Bruno

Discussion (3) ¬

1. 
   ronald

   March 5, 2016 at 12:46 am | #

   I have to admit that I don’t quite understand transsexualism (which doesn’t mean I have anything against it), because, at the risk of sounding disingenuous, as far as I can tell I don’t feel like a man *or* like a woman, I just feel like me.
2. 
   ronald

   March 6, 2016 at 3:19 pm | #

   Anyway, so, for it to have “not counted,” he was drunk at the time (making it “non-consensual” and thus “not count”) but “she” didn’t realize that (meaning that she didn’t KNOW it was “non-consensual” at the time), making it a very creepy awkward interlude that they both wanted to just forget all about and never speak of again. And since it thus “didn’t count,” Dije never mentioning it to the group didn’t make him a liar and even (from this perspective) constituted going out of his way to avoid embarrassing a friend.

   There. That took me less than two minutes. ;-)
3. 
   Pete Rogan

   March 6, 2016 at 7:24 pm | #

   Oh, for—!

   Unless you find yourself not feeling like the gender you were born into, you will find the entire concept alien — like not being purple with green spots, as (for example) you may feel is more natural to you. Most people don’t have this issue; they, like you, feel they are who they are.

   Discovering you are NOT who you feel you were meant to be — physically; emotionally you may already be there — is dislocating, to say the least. For a very long time we did not permit the very concept of gender identity to exist outside of the obvious physical manifestations. But times have changed, especially since the very public gender reassignment surgery of Christine Jorgenson in the 1950s. Suddenly the idea was out; and a number of people, more than you might be comfortable with, confronted the idea that they might indeed be a girl in a boy’s body. How, why, cannot be answered. But the heart knows its own, as we used to say, and to thine own self be true is still true when you have the equipment of Bruce Boxleitner (say) but the instincts and feelings of Sally Field (also say).

   Which is what happened to Judi. Physically a male, she had the feelings and sexual desires of a woman. She was coming to this realization when she met Dije, who, despite his arrogance and smug superiority, nonetheless is a tender and caring person romantically, and who felt an attraction to Judi despite her true feelings. And Judi, who probably likewise found him fascinating and compelling, let herself be seduced. And therein is the seed of the problem.

   Dije was attracted to Judi’s male physique and to some extent her vulnerability and personality. This was perfectly normal to him. But to Judi, having her first homosexual relationship likely fused her two selves into one resolution: She was attracted to Dije as a man, but, physically being a man herself, she was startled and probably more than a little repelled that this was the best her body could do. It very likely cemented her certainty that she was not a man attracted to men; she was a woman, psychically and emotionally, who wanted to love and be loved by men, but had been born a male instead. A revelation I’m sure to both of them, their sexual encounters clarified Judi’s actual needs and, alas for Dije, left him with the other end of that confusion — attracted to a man who was actually a woman, who was not at all pleased with what she had to do with the genitals she was born with to please him.

   Impasse. But both Dije and Judi realized the solution was gender reassignment, and with his help Judi made the difficult surgical and physical transformation into who she actually was — a straight woman who loved men. This had to be immensely difficult for Dije, who was losing a lover who couldn’t stand herself for a young woman who might still be tender toward him, but no longer in a form he found desirable. But he made the sacrifice because no one else was going to support her decision… and her happiness meant more to him than his own. And so he set her free, along her true path. And has pined for the he-in-the-she he gave up ever since. He still loves her — though, for his sake, he cannot. Physically not attracted, but emotionally bound to her still.

   He’s accepted that barrier but not the necessity of giving her up. Dije still loves Judi, not as a lost male but as a brave soul who left behind her ‘wrong’ body for the one that makes her feel complete. He’s compelled no less than she is, and this entraps him. Yes, they made love. Yes, Judi was then physically male. But she was a woman inside, and Dije realized this, and it got him across the knees. Because the woman-that-is-Judi came to him as a male, and he could no more separate his feelings for her than you can imagine what it’s like to feel you were born the wrong gender. He had made love to a woman, never mind the plumbing — and he still loves her.

   You can’t surgically separate your feelings for someone just because they made the decision to be physically someone else. Especially when that someone else is the person they feel they should have been from birth, and who finally, finally! — emerge as complete. How can you not still love him, or her, for becoming happier, and more themselves than ever before?

   Dije has made the very difficult decision to continue to love Judi but to never again be intimate with her. He led her to the Rainbow Bridge and she crossed and he cannot. So he remains, pining, deeply attached but more than physically separated — he not only cannot love her the way he wants, that perhaps she wants, but he is bound to keep her terrible secret, the transformation itself, poorly understood by the public and very much a lightning-rod for all sorts of bad and jealous feelings, not to mention a unique kind of xenophobia. All of which could be bad for Judi, professionally, personally, and worth her very life.

   But Dije, man of principle, cannot get over his feelings, and so he blurts to Bruno that Judi and he were once lovers, when he has said that only Sophia of all women had loved him, once. Hence the natural curiosity — exaggerated by Dije’s own sense of failed integrity, worsened by his realization of betrayal, drawing Bruno in to the heart of the mystery. Which centers, at last, back on Dije, whose importune comment began what could have been a costly avalanche of opprobrium and ruin — for Judi, not himself. And who has no one left to blame.

   Hence the tenderness of this scene, where Judi, brusquely, offers him the only absolution: Yes, Dije has in fact known another woman in his life. And that past has been left behind — by her. Dije can now be the wounded, the offended not offending party, the victim of his own feelings long ago. His integrity remains intact. So does Judi’s life. He will endure the hoots and catcalls because of his slip-up, which will feed his friends with juicy moments forever after, but he can stop feeling he must defend Judi even if it means, as it would, admitting she was not a woman the first time they went to bed together. Take it or leave it. And Dije, gratefully, snarkfully, takes it.

   It’s an intriguing look at the inside of the decision to stop being the wrong gender, and I have often felt the entire drama of Dije and Judi could use a fuller treatment, addressing just those issues that are so poignant and so out-of-reach for most people now. As a storyteller myself, I wonder about how this play might be staged… and as a reader, I point out that ‘Dije’ and ‘Judi’ are one letter away from being anagrams for each other, a relationship that is more than it now seems, and was never easy, or simple, or static. A Romeo and Juliet for our time, perhaps.

   Worth thinking about, I think.