Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual

By Aimee Norin

Many books have been written about public transsexual people. Many stealth trans people live happy, fulfilling lives. This is a story, however, of someone stealth who is tortured in life, abused as a child, attacked for marrying into a conservative world, who feels she cannot defend herself without raising her transness which she has learned to hate—and who grows through all that during a time of crisis in her life toward self-acceptance and community.

Stealth: the Dark Side of Transsexual is a Dark Side novel, an exposé about problems a stealth transsexual has over 41 years in transition and how she learns to grow through them: her marriage, legal hassles, doctors misunderstanding, opposition to being labelled transgender, assaults, oppressions, rape, and her inability to defend herself without revealing her secrets.

Stealth novel follows Keiko “Kay” Knapp, a Japanese-American, bi-racial, stealth transsexual, throughout her life to age fifty-nine, including forty-one years in transition. She has “S.R.S.” in Asia, becomes a flight attendant, and enjoys a long marriage to a defense contractor associated with military bases. She does not see herself as transgender—in fact, she sees herself as victimized by the paradigm's popularity—which causes her great distress. Yet she learns to integrate by the ending. Unfortunately, due to a high level of integration with conservative groups in her personal life, she also suffers assaults, intrusions, burglaries, threats, rejections, manipulations from others, mistrust, and lives a life of fear and, apart from her husband, loneliness.

It may seem that too many things happen to Kay in this novel, good and bad, but events shared herein for her life do span decades and are actually few compared to day-to-day and year-to-year events that can occur in an actual person’s life. The focus of the novel’s incidents are, instead, kinds of things that can happen over decades in a stealth transsexual’s life.

Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual is written from the perspective of older stealth transsexuals, looking back. Issues that Kay had earlier with denial, about what she attained in transition and how people take her, passed long ago. S:TDSTs tells her story and does not rubber stamp popular social movements. It is called “...The Dark Side...” for a reason, sharing things often glossed over by others, even problems Kay causes for herself with the stealth aspect of her life, making things harder than they need to be. While sex, love, happiness and joy are part of her life, the novel doesn’t gloss over Kay’s hardships: an inability to actually change biologic sex as she craves, doctors who are untrustworthy, a medical system that reinforces deception from her, arguments with transgenders, personal growth or the delay thereof, violence, legal problems, the way families or “friends” may manipulate to gain secrets, gossip, the way group dynamics change with discovery, hate crimes, oppressions, etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aimee Norin
• Release date: Dec 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311242532

Aimee Norin

Some Aimee Norin novels are listed in the ADULT SECTION, and may not be visible in the General section. Please unlock the ADULT SECTION to see them all. I am an advocate for trans people, for transgender, transsexual, gender non-conforming and LGBTQI living. I not only write for entertainment but to address issues felt by minorities, which includes trans people as a whole and also minority groups within—views both popular and unpopular—with an underlying message throughout of the value of life, mutual acceptance, and mutual respect. PLEASE NOTE: My characters are usually in some form of conflict, working through issues, struggling with society or sometimes even with their own demons in an effort to find love and respect, happiness in life. A novel may walk with a character through her own hell, then glimpse by the end a new way for her to engage in her life—or an idea may be expressed one way, in one novel, only to be expressed differently in another novel, by the same or another character—how people's views change over time, in different situations, or as seen by others. Some novels are happy for the most part, such as "Out of the Closet," "Falling in Love" and "Transmutation." "Falling in Love" is particularly romantic, with some devastation, argument; "Transmutation" is also funny, through it starts out with a death and the protagonist's angry refusal to endure that again. "Transmutation" is a trans utopian future. "Hate Crimes" is a combination of a dream come true, hate crimes, and a plea for peace. Finally, I must note: I think of myself more as a storyteller than a writer. Transitions are expensive, sometimes costing several multiples of an annual salary, and sometimes the treatment industry charges way too much. In addition, when someone is hurting because she needs to change, or when someone's social or financial life has been affected in relation to a transition, money can be even harder to come by. In order to keep these books coming for free, I usually do not use an outside editor as I make no money off these books at all and editors are costly. I spend a great deal of time with each novel, but if a mistake is noted, please email me at [e-mail] and let me know. Without an editor, all these novels are all a work-in-progress, and I do depend on feedback about content. I do respond to such feedback in an effort to please, and go back and revise the novels. When enough modifications are made, I may put a "V" for Version on the cover to quickly indicate. As always, all Aimee Norin materials are copyrighted, all rights reserved. Beyond the legal minimum, no Aimee Norin novel may be copied, shared, or reproduced electronically or otherwise without prior written permission of the author. Thank you, and blessings to all, Aimee Norin

