All language subtitles for FRAMING AGNES 2022 WEBRIP X264-ION10

- Good evening.

It's been six years
since a young GI stepped

onto the tarmac at Idlewild Airport

causing an international sensation,

just arrived from Copenhagen,

Christine Jorgensen was thought

to be the first American to
have successfully changed sex.

You might be wondering where people go

when they are experiencing
problems of a sexual nature.

- [Host] Just around the
corner from our studios,

an experimental research team

at UCLA is interviewing dozens

of people about emerging
problems of sex and gender.

One of their patients has
presented a unique puzzle.

For two years, our first
guest, Agnes, was interviewed

by doctors, Robert Stoller
and Harold Garfinkel,

telling them she was born a boy

but began growing breasts at puberty.

Recently, she returned to
tell a different story,

forcing doctors to retract
years of published research.

We will talk to Agnes
right after the break.

In our collaboration, we've
been thinking together

about the legacy of Agnes's
case for a long time.

Yeah, this is why we love
having you in the project,

because to be able to talk
to people who also know

that feeling of the archive,
where you can't quit.

- How did you first encounter Agnes?

- [Narrator] I first encountered
Agnes in graduate school.

I read a case study
about a young trans girl

in the 1950s who lied her way

into the UCLA gender clinic
to get access to surgery.

(gentle upbeat music)

Agnes is remembered in two ways,

either as a cautionary tale

about the untrustworthiness

of trans people or as
an icon and folk hero

who navigated a system
designed to exclude her.

In the years since I first read the case,

I've become obsessed with
our attachment to the story

of Agnes as exceptional and I worry

about what and who else has
been lost along the way.

- One of the weird things
about Agnes is she pops up

over and over and over
again in trans writing from,

you know, really the time
at which she's, you know,

doing interviews with
Garfinkel and Stoller,

all the way into the 80s and the 90s

and the 2000s and I always
wanted to read more.

I always wanted to go to
UCLA and find out more,

but I also have this sort of deep mistrust

of that whole endeavor
from the real beginning

and it's been interesting over the years

to find out that I think a lot
of people share that feeling.

- It used to be so simple:

you were either a boy or you were a girl.

Growing up in the 1940s,

Agnes always knew she was different.

- I was the youngest of four children.

My father was a machinist.

He died when I was quite young,

9 or 10 years old,

I suppose it was all sort of normal.

I mean, nothing out of the ordinary.

- Did you go to school?

- I dropped out at some point

because I figured it
wouldn't be very useful

to have a high school diploma
with a different name on it.

- I wanted to frame out what
we're doing a little bit,

because the flip for me to
the talk show is in part a nod

to the fact that I think from
many people of our generation,

the talk show was the place where many

of us first encountered
gender nonconforming subjects.

- Yeah. I mean, I feel like I grew up

in the golden age of talk shows.

I mean, they were just on
continuously throughout the day.

So if you were sick and you
know, stayed home from school,

it was very likely that you
could just watch a string

of talk shows.

You know, there were some

that were clearly more
progressive, you know, Joan Rivers.

- Today's show is all about
sexually confusing stories.

- And then there was, you know,

more exploitative ones where,

you know, people's gender identities

were being sensationalized and
they were being - electing -

to out themselves on national television

for whatever kind of financial incentives.

It was helpful to have some view

into the possibility
that trans people existed

on television, but by and large,

the ostracization that
those subjects faced

in putting themselves out
there and I can't help

but think that they were doing it for us.

- Are you familiar with
Christine Jorgensen?

- Yes, I do read the newspaper.

When Jorgensen came back from Europe,

I had something tangible to go by.

I figured I could do
something like that myself.

For Agnes, that it was all new.

That Christine Jorgensen was
the first time she was seeing

somebody and realizing

that there was another
person out there like her.

- Ah, Christine Jorgensen.

Okay, here we go.

Picture this, the most famous
woman in the world in 1952,

the most famous woman

in the world knocking atomic
bomb tests off the front page

of newspapers is a trans woman.

We don't exactly know how

but her story was leaked to the press.

Poor Christine, she
played the perfect part.

(upbeat music)

- [News presenter] Christine Jorgensen,

who used to answer to
George, creates quite a stir

as she returns home to
New York from Copenhagen.

- So we have this incredible
footage of her landing

in New York at Idlewild
Airport and, you know,

coming off the airplane,
like, 'oh my goodness,

what is this media storm?

Oh, no, thank goodness,
I'm dressed gorgeously'

and she has this
incredible screen presence.

I mean, Christine Jorgensen is, you know,

almost like the Marilyn Monroe

of the moment and she
comes out very like, 'well,

I'm just happy to be here
and back on American soil. '

- I'm very impressed by everyone coming.

- [Reporter] Christine,
are you happy to be home?

- Yes, of course, what
American wouldn't be?

- And she just has this perfect persona

to personify post-war America.

America, the country so
free that you, a man,

can become a woman.

