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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 ecember 8, 1992, was the day I penned what I
thought was to be the last word of THE BOOK. It's now August 19,
1994 and I have more stories to tell and songs to sing. What can
I do? I keep on living and having new
adventures. I tried dying! I don't like it! It doesn't work for
me! Ah, but once again I am getting ahead of my narrative. In
order to do justice to this continuation I have to return to July
4, 1991. A marvelous magic seems to have come upon us since the
rainbow embraced Joan and I, an almost unbelievable magic where
anything seems possible and that magic has a name, Julia, Julia
Cybele Cachia. Here then is the story of how Julia became one
with Joan and I, the story of the birth of The Triad!
September 1987 Joan and I moved our mobile home from Phoenix to Tucson and our life became filled with travel, immense activity and many friends. Joan, having led a sheltered life, in some ways a deprived life, was pure of heart with an unparalleled innocence. The world as I had experienced it was foreign to her and the joy she took as she began to live was written in her eyes, her smile, and the loudest most joyous laughter I have ever heard. Through her I experienced the world anew, seeing it as if for the first time, and lordy, my own smile and laughter began to reflect hers. Owning our own home created an odd condition of being wealthy although poor. That is we didn't make a great deal of money, but, without rent or mortgage to pay we could pretty much do anything we wanted to do. So we travelled a great deal, all over the southwest and western parts of the country. We also hiked high in the beautiful Catalina mountains north of Tucson, camped in the forests near Prescott, and visited the Pacific Ocean in San Diego. Joan loved playing in the ocean surf. Her giggles, her animated gestures, her sparkling eyes, her grin spreading from ear to ear, were more extraordinary to me than the unending expanse of the ocean. Her joy was infectious, a welcome infection that exhilarated me in equal measure. We also visited places such as the Desert Sonora Museum, Flandrau Planetarium, Tombstone, Old Tucson, and Mt. Lemmon where we rode the ski lift. Eating at fine old restaurants and not so fine, enjoying a wide diversity of ethnic foodstuffs, we often followed by catching a movie or attending a concert. We visited friends and relatives and they visited us and through local computer bulletin boards we made new friends. Once a week we held games night, playing Ping Pong, chess, go, and role playing games while snacking on a wide variety of munchies brought by all. For our first year together we rode bicycles everywhere. Not owning a reliable car, bicycles and buses were our usual means of transportation. Consequently our first couple years in Tucson Joan and I didn't travel a great deal. However, because of bicycles and computers, we acquired four children, three daughters and a son. There names were Jamie, Diana, Sarah, and Josh. Josh, Jamie's brother and the youngest of the four was eleven years old. They were the children of our neighbors and they spent almost as much time with us, at our home, as they did at their own. How this came about was a pretty piece of magic. It began because Joan had never learned how to ride a bicycle. Her father had tried to teach her on a full size adult bike, but she was unable to reach the peddles and wrecked every time she got on. We both knew bike riding could be important for my heart so Joan, uncertain and fearful, agreed to learn. More accurately, she agreed to try to learn but she had grave doubts. Thus it was that we purchased a small child's bike and, on the sidewalk in front of Desert Haven, I taught Joan to ride. She felt safe on the small bike, able to put her feet down while seated. Later we purchased a bigger bike, but still smaller than adult size. We gave Josh Joan's first bike as a gift. The families in our mobile home park were poor and we were always giving someone something. Our generosity made us popular, particularly with the children. In addition to our Epson Equity II we also had a Commodore 128 computer and hundreds and hundreds of games. Which is another reason we acquired the neighborhood children. I encouraged them to play on the Commodore, showed them how, and in a short time they became computer literate. In the process, they became like part of our family. The girls didn't always allow Josh to come over and play. Particularly when they ran in the house, slid shut the door, and peeked through the curtains at the curly haired hunk that lived in the trailer directly across from us. It was amusing to watch them giggle, laugh, and turn red. Diana would sometimes turn around from her furtive peeking, stomp her foot, and in a loud voice proclaim, ``God he's hot ... he's so fucking hhhoootttt!'' Jamie would admonish her, ``Diana, don't swear!'' and Diana would impishly say, ``I can't help it. He is so fucking hot! Don't you think he's fucking hot.'' Jamie would then reply, ``Yes, he's hot!'' After a few weeks of this they left a note in his mailbox that said, ``You're cute! We love you. Signed, Jamie, Diana, and Sarah.'' One day he caught them peering through the curtains at him and, along with his girlfriend who was visiting at the time, he invited them over. His girlfriend took Polaroid pictures of him with his arm around the shoulder of each girl. I thought they were going to swoon when they returned to the house with pictures in hand. Diana learned to play a game called Flashbier better than anyone, including me. She was a virtual expert. When she realized that she was far and away the best at this game she hugged me, tears of joy in her eyes, and cried, ``I've never been the best at anything in my whole life. Thank you so very much! Thank you, thank you!'' In Jamie's Junior year of high school and Diana's Sophomore year, they both were given the job of teaching the other kids about computers. Having played games on the Commodore, made post cards and posters using Printmaster on the Equity II and having used Word Perfect to write stories, letters, and poems they were more than a little computer literate. On my birthday they baked me a chocolate cake, made a card they designed on the computer, and then colored it by hand. The card was a picture of them playing at my house on the computer and underneath it were the words, ``Laura, we love you. Thank you for being our friend.'' Tears brimmed my eyes. I let them roll down my cheeks feeling immense pride in these lovely girls. I will never forget them.
