communion, and this is my father
just as a woman.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
He's looking like how you would put it, like kind
of like a like a fifties housewife or something.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
That was his mental picture of what, you know, he
wanted to look like as a woman. He grew up
in an orphanage, raised by the nuns that molded.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
His idea could look like.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, you know, And I told all my friends that
he was my aunt. I understood the situation, but I
never knew what to say. I was always walking on
eggshells because it was like do I say this? Do
I not say this?
Speaker 8 (24:12):
Like what's okay?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
What's not okay? That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Why do you think he brought you with him that
day to the video shoot.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I don't know. I think it was. I think it
was to use me as a tool to have somebody
to have sympathy for sympathy for him, Yes, because in
his mind, I guess, I mean, you know, I have
this beautiful, young, well behaved daughter, and I'm you know,
(25:06):
we're forced to live in this one room, We're forced
to live this way. He's forced to live in limbo,
and you know, all these things. I think it was.
I think it was a cry for help, and I
think he was using me as a tool in his
plea and cry for help.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
In the video, he refers to himself as as intersext.
So how did you how did you understand that? What
to mean from what.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I was always told was he had a medical condition.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
When Tara asks her father about his medical condition, it's
hard to get a clear answer. In the past few years,
he's been diagnosed with dementia, and so there's a lot
he just doesn't remember, and Tara ends up relying on
what she was told as a child.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Lately, in the last couple of years, you know, I
started to just question certain things about you know, how
this whole transition happened, and I did some research and
I found an article that was written by this doctor
from Germany.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
It's not just an article, it's a study conducted by
two German doctors over the course of twenty years, with
Tara's dad as its sole focus. It was published in
a journal called Archives of Sexual Behavior, and in it,
Tara's dad is diagnosed as having common syndrome, a rare
hormonal disorder that, among other symptoms, delays puberty or stops
(26:44):
it entirely. So if your male, this means your voice
never lowers, your body never grows hair. While the video
captures one moment in Tara's dad's life, the article presents
a portrait of his life since childhood, so alongside the
data on his hormone levels are details like how at
the orphanage he was caught spying on the girls and
(27:05):
as a punishment, was forced to dress as a girl.
Was also discharged from the Air Force for concealing female
clothes and his foot locker. The article also documents a
history of misdiagnoses, psychiatric hospitalizations, thwarted attempts at gender reassignment surgery,
and suicide attempts. He'd even set himself on fire. Throughout
(27:29):
his entire life, Tara's dad insisted his gender confusion owed
solely to the commons a physical hormonal condition. Nonetheless, the
doctors he was treated by labeled him with the mental
disorder transsexual, a diagnosis he violently rejected. It's also a
diagnosis that no longer even exists. The article states, she
(27:50):
always refused to consider herself as transsexual. As a result,
she found herself quote stuck in the middle. Because of
this stressful situation, she became emotionally even more disturbed. Tara's
dad was never able to get the life he wanted
or the treatment he needed. After reading the article, the
(28:11):
overwhelming sense I'm left with is that while things are
by no means perfect, the medical community's understanding of gender
has changed drastically, and societies has too. Had Tara's dad
been born twenty five years later, being quote stuck in
the middle might not have been the curse it felt
like back then, and perhaps he might not have experienced
(28:31):
quite so much suffering, and Tara might have been spared
having to witness so much suffering. In watching the video,
it doesn't feel as though you're being protected from any
kind of like thing that is being expressed.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
No, I mean I knew more about this stuff as
a young child than most kids now.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
And was that just a function of you say that
the apartment that your dad describes in the video is
like it's.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Just a room from I believe it was like twelve
by fourteen. Really, Yes, that's what I think the actual
size was. It's very small. I was right in the middle.
It was very hard for them to keep any types
of secrets from me, just because of the nature. There
wasn't any closed doors, there wasn't any escape.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
She remember seeing her father come home with a black
eye from the building he worked at as a doorman.
The other doorman had beaten them up and told him
to never come back.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
There were a lot of people that picked on him
abused him. I think it would have been better if
he probably moved away and started somewhere new with a
new life.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
So why did he stay. At the end of the article,
the author's hypothesized that living in between, rather than, as
they put it, quote a real woman, allowed Tyr's dad
to continue to live with his family. I wrote to
one of the article's authors to ask what that meant.