Well, except not in
America because she had

to go to Denmark.

Well, oh, well,

we'll just, we'll look over

that fact and the media
is fascinated, right?

The term transsexual
is still in its infancy

and so a lot of people
are not exactly sure

what to make of her and there's a lot

of terrible salacious
kind of tabloid coverage.

Well, isn't she really just a man?

And my God, is she going to marry a man?

And how will that work?

You know, and things that
were fit to print and things

that were not fit to print and
Christine really, you know,

in some ways is forced into
this impossible position.

She senses, rightly, that she has a chance

to make it in life and be a
celebrity and be a persona

but the only way to do that is to lean

into the fact that everyone
wants a piece of her.

- Have you been offered a movie contract?

- Yes, but I haven't accepted it.

- It was very striking to see in all

of these transcripts everyone

references Christine
Jorgensen in some way, right?

And I think that really
got us to this connection

of thinking of Christine Jorgensen
on the Mike Wallace Show.

- Right, and you know,

the structure of the Mike
Wallace show is so interesting.

The Mike Wallace Interview in particular,

he identifies as a show
about the current moment's

most extraordinary and curious people.

- This is Mike Wallace with

another television portrait

from our gallery of colorful people.

- [Chase] What's striking to me

about the relationship
between Mike Wallace

and Garfinkel is

that the Mike Wallace Interview
happens from '57 to '60,

exactly the same time
that Garfinkel is at UCLA.

- [Agnes] It was was either

that I wasn't gonna see him anymore-

- (indistinct)

No I wasn't going to tell him.

- [Agnes] So I told.

- So I told him.

- [Agnes] Because I couldn't do the other,

I tried the other first
but I couldn't do that so-

- Because I couldn't do the
other first, I told him that.

- [Agnes] Oh well.

- Well.

- [Agnes] Well, of
course not (indistinct)

- Well of course not.

- Are you feeling impatient?

- Not impatient in the
sense that I can't wait,

but impatient in the sense

that I wonder what I'm waiting for.

- You are very smart.

- You know, there's a difference

between being smart and
having all the information.

- UCLA is a really fascinating
character in this history,

partially because it's a
super interdisciplinary space

and so it's this wide open clinic

where they're seeing intersex folks,

gay and lesbian folks, trans folks

and people who aren't sure
or don't necessarily explain

what they identify as

and the doctors are not
especially concerned

about the differences,

but I think that's one

of the reasons why UCLA ends
up being so interesting.

- [Kristen] Harold
Garfinkel had died in 2011

and I knew that there was a sociologist

who had been gifted sort
of all of his papers.

- [Chase] Kristen and I
started visiting the archive

over and over again in part helping

to organize the content

and all the while we
were looking for Agnes.

- You know, the funny story that we like

to tell is we found everything

that we found in the last moments.

- There was a large metal filing cabinet

that had long been rusted shut.

We pried the drawer open
and found the entirety

of Agnes's case files

and in the back of the filing cabinet

were other case studies of
gender nonconforming people

who never make it into the research.

(gentle upbeat music)

- It's weird because
UCLA is both the archive,

the place where the records are held,

but also the place where
all of this went down,

where Agnes was, where Stoller
was, where Garfinkel was.

It feels a little haunted sometimes.

So I think there's a way

that I always feel like I'm looking

over my shoulder even
though an archive is sort

of the most natural place for
me to hang out as a scholar,

it feels like you can't
fully walk in as yourself.

It's important to walk in as a researcher,

as someone with a PhD, as
a specialist, as a scholar,

like that's your ticket in

because you don't want the same ticket

in that Agnes had or Barbara had.

- Even though I was raised
by a single father. .

I love how everything she does,

it's like, I know where you want to go

and I'm not going to let you.

- Yeah, that's exactly right.

- [Crew Member] C mark,
I mean, D mark, sorry.

- When did you decide to make the change?

- Well, I've been living as
a woman for six months now

but it's been years since
anyone looked twice at me.

Even as a man, I was very feminine,

plucked brows, bleached
hair, painted nails.

One day I realized that people were going

to react to me no matter what I did.

So I might as well live more truthfully.

For myself.

- Tell me about your childhood.

Were you close with your parents?

- My mother died when I was little

but even though I was
raised by a single father,

I always had my dolls and dishes.

- How did you go about finding
others in your situation?

- When we were young, we
didn't know about homosexuality

but we knew we were feminine.

We knew we were different
and we found each other.

What I love about Barbara is exactly that,

that she is so networked
that she rebukes this notion

that trans people have
to be isolated or lonely.

- So there are many of you then?

- I'd say I know 22 of the 36 women

in town who have had the operation.

Even that Hollywood star.

Well, I shouldn't say her name.

Whenever we hear about someone

who's been arrested for cross-dressing,

we reach out, there's a group of us.

We do hospital visits
after someone's operation

so they won't be alone.

We talk to each other about
what hospitals to avoid.

I can always tell who's had

which procedure by how nice the room is

or how long the stay.