You might wonder what the girls, and their parents, thought about Joan and myself. We never mentioned anything about our relationship, but our love would have been hard to miss. Only once did I hear anything said about us. A new girl moved into the neighborhood and I could hear Jamie talking to her just outside our kitchen window. The new girl said, ``My Mom won't let me go there because they're lesbians.'' Jamie replied, ``What they are is their own business. They're wonderful people.'' This and nothing more! My heart went out to the new girl, there was so much she could have learned from us. Not only the computer, not only that unusual people simply march to a different drummer, but the sharing she could have had with the other girls. Jamie, Diana, and Sarah were at my home every day after school, and often on the weekends. Their parents worked but from the little I spoke to them they appreciated that their kids had a safe place to go until they came home. This, even though they knew Joan and I were lovers. I've always been of a mind that bigots are few in this world, and that most people are willing to live and let live. The kids also knew we were Wiccan. They thought it was, Cool! Strangely, or perhaps not so strange, that was a secret they kept from their parents, except for Jamie's mother who was also a pagan. We rarely talked to the kids about the craft, putting their questions off by telling them, and the truth it was, ``We believe children shouldn't be taught religion until they're grown. Then they can decide if they are interested in such things.''
The first year we were in the mobile home park we had an old klunker of a car James had given us. It was better than nothing, but it smoked, choked, and started only when it was in the mood. Finally, it stopped starting altogether. Frustrated I gave it to Jamie's family. Her Dad was a mechanic and he offered to repair it for us, or to at least pay something for it. I wouldn't hear of such a thing. They could scarcely keep their kids fed as it was. Joan and I went out and purchased two new bicycles. An adult sized bike for Joan, although sized to her smaller proportions, and a road bike for me. This would become our means of transportation for more than a year, other than the buses which Joan took back and forth to work and that we occasionally took if we wanted to go further than five miles away. Once again, since Josh had already outgrown the first bike we gave him, we gave him Joan's old bike, on condition he give some other kid his first bike. Riding bicycles was glorious. It was a different world, a slower more evenly paced world. When we went to Bookman's, the biggest used bookstore in Arizona, or visited other places we would marvel at the craziness that automobiles imposed on people's lives. Stress, tension, unpleasantness, red faces, shaking fists, and honking horns; while we peddled along at a sedate pace enjoying every moment of the togetherness and closeness we shared. We even equipped our bikes with baskets and used them to load all of our groceries. With care we were able to carry almost everything we would have carried in a car. We still hadn't purchased a car when Felicia, my soul sister, went to Trinidad, Colorado to became a ``Biber Doll.'' After her sexual reconstruction surgery (SRS), she came to recuperate for the first week with us. She was thrilled to finally accomplish her long sought goal and we were happy for her.
In the meantime Joan and I were also making inroads into the BBS community of Tucson. We became friends with Glen Billings, and Nancy and Sean Dippold. Which led to more friendships with other people in Tucson. Sean, Nancy's husband, suffering from a painful back condition and unable to do much more than sit home watching television and toy around on the computer Bulletin Boards, killed himself not too long after we met them. He did it by running a hose from the exhaust pipe to the window of their pickup while parked in their closed garage. He managed to finish three beers from a six pack before falling asleep. When Nancy came home from shopping he was slumped over in the front seat still breathing, but he died shortly after the paramedics arrived. It was fifteen miles to Nancy's from our trailer, slightly uphill all the way. To comfort her I visited often, riding there on my bicycle, and spending a good portion of my day with her. When I arrived she permitted me to shower and change from my stinky bike togs into clean clothes. In the afternoon, riding slightly downhill, I returned home with delightful speed and was there before ``our kids'' came home from school. Arriving home I cleaned up and changed clothes again.