His explanation was simple. Nowadays, he wrote, we see many
transgender persons who stay together with their spouse and family.
(30:05):
You have to remember that this happened in the nineteen eighties.
If Tara's dad had undergone sex reassignment, he says, it
might have broken up the family, and family was very
important to him. Tara's dad was put into foster care
at age one and lived in an orphanage until he
was a teenager. So maybe this living all together in
one room, a communal bathroom down the hall Tara having
(30:28):
to sleep in the same twin bed as him was
the only way he knew to keep his own family together.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I mean, my parents were very supportive of me and
anything I wanted to do. I went through private school,
even though we had no money. My mother decided to
work saturdays doing their bingo in exchange for my tuition.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
She worked that out.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yes, yes, you know. The only thing I would say
that I lacked growing up in that kind of environment
was having my own sets of privacy. That is the
only thing that I really lacked.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
How did you negotiate that?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
When I was really young, I actually used to go
out into the hallway and they had outlets in the hallway,
and I would bring my stuff out in the hallway
and just kind of make my own little private little
even though you had people that passed by once in
a while, I still had quite a bit of privacy there.
We had at one point we had a small, little
portable TV. I brought that outside. I mean, I would
(31:37):
do whatever. I'd bring my blanket outside in the hallway.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And so is it happy memories?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Absolutely. For Thanksgiving, the tenants would sometimes set up a
table in the hallway so they could all eat together
like a family. Tara was one of the few kids
(32:05):
in the building, so people were often stopping by to
give her little gifts. Even the most experimental of short
videos can only show what lies within the frame, not
what lies outside of it. Neither Tara, her mother, nor
her father remembered the video until I reminded them the
video had been swallowed up by all of their other days,
(32:26):
some bad, some good. There's one last thing that bears
Mentioning about that article, Tara appears in it as well.
The authors write that in spite of the situation, Tara
appeared to be dealing quote exceptionally well. They also said
that to her parents, Tara was a major source of pride.
Tara and her husband are looking to buy a house,
(32:48):
and Tara says she'd like one with lots of space.
They plan on starting a family. When she was a kid,
Tara's family made a couple cross country road trips together.
They lasted almost the whole summer. She says that after
she left their shared room, went off to college and graduated,
she decided to do one last trip with them. She
says she was probably never going to have a chance
(33:09):
to do it again, which says a lot. It's the
kind of thing a happy family does. Chooses to be together,
chooses to be squeezed in close just because they want
to be. Now that the Ferners returned to its goodwill home,
(34:02):
now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage,
the posit this moment to do so if we imagine,
if we trapler Acid Heavyweight is hosted and produced by
(34:30):
me Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila holt Our.
Senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg and
Jorge just Special thanks to Emily Condon, Caitlin Kenny, Peter Clowney,
Michelle Harris, Doctor Susan Bolwaer at Yale Pediatric Ender Chronology,
Maxi Cohen, Jack Hit, Jack Turbin, Leda Drummond, Mario Falsetto,
Peter Rose and my beloved friend Jackie Cohen. The show
(34:54):
is mixed by Hailey Shaw, music by Christine Fellow's. Additional
music for the episode can be found on our website,
Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by
the Weaker Bands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad
music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on to Twitter
at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimbltmedia dot com.
We'll have a new episode next week. And if you're
(35:16):
a fan of Wiretap, the show I used to make
at the CBC, you can now find season six through
eleven on Earwolf's Howl app. Go to Howl dot fm
and sign up for a free seven day trial. Oh by.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Anger is my middle day.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Anger is my middle name.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Oh he Anger is my middle name.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Oh Anger Anger is my middle name.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
That was really pretty. Matthew Boll, lead audio engineer at
Gimblet Media. Thank you, what's your middle name? My name?
Middle name is Matthew well, what's your middle name, Matthew,
you don't have a middle name. No, that is my
middle name. You use your middle name as your first name. Yes,
you know what my middle name is.
Speaker 5 (36:53):
What?
Speaker 4 (36:53):
No, I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
I don't know. Stewart. That's nice.
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