If You Only Knew (13 page)

CHAPTER 30

WHEN DANNY AND VONLEE
finished eating dinner and returned to the truck, the recording device picked them back up. Why not initiate more incriminating conversation during the ride home? Danny figured. Danny felt as though he was totally immersed in turning in his former gal pal. He had taken it this far, she was suspicious and even checked out his truck, and yet Vonlee was still talking. Asking a few more questions would not aggravate the situation any more than it was already.

As they were getting into the truck, Vonlee said something about Danny being a “hardened criminal” himself, but then realized Danny had nearly fallen on the ground near the driver's door.

“You all right?” Vonlee asked.

“I don't feel good.”

“Are you getting sick?”

“Maybe.”

“What's wrong?” she said as Danny got into the driver's seat.

“I don't . . . I . . .” Danny had trouble finishing his thought. He started the vehicle as Vonlee sat down. Then he drove off.

As they headed home, Danny was still complaining about being ill.

“Pull up here,” Vonlee said. “Pull up here.”

Danny stopped the vehicle. They both got out. Danny seemed as though he was going to vomit. He said something about how sick the entire ordeal had made him—the idea that he had been dating a man, and that man was somehow involved in a murder. Hearing it all from Vonlee throughout the night had just been too much, he explained.

“I mean, I'm sorry this is going on right now, but it
is
going on,” Vonlee said as they got back into the vehicle and Danny sped off, apparently feeling better. “I wish it wasn't going on, more than you wish it wasn't going on. Trust me. I mean, I'm a good person as far as that, and I'm going to get over this. What happened . . .
happened.
I think I'm going to get,” Vonlee said, but then changed her tone: “I was a
victim.
I really do think Billie . . . ,” she said, but stopped herself again.

Thinking about it, Vonlee considered that Danny's attitude and “sickness” were more about them than the crime.

“I think this has a little more to do with me and you. Am I right?” Vonlee wanted to know.

“No! No, no, no. It doesn't have anything to do with you and me,” Danny said, giving Vonlee the indication their romance was still on track and the fact that she was a man did not bother him or have an effect on their relationship.

Vonlee wouldn't accept that. “What do you mean it can't have anything to do with me and you? It
has
to have something to do with me and you.”

They went back and forth about this. Danny insisted he wanted to be there for Vonlee during her darkest hour and help her work through all of this.

“It's over,” Vonlee said, referring to her speaking about her aunt and Don's death and what had happened. “It's done with. I will never bring it up again. Can you do the same, please?” But Vonlee couldn't let the other subject go, however. “You finally meet somebody you really care about and she turns out to be a man!” she added sarcastically.

This comment sparked an argument between them.

Finally, “So you don't want to see me again?” Vonlee asked, feeling as though she had read through the lines of Danny's heart.

Danny hadn't said that, but he certainly was feeling it. He could not hide his disdain for what she had done with Billie Jean and the fact that she had lied to him about being a woman.

“No, I didn't say that. Did I say that? I'm just saying I'm weak today.”

Why couldn't Vonlee cut the guy some slack? He'd been through a lot in such a short period. In the same conversation, on the same night, his girlfriend had confided in him her two deepest, darkest secrets—and each had affected him immensely.

“I'm sorry,” Vonlee said. “I don't mean to do this to you. I mean, I don't want you to go through this. Please tell me you'll get over it.”

Danny wasn't sure, he said.

“Well, I mean, do you think that we could work it out? 'Cause I really care about you. . . . I think I love you. . . . You know that I'm not a bad person.”

“You're not a bad person. . . .”

“Are you going to call me?”

“Yeah, I want to.”

They drove for some time and talked quietly and cautiously. Danny was all over the place, as was Vonlee. As the road signs passed, traffic whizzed by, a silence took over the inside of the vehicle. Here were two people, each hiding something from the other, each knowing that this relationship was doomed and that the Don situation was also going to blow up in the coming days. Still, Vonlee held on to the notion that if Danny just kept his mouth shut, and didn't say anything to anyone, everything would work itself out.