- But how do you find each other?

- Well, it's all about trust.

Once you're in the network,

you realize it just
goes and goes and goes.

We're like a club.

What I loved about playing Barbara,

why I would like to spend more time

with her, is the confidence
with which she discusses

not only networking, but dating, passing.

She has a self-possession
that I don't have

in real life out in the world

and that's the kind of part that,

that's the fun part

because that's where
you get to be different.

- [Host] You say we a lot.

- I'm not in this work alone.

- Do you know other people like you?

- Well, no, I don't.

- And why is that?

- I suppose I've just
never met another person

like me before.

It's so interesting
that Agnes was anonymous

and I believe that she

in many ways represents a generation

of trans women who were
encouraged to disappear.

- For a trans woman to get
access to surgery in the 1960s,

she had to swear she would
never tell anyone ever again

that she had been trans and
that she would leave the life

and you really saw that in cities,

people would leave neighborhoods,
stop doing sex work,

try to get married, try to disappear.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- Such a treat to be with you today.

- Always.

- [Chase] Thank you for coming.

- Thank you, Chase.

- You know, because this
project flips the scene

of the clinical office with
the stage of the talk show,

to think about how meaning gets produced

about trans people in
different environments.

You know, when we were
talking about the feature,

you were like, I'm tired
of telling certain kinds

of stories about my life and
I don't want to do it anymore.

- I get a little fatigued about my story

because my story and telling my story,

it keeps getting positioned as sort

of this exceptional story.

- As a trans person in the world with you,

I had this immediate bodily reaction,

which was like, yeah, totally get it.

Much like Christine Jorgensen
before her transformation,

our next guest was a military man.

- Spent most of my teenage years

in my father's church
doing evangelical work.

- Do you remember at

what age did you start
having these feelings?

- I've always known.

- Georgia is a resourceful woman.

I think like many trans
women from her time

and even before who
didn't have the language

or the policy or the access,
they had to be resourceful.

- We have this sort of white-washed image

of the first trans people.

We see folks like Georgia,

the kind of person that maybe
we feel surprised to meet,

a Black trans woman is going
to this very conservative,

racially normative kind of space

where she's making it in to go toe-to-toe

with these titans of mid-century
American social science.

I mean, does it get any
straighter and whiter than that?

- Do you ever tell people
the truth about yourself?

- Sometimes I tell people I'm a man just

to hear them say, I'm pulling their leg.

So that there's my life.

You know,

it's wild to be a part
of a project like this

that kind of blows open a vault

of all this information and you're. .

and people are like,
did that really happen?

Or is this really true?

And the reality is,

is that we live in a world
that has been dominated

by stories being told by white people,

by the people who have the power,

the most power within white communities.

We have heard the story told by the hunter

and not by the lion and not

by the lions who not only fought back

but got away. And so I think
that not only these stories,

but this just really
inspires me to think about

how many more stories are there out there

that we don't know about.

- The archive that we get is
really limited in that way.

These architects at UCLA that
are building these new ways

of thinking, that are

founding these new schools of thought,

they don't want to talk
about racial diversity.

They don't want to talk about racism.

They don't want to talk about class.

They want to produce mirror images

of the ideals of American
culture at that time:

beautiful, white,
middle-class, heterosexuals.

- Not all of our guests were surrounded

by like-minded individuals,

meet Henry, born in 1917.

Nope.

Meet Henry, born a girl
in Long Beach, California.

- They always say that, 'born a girl'

- So rude.

- Back in the articles
I was in in the 90s-

- Oh yeah.

- It would be, a girl, born a girl.

- About you?

- Even in the 90s, yes.

I was born in Southern California in 1917.

I worked as an engineer at Lockheed.

Well, Henry, interestingly enough,

I believe was interviewed

by Harold Garfinkel the year I was born.

- What is it like for
you to embody a trans man

from the 1950s who was also
writing about his life?

- Well, you know, I respect that,

we have that in common,
he had that impulse

to put pen to paper
and to put his thoughts

to paper and he knew that
his experience was important.

It was unique.

I am a poet and I was writing poetry,

doing readings in the
Bay Area since, you know,

since I arrived there in 1977.

I connected right away
with the kind of beat,

neo-beat community in North Beach.

The kind of poetry I write
is very non-narrative,

it's not so much telling
a story about my life

or my feelings.

I don't really write that kind of thing

but I saw that there was
a need, there was nothing,

there was very little
out there and so I think,

and most of the things

that had been written were ghost-written

but I never saw them talk about,

I never read anything
where they wrote very much

about the hormones and
to me, the hormones,

in my case, the testosterone,
was the access of change.

- As far as I can tell,
it was rarer for trans men

to get on T and part of that is

because trans men tended
to be more isolated

and they were more able to pass

in some ways because there were categories

of masculinity in-between female

and male in which men could travel.

- I grew up in the Midwest.

I was a tomboy mostly.