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Copyright 2014 by Aimee Norin. All rights reserved. Thank you for downloading this eBook. This novel is the property of Aimee Norin, yet it is FREE and you are welcome to share it with friends and students. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed among individuals, in classrooms, and for other non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Quotes or brief passages may be used commercially per fair use. For larger concerns, please email Aimee Norin at [e-mail]

This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons living or dead is coincidental, including but not limited to the protagonist, other transpersons, family and friends, the Knapp Assistance Foundation, news media channels and networks, organizations and clubs, et cetera.

This novel is for mature understanding. Language, sex, and violence, sometimes herein, are not recommended for minors.

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Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual

By

Aimee Norin

Begin Reading

Preface

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

About the Author

Contact the Author

Other Novels by Aimee Norin

For Kay Knapps among us.

Speaking out

Would conflict

With the need.

People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

Soren Kierkegaard

Journal

February 1836

PREFACE

Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual is not about any person in particular. I set the novel in places with which I am familiar, so I could write the story, and so it would purposefully not reflect on anyone’s life situation. My effort is to protect the privacy of stealth transsexuals who have confided in me over the years.

Many stealth transsexuals have experienced similar issues in life: psychic pain from feeling so horribly wrong, abuse or rejection from family or friends for being so different, bending rules to obtain S.R.S. at a young age, falling in love and living with someone whose associates can be cruel, and not knowing how to navigate situations, making life more difficult by mishandling things.

Stealth: TDST is not about things working out well after transition. There are many stories of trans people who lead happy, fulfilling lives, but this novel is a story of someone with continuing difficulty. At the time of this novel, she is in crisis with several life issues coming to the fore at the same time. Living stealth and under siege, she fears a great many things. Usually the one others come to for advice, she must forge her own new ground with little help. She is scared and lost, not knowing which way to go.

Many people view living stealth romantically as an ideal or as more successful than it may be, I feel, a view that misses issues which can be very difficult for stealth trans to endure. While living stealth may be crutial to a person’s need to be herself, while she may feel closer to her goal, while it may be all she wants—I’ve transitioned, it’s done, now just live—there are a few major issues that can be created or perpetuated by being steath.

For one, if living under the radar without trans as a topic for herself in life, when someone wrongs her, she cannot defend or stand up for herself if an issue could lead to her revelation. This adds a level of pain in her life that stacks on top of everything else, making her life harder to bear. And in addition, if a cruel person sees she does not stand up for herself, she may be seen as an easy victim for more. Over decades, this can become significant.

For another, she can’t connect with herself on a topic she conceals, nor can she connect with others very well because of it, even if that topic is not on the table, because it is such a major part of her life. People are born with a gender, and being mis-assigned at birth because of external features is a very major thing—internally excrutiating because of the mind/body incongruence, compounded by a million other things in life that result. If she’s stealth, she may have very few places to discuss it. She may not want to, either, at first. But as the decades roll by, she may find it pressing—to not be able to share a major part of her life, childhood traumata, or her need to be recognized as a survivor.

And for another, there can be the problem of getting the message, such as through childhood abuse—which is all too common with trans people—that she is deeply not okay because of her transness. Living stealth, she prevents herself from getting kinder, positive messages from other people about her transness as she moves through life. And let their be no mistake, conveying a message to trans girls and trans boys that they must not be themselves is serious emotional abuse, no less paiful or damaging than physical abuse, beatings, molestation, or rape. Being stealth, not allowing the topic for discussion through her life, she may prevent herself from re-learning that she is, in fact, a very good person to her core, including her transness, wonderful, even beautiful. She may think she is okay in her head. Others may compliment her. She may be successful in a lot of things. But missing other people convey that positive message to her directly in life, about her transness, makes it extremely difficult to moderate an underlying, persistent, internalized message that can remain through life: I am not okay; I am disgusting; I should be humiliated to be myself.