“Please, you would never say anything to anybody.”

Danny shrugged. He'd said he wouldn't mention it.

“You said you wish somebody would shoot you,” Vonlee said. To her, this meant Danny was done with everything. And his comment told her that if he was going down with the ship, well, she was going to drown with him.

“I wish somebody would shoot me, yeah,” Danny confirmed.

“But a month from now, you're not going to wish that.”

“Don't worry about it,” Danny said.

Vonlee got back on the subject of her alcoholism. She kept working the conversation back to something Danny had said during dinner: that he felt somehow responsible for what happened to Don. If only he'd foreseen it and stepped in and told Billie Jean she was crazy for following through with it. He could have helped Vonlee avoid all of the problems she was facing.

“You've not done anything wrong,” Vonlee told Danny.

“I know.”

Danny pulled into the driveway. Billie Jean's car was gone. She wasn't home, Vonlee pointed out.

“I love you,” Vonlee said as she got out.

“I love you, too.” Danny took a pause. “Bye.”

Danny drove off, staring at Vonlee in his rearview mirror as she struggled to get her key into the door. As he got farther down the road, the image of Vonlee dissolved smaller and smaller, until she finally vanished altogether, disappearing from his life.

CHAPTER 31

PART OF WHAT ALLOWED
Vonlee to fall deeply into the person she believed herself to be, despite the body God had provided, was a steadfast sensitivity she'd established in the core of her soul: she was a female—nobody was going to change Vonlee Titlow into a boy. It wasn't a disease she had, or some sort of psychological problem she could go to therapy and work through. Vonlee was a woman, a Christian woman at that.

She grew up in the South, where most people rarely held back what they felt or believed religiously, politically or personally. And as Vonlee stepped into those formative, judgmental years of junior high and high school, it became apparent to her that life was going to be an uphill battle from this point forward. It was hard enough, she knew, for gays to come out and tell their families and admit in public who they were; but add gender to that and her days were now an unsettling, stressful, tumultuous journey of explaining who she was to those who did not know her, while putting up with the stares and the comments.

During her prepubescent years, Vonlee had dressed daringly for a young “boy” in the South; that is, cutoff blue jean short-shorts and half T-shirts, exposing his/her midsection. Vonlee's hair was kept “real long.” Body hair was never an issue because Vonlee did not have much, anyway. Thus, “I looked like a little girl.”

Fast-forward to those critical years of high school and that's where the problems—socially, culturally and emotionally—began. For one, as a child, Vonlee had no trouble looking like a girl. But as she grew into her teens, “I started to go through a real awkward stage. . . .” And as she changed and fought those changes, the people around Vonlee began to notice.

Vonlee's mother slowly accepted her more each day as she grew. There came a time when Georgia sold her mother's house (where Vonlee had grown up) and bought a different house for her. Vonlee then had to change schools. She left behind all those friends she had known her entire life—those who knew her best. Now she was subjected to a new group of kids that had never seen or met her. And that's when the insults and bullying started.

Heritage High School, home of the Mountaineers, was built in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Standing in the school parking lot, one could look out onto what was a stunning display of American landscape, or “God's country,” as some might be inclined to say. This part of the South is as picturesque and beautiful as any other in the country.

“I went to school with a lot of rednecks and backcountry kids,” Vonlee explained.

A person like Vonlee, who now tried as hard as she could to present herself as a boy, stood out. At first, she tried dating girls. It was one of the hardest things she ever did. Awkward and unsettling. Every bit of it, she felt, was wrong.

“I wanted to do their hair and makeup,” Vonlee said later.

As a male, Vonlee had sex with a female. “But I felt gay, like I was a lesbian. It just wasn't comfortable for me.”

After that stage, Vonlee went back to being herself, or as much as she could within the boundaries society had erected for her. She didn't want to walk the halls as a transsexual, not in high school, not in the South. Yet, she still couldn't hide who she was, either. It was always there, even if she tried dressing like a boy.

“Sissy,” kids would shout at Vonlee as she walked down the hallway. “Wee-wee sucker!” And the ultimate derogatory homosexual insult: “Fag!”

These comments told her how much nobody understood who she was, or how she wanted to live her life.

As her days in school drudged on, it became harder to deflect the reproachful and hurtful comments, threats and ridicule. It was a daily ritual: wake up, get dressed, go to school and be subjected to harassment. As her sophomore and junior years came to pass, Vonlee grew severely depressed. She couldn't stop trying to be a female—it wasn't a choice. This was one aspect of being transgender, she explained, that people don't understand: she would never
choose
it.

Her grades began to slip.

“I hated school—it was horrible.”

There was one day when Vonlee sat down with her mother. Georgia could tell that her child was having a hard time, not only with school, but life in general. For Vonlee, it was difficult just getting out of bed and going to class. She was sleeping in class whenever she could, because her nights were spent staring at the ceiling, battling anxiety.

“You okay?” Georgia wondered.

“I'm not.”

Georgia sat near Vonlee and took her by the shoulders, staring into her eyes. “Listen,” a mother said to her child, “if you go and take the GED and pass, you can quit.”

They hugged.

It seemed like the logical thing for Vonlee to do.

Not long after she started her junior year, now old enough to quit, Vonlee took the General Educational Development (GED) test and passed. So she quit high school.

The one thing Vonlee knew as she entered adulthood was that she needed to get out of Maryville. There was no way she could stay in a town, standing out like a Union flag, and live life on her own terms, openly being who she was.

There was a guy who had rented a room at Vonlee's mother's house during those difficult years. Vonlee soon found out he was gay. She had no attraction to this man. Dating men was not a same-gender relationship for her. Vonlee saw herself as a female and dating men to her would be considered a normal, heterosexual relationship.

“This guy, when I found out he was gay,” Vonlee explained, “I began talking to him about the scene. He introduced me to the gay scene in Nashville.”

It was hard for Vonlee to say she “felt comfortable” within the gay scene. But it was as close as she could get to feeling normal: meeting men who might be into her and living her life as a female.

“The gay community was accepting of me, which was why I embraced it,” Vonlee later recalled. “But there were also bars in downtown [Nashville] geared toward transsexual life.”

Vonlee walked into a club one night and there on the stage performing a “drag show” was a transsexual that looked “just like a Barbie doll.” Vonlee felt at home for the first time in her life. By now, Vonlee was on a host of female hormones and her body was tightening up and shrinking. Her voice, quite effeminate to begin with, was changing remarkably. She looked and sounded like a female, now more than ever—as opposed to a male
trying
to sound like a female. Her body was changing and her mood and mind were fitting congenially into the mold of who she truly was emotionally. For what seemed to be the first time, her life was on track.

Staring up at the stage, drink in her hand, Vonlee looked at the drag queen and thought:
Oh, my gosh . . . a live Barbie . . . look at her! That's what I want to do. That's me. I'm home.

Vonlee spoke to the drag queen after her set. It was liberating to hear the person speak about living life the way in which she wanted. No boundaries. No waking up feeling as though she had nowhere to go. No worrying about being insulted around every corner.

“You have to understand,” Vonlee said, “back home, I would hide who I was in a lot of ways.... I would go into the bathroom and do my makeup. Then I would wash it off. So any chance I got to dress completely like a female, I would do it.”

And now here was the opportunity not only to dress the part, but live it day in and day out.

Still, as time went on, meeting the Barbie drag queen, for Vonlee, “That was okay. But it wasn't who I wanted to be. I wanted to be a woman. Not a stage show.”

It was 1984 through 1985, the height, one could argue, of the AIDS epidemic and crisis just reaching the gay community. It was not easy being different then.

But as she made her way through the Nashville scene, Vonlee made a decision. She was going to do something about her lifestyle. And the choice she was about to make would shock even her.