How I Got Here

By Bobbie Jeanne

__________________________

In 1980 I had been living with a gay male hooker who had invited me from Cincinnati, to move in with him in San Francisco. We got into a squabble over his lies and he kicked me out. One of the men in the registry wanted to move out of his apartment and into the one of his friend, so he arranged for the two of us to take his apartment over. It was on Geary Boulevard at the bottom of Cathedral Hill where Polk Street intersected. They called it the "tenderloin" because the gay male hookers went up Polk Street and the female hookers went downtown on Geary. I had lived there for 4 years before I found out that it was considered to be a "bad" neighborhood.

David was a rather strange fellow-- gentle, quiet and shy. But, far better than most men I had been around in my past. The day that I moved in we had the following conversation: I said to him, "I am a nudist and I hate to wear clothes in my home. I have no intention of being offensive to you and will remain clothed if you so request, but if you dislike nudity, I will be out of here as fast as I can." She thought this woman is so weird, I believe that I can trust her with my secret. She then said to me, "Sure. That's ok. But I am a woman, not a man, do you mind if I go get dressed?"

She was in the bedroom a long time, carefully applying her makeup and changing from men's clothes into women's. The bedroom door opened and out came this tall, stunning, beautiful woman. I was enchanted and delighted. We lived together from 1980 until 1988 when her autopsy revealed that she had died of a massive coronary.

Having deliberately socialized myself male until the age of 12, for my father who had wanted a boy and not me, I was female in appearance and behavior, but 50-50 psychologically. She was far more feminine than I was, and would have put a graduate of a finishing school to shame. Watching her walk was a joy to behold. As if she were wearing invisible ice skates, she glided silently and smoothly over the floor. Her voice was so soft sometimes I could scarcely hear it. Her movements were as delicate and smooth as those of a ballerina. The boy in me fell head over heels in love with the girl in her.

I had never met a transsexual before, and there was absolutely no question in my mind that she was a woman trapped in a man's body. Then I went into temporary shock and confusion. I was a woman in love with another woman and that made me a lesbian in my mind. This was confirmed by memories of a tender, loving kiss from a woman, and of the soft cuddly plumpness of a man's wife. What was I going to do?

For a short while I tried to switch like she had, so that we could have gotten legally married, but it would have been far too difficult for the rewards it offered to me and I did not have the pressure of feeling like a man trapped in a woman's body, I just wanted to be one.

Because I was not willing to switch like she had, that would have made her a lesbian, and she was upset enough by being a transsexual without adding another society rejecting label on herself. She never did get around to even so much as saving up for her surgery.

I went to the bisexual center for a while and was told that I would never be happy until I had a primary relationship with one gender and a secondary relationship with the opposite gender. I am very monogamous and cannot cope with a 69 much less two relationships, so I gave up on that idea.

The Christians got a hold of me in the early 90's and tried to tell me that the fact that it felt good when I was touched did not mean that I was a lesbian. I bought that for a while until I realized that only a lesbian or bisexual would have allowed themselves to get into those situations, much less fall in love.

A decade after that I figured out that I am bisexual, but my preference is for effeminate men (who are usually gay) or bdsm subs who are the only ones I can trust to not hurt me like I have been in the past.

Then we go to this past February when an Egyptian sub sent me off to wesbite. And after hours and days and weeks of devouring the materials contained therein, I had all of my erroneous Christian ideas stripped from me. I assumed that Islam held the truth for me, and said Shahadah on February 23, 2008.

I had absolutley no idea what I had gotten myself into. I quickly found all of the judging and condemning Muslims on the net and was beginning to get frantic until I discovered a website for queer Muslims, and started to relax. I love Allah (sub'hana'hu wa 'ta'la) and have great respect and admiration for Mohammed (salallahu 'alaihi wa salaam) but I doggoned near drowned in all of the rules and regulations.

When I tried to tell a person from the local mosque that I was bisexual, I was forbidden to ever mention that word again, and told that Allah (sub'hana'hu wa 'ta'la) had forgiven me off all of my sins of the past when I said Shahadah. I have been told that there is "no such thing as a homosexual Muslim", and that I will be tortured in hell for refusing to let go of that part of myself--even if I am non-practicing.

One person demanded that I remove "lesbians, gays and bisexuals" from my profile, an another told me that I am not a Muslim if I choose to continue to call myself bisexual. Somebody else told me that nobody who is Muslim would trust me, much less be eager and willing to help me out. But the worst I heard was about two men in Saudi Arabia who had been beheaded for being gay. It was not until I also found out that they had been pedophiles who had been molesting young boys, that I was not as much afraid to go to Mecca (as if I could in this wheelchair).

Then there was the soul searching I had to do about whether or not I could consider a "book" (The Noble Qur'an is the one I have) advocating my death, to be the holy and INERRANT word of God spoken through Gabriel to Mohammad (sallahu 'alaihi wa sallam) that a "good" Muslim is required to follow literally, including amputating the hand of a thief and giving 100 lashes to a person engaging in sex before marriage. That is a powerfully heavy burden for a 4 month old brand new revert to have to carry.

If it had not been for the queer Muslim website, and the three others that I belong to, I might have given up on trying to learn how to pray in Arabic and reading my Qur'an daily. But if I chose to leave, I then had to worry about the apostates who have been murdered or whose lives are in danger.

It was not until I realized that all of this stuff I had been worrying about was taking me away from my prayers and readings, that I realized that these people doing these things that caused such a reaction in me cannot possibly be the peaceful, loving Muslims that I expected to find when I reverted. I threw away absolutely everything that they told me was "the truth" and I intend to find the truth in the Qur'an at a much slower pace. I kept hearing "Allah knows best" as if they did not even care that they were "supposed to" promptly say words of respect for him (sub'hana'hu wa 'ta'la) each time that his name is spoken.

Then I read about how the original Qur'an had words in it that could have had two entirely different meanings, and, because of the lack of punctuation, one word could have been translated either "fight" or "kill". Big difference. When I realized that Osama bin Laden could have done what he did because of a lousy interpretation of the meaning of some of the words in the Qur'an, I laughed outloud at the irony.

*******************

Bobbe Jeanne is a Muslim woman who lives in the United States. She can be reached via info@huriyahmag.com

HOME