Sometimes what happens, when someone has been stealth for a few decades, she begins to resolve some of her feelings, sees how society is loosening up a little, and she may long to simply be able to be true with others about her major life issues, only to be stopped by her intense, underlying feeling that she would also be revealing to others how horrible she is. This happens to some in stealth, and the perpetuating internal conflict can be painful.

My message to stealth trans who, after years, are beginning to feel this conflict, who want to be open with so many important things in life yet who fear their own feelings or the reactions of others:

That internal feeling is not knowledge; it is child abuse.

That certainty inside, based on a thousand things that have convinced you your transness is no good—your parent beating you over it, ridicule, disapproval, kids at school who teased, being beaten by someone—is not the truth. It is ignorance or prejudice. Your feeling is real, but it is not true that you are bad, negative, disgusting, someone who should be shunned. It is not true that you are unworthy, ugly or shameful. It is not true that you should be humiliated to be yourself.

A lot of people I find living stealth over the long-term have these issues, deep inside where they don’t talk about them: difficulty or inability to connect well with others; inability to stand up for themselves when wronged; happy with some aspects of life yet with the persistent belief they are deeply not okay in this area, a left-over feeling from before.

In all of this, I am not trying to dissuade someone from being stealth if that is her preference. I am trying to speak up for those who do not feel they can speak up for themselves, to share understanding and, hopefully, gain compassion.

This novel is the story of one such stealth transsexual, revealing what she has suffered and of her growth into a new era in her life. It is an exposé of kinds of things rarely shared but which are experienced by some. As well, this novel is fiction; the exposé aspect is in the storyline, not in any revelation of real life persons or institutions.

Stealth, as used in this novel, is not meant to describe someone who is undetectable in transition—unreadable—but, instead, is meant to describe someone who lives below the radar, whose effort is to blend in, who is extremely private about transition, and who will work to regain that privacy if exposed. The term began to be used in trans communities in the 1980s and was further popularized in the 1990s with the use of the F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter and the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber in the Gulf War. Trans’ use for stealth follows the same principles as the airplanes. No aircraft is completely unreadable by radar. All can be read if they get too close to a radar or if they fly in a manner that exposes a readable element of the aircraft to that radar, and if they are exposed, steps are taken to attempt to regain stealth.

There are some issues Regina Isler faces in Sliders that are relevant for Kay Knapp as well, such as examples in Sliders, through the three SECTIONS, of years- or decades-long gender swings post-transition, and, in Chapter 1, of a plastic surgeon enabling denial and selling his procedures, etc. Such things, where relevant for Kay, are usually mentioned in Stealth, yet Kay’s story is her own, and in Stealth, other issues are presented in focus.

MEDICAL: Chapter 2, with a little from Chapter 1, gives some reasons why the mecical system reinforces Kay’s distrust of physicians, as a stealth transsexual, and shows a few reasons why she misrepresents herself to them.

LEGAL: Chapters 11 and 16 contrast one set of lawyers with another on issues of assault and marriage. Chapter 16, particularly, is an example of her own lawyer distorting information to Kay, trying to take advantage of her for money.

It may seem that too many things happen to Kay in this novel, good and bad. Certainly, this many things, or these kinds of things, are not generally heard-of. But events shared herein do span decades and are actually few compared to day-to-day and year-to-year events that can occur in a stealth transsexual’s life who is under siege, such as Kay. The focus of the novel’s incidents are kinds of things that can happen over decades. Though they are events inspired and fictionalized from the lives of multiple real stealth transsexuals, Kay is not a protagonist who has several times a usual number of events in her life. It is common for many things to collect in any single person’s life of this nature.

It should be noted this is a novel, fiction, and does not give legal or medical advice. Characters represented are flawed human beings, growing through important personal and social issues, both of which evolve over time. Sometimes they are pleased with decisions; sometimes they make mistakes and do things they later regret; sometimes they learn to rephrase—in short, they learn from life. It is a novel. Please always seek qualified professionals for medical or legal advice.