About this time was when I met Sarah and Mary, another Lesbian couple. Sarah and I began biking at the Rillito Linear Park. This park, a couple hundred feet wide at the widest was three miles long with a paved biking and walking trail, underpasses under roads, and bridges over washes. One day Sarah and I were biking and we both became a bit obstinate. Each time we ended a complete pass on the trail we would ask the other, ``Ready to stop yet!'' Each of us would say, ``If you are,'' and off we'd go for another lap. We ended up riding 75 miles apiece, beating ourselves to death, before we finally agreed it was enough.
Joan and I came to know many, many people through computer BBS connections. Outspoken, bold, brash, sometimes rude, I became rather well known, liked in some quarters and not liked in others. My strong stance against particular beliefs of Christian Fundamentalists was not well received by some people. I was armed with strong rebuttals to such beliefs, beliefs which diminish, denigrate, and deprecate people who aren't in their cult of the mainstream. ``What kind of God would burn people forever for not believing he exists? Such a god would be worse than Hitler.'' Actually, Joan came up with this first and was too timid to post it on the boards, but not yours truly. I also questioned, ``If God is all powerful, all wise, and all good, how come he created living things which to survive must consume other living things. A five year old who was all powerful could do better. Why not make all things plants or make all creatures pure energy?'' I'd lay on at their Bible too, pointing out the incongruous, absurd, and patently false information contained therein. For instance, the ten commandments, it is politically correct to commend them. Not in my lexicon, five of the ten commandments are dedicated to a self-serving and egotistical patriarchal god desperately demanding to be loved. Where are the commandments against child abuse, wife beating, rape, and incest? Ah but then these things were not considered that terrible by the men who wrote that infantile book. The Bible is a book written by men, about men, and for men. Not one woman penned a single word in the entire set of manuscripts. It's written about men dominating the earth and everything on earth, including women. Therefore a commandment to rest on the Sabbath is vastly more important than having one condemning child abuse, wife beating, rape, or incest. These were some of the thoughts I expressed on the BBSs and my presence made me both friends and enemies. One man, Gordon Kane, claiming that he was ordered by his god to put me down, ended up moving to New Mexico because he thought I had put demons in his house. Jeez, if I could order demons around, assuming the reality of such creatures, I would have better things for them to do then to haunt a Christian Fundamentalist. I admit to being a bit rabid against ``funny-mentalists'', but they created my antagonism. It is their harsh indictments and ugly perspectives that have created the unreasoning hatred of gender diverse people. It is they who have created the ``us and them'' mind set and to survive their hatred it is imperative to not permit them to peddle their evil views uncontested. However, I don't want to bore anyone with details of my studies into religion. Suffice it to say, I did my homework. I know their history better then they do, and teven heir Bible better than most of them. My purpose was not to confound or convert Christians. I had two reasons for my direct antagonism. The first was to point out to other people suffering the slings and arrows from these narrowminded bigots, that they could be answered and put in their place. The second reason was to present myself as a threat to them, thus when meeting more gentle transsexuals they might hesitate in their unrelenting attacks. For a few, I became the enemy, the Antichrist, the personification of all they feared. Religion is not something I care to focus on, but there is one bit of tomfoolery that believers tend to spout that I want to answer before I take leave of this tedious and tawdry subject altogether. Pascal once made a wager concerning god and religion which indicates one should believe in god for fear of losing the prospect of immortal life. He contended that the believer has nothing to lose by belief and everything to gain. I counter his wager with my own. We are alive here and now and have no reason to contend that there is anything else. If we throw away the life we have, the here and the now, on myth, illusion, and fantasy, devoting ourselves to a deity of our own design, on false hopes and mythology, we have thrown away that little bit of eternity that is really ours. To live with head bowed and knee bent in hopes of a better life to come, is to have never lived at all. In doing so we not only fail ourselves, we come to believe that god, all-wise, has a reason for the suffering and tragedy in the world. Therefore the suffering and tragedy become tolerable, no matter how heinous it might be. Belief sucks at any motivation we might have to solve the problems that confront the human species and therefore, I submit, acts to our disadvantage. Even if there is a god, it would be better to live and believe that there is not, for then we are faced with the prospect of correcting the misery that exists on this earth and, for a rational being, that is the holiest meaning one can have. What is the eternal survival of one individual living at the beck and call of some tyrannical god to the prospect of each of us devoting our lives to making the world a better place?