- What would you do if something as common

as using the lavatory caused
an impossible predicament?

Denny faces this problem every day

on the floor of the factory.

- World War II made it possible

for women to wear slacks, you
know, the dirty shirt effect.

- Making use of the facilities
at work is unavoidable.

What would you do if you got caught?

- Well for all you know,
it could have been shot off

in the war and, you know,

I just don't have the
money to build it back.

I have a wife, I have a home

and if anybody is fresh enough
to ask, I'd gag it up a bit.

Denny was a working class guy.

He was kind of a tomboy.

So he's kind of an in-betweener.

For a lot of years I
passed intermittently.

So, you know, I wasn't on testosterone

and didn't have any top surgery

but I looked like a boy
and I was in a punk band

and it was a lot my voice
that would give me away

but so I'd go kind of in and out

and I worked construction
and I was in a lot

of like predominantly male fields.

Being queer and looking the way we did,

it was, you didn't get jobs.

You know, you kind of stayed in your lane

because there weren't a lot of options.

That changed as things got
more mainstream acceptable

but there were just things that, you know,

it's like, oh, you're
going to do carpentry

and you're going to be a
dancer and you're going to,

you know, we stayed in
these very blue collar,

physical jobs which I
stayed into all the way

after my MFA and second feature

because I ran out of work
and there was, you know,

the economy crashed and I
was painting buildings again

and just like, there were
these real limitations

to looking like an outsider,
that kind of stayed with you.

- When I moved to California

I did have trouble finding work.

My old job, my old documents,

they were all in, well that male name.

But I have a friend, she's like me

and she helped me take a position

as a receptionist at a hair salon.

- Does the owner know about you?

- They know I can type.

- Well, yes, I have a job.

I work in an office, pink collar work.

It's practically impossible
to make the work interesting.

- I can't work.

I can't get a job as a man or a woman.

When I lived in the South,

I used to go into white
people's homes and cook

for a bit of money.

I was a good cook.

- Trying to hold down a job and everything

that comes with that,
being able to pay rent,

being able to save up for surgery,

being able to live,

it all really comes down

to whether you have
access to the workplace

because of gender

and whether it's been racially segregated

and I think we see a lot of that

for Georgia. And there's a lot of lack

of autonomy that comes with not being able

to earn your own wages.

- I'm having a hard time getting work.

I still have an F on my license.

- My friend Henry is a lot like me,

but I fear he's a little depressed,

I don't think the
testosterone is helping him.

- When I first contacted Dr.
Wynn in Southern California,

he said that it was unethical
to remove healthy organs.

After the long recovery,

they told me they wanted to operate again,

I couldn't handle any
more poking and prodding.

- We will return to our
story after the break.

I was just realizing story-wise, Morgan,

that we have it built in about surgery

and Dr. Wynn saying 'won't
operate on healthy organs'

but then we have this
after a long recovery line

because we haven't built in
the fact that Henry had cancer.

- Oh yeah, he had cancer.

- He had cancer.

- Probably died of cancer, right?

- To be honest, I think he killed himself.

- Oh, really?

Oh God, that's terrible.

- (indistinct)

- I think so.

- Oh wow, that's a drag.

- Like, not very long after this

- Oh really?

Oh, wow.
- Interview.

Kristen and I were able to
find some people's birth

and death dates and he's one

of the people who we were able to identify

as having died quite early.

- Wow.

- And because of some

of the writing about his
depression and his sort

of despondent orientation
to his circumstances-

- Right.

- We think that that's
probably what happened.

- Yeah.

A lot of his isolation was probably

because he didn't know how

to handle disclosure and it is tricky.

I mean, even for, sometimes
for me, it's tricky.

I mean, obviously I'm public,
but not everybody knows.

I don't announce it to everybody I know.

You know, but when I say I'm
a writer and they say, well,

what do you write?

I mean, I'm a poet.

So I've got a poetry
book out now, you know,

but if they ask, well, I say
I wrote a memoir and they say,

what was that about?

Then I have to, you know, then
I have to spill the beans.

- One of the most
extraordinary things about

our archival find was a full copy

of Henry's autobiography manuscript

that he had obviously handed to Garfinkel

at some point throughout their sessions

and I think it's like a 47 page document,

a totally extraordinary snapshot

into someone's own self-narration.

I really continue to think about
the presence of these texts

that were never published and
are otherwise inaccessible

and how we can hold them now

and I brought a little excerpt of part

of Henry's life writing that I wanted

to offer up to you and I
wonder if you might read it.

- Yeah.

So he writes,

there is not as much difference

between men and women as our
society would have us believe,

both sexes have hearts that can be light

with pressure or heavy with misery,

both have tear ducts, but men
are not supposed to use them.

Both have muscles

but it is not considered feminine

for a woman to develop hers.

- [Henry voiceover] If only we could learn

to live with each other as individuals,

sharply, we separate the sexes.

We place them in boxes
marked male and female,

slam shut the lids and care not

whom we suffocate in
the name of conformity.

