I first met Amy when I was working at an arts college in 2000. For months, I had been the only lesbian in the office, and then one day Amy showed up and I wasn’t the only one anymore. Of course we started talking and actually hit it off. I hung out with Amy and her girlfriend many times and they were big supporters of my music—I could always count on them to be at my shows. I even wrote a song inspired by a conversation I had with Amy.
Amy was a very talented graphic designer and Web site administrator. She was very smart and thoughtful—the kind of friend you can count on. But I always felt like something was off. I sensed some kind of depression. We talked about a lot of things that close friends do—girls, moods, jobs, our childhoods—but sometimes it seemed like Amy was far away.
In 2002, I moved to Nashville; I said goodbye to Amy and honestly thought I would never see her again.
Flash forward to 2005. I returned to the Bay Area for good and began looking up all my old friends, so obviously, I had to find her. I called a mutual friend and she gave me Amy’s new info and then told me, “But just so you know, Amy is now Chris.”
That might be a shocker to most people, but I’ve been in the gay community for a while and did my master’s thesis on gender and transsexualism, so at least I knew what she was talking about. I had read about it and studied it and known some people, but I had never had a close friend actually transition.
I didn’t know what to expect when I saw Chris. At that point, he seemed to occupy a space between male and female. I asked him if he’d started “T” (testosterone) yet and he told me he’d just started a couple of months ago.
Over the next few months, we spent a great deal of time together, and I started seeing the effects of the T. Each time he injected the T, which was weekly, he decided to record his voice. He would say, “It’s March whatever, and this is my fifteenth injection, and this is how I feel …” One day we listened to all of the recordings in order and it was amazing. His voice must have dropped an octave. We were both fascinated.
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