Of course Joan and I were human and we did exchange a few cross words from time to time. When we first started biking Joan was slow and not used to the Arizona sun. Every half mile or so she wanted to stop and drink water, not sufficiently coordinated to drink while riding. Well, still having ``testicles'' and testosterone I was impatient. Every delay was an agitation. One hot afternoon I ragged her good and she started to cry. This woke me up to what I was doing and to Joan's wimpy response. I yelled at her, ``God damn it, Joan, stop crying. I'm acting like an asshole and all you can do is cry. Stand up for yourself! Tell me this is the God damn desert and you have the right to drink water anytime you damn well please. Scream at me! Don't cry! You're not a little girl for Chris' sakes. You're a grown woman.'' And she did! She screamed and she yelled! She reamed me out a new asshole! I don't think I have ever been more proud of her. That day she became real in every sense of the word. From then on when I acted like an asshole, as we all do from time to time, she let me know it. She looked so cute standing there screaming her guts out, that I couldn't help but smile. I took her in my arms and we hugged. ``Honey,'' I explained, ``I'm human. Like everyone else, I can get stupid. I need you to help me. When I do something that pisses you off, then scream at me. That's the quickest way to get my attention.'' ``I never learned anything of the sort in my family. Gramma never permitted me to show anger or raise my voice. But, this feels good,'' she replied, getting back on her bike and making ready to ride. From that day on Joan has never had any difficulty yelling at me. Hmmmm, maybe I wasn't so clever after all.
After my father died. Mom was alone for nearly five years. My heart went out to her, sitting alone in her big house, her only friends a couple of Christian ``funny-mentalist'' women who mostly wanted to convert her. She cried herself to sleep almost every night. Well, there was this guy I knew in Tucson, Glen Billings. Glen was a bit of an entrepreneur, a bit of an opportunist, and, at times, a bit of a scamp. He was also twenty years younger than my mother. It ran in my family! However, there were important things I knew about Glen. He watched over and took care of his aging mother like a mother hen. She was crippled with arthritis and he helped her dress and groom herself. He talked kindly of her when she wasn't present, even though they would sometimes have thunderous fights. All in all, he impressed me as a good man. He drank a lot and he smoked continuously, bathed far too infrequently, and had an irascible nature. These were my major concerns if he and mom got together. Glen had played piano bar as a career for twenty-five years. He was grand and only a little rusty. I had heard him play only once, but I arranged for my mother to come down and visit at a friend's house who had a piano. Imagine that! Glen played and sang for mother and the magic was there. The next thing I knew, with only a little nudging from me, they were dating, mother driving down from Phoenix every weekend. One late Saturday night, almost midnight, Mom and Glen both were tipsy and sitting on the porch bench in front of my mobile home. I was forced to arise from my bed and admonish them to quiet down. They were so loud that I feared they would get us kicked out of the mobile home park. They quieted down immediately with giggles and apologies, but it was an eerie feeling having to treat my mother like a rambunctious teenager. Soon Glen and mom were living together in Goodyear, with Glen's mother in an apartment nearby so he could continue to watch over her. A few months later Glen stopped drinking and he converted the carport into a smoking area. He bathed, if not frequently enough, certainly more frequently than before. His irascible nature, however, hadn't diminished. Which was okay. Mom needed something to keep her mind occupied. How did she encourage these dramatic changes in him? She loved him and she joined him in his activities. She drank can for can what he drank and smoked cigarette for cigarette. She choked, hacked, and coughed. Glen knew if they kept up what they were doing, she'd die. It was Glen who suggested they quit drinking and promised that he would quit if she would. He also promised, if she stopped smoking, he wouldn't smoke in the house. He'd only smoke outside. He did what he had to do to keep the woman he loved from killing herself. Glen made some changes around the house too. Painting the exterior, repairing the leaky roof, and turning the carport into a pleasant ramada for smoking with a mister, tables, chairs, and a carpet. Not to mention, he was good at ``muff diving'' (Mom's phraseology). My father, although having frequent demands, didn't perform oral sex. Speaking of my father, he would have hated Glen. My father was a frugal man, Glen was a wastrel. Dad, in addition to the house, left mom with about 25,000 dollars in liquid assets. Glen and mom went through the nest egg rapidly and in short order had a 50,000 dollar mortgage on the home. Oh, they had fun with the money, true enough, but dad would have shit his breeches.
After Anton's hitch in the Air Force was up he returned from Germany to stay with Joan and I for the next four years. With Joan's blessing I offered Anton the opportunity of room and board if he would go to college. We got on quite well. There were only a few upsets. Anton chose Pima Community College for his first three years. His course of study was general education, in preparation for a teaching career. During his third year he met Sheila and her son Mitch. Sheila was studying drafting at Pima and was sending Mitch to a Christian Elementary School. Although there were, obviously, philosophical differences in their relationship, both Sheila and Anton needed a loving relationship. Over the next year and a half they each helped the other restore lost self- confidence, but they fought often. Anton never could stand fighting, not even as a child. The relationship eventually came to an end, but not before Anton lost a year of college.
During the first year Anton was home I went to Nogales, Mexico for an orchiectomy. Joan and Anton went along for moral support. It was appreciated! The ordeal was painful and humiliating. Understanding a smattering of Spanish I picked up on some of the joking behind the scenes by the ``professional'' medical personnel at the clinic. Not that I hadn't expected it, but the presence of Joan and Anton kept me from feeling totally alone in an alien environment. They were friendly ears to hear the translations and my subsequent venting. One thing was certain, the ignorance displayed by the staff of Dr. Enrique Davis, the butcher of Nogales, didn't inspire a great deal of confidence. The doctor also didn't inspire a great deal of confidence. I had an 8 AM appointment and he was late. He had to be called. His staff said he was at the hospital performing an operation. However, when he showed up he apologized for being late and told me his car had given him trouble. What was the truth? When he arrived he was disheveled and had sleep in his eyes. The good doctor, most likely, had hung one on the night before. Still, an orchectomy was a simple procedure. I didn't expect any difficulties. For sure I didn't expect to be butchered, nor to be fighting a massive infection for three months. Most of all, I didn't expect to be digging long strings of necrotic tissue out of my scrotal sacks. I was on penicillin for over two months. My doctors in the states admonished me for having my operation in Mexico and I admonished them right back. Why was it so difficult to get an orchiectomy in the states? Why is it so expensive? Too many surgeons are hung up on the sanctity of testicles. With all said and done, I'm glad I did it. It diminished my libido, freeing me from unpleasant fantasies generated by testosterone. What I suspected was true, my sexual excess was a product of testosterone. Testosterone, however, only determines the intensity of desire. It doesn't determine the inclination. A few years back there was a study concerning the effect of testosterone on gay males. Increased testosterone didn't change their inclination. It created super gay studs. Injections of testosterone were rewarded with insatiable appetites, but no sudden desire to bed women resulted from the experiment. For me, with the nature of a Winkte, sex was always more of a pain then a pleasure. It got in the way of more important things and motivated the most outlandish behavior. Supplemental female hormones helped, of course, but they were inadequate to quench the raging fires from a body super charged by testosterone. Those raging fires were uncomfortable to one of my nature, pushing my mind and body into an unresolvable conflict. It took a year or so, but as the testosterone seeped away, the raging fires went out.
A couple years after my visit to Mexico James resigned from the Navy. He had been in thirteen years. Mostly, he was fed up at the waste of money and resources. We invited him to stay with us while he made the transition from sailor to civilian and he accepted. With his severance pay he put himself through real estate school and became an agent. James was the kind of guy who is always helping someone. He helped Joan and I get into a pleasant little condo in southwest Tucson, near the desert. He helped my brother refinance his house when the interest rate dropped to 7 percent. He helped a number of other people do the same. Then he loaned a neighbor a sizeable portion of his available cash. When they didn't pay it back as promised, James couldn't continue in real estate. Shortly thereafter, James moved in with his brother, Larry, in Phoenix. Having decided that the best way to make money in real estate was as a buyer, not as an agent. James helped Larry finance an apartment complex and Larry, when the time arrives, is supposed to do the same for James. All in all, I arrived at a stable period in my life, as had most of the people I loved. Mom was happy. Anton had grown in self-confidence. James was out of the service and would soon bring his family over from the Philippines. Gene and Cindy were together and making a family, popping kids out like a popcorn machine blasts out corn kernels. Mary moved in with them and is helping them raise their brood. Even Felicia, my long lost soul sister, returned after a three year absence. After her SRS she had gone through a lot of emotional baggage and stayed away from everyone. Finally loneliness became too much to bear and one day there she was standing in the doorway. I had missed her. She will always be as much a part of my family, of me, as those born of my blood. The stage was almost set now. The grandest adventure of all was about to unfold. It remained only for me to die and that was not long in coming. (Grin! I loved writing this line. It sounds so dramatic. Hmmm, of course dying and living to tell the tale does have a certain amount of drama when you stop to consider it.)
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