- I defied the law of standardization.

Consequently, I belong in neither box,

yet, I have been inside both.

- These archival subjects,

these transcripts that we now have access

to are from a moment in time
when categories are being made.

Where people in clinics
and research institutions

and doctor's offices are
thinking this but not that,

well, maybe this means that, and

we're actually in this moment

where these decisions
and these comparisons

and these tensions are being animated

by people who are in positions

of structural and institutional power.

- I think one of the ways we could think

about this time period is it's the moment

when people's own everyday
lives are starting

to interface with
institutional categories.

Categories of law, medicine, psychology,

social science and so we're seeing

that as antagonism, right?

I think today we're often led

to believe like our
categories will set us free.

Oh, we authored them all.

We have these lovely words
like trans and transgender

and non-binary that have nothing

to do with medicine and so
we'll be totally set free

because you're in the driver's seat.

You call yourself whatever you want.

You've got your pronouns
and you're good to go.

But when we come back to this time period,

we see that these
categories, which are systems

of classification, ways
of drawing hard lines

and if you're on this side of the line,

you're out and if you're
on this side of the line,

you're lucky, right?

Agnes is here, Georgia is here.

And what we see in this time period is

that those categories are
the product of struggle.

It's a showdown.

That's why the talk show is
so apt, it's a tête-à-tête,

but one person has a lot more credibility

than the other person.

One person is considered an expert.

The other person is considered

to not know anything about themselves.

- Do you consider
yourself to be homosexual?

- In the beginning I was
lumped in with homosexuals,

but I've never considered
myself to be one.

- I don't understand
the line of questioning.

- I've always been
connected to the gay world.

I knew all the butches
and the diesel dykes

in college and I realized
I wasn't the only one

in the world experiencing
female masculinity.

- Well, I tried to go back to the gay bars

but they treated me like a tourist.

I feel more confident with
the heterosexual crowd,

as long as they don't know
anything about my situation.

Well, yeah, to me it makes sense,

even though it seems like
it shouldn't make sense

but it makes sense 'cause
I am a heterosexual, right?

Kind of a weird one.

But if I'm around gay and lesbian people,

at some point, it'll, you
know, they assume that,

you know, gay men might
assume I'm gay and it's like,

well, I'm not.

- The thing that I hear

in Denny's voice is something
I connect to which is,

you know, I'm not,

I don't really identify as a straight male

or cis-male at all, I really,

but I don't identify as
a lesbian at all either.

I really feel that I'm,
this in-between sort

of version and that there's like,

the paradox is sort of become my friend.

- I remember the first time
I went out into gay life,

it was a bar in Detroit called The Fox.

I walked in wearing women's apparel

and I knew right away that was a mistake.

- What kind of a mistake?

- It's easier to be a homosexual
in those kinds of places.

We need to create our own spaces.

There's like a hint of kind

of like disappointment and
almost patronizing quality

in the way that Barbara interacts

with the doctor in the transcript

when she realizes that he's
not really in the know.

- Some other people I've
spoken to talk about pretense.

- Pretense?

- Being a man, but having
to pass as a woman.

- There's no pretense.

If it is in you to be female

and women's apparel help
you make a success of it,

then so be it.

- Yes, well, that's what everyone says

but some do admit that it is
hard to shake off the pretense.

- I don't feel that way.

When I was a female
impersonator, I was acting

but it's not like when I
left I took off my face

and became a different person.

- I was wondering if you
could help me make sense

of some of the frictions or relationship

between trans, cross-dressing
and drag communities

as you understand them.

- When I first went out to
clubs dressed as a woman,

and at that time that would have been

considered cross-dressing

'cause I wasn't living my life that way.

It seemed to me that the lines

between us all were a little bit blurrier.

You know, prior to social media,

prior to this particular
phase of identity politics,

there was a kind of sense
of behind closed doors

we were all just, you know,

the freaks and the others
and gay in some way,

shape or form, whatever that meant.

- Many of us, when we come out of one box,

we hop into another box.

This is what it means to be trans,

this is what it means to be gay,

and have learned some unhealthy, I think,

performance behavior in performing
gender along those lines.

- There were people who were uncomfortable

being seen as trans.

It tended to be people who

regardless of how they felt inside had

at one point in time
been seen by the world

as straight white men and their way

of coping with that was to try

to eliminate the word that sparked

that discomfort and to draw very clean

and distinct lines between them

and drag because drag
queens really were men.

So it was all about kind

of creating these rhetorical boundaries.

- Some of our other guests say

that they frequently end up
on the wrong side of the law.

- I never have a problem,

but we are putting together information

who is arrestable based

on newspaper clippings
that we've collected.

- And in the street, do
you run into trouble?

- There will always be ignorant people,

but I experienced much more aggression

when I was perceived as a homosexual.

- I've put a bit of paint over the F

on my driver's license but
the police scraped it off.

They asked me, are you a man or a woman?

