The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [161]
She certainly didn’t want it. What happened was that she wrote a letter to her parents, and somebody saw the letter and picked it up and sold it to the papers for two hundred dollars. She went into hiding for about six months, then thought that since there was nothing she could do about it, she might as well capitalize on it. She did a very good job of capitalizing on it. But also in the capitalization process, she went on with her career, working at movie studios, where she was a film editor. As a result, she got to know all the big stars. I’ll never forget, one night I was taking care of her dog while she was gone and all of a sudden, at two o’clock in the morning, her phone rang and I rolled over, half awake, and this voice says, “Christine?” I said, “No, Christine’s not here. This is Joanna,” and he says, “This is Uncle Milty. Tell her I called.”
She was an absolutely wonderful human being. I think that there was a part of her that was very lonely because of things that she had gone through. She realized that she had very good friends in the world, but a lot were just her “friends” because of who she was. For the first four or five years she worked very hard trying to answer letters that came to her, people saying, “I’m like you,” and so forth. Then she came to the realization that there were a lot of crazy people out there, and she would help who she could help. She of course knew Harry Benjamin really well, Paul Walker, some of the folks at Hopkins, John Money.
She loved to party. She would have her “Christmas in July” party every year. She put up a fully decorated Christmas tree that would stay up till after Christmas, then come down. At least twice a month she’d have a big party at her house. When I got involved with her she made me part of her circle, and I would go to her parties. Of course there was a lot of drinking, and I don’t drink. At two o’clock in the morning she’d go into her bedroom and pass out and go to sleep. I’d go home and get up in the morning and go over and clean the house for her.
Q: Do you think she enjoyed her life?
I think she did. Even though there was a lot of pain in her life. I think she overall led a good life and had her good times and her bad times. The best of times and the worst of times. She chose to remember her good times. She wasted very little time on her bad times. She went to the colleges and universities and did her lectures. So did I, but I made a mistake because she got paid and Jude [Patton] and I went and did them for free. Eventually Jude stopped and I stopped. I still do one though, because I really like the professor. It’s at the Southern California Christian College, and he really prepares his class. They are all fundamentalist Christians, so it’s an opportunity to really go in and open minds. That’s probably the only reason I continue to do it.
Q: That leads to another thing I wanted to talk with you about: faith background and whether religion and spirituality are a source of nurturing or otherwise for transgendered people.
I think spirituality is a very key component to success. Of course, there is a big difference between spirituality and religion. At the program where I work as a consultant, one of the questions I ask people is, “What is your relationship with God?” But most take offense to it and they are like, “I don’t need God.” They were raised in a very fundamentalist environment, and it was shoved down their throat that what they were doing was sin, and they just don’t want to deal with it. My response is, “I don’t care what your religion is. I’m concerned about how you’ve dealt with it. If you’ve decided that you’re not going to deal with it,