As is usual with me, acronyms can be pronounced by how they’re written, herein. If an acronym’s letters are written together, without periods, then I’m sharing it as a word. Example: DOMA is pronounced DOH-ma. If an acronym has periods in it, then I’m sharing it spoken as a string of letters, such as G.R.S., pronounced gee-ar-ess.

Aimee Norin

CHAPTER

1

The Palos Verdes peninsula angled into the San Pedro Channel, south of Los Angeles, about twenty miles from Catalina Island at its closest point. Long, early morning shadows of buildings and cliffs stretched over the ocean to end mid-channel.

Waters were cool in the Channel, flowing in a large current southeast from Alaska along the coast of the western United States, which in turn cooled a soft breeze that drifted eastward over the current and up the western cliffs of the peninsula, through palm trees and into Keiko Knapp’s front window—the little one, beside the large picture window in her study.

The air was as fresh as the scene before her, but Kay could barely smell it. She watched a sailboat, four miles out, emerge westward from a building’s shadow into the morning sun.

She felt sick to her stomach.

God give me life!

Kay sat her morning coffee-cup-of-tea on her desk, without sipping it.

She closed her eyes for a second and took a breath. She tried to imagine home, health, and happiness, but it did little to calm her nerves.

Me, on Miramar, with marines—by myself, without Wayne.

Fears ran through her, painful scenarios she could be made to face with them. She had to go to Marine Corp Air Station Miramar for a two-day visit, down by San Diego—the site of the movie Top Gun, back in 1986, a naval air station at the time, and the site of the Navy’s real TOPGUN air base, back in the day. It was early October, and Miramar was having their annual air show over the weekend. Kay had gotten herself invited for the Friday private show because of her husband’s company’s work with them on various projects over the years, including the F-35 Lightning, more recently.

She checked her watch.

I need to leave in thirty minutes. I have one stop to make along the way.

Will they know about me there? And if they do, are they hosting me so they can stare?

God! Her stomach hurt. She took a sip of tea in the hope it would help and rubbed her tummy with her fingers.

Kay feared change, any more, and groups were the worst. When something in a group changed, it could act as a catalyst, and other people in the group tended to change, as well. In this case, her husband passed away two-and-a-half years ago, so instead of being with him, instead of him being the center of attention, her on his arm, she was alone, and any suspicion would spotlight her. She hadn’t been back since.

She rubbed her tummy some more.

They’re the United States Marines!

They’ve got to be the worst!

But I have to go!

She searched for resolve, and the answer presented itself again. It was clear. She needed Wayne’s memory—there, on Miramar, in the Officers’ Club—more than she feared the marines. She had to go.

The house was chilly. She hadn’t turned the heat on—

And here I am with the window open.

She rubbed her arms with her hands, got up to go to the kitchen for something to eat—maybe something warm—but on opening the cabinet she felt sick and turned back to her desk, plopping into her office chair.

She held her still-warm coffee-cup-of tea.

No food!

Stare out the window, she told herself.

Calm down.

Shadows were slowly creeping east across the ocean toward Marina Del Rey, Venice, and Los Angeles to her north. Even the Pacific Palisades were visible beyond Santa Monica. It was a clear outside. Everything in Kay’s view had that faded-but-warm look of a still autumn day. The cliffs below her, down to the sea, were a rich brown and green. The sea breeze brought that soft, salty air into her soul.

Life.

She closed her eyes.

Every day is new. The channel is new. The air is new. I am okay—

She opened her eyes.

Baloney!

She didn’t believe anything was new.

She pressed on her tummy a little. There was nothing to be done about it, the feeling in her gut. It had been there most of her life. Only it was worse since her denial faded several years ago, and worse still since Wayne passed, since she had begun to face life’s increasing pressures without him.

Tears began to fall over her still face.

She felt so tired.

I don’t have the energy to keep this up—

She was sad, chronically, any more, no longer trying to connect with people. It wasn’t the downer belief that she was no good, in itself. Other than the state of her physical sex, her feelings about herself were not low, in general. Her sadness was resignation in acceptance that she was, indeed, different enough that most people treated her like something worthy of curiosity, at best, and gossip, abuse, or worse—

Never mind that! She swore to herself. Just worse.

Not that!

Kay shook that thought out of her head.

I won’t go there!