And I said, well, that's
a matter of opinion.

- I was pulled over for
drunk driving in 1955 and

yeah, I was worried I
was going to get booked

for being a sexual degenerate.

Once you're in the books,

you're in the books for
the rest of your life.

- My husband had a baseball game.

I decided I would wear
a pair of Capri pants

and these Japanese flats.
These vice cops picked me up,

said I was soliciting.

I don't need to do that.

I have someone taking care of me.

They just kept asking,
are you a man or a woman?

And took me to jail.

- And where's the harassment most common?

- Everywhere. Mexico, Chicago, Washington,

you can't get away from it.

I'm sick and tired of it.

I walk like a woman.

I feel like a woman,

everything I do is feminine and still.

- How long has this
harassment been going on?

- Forever.

- I actually find it really
hard to sit with Georgia.

I think a lot is put on
her shoulders at the time

and so we encounter her in that context

and there's only so much we can do.

We're not there. And I think, you know,

beyond the initial surprise

to find a brilliant,
pedagogical, well-spoken,

buttoned-up Black trans woman

in the mid-century
speaking back to Garfinkel.

Beyond that, there's some
real tough questions about

what she let slip about
how hard her life really is

and the way that she tries to package that

for him so he can understand it.

Because there's a color
line separating the two

of them and it's really
at this time period

and unbridgeable gulf of white supremacy

and Jim Crow and a lot of that has to do

with the divide between public space

and private space. And
so it's no coincidence

that iconic trans women of the era,

the Christine Jorgensen's

and the Agnes' are beautiful white women

that we can imagine

in a kitchen - making
dinner for their husbands.

The private sphere is a
refuge for those lucky enough

by the color of their
skin and their income

to be able to flee to the
suburbs where you can't be seen.

But for poorer Black trans
people and trans people

of color living in places like LA,

moving through space was just

as dangerous then in
some ways as it is now.

Walking down the street

which is the story that Georgia tells,

is enough reason to be
picked up for prostitution,

for sex work, because
just to exist and walk

through the world in public space

as a Black trans woman was

to be considered guilty of a crime.

- [Chase] I think often
about the relationship

between visibility and vulnerability.

- Yes, yes.

You know, with the talk shows,

with, you know, media, with all of the,

even the fact that with news
now we're actually starting

to hear some of the reports

of the trans murders and
to think the violence

that our community experiences.

At the same time, you know,

more visibility provides us
with so much more opportunities.

Those who are in the more privileged

parts of our community
experience, get more privileged.

Those who are in the most vulnerable parts

of our community are
more vulnerable and so,

sort of spotlight turns into
this sort of magnifying glass.

It's like this kid
holding a magnifying glass

over an ant and burning
it because we burn up,

a lot of people in those margins,

we burn up under that spotlight.

When you're in the hood and now they know

how to look for trans
people and what to look

for and what have you like, you know,

all eyes are on you and it's
not always a good feeling.

- I think visibility is
such a hotly contested

topic in our community
because our survival

has been predicated on invisibility.

There was always an impulse, I think,

to avoid other trans people.

I remember early in my journey identifying

other trans women in particular
in public space and like,

instead of having a moment of recognition

and acknowledgement,
it was like a moment of

anxiety.

- I did have a moment where I was

in a diner in Brooklyn
and this young woman came

in with her boyfriend
and sat down right next

to me and I had that whole
kind of moment of like,

should I say something?

Does she know who I am? Or
whatever, and on the way out,

like I just looked at her
and she just looked up

and it was just a, you know,

just like the subtlest
of head nods and we went

about our day, but that
was really powerful.

It's like, we're just out

in public doing our thing
and we're not alone.

- The thing about women,

cis-women that we still have yet to sort

of claim is that cis-women
come in all shapes,

sizes and tones. And so you
have cis-women with deep voices.

You have cis-women with broad shoulders.

You have cis-women who
are six feet tall or more.

Cis-women with Adam's apples.

But when you're talking about trans women,

then when we come together,

it's sort of an addition up to

what will get us clocked and
we can't have an Adam's apple,

a six foot and baritone
all in the same group

or else we're all gonna get clocked.

- I also think it's kind of interesting

that with trans people
there was an interesting,

this kind of historical accident

that the people who got
elevated the highest

were actually those

who shared an identity with the
people who are most at risk.

The fact that it was Black trans women

who became ultimately
the face of the movement

while it was Black trans women

who were most at risk in the movement.

- Can you do me a favor or yeah,

the favor, of summarizing the Laverne,

Katie Couric encounter?

- It was interesting to watch on TV

because it was such a milestone for us

as trans people

to see two trans people
on Katie Couric's show,

Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera

and what you saw was at first, Katie tries

to ask these very
invasive questions about,

you know, what surgeries have you had,

what's going on with your body
to Carmen Carrera and Carmen,

I think might not have
had the words at the time

but she knew in her body
just something felt wrong

about that question.

