Topic: Monica Helms

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #097, Spring 2002.
by Monica F. Helms

This column began taking shape on September 15, 2001, four days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I?m telling you this so you?ll know why you?re not reading my usual jovial opening. I wanted to put down my thoughts while they were still clear. Consider this my chance to heal, if healing is at all possible.

I?m 50 years old, so I hadn?t yet arrived when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I am old enough to remember when an assassin?s bullet took President Kennedy?s life. We were living in Germany at the time. I remember my mother telling me to go get my father at the high school gym, where he and his friends were setting up for a square dance. It seemed surreal as I hurried through the cold November night. When I arrived at the gym, it was dark and deserted. I had horribly sad news, but no one to tell it to.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.
by Monica Helms

Recently, my mother sent me a large box full of photos?photos from my past. She sent pictures of me from the age of one month to just before I dropped the bomb on her about being a transsexual, 46 years later. There were black-and-white prints of me as a young child, pictures of my grandparents, grade school pictures, high school pictures, and many of myself with my two boys and my ex. I had to laugh at one in which I stood next to the television at age one; the caption my father wrote was, ?Why don?t you turn on Uncle Milty?? Hmmm. That must have been my first exposure to a transgendered person.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.
by Monica F Helms

I wonder what time of the year this issue is coming out? It?s important to know this so I can write a clever opening. Now, let?s see ... Dallas gave me this wonderful formula that is suppose to help me keep this straight?or in my case, let?s say correct. I don?t do anything ?straight? any more. According to her formula, I first take the square root of the number of shoes once owned by Imelda Marcos. Then I divide by the amount of stitches Dr. Schrang uses in the average MTF surgery. After that, I subtract the number of streetlights in downtown Ajo, Arizona, then multiply that by the cosine of 32 degrees to the third power.