Another tear formed.

So what should I do? She asked the cosmos.

Should I dismiss things and live in a fake-happy world? Pretend?

Or should I learn from my experience at some point?

She used her shirtsleeve to wipe tears off her face.

So the view out her front window was, in fact, not new, she affirmed for herself; it was recycled. The current flowed clockwise around the northern Pacific to the U.S., to Japan and back, and the air was only fresh because it had been cleansed by rain over that same ocean.

Though it was beautiful.

Nothing wrong with being recycled.

Thank you, God, for my blessings.

She turned on her computer, an old Windows 7 unit. She’d had a stalker for thirty years; she didn’t trust cloud-based systems. That’s all she’d need: someone, stalker or whomever—for hate, fun, or profit—hack a company’s systems, connect her to Wayne or the Foundation, and blast it on the internet or accuse her of something.

Kay was very private.

Lay low.

When the computer came up, Kay started Firefox and checked her email. She was in the mood to talk with Lourdes in Missouri, another stealth transsexual. Lourdes used to be wracked by fear in Los Angeles, until some guy in Missouri set her straight. And now she married him?

Missouri?

She could use a few good words from Lourdes.

Get it together, Kay.

Wish, hope— Ah!

There was nothing from Lourdes that morning.

The first email was from Liz, instead.

Liz had cut Kay off, the only local friend Kay had left, gone like the others. And the thing was, Kay had predicted it and walked right into it. When Liz mentioned that her family was coming to visit from Florida, who had never visited Liz before, Kay feared that Liz’ family would add new variables, that someone there may read Kay, tell Liz, and then Liz would no longer be able to pretend she didn’t know.

Game over.

The loss of a friendship.

I should have avoided Liz the whole time they were here.

Then maybe Liz wasn’t a real friend.

How low, Kay felt, that it mattered, anyway.

Kay had known rejections her all her life, since she was a child, and she’d always struggled to find a way to try to keep a friend, looking for any feeble way to reach out to them when they distanced.

She knew from experience she couldn’t tell the friend, outright, about her own sexuality, because that would (1) invite a period of curiosity and disclosure, followed closely by (2) their distancing and Kay’s humiliation, at the least. That had happened every time, even when she got their prior agreement that it wouldn’t. And after decades of trying new things, she’d settled on trying to maximize her chances of the friend returning by barely touching the real truth of the matter, just enough to inspire thought, while at the same time suggesting discretion and offering something face-saving to help them come back, if they ever chose to. In essence, to help a light bulb go on in their head, yet still allow them to pretend they don’t know.

That didn’t work, either, but Kay felt it had a better chance than nothing.

Stealth is such a pain!

But maybe Liz would come back?

Some day?

She shook her head. She truly didn’t think so.

Habitually, she turned things over in her mind, trying to figure them out.

Is it really my sexuality, that wigs Liz out?

Could it be my heritage, instead?

Of Japanese descent on her father’s side, Kay was as American as anyone else, born and raised in California. She was cute, of average height, longish straight, dark brown hair just below the shoulders.

No, she thought. Liz never minded the Japanese part of me. I don’t think it’s that.

Resigned to do her best, Kay clicked the icon to send an email.

Don’t let on what you suspect.

Be cool, inviting, forgiving without saying.

Don’t STATE anything outright she may give to friends!

Offer her a way to save face.

To: Liz

Cc/Bcc:

Subject: How are you doing?

Hello Liz,

I wanted to ask you if everything is allright, because I haven’t heard from you since that last dinner we shared with your family, before they went back to Florida. I haven’t seen you since. I’ve called twice and emailed three times. You were very brief with me on the phone, and you haven’t returned my emails.

So are you okay, hon?

Kay

Kay pressed Send and looked at the screen. It said it sent, and didn’t indicate a problem.

She took the next email. It was from a gal, Chun. This one was trouble. Her email was short:

Kay: We’re friends. It was a good lunch.

Chun

Kay had found Chun at a local university, thirty-some years ago. A Chinese-American, OB/GYN, M.D., Ph.D., she was a young researcher who ran a fertility clinic. Kay had gone to her to ask if there were any way she could become pregnant, sometime. Chun got all her good secrets, studied her, and concluded that it would be possible—saying something about an omental ectopic pregnancy—but that no human subjects committee would approve of it.

Chun seemed like a very good person, quick of wit, congenial. Over time, one thing led to another, and Chun was invited into Kay’s circle. Chun, who was sworn to protect Kay’s medically-acquired information, had appeared trustworthy.

Joi, the rest of the golf group, and Chun had gotten along well, but then, one day, early this century, Kay noticed a shift in the way Joi regarded her.

Immediately, Kay knew what it was—or suspected.

Joi disappeared.

Other ladies quit calling.

It seemed Chun had talked.

Kay asked Chun, who denied then later admitted the disclosure. The women, in general, in the golf group, had not been shunning Kay, yet Chun’s gossip and Joi’s changed attitude appeared to be a catalyst for change in the group.

Kay was humiliated and quit golfing with them, or anything else with them.

Then Joi re-emerged later, swearing no one knew anything at all, asking Kay to come back, and Kay had been trying to avoid that mine field ever since, a problem because those ladies knew other people Kay knew.

Chun began to disappear and would discontinue contact for long stretches of time, only to reappear for some reason, reassert friendship as if nothing had happened—even ask Kay for more personal information. I’m totally confidential, now. You can trust me.

And I would fall for it every time.

Not all my fault; Chun lies to me, tells me she’s a better friend than she is, and keeps things from me...

But I should know better. Other people’s secrecy, nondisclosure, distance? That person is hiding from me. So why do they want me to share?

Stay away from her!

Don’t piss her off. She’ll gossip even more.

Distance casually.

To: Chun

Cc/Bcc:

Subject:

I’m catching up on some things. I’ll let you know.

Kay

Kay clicked Send and wondered if she made a mistake.

So is Chun a good person, though not good for me, who is manipulating me? Or is she actually a friend who just doesn’t get it yet?

Disclose more so she’ll learn?

Disclose less, because she’s not going to get it, and she may gossip with what he learns.

Kay was astonished with herself.

I’LL NEVER LEARN!

The next email was from yet another board member of the yacht club Wayne and Kay had been in for years—the one with Liz. Like the others, this board member was wondering why Kay had quit the club.

Because I’m tired of being snubbed, is the truth of it.

Kay had already told them a few times that she was gone, and for bland, benign reasoning.

She thought about Liz’ involvement. She nodded to herself. She did not blame Liz for their actions, in particular, though. Liz was not a catalyst for their change, because they were already shunning Kay for years, without Liz’ help.

And now they’re bugging me when I try to leave?

Why won’t you people leave me alone!

She hastily clicked the Reply field.

To: Lucie

Cc/Bcc:

Subject: Leave me alone

I’ve quit the club. I moved on. Why won’t you leave me alone?

Because they want me to say they didn’t do anything.

I left the club because I’ve moved on. I’ve never connected with the people there. Proof: I have a nice house on the cliffs, here. I had a good husband, good marriage. I became your historian, tried to get involved. We have both enjoyed cruising to the islands with you.

But none of you ever came over, not once, not when I invited you, not even when we had meetings at a member’s home.

Either you’re not warm, or you’re not warm to me—and, no, don’t start emailing me to ask what I mean! Just leave me alone. Please.

I’m quite hurt by this. I have been for years. Please leave me alone and stop emailing me.

Kay

Kay clicked Send before she had time to think about it, and then wished she hadn’t. She was too tired for more fighting. She should have just said—nothing. She’d quit the club via email, and that was sufficient. She overreacted. She should have let it go! Ignored them! They’d have stopped sooner or later. She may have caused more trouble for herself and given them a reason to think she’s a nut.

"I’m tired of not being able to defend myself!"

Goddamnit!

She caught herself.

Hush!

Her hand went to her mouth and she looked around her house.

Don’t say things like that out loud!

She looked habitually in the corners and along the ceiling line for signs of a bug. She’d swept the house as well as she could for them, after the break-in, bought scanners, inspected light sockets … but she didn’t hire a professional sweeper this time, because of the way they took her for a ride the last time.

She knew they’d been in her house.

I was not good enough to marry Wayne, in their eyes, an embarrassment to the company.

Chun has no idea how people really react.

Kay got up to pace her