She's like, oh, I actually
kind of don't want

to answer that question
and then Laverne came out

and Katie kind of tried

to come back again and was like, well,

I asked Carmen these questions

and she felt it was a little
intrusive, what do you think?

And Laverne had the words.

- The preoccupation with transition,

with surgery, objectifies trans people

and then we don't get to really deal

with the real lived experiences.

The reality of trans people's lives is

that so often we're targets of violence.

The homicide rate in the
LGBT community is highest

amongst trans women and
when we focus on transition,

we don't actually get to
talk about those things.

This is the reality of so
many trans people's lives

in this country, trans women

of color whose lives are in danger simply

for being who they are and we're looking

for justice for Islan's
murder and we're looking

for justice for so many trans people

across this country and
by focusing on bodies,

we don't focus on the lived realities

of that oppression and
that discrimination.

- We turn to Laverne Cox
and we turn to Janet Mock

and we turn to Angelica Ross and people

who are going to show us a path forward,

speak truth to power and we love it,

but we don't think about the pressure

that that puts on them and we don't think

about what it means to
be put in that position,

where you can either sink or swim

and I think people are tired of swimming.

You shouldn't have to be a
saint, you know, to get a job.

- [Host] So Georgia, what's next?

- I don't know.

I don't know.

This whole thing just
has me so sick with worry

and I read my Bible, stay
faithful, but I don't know.

I feel good about being a woman

but everything else,

I don't know.

(humming)

- I feel this kind of responsibility

for Georgia that is totally inappropriate.

I don't know Georgia.

My life is nothing like her.

I'm a trans woman of color, I'm not Black.

I don't share that experience.

I'm not from the South.

I never lived in that time period.

I don't know shit about Georgia

and in that way I'm much like Garfinkel.

There's what I think I know about her.

There's what I want her to mean for me

and I've had to work
really hard in my life

to understand that that's
also how I'm treated

in the world. And I
think it's really painful

to try and turn to the
past to learn a lesson

for this moment

when I just see the same thing happening

over and over again.

One of my first reactions
to Agnes was, wow,

that's so interesting.

I'm nothing like that.

I could have never been her.

I also don't want to.

I don't want to be her.

But I think part of the
problem then is if we think

that Agnes is unrepresentative,

we have to try and
figure out what do we do

with the fact that she's
iconic. And she's iconic

in this positive sense
that she was very visible

because she ticked a lot of the boxes

and so she was able to
leverage that, right?

She got things done.

She outwitted Robert Stoller,

she got hormones, she got surgery,

she made a life for herself, right?

And I don't begrudge
her that for a moment.

She saw an opportunity and she took it

and so she's iconic in a certain way

but then we have to go and
ask, how is Georgia iconic?

Well, she's not a household name.

Even amongst historians
people don't know her story,

but people think they know
who she is when they see her,

oh, the Black trans woman from that era,

she must be incarnating
all that was horrible

and awful and racist and transphobic.

And so she becomes iconic too,

but almost like a negative icon.

And so it's easy for us to say, well,

Agnes doesn't work because
she's too limited as you know,

an icon to stand in for trans people

so we'll just substitute her for Georgia.

And that will be a radical act

because Black trans women
haven't had their time

and so we're just doing a good thing,

just like that. Boom, boom.

But it's the same system of icons

and it doesn't take
into consideration that,

you know, when all is said and done,

Agnes gets some things that help her life.

Did Georgia get anything
out of that experience?

I don't know but it doesn't seem like it.

And she's not the one that we remember

and so I'm really critical of trying

to recuperate the Georgia's of the past

as if that atones for the sins

of that time but also
the sins of our present.

One of my mentors in
college was teaching me

kind of how to be a historian
and one of the things

that she told me that's always
stuck with me is she said,

our job is not to act as if
we know things about people

that they didn't know about themselves.

And if that's true, then we can't turn

to Georgia just like
we can't turn to Agnes

to fix something that's our fault.

We can only meet them in so far

as they exist in this archive

and we can imagine more about them

but we have to admit when
that imagining is about

what we want and need from them

and not what they were really there doing.

- If I could talk to
Georgia, it really would be,

I just feel like there's this
thread through the experience.

There's a story that I would relate to.

Girl, how did you make it through?

I always say, either you like me like this

or you don't like me at all

'cause I can't be nobody else but me.

- Many, many years ago
I just gotten my PhD

and I decided to write a book

about the history of trans kids,

partly because there was no book

about the history of trans kids, partly

because trans kids were suddenly on 20/20

and there were being
documentaries being made

about them and there were, you know,

new characters on TV shows

and I just had this premonition that like,

it's about to get really
dangerous and really dark

and I had seen whispers in the archive

that kids transitioned
and we didn't know this.

It's incredible to meet Jimmy

because Jimmy is a trans teenager.

- Hello, Jimmy, thank you
for joining us this evening.

I must admit you are much younger

than most of the people
we've been speaking to.

- Yeah, I'm a teen.

- Can you tell me a little
bit about your family?

- I have two brothers and a sister.

- And what about your parents?

- My dad is a truck driver
and my mom is a housewife.

- [Morgan] One of the interesting pieces

of Jimmy's story is that he comes

into the UCLA clinic with his
mom and she's like supportive.

What do you think about that?

- I think a lot of things.

I think that like the space
of the clinic is a space

where the mother can emerge as supportive.

My kids said that they were this thing

or that they needed this
thing and then I checked

with an expert and the experts said

that that was going to be
okay and so it could happen.

- Your parents must be
a little overwhelmed

by your desire for all these changes.

- Yeah, well, you know,
they're old people.

- I assume you go to school.

- Yeah, we just switched school districts

so that I could start
the next year as a boy.

It didn't matter before

because everybody sounds
the same pre-puberty.

- But you have to practice being a boy?

- You just grimace, hitch
your pants up, and sit down.

- But there's a difference between wanting

to be a boy and being a boy.

- I don't see a difference.

To be an adolescent is kind of

to be like truculent or to feel aggrieved

or to kind of feel like
no one around me knows

what I am going through.

I think the thing that I really identify

with here is that for
lots of trans adolescents,

like that's true.

Like no one around me knows
what I'm going through.

It's like the problem of
adolescence writ insanely large.

- We didn't think there were
trans teenagers that long ago.

A lot of trans kids today
think they're the first ones

to go through this.

A lot of trans people
think whenever you are able

to finally transition that
one of the reasons it's

so hard is no one's ever done it before.

And so I really wanted to tell
the stories of trans kids.

I wanted to find them.

I wanted to go to places like UCLA

and say they were there too.

They did it.

And I decided to write this book

in a lot of ways because I wanted

to avoid transitioning

and I thought if I could write a book

about trans people that
did their lives justice

then I would have done my piece

and I wouldn't have to
say yes to the thing

that I wanted. And I'm sure you can relate

to this in different ways as a maker

we bring ourselves into what we do

but sometimes we want so badly

to escape who we are in our work.

- I was talking to your mom
backstage about the surgery.

- I got my tonsils out when I was little.

I don't see how this is much different.

I know I have male blood cells,

I just need to get the plumbing fixed.

- You've already got the hair.

- Like a surfer.

- What do you want to do when you grow up?

- I want live in Malibu and own a yacht.

- That sounds nice.

- My grandma says she'll buy the gasoline.

And I said I'd let her.

- What?

(laughing)

- And I said I'd let her.

- He is trolling the guy.

- Yeah.
- Like he's like I'm gonna say

the most absurd thing I possibly can.

- I think so.

So there are several moments
in Jimmy's interviews

which reading them, especially

as a transcript and not knowing

how he said the thing,
is really interesting.

Moments that I read as basically him sort

of fucking with Garfinkel
or like messing with him.

So there's a skill of playfulness just

for keeping yourself alive.

- In the course of like
performing this person

or inhabiting this person,

there's like a grief that
is really there for me.

This was like one of the things I kind

of believed that this was new,

that like this had never
happened before and part

of the reason why all of
these horrible things had

to happen to me and part of the reason

why when I said like over and
over, you have to call me he,

you have to call me he, please call me he,

I can't live like this.

Part of the reason that the answer had

to be no was that this was all so new

and no one knew what to do with it.

Most of the doctors that I saw

as a youth just had no idea

what they were talking about and were sort

of pretending to or
not in varying degrees.

I saw one dude

who was doing his PhD at UCLA,

when people want the like
reparative therapy anecdote,

this is the reparative therapy anecdote:

So he's like telling me this story

about this trans man patient
that he has and he's like,

so he was dating this girl
and he brought the girl

into my office because it
was the first relationship,

you know, he had tried to
have and he was really happy

with her and they were
sitting there together

and at one point she
turned to him and she said,

'oh honey, I know you're a girl'

And as a 27 year old man, I'm like, oh,

I'm sure that there are all kinds

of ways that they could be
understanding themselves, right?

But at the time I was fucking furious.

I just was like, why?

That was a horrible thing to say to him,

like he should have
walked out of the office

and dumped her right there
and the doctor was like,

no, no, no, you don't understand.

It was beautiful because
that's the only way

that someone like that could ever

have a relationship. And I
remember being like, well,

I'm never going to have
a relationship like that.

Like, I'm never going to date somebody

who thinks I'm a girl. And he looked me

in my eyes and he said,

who loves people like that?

- Am I right to say that
you're in a relationship?

- That's correct.

He's a decent man.

- But what about intimacy?

- What about it?

- I met my husband in 1955.

Most men would ask, are
you a man or a woman?

So I had to find a man who
liked that sort of thing.

- And what about love?

- You know what I say, love
is like a gun collection,

many kinds, many calibers.

- I've been with June for many years

and she always told me she'd stay

with me through any changes.

- I met Cathy in 1942, love of my life.

- Sometimes I get so
frustrