Transcript

#3 Tara · Heavyweight

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. What's your favorite movie? I can't talk right now.
0:24
Speaker 2: I'm going out for lunch.
0:25
Speaker 1: Who are you going for lunch with?
0:28
Speaker 3: What?
0:29
Speaker 1: You stand still? You're The sound on the phone is terrible. Carol,
0:34
Speaker 1: my ex girlfriend, Carol? Is it okay? Do you really care?
0:38
Speaker 1: Let's say I said no. I don't you know it
0:41
Speaker 1: affects me. You're not sorry?
0:45
Speaker 4: Do you know?
0:45
Speaker 1: There are many of your ex boyfriends who I was
0:47
Speaker 1: fond of, and I don't keep in touch with them
0:50
Speaker 1: because I felt like it would be a disloyalty to you.
0:53
Speaker 1: Are you going to talk about me?
0:55
Speaker 5: Of course? I don't want you to.
0:58
Speaker 1: From here, all right, have a good lunch. What are
1:01
Speaker 1: you gonna order?
1:01
Speaker 5: I don't know what. Are we gonna know?
1:04
Speaker 1: What we're gonna eat? From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein
1:14
Speaker 1: and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Tara. During my freshman year,
1:30
Speaker 1: I wore black turtlenecks. They were meant to let people
1:33
Speaker 1: know I was an artist. It was easier than actually
1:36
Speaker 1: making art. I wore them so tight that the outline
1:39
Speaker 1: of my Adam's apple was made visible when I swallowed
1:42
Speaker 1: with excitement, and nothing excited me more than art. Hearing
1:47
Speaker 1: words like kirisciro and trompe lois was enough to set
1:51
Speaker 1: my adam's apple racing up and down, my turtleneck collar
1:54
Speaker 1: like an otter trapped and a sleeping bag. Aside from
1:59
Speaker 1: my own saliva, I also enjoyed swallowing espresso, and in
2:03
Speaker 1: the back row of my experimental film appreciation class, I
2:06
Speaker 1: swallowed oceans of the stuff. The back row was an
2:11
Speaker 1: ideal place to sit, as it was closest to the exit,
2:15
Speaker 1: so in case I had to get up and smoke
2:17
Speaker 1: a ghitan or indul ja panic attack about my future,
2:21
Speaker 1: I could do so unnoticed. Although I knew I was
2:25
Speaker 1: an artist, I did not know what kind, and so
2:28
Speaker 1: experimental film felt like a possible calling. I knew I
2:32
Speaker 1: could never make a movie movie like Raiders of the
2:35
Speaker 1: Lost Arc or Ishtar, but I could probably get away
2:38
Speaker 1: with making weird stuff, the kind of films that played
2:41
Speaker 1: on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at three in the morning
2:45
Speaker 1: and prompted my father to demand after several minutes in
2:48
Speaker 1: what the hell happened at a plot, so point a
2:51
Speaker 1: camera at a sleeping person for ten hours. I could
2:54
Speaker 1: totally do that in the end, though I only ever
3:02
Speaker 1: made one single film, a Super eight short that involved
3:06
Speaker 1: montages of swirling fans and clouds drifting across the sky
3:10
Speaker 1: and speed it up motion. It was all set to
3:13
Speaker 1: the progressively jazzy strains of Pat Metheni's seminal fusion album
3:17
Speaker 1: as Falls Wichita, So Falls, Wichita Falls. I named the
3:22
Speaker 1: film in Sensito. I can no longer recall why, but
3:27
Speaker 1: I still loved watching movies in class Window Water, Baby Moving,
3:31
Speaker 1: in which the director filmed his wife giving birth, and Mothlight,
3:35
Speaker 1: which looked like a white, scratchy film strip. But of
3:38
Speaker 1: all the films in film appreciation class that I appreciated,
3:42
Speaker 1: there's a scene from one video that I still think
3:45
Speaker 1: about twenty five years later. The premise of the video
3:49
Speaker 1: was this. In nineteen eighty six, the director put an
3:53
Speaker 1: ad in the village voice, asking people who were angry
3:56
Speaker 1: to come down to her studio and tell her why.
3:59
Speaker 1: The resulting video was simply titled Anger. I've never been
4:03
Speaker 1: able to find it again, but I remember it clearly.
4:06
Speaker 1: There were ranting punks, a murder who bragged about all
4:10
Speaker 1: the murders he'd committed, and victims of violence who laid
4:13
Speaker 1: out their plans for revenge. But the person I still
4:17
Speaker 1: think about all these years later is someone who didn't
4:19
Speaker 1: say anything at all. A little girl. She couldn't have
4:24
Speaker 1: been more than eight or nine. She sat silently watching
4:27
Speaker 1: her parent, who described herself as being intersext weep tears
4:31
Speaker 1: of anger and frustration over how hard her life was.
4:35
Speaker 1: Then the little girl, with her chin raised, stared directly
4:39
Speaker 1: into the camera, And this is what I remember so well,
4:43
Speaker 1: meeting her gaze and how complicit I felt to be
4:45
Speaker 1: watching her. Why would the woman have brought along a
4:49
Speaker 1: child that day to hear all this? From the look
4:51
Speaker 1: on the little girl's face, it was hard to tell
4:53
Speaker 1: what affect these words were having on her. And over
4:56
Speaker 1: the past twenty five years, every once in a while,
5:00
Speaker 1: I find myself worrying about what might have become of
5:02
Speaker 1: this little girl, and wondering if maybe finding her would
5:06
Speaker 1: put my mind to rest. I've never been able to
5:12
Speaker 1: talk about it with anyone, because no one I know
5:15
Speaker 1: has ever seen the video. Lately, I've been trying to
5:18
Speaker 1: find it online, but because I don't remember the director's name,
5:22
Speaker 1: it's been virtually impossible to google. When I punch in
5:25
Speaker 1: anger plus video plus eighties, my search yields a heavy
5:29
Speaker 1: metal music video for a song called Anger. In it,
5:33
Speaker 1: a shirtless viking with a spiral perm wields a cardboard sword.
5:44
Speaker 1: My middle name is Stewart. I email old film school friends,
5:49
Speaker 1: but none of them know what I'm talking about. Then
5:51
Speaker 1: one night I hear back from a retired professor. God, yes,
5:55
Speaker 1: he writes, even with failing memory, I do believe I
5:59
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. He sends a link to
6:02
Speaker 1: the video on YouTube, where it sits with few views
6:05
Speaker 1: and not a single comment. I press play, and I'm shocked,
6:09
Speaker 1: after all these years by how much I remember. For
6:13
Speaker 1: all you vidiots out there, this one's for you. Step off, yuppies,
6:18
Speaker 1: step off. It starts with a group of skinheads and
6:21
Speaker 1: punks giving the camera the finger. Back in the eighties,
6:24
Speaker 1: giving a camera the finger was a big thing, junk,
6:28
Speaker 1: and I'm proud of it. There's the wrongfully accused police
6:31
Speaker 1: detective forced out of his unit amid scandal.
6:34
Speaker 3: I'm angry enough right now that if I saw something
6:36
Speaker 3: happening in the street possibility, I wouldn't do a goddamn
6:39
Speaker 3: thing about it, because it's done on my fucking business.
6:42
Speaker 3: You let another guy handle it. I was never liked
6:44
Speaker 3: that I loved what I was doing. Now I wouldn't
6:47
Speaker 3: do shit.
6:49
Speaker 1: There's the ethereal young woman wearing a pink sweatshirt with ducks,
6:52
Speaker 1: who speaks of being attacked at knife point and how
6:55
Speaker 1: a month later her boyfriend left her.
6:58
Speaker 6: Everything you do to someone does eventually come back to
7:00
Speaker 6: everything you do. All actions have reactions, And if I didn't.
7:04
Speaker 1: Believe that, I would have kissed the detrain a long
7:06
Speaker 1: time ago. There's the artist couple, once in love but
7:09
Speaker 1: now filled with raw hatred for each other, who, because
7:12
Speaker 1: of the realities of Manhattan real estate, were forced to
7:15
Speaker 1: live as roommates in a small artist's.
7:18
Speaker 7: Last night's Can I speak now?
7:22
Speaker 2: Can I please speak?
7:23
Speaker 1: What are you asking permission for?
7:24
Speaker 8: Yourn?
7:29
Speaker 1: Then the scene I've not been able to forget, the
7:32
Speaker 1: weeping woman and her little girl.
7:35
Speaker 7: I went to an drowcinologist, and I found out too
7:38
Speaker 7: many of the tests that they did that I was
7:41
Speaker 7: biologically a woman and a man at the same time
7:44
Speaker 7: I was intersexed.
7:46
Speaker 1: In her powder blue knee length skirt and pearl necklace,
7:49
Speaker 1: she looks to be out of an entirely different era,
7:52
Speaker 1: like a nun from the fifties. On her day off.
7:55
Speaker 1: She sits on the stool wringing her hands.
7:59
Speaker 7: After two years of constantly crying night after night after night,
8:04
Speaker 7: and my wife being upset, and my child being upset,
8:09
Speaker 7: and the constant harassment from people on the job, I
8:17
Speaker 7: became so helpless, and finally, after seeing many doctors to
8:26
Speaker 7: try to have some way to have it corrected, it
8:30
Speaker 7: was an impossibility, and it was a question of being
8:34
Speaker 7: a circus for the society or choosing to be a woman.
8:41
Speaker 3: And I.
8:44
Speaker 4: Thought at that time that it was much.
8:48
Speaker 1: Easier for me to be a woman. As she speaks,
8:54
Speaker 1: the camera pans to the right, and sitting beside her
8:58
Speaker 1: is the little girl. She's wearing a purple dress, her
9:01
Speaker 1: long brown hair pulled back with a headband. She sits
9:05
Speaker 1: there as though absorbing radiation. It's hard to tell what
9:08
Speaker 1: she thinking. Yeah, some of what the woman says is
9:20
Speaker 1: hard to follow. She doesn't want sex reassignment, but she
9:23
Speaker 1: doesn't want to live in the middle.
9:26
Speaker 4: I know about I'm not married to my wife anymore.
9:31
Speaker 4: We still live together as sisters the child, but it's
9:36
Speaker 4: a smaller than nine by twelve roup for three of us.
9:45
Speaker 4: I think that I've worked so hard.
9:48
Speaker 8: To try to make a sing sense out of my life,
9:52
Speaker 8: only to wind up at the bottom.
10:08
Speaker 1: Seeing the video still makes me feel as powerless as
10:11
Speaker 1: it did all those years ago. What had their life
10:14
Speaker 1: been like in that nine x twelve room? And where
10:18
Speaker 1: was the little girl?
10:19
Speaker 5: Now?
10:20
Speaker 1: The video, at least the online version, ends just before
10:24
Speaker 1: the credits begin, so there's no way to know who
10:26
Speaker 1: the weeping woman and the little girl were. But the
10:29
Speaker 1: director's name was there, Maxie Cohen, And it turns out
10:34
Speaker 1: she's not hard to find. Okay, oh hi, it's Jonathan.
10:43
Speaker 1: I didn't get that, but uh okay. Maxie's place was
10:48
Speaker 1: just a subway ride away. It turns out that Maxie
10:51
Speaker 1: hasn't thought about the movie in years and was surprised
10:54
Speaker 1: by my interest. I guess I assumed an experimental video
10:58
Speaker 1: director's place would be piled from Florida ceiling with towers
11:01
Speaker 1: of alt publications, possess a bathtub overflowing with bicycle parts
11:06
Speaker 1: for future art projects, you know, gritty. But Maxie's place
11:12
Speaker 1: is fancy. I'm greeted at the door by young interns
11:16
Speaker 1: who inform me that Maxie will be with me in
11:18
Speaker 1: a moment. In a moment, well, la di da. It
11:22
Speaker 1: seems I've caught them just before lunch in the kitchenette,
11:26
Speaker 1: a meal of kle and beats is being prepared. Maybe
11:29
Speaker 1: I should have become an experimental film director after all. Oh,
11:35
Speaker 1: Maxie still lives and works in the same Soho studio
11:38
Speaker 1: where she filled Anger thirty years ago.
11:40
Speaker 6: Well, at first they set up a studio somewhere else
11:42
Speaker 6: because I didn't know if I wanted all these angry
11:44
Speaker 6: people in my house. But yeah, I just asked people,
11:47
Speaker 6: what made the mank what were they angry about? That
11:50
Speaker 6: was really all I asked. And I think the people
11:53
Speaker 6: that really responded were people who were deeply troubled.
11:57
Speaker 1: I asked her if she's ever followed up with any
11:59
Speaker 1: of them, Not.
12:01
Speaker 6: Really, except about a year later or sometime later. Maybe
12:05
Speaker 6: it's a year or two later. The commissioning editor from
12:09
Speaker 6: Channel four in London saw the piece and he was
12:13
Speaker 6: so distraught that I had made this film. And I
12:16
Speaker 6: remember the producer from Channel four thinking I was totally
12:19
Speaker 6: irresponsible that I hadn't kept He wanted to know what
12:22
Speaker 6: happened to that little girl.
12:25
Speaker 1: This sound is an audible gasp. I hadn't told Maxie
12:29
Speaker 1: that the reason I'd come to see her was specifically
12:32
Speaker 1: to ask about the little girl. And let's back up.
12:41
Speaker 1: I have Maxie go back to the day of the
12:42
Speaker 1: shoot and tell me what she remembers about the little girl.
12:46
Speaker 6: She just looked at her face while her mother talked,
12:49
Speaker 6: her father talked. It all went in and I was
12:56
Speaker 6: really concerned about her hearing all of this, but her
13:02
Speaker 6: parent said no, no, no, keep her in the room
13:06
Speaker 6: like she was just fine there. Now, this is this
13:09
Speaker 6: is the only person that I did not talk to
13:12
Speaker 6: before I shot. And I don't even know how it happened,
13:16
Speaker 6: because all of a sudden, somebody showed up on location
13:20
Speaker 6: the day that we were shooting, and I had no
13:25
Speaker 6: idea what I was in for.
13:27
Speaker 1: So you said that it was a guy from the
13:31
Speaker 1: BBC who got in touch with you. Was curious about
13:35
Speaker 1: this little girl.
13:37
Speaker 6: He was so disdrawt after watching it, and he why
13:43
Speaker 6: didn't I keep up with her and what has happened
13:45
Speaker 6: to her? And really made me feel that it was
13:50
Speaker 6: my responsibility to do that.
13:52
Speaker 1: How long ago was this that he got in touch
13:54
Speaker 1: with you?
13:55
Speaker 6: Oh, this was maybe a year or two after it
13:57
Speaker 6: was broadcast.
13:57
Speaker 1: It was still the late eadies, was still the late eadies.
13:59
Speaker 6: Okay, So I tracked her down.
14:05
Speaker 1: And what Maxie learned wasn't very much. The woman was
14:08
Speaker 1: getting used to wearing glouses, and the little girl had
14:11
Speaker 1: just gotten a bicycle. And at the time, how did
14:14
Speaker 1: you get into touch with them?
14:17
Speaker 6: I guess I have their phone number, which I could
14:19
Speaker 6: still possibly have if anybody still has the same phone
14:22
Speaker 6: as they had in nineteen eighty six.
14:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, thirty years later, we don't even have phones anymore.
14:28
Speaker 6: Right, that's true.
14:31
Speaker 1: But you have that information.
14:32
Speaker 6: I probably do somewhere.
14:34
Speaker 1: Because you want to track her down. I don't really
14:37
Speaker 1: want to. Yeah. When I saw it all those years ago,
14:41
Speaker 1: she she stayed with me.
14:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, maybe next week I'll have the time to look.
14:50
Speaker 1: You still have that stuff?
14:51
Speaker 6: I might? I might, I do tend to.
14:54
Speaker 1: I mean I went through one cleaning uh huh.
14:57
Speaker 6: And I can't remember if I got rid of it
14:59
Speaker 6: or kept it so I could look.
15:02
Speaker 1: Is that a big undertaking to find it? Yeah?
15:05
Speaker 6: All right, well let's see. Maybe if let's see what
15:07
Speaker 6: time it is, maybe we can no, I could go down.
15:10
Speaker 1: I could go down.
15:11
Speaker 6: We could go down, and I could see if it's
15:12
Speaker 6: easier or not.
15:25
Speaker 1: The door onto there's a lesson here in the importance
15:37
Speaker 1: of archiving, we would stay to New York. You know,
15:40
Speaker 1: where do you put it all? Maxie's basement locker is
15:43
Speaker 1: filled from top to bottom, and a thirty year old
15:45
Speaker 1: phone number unless it's been inscribed on a block of
15:48
Speaker 1: asbestos and Maxi's up for a cleansing fire, doesn't seem
15:52
Speaker 1: likely to be found. Nevertheless, we go through boxes, some
15:56
Speaker 1: marked and some not.
15:58
Speaker 6: You know, now that I just think about it, the
16:00
Speaker 6: releases would have people's names and numbers on them, right.
16:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we search through folder after folder for release
16:08
Speaker 1: forms signed in nineteen eighty six. It isn't looking hopeful,
16:12
Speaker 1: but then.
16:13
Speaker 6: There's so much stuff.
16:14
Speaker 1: This brings back anger.
16:16
Speaker 6: Oh maybe here's are pieces.
16:18
Speaker 1: Okay, we even find the information for those yuppie hating punks.
16:23
Speaker 1: Such neat handwriting for punks.
16:25
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the woman whose name is Laura, that's the
16:29
Speaker 6: woman who's intersext.
16:31
Speaker 1: Is there a phone number there? There is? Wow? This
16:35
Speaker 1: sound wow is the sound of my amazement. Maxi gives
16:45
Speaker 1: me the numbers of everyone in the video. The number
16:49
Speaker 1: you dialed is not in servant. The number you dialed
16:52
Speaker 1: is not in service. The number you have dialed is unallocated.
16:56
Speaker 1: I love that unallocated guy. Unsurprisingly, every single number is
17:01
Speaker 1: disconnected except for one.
17:07
Speaker 5: Hello.
17:08
Speaker 1: Hello, is there a Laura there, Robert. No, a Laura.
17:14
Speaker 1: That's who I'm calling for.
17:18
Speaker 5: That's you. No, I'm calling on now Hello.
17:25
Speaker 1: Yes, Hello, I was looking for a Laura. Oh that's you. Yes, Wow, Okay.
17:33
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Goldstein. And I watched a short
17:37
Speaker 1: movie that you were in from many years ago, from
17:41
Speaker 1: the late eighties.
17:42
Speaker 5: It's possible that. I mean, it's like I'm seventy six
17:45
Speaker 5: years old now.
17:47
Speaker 1: Well, it makes sense because I think in the in
17:50
Speaker 1: the short film that I saw, you were forty or so.
17:55
Speaker 1: As I continue to talk about the video, it doesn't
17:57
Speaker 1: seem to evoke any memory. For the duration of the conversation.
18:01
Speaker 1: Laura acts like getting a call about an interview from
18:03
Speaker 1: thirty years ago is all in a day's work, because
18:06
Speaker 1: I called you just now thinking there's no way that
18:09
Speaker 1: this person is still going to be at this phone number.
18:12
Speaker 5: Yep. People are still live in the same place too.
18:15
Speaker 1: You're kidding. No, what isn't the same is that Laura
18:21
Speaker 1: is now Robert again?
18:23
Speaker 3: Yeah?
18:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, I just life keeps going
18:25
Speaker 5: on and on. I just you know, I go with
18:27
Speaker 5: the flow of things. And that's just.
18:31
Speaker 1: Wait a second, because okay, in that movie, you had
18:34
Speaker 1: said that you had made the decision to live as
18:36
Speaker 1: a as a woman.
18:37
Speaker 5: Right, and now I just now I live as a male.
18:41
Speaker 1: Mall when did you when? When did that change occur?
18:46
Speaker 5: Well, that was maybe a couple of years ago already.
18:51
Speaker 1: It was only a couple of years ago that you
18:53
Speaker 1: that you why.
18:55
Speaker 5: I don't know, because that's the way my life was,
18:57
Speaker 5: and I, you know, things keep changing and everything, and
19:00
Speaker 5: I just made certain decisions and that was it.
19:05
Speaker 1: Let's recall that this question of gender was once so
19:07
Speaker 1: crushing that Robert couldn't even talk about it without breaking down,
19:12
Speaker 1: and now he seems surprisingly at peace. You showed up
19:16
Speaker 1: with your daughter, do you remember, Well, not.
19:22
Speaker 5: That I don't even know, but it's possible.
19:25
Speaker 1: You were sitting on a stool talking to the you know,
19:29
Speaker 1: facing the camera, and.
19:30
Speaker 5: It sounds similar. You know, we were talking. I'm talking
19:34
Speaker 5: to somebody on the phone, my wife.
19:40
Speaker 1: Okay, Hello, yes, hello, Hi, I was just I was
19:47
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan, Yeah, And I saw this movie
19:51
Speaker 1: that Laura was in from the late eighties.
19:54
Speaker 9: I don't know nothing about that. But okay, so what
19:57
Speaker 9: is this about.
19:58
Speaker 1: Then he came to the movie with your daughter, I
20:02
Speaker 1: think when he when he went to be interviewed, and
20:06
Speaker 1: she sat beside him while he was telling his story.
20:11
Speaker 9: This was thirty years ago.
20:12
Speaker 1: Almost thirty years ago.
20:14
Speaker 9: Holy smoke. Oh wow, I don't know anything about this village.
20:22
Speaker 1: He was talking at the time about having to decide
20:27
Speaker 1: with his doctor to become a woman.
20:30
Speaker 9: Yes, yes, somehow it didn't you know, he decided not
20:35
Speaker 9: to not to do it. He changed That's why he
20:37
Speaker 9: changed his name back to Robert.
20:40
Speaker 1: And do you remember why he decided to change back.
20:42
Speaker 9: Well, he would get well, no, he would get up
20:44
Speaker 9: and age and and he rather attracted two men.
20:50
Speaker 1: And you guys, you guys are still married after all
20:52
Speaker 1: these years.
20:53
Speaker 9: We're still married. Yes. Yeah.
20:55
Speaker 1: And nowadays, people, some of what he was talking about is.
21:00
Speaker 9: More Yeah, now it's more open than it was, like, uh,
21:05
Speaker 9: thirty years ago. Now it's more open now.
21:07
Speaker 6: Yeah.
21:09
Speaker 9: You know what that you can't change the human mind.
21:13
Speaker 9: You can't. You can never. You can't reverse the human mind.
21:15
Speaker 9: If you're trying to fight the human mind and forget
21:17
Speaker 9: about it, you can go crazy.
21:25
Speaker 1: I talk with Robert's wife for a while, and eventually
21:28
Speaker 1: ask her what her daughter's name is, and she says
21:31
Speaker 1: it's Tara. After the break, Tara, I take out Tara's number,
21:53
Speaker 1: but before picking up the phone, I find myself worrying
21:56
Speaker 1: about what to say. After all the years of wondering
21:59
Speaker 1: what had become of her, now is my chance to
22:02
Speaker 1: find out. All during our conversation, I keep just wanting
22:06
Speaker 1: to say, how are you? Are you okay? But such
22:10
Speaker 1: questions are hard to come right out and ask, even
22:12
Speaker 1: to friends and family, let alone a perfect stranger. Tara
22:16
Speaker 1: tells me she had no idea that such a video
22:18
Speaker 1: even existed, and is reluctant to talk about that time.
22:22
Speaker 1: But maybe she's a bit curious too, because when I
22:25
Speaker 1: ask if we can meet up, although she's hesitant, she
22:28
Speaker 1: says yes. I suggest meeting at a quiet place, and
22:31
Speaker 1: since you can't talk at libraries and a cemetery would
22:34
Speaker 1: have seemed plain creepy, I rented the conference room of
22:38
Speaker 1: a local chain hotel. Oh, here we go. So Tara
22:42
Speaker 1: liked the idea, but when she shows up, she seems
22:45
Speaker 1: a little nervous. And so there's water.
22:47
Speaker 2: I have my own water.
22:48
Speaker 1: It's okay, And I do my best to put her
22:50
Speaker 1: at ease. Okay, so yes, but I still somehow feel
22:59
Speaker 1: like I'm selling time shares in Orlando and this for you, right, Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 1: Tara's now in her late thirties but looks younger. She
23:08
Speaker 1: has an open and kind face and still has long,
23:10
Speaker 1: straight brown hair. She looks a lot like the little
23:13
Speaker 1: girl from the video, and as we talk, her face
23:15
Speaker 1: seems to toggle between adult and child. She showed up
23:19
Speaker 1: with her husband and some photographs.
23:22
Speaker 2: This was my first communion, and this is my father
23:29
Speaker 2: just as a woman.
23:31
Speaker 1: He's looking like how you would put it, like kind
23:35
Speaker 1: of like a like a fifties housewife or something.
23:38
Speaker 8: You know.
23:39
Speaker 2: That was his mental picture of what, you know, he
23:43
Speaker 2: wanted to look like as a woman. He grew up
23:46
Speaker 2: in an orphanage, raised by the nuns that molded.
23:51
Speaker 1: His idea could look like.
23:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, And I told all my friends that
23:59
Speaker 2: he was my aunt. I understood the situation, but I
24:05
Speaker 2: never knew what to say. I was always walking on
24:08
Speaker 2: eggshells because it was like do I say this? Do
24:11
Speaker 2: I not say this?
24:12
Speaker 8: Like what's okay?
24:14
Speaker 2: What's not okay? That kind of thing.
24:27
Speaker 1: Why do you think he brought you with him that
24:30
Speaker 1: day to the video shoot.
24:40
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it was. I think it
24:45
Speaker 2: was to use me as a tool to have somebody
24:48
Speaker 2: to have sympathy for sympathy for him, Yes, because in
24:54
Speaker 2: his mind, I guess, I mean, you know, I have
24:59
Speaker 2: this beautiful, young, well behaved daughter, and I'm you know,
25:06
Speaker 2: we're forced to live in this one room, We're forced
25:09
Speaker 2: to live this way. He's forced to live in limbo,
25:12
Speaker 2: and you know, all these things. I think it was.
25:15
Speaker 2: I think it was a cry for help, and I
25:17
Speaker 2: think he was using me as a tool in his
25:23
Speaker 2: plea and cry for help.
25:26
Speaker 1: In the video, he refers to himself as as intersext.
25:32
Speaker 1: So how did you how did you understand that? What
25:38
Speaker 1: to mean from what.
25:38
Speaker 2: I was always told was he had a medical condition.
25:43
Speaker 1: When Tara asks her father about his medical condition, it's
25:46
Speaker 1: hard to get a clear answer. In the past few years,
25:49
Speaker 1: he's been diagnosed with dementia, and so there's a lot
25:52
Speaker 1: he just doesn't remember, and Tara ends up relying on
25:55
Speaker 1: what she was told as a child.
25:58
Speaker 2: Lately, in the last couple of years, you know, I
26:00
Speaker 2: started to just question certain things about you know, how
26:05
Speaker 2: this whole transition happened, and I did some research and
26:12
Speaker 2: I found an article that was written by this doctor
26:17
Speaker 2: from Germany.
26:21
Speaker 1: It's not just an article, it's a study conducted by
26:25
Speaker 1: two German doctors over the course of twenty years, with
26:28
Speaker 1: Tara's dad as its sole focus. It was published in
26:31
Speaker 1: a journal called Archives of Sexual Behavior, and in it,
26:36
Speaker 1: Tara's dad is diagnosed as having common syndrome, a rare
26:39
Speaker 1: hormonal disorder that, among other symptoms, delays puberty or stops
26:44
Speaker 1: it entirely. So if your male, this means your voice
26:48
Speaker 1: never lowers, your body never grows hair. While the video
26:52
Speaker 1: captures one moment in Tara's dad's life, the article presents
26:55
Speaker 1: a portrait of his life since childhood, so alongside the
26:59
Speaker 1: data on his hormone levels are details like how at
27:02
Speaker 1: the orphanage he was caught spying on the girls and
27:05
Speaker 1: as a punishment, was forced to dress as a girl.
27:09
Speaker 1: Was also discharged from the Air Force for concealing female
27:12
Speaker 1: clothes and his foot locker. The article also documents a
27:17
Speaker 1: history of misdiagnoses, psychiatric hospitalizations, thwarted attempts at gender reassignment surgery,
27:23
Speaker 1: and suicide attempts. He'd even set himself on fire. Throughout
27:29
Speaker 1: his entire life, Tara's dad insisted his gender confusion owed
27:33
Speaker 1: solely to the commons a physical hormonal condition. Nonetheless, the
27:38
Speaker 1: doctors he was treated by labeled him with the mental
27:41
Speaker 1: disorder transsexual, a diagnosis he violently rejected. It's also a
27:46
Speaker 1: diagnosis that no longer even exists. The article states, she
27:50
Speaker 1: always refused to consider herself as transsexual. As a result,
27:55
Speaker 1: she found herself quote stuck in the middle. Because of
27:58
Speaker 1: this stressful situation, she became emotionally even more disturbed. Tara's
28:04
Speaker 1: dad was never able to get the life he wanted
28:07
Speaker 1: or the treatment he needed. After reading the article, the
28:11
Speaker 1: overwhelming sense I'm left with is that while things are
28:14
Speaker 1: by no means perfect, the medical community's understanding of gender
28:18
Speaker 1: has changed drastically, and societies has too. Had Tara's dad
28:23
Speaker 1: been born twenty five years later, being quote stuck in
28:26
Speaker 1: the middle might not have been the curse it felt
28:28
Speaker 1: like back then, and perhaps he might not have experienced
28:31
Speaker 1: quite so much suffering, and Tara might have been spared
28:35
Speaker 1: having to witness so much suffering. In watching the video,
28:40
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel as though you're being protected from any
28:44
Speaker 1: kind of like thing that is being expressed.
28:47
Speaker 2: No, I mean I knew more about this stuff as
28:50
Speaker 2: a young child than most kids now.
28:52
Speaker 1: And was that just a function of you say that
28:55
Speaker 1: the apartment that your dad describes in the video is
28:59
Speaker 1: like it's.
28:59
Speaker 2: Just a room from I believe it was like twelve
29:03
Speaker 2: by fourteen. Really, Yes, that's what I think the actual
29:07
Speaker 2: size was. It's very small. I was right in the middle.
29:11
Speaker 2: It was very hard for them to keep any types
29:13
Speaker 2: of secrets from me, just because of the nature. There
29:17
Speaker 2: wasn't any closed doors, there wasn't any escape.
29:22
Speaker 1: She remember seeing her father come home with a black
29:24
Speaker 1: eye from the building he worked at as a doorman.
29:27
Speaker 1: The other doorman had beaten them up and told him
29:29
Speaker 1: to never come back.
29:31
Speaker 2: There were a lot of people that picked on him
29:34
Speaker 2: abused him. I think it would have been better if
29:36
Speaker 2: he probably moved away and started somewhere new with a
29:40
Speaker 2: new life.
29:42
Speaker 1: So why did he stay. At the end of the article,
29:45
Speaker 1: the author's hypothesized that living in between, rather than, as
29:49
Speaker 1: they put it, quote a real woman, allowed Tyr's dad
29:52
Speaker 1: to continue to live with his family. I wrote to
29:55
Speaker 1: one of the article's authors to ask what that meant.
29:57
Speaker 1: His explanation was simple. Nowadays, he wrote, we see many
30:01
Speaker 1: transgender persons who stay together with their spouse and family.
30:05
Speaker 1: You have to remember that this happened in the nineteen eighties.
30:09
Speaker 1: If Tara's dad had undergone sex reassignment, he says, it
30:12
Speaker 1: might have broken up the family, and family was very
30:15
Speaker 1: important to him. Tara's dad was put into foster care
30:19
Speaker 1: at age one and lived in an orphanage until he
30:21
Speaker 1: was a teenager. So maybe this living all together in
30:25
Speaker 1: one room, a communal bathroom down the hall Tara having
30:28
Speaker 1: to sleep in the same twin bed as him was
30:30
Speaker 1: the only way he knew to keep his own family together.
30:34
Speaker 2: I mean, my parents were very supportive of me and
30:39
Speaker 2: anything I wanted to do. I went through private school,
30:44
Speaker 2: even though we had no money. My mother decided to
30:47
Speaker 2: work saturdays doing their bingo in exchange for my tuition.
30:52
Speaker 1: She worked that out.
30:53
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you know. The only thing I would say
30:59
Speaker 2: that I lacked growing up in that kind of environment
31:04
Speaker 2: was having my own sets of privacy. That is the
31:08
Speaker 2: only thing that I really lacked.
31:11
Speaker 1: How did you negotiate that?
31:13
Speaker 2: When I was really young, I actually used to go
31:16
Speaker 2: out into the hallway and they had outlets in the hallway,
31:19
Speaker 2: and I would bring my stuff out in the hallway
31:23
Speaker 2: and just kind of make my own little private little
31:25
Speaker 2: even though you had people that passed by once in
31:28
Speaker 2: a while, I still had quite a bit of privacy there.
31:31
Speaker 2: We had at one point we had a small, little
31:33
Speaker 2: portable TV. I brought that outside. I mean, I would
31:37
Speaker 2: do whatever. I'd bring my blanket outside in the hallway.
31:42
Speaker 1: And so is it happy memories?
31:44
Speaker 4: Yeah?
31:44
Speaker 1: Absolutely. For Thanksgiving, the tenants would sometimes set up a
31:59
Speaker 1: table in the hallway so they could all eat together
32:03
Speaker 1: like a family. Tara was one of the few kids
32:05
Speaker 1: in the building, so people were often stopping by to
32:09
Speaker 1: give her little gifts. Even the most experimental of short
32:13
Speaker 1: videos can only show what lies within the frame, not
32:16
Speaker 1: what lies outside of it. Neither Tara, her mother, nor
32:20
Speaker 1: her father remembered the video until I reminded them the
32:24
Speaker 1: video had been swallowed up by all of their other days,
32:26
Speaker 1: some bad, some good. There's one last thing that bears
32:30
Speaker 1: Mentioning about that article, Tara appears in it as well.
32:34
Speaker 1: The authors write that in spite of the situation, Tara
32:37
Speaker 1: appeared to be dealing quote exceptionally well. They also said
32:41
Speaker 1: that to her parents, Tara was a major source of pride.
32:45
Speaker 1: Tara and her husband are looking to buy a house,
32:48
Speaker 1: and Tara says she'd like one with lots of space.
32:51
Speaker 1: They plan on starting a family. When she was a kid,
32:54
Speaker 1: Tara's family made a couple cross country road trips together.
32:58
Speaker 1: They lasted almost the whole summer. She says that after
33:01
Speaker 1: she left their shared room, went off to college and graduated,
33:04
Speaker 1: she decided to do one last trip with them. She
33:07
Speaker 1: says she was probably never going to have a chance
33:09
Speaker 1: to do it again, which says a lot. It's the
33:13
Speaker 1: kind of thing a happy family does. Chooses to be together,
33:17
Speaker 1: chooses to be squeezed in close just because they want
33:20
Speaker 1: to be. Now that the Ferners returned to its goodwill home,
34:02
Speaker 1: now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage,
34:07
Speaker 1: the posit this moment to do so if we imagine,
34:14
Speaker 1: if we trapler Acid Heavyweight is hosted and produced by
34:30
Speaker 1: me Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila holt Our.
34:34
Speaker 1: Senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg and
34:37
Speaker 1: Jorge just Special thanks to Emily Condon, Caitlin Kenny, Peter Clowney,
34:41
Speaker 1: Michelle Harris, Doctor Susan Bolwaer at Yale Pediatric Ender Chronology,
34:46
Speaker 1: Maxi Cohen, Jack Hit, Jack Turbin, Leda Drummond, Mario Falsetto,
34:49
Speaker 1: Peter Rose and my beloved friend Jackie Cohen. The show
34:54
Speaker 1: is mixed by Hailey Shaw, music by Christine Fellow's. Additional
34:57
Speaker 1: music for the episode can be found on our website,
34:59
Speaker 1: Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by
35:03
Speaker 1: the Weaker Bands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad
35:06
Speaker 1: music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on to Twitter
35:09
Speaker 1: at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimbltmedia dot com.
35:13
Speaker 1: We'll have a new episode next week. And if you're
35:16
Speaker 1: a fan of Wiretap, the show I used to make
35:18
Speaker 1: at the CBC, you can now find season six through
35:21
Speaker 1: eleven on Earwolf's Howl app. Go to Howl dot fm
35:25
Speaker 1: and sign up for a free seven day trial. Oh by.
36:02
Speaker 2: Anger is my middle day.
36:10
Speaker 1: Anger is my middle name.
36:14
Speaker 2: Oh he Anger is my middle name.
36:22
Speaker 7: Oh Anger Anger is my middle name.
36:34
Speaker 1: That was really pretty. Matthew Boll, lead audio engineer at
36:37
Speaker 1: Gimblet Media. Thank you, what's your middle name? My name?
36:43
Speaker 1: Middle name is Matthew well, what's your middle name, Matthew,
36:47
Speaker 1: you don't have a middle name. No, that is my
36:48
Speaker 1: middle name. You use your middle name as your first name. Yes,
36:52
Speaker 1: you know what my middle name is.
36:53
Speaker 5: What?
36:53
Speaker 4: No, I don't.
36:54
Speaker 1: I don't know. Stewart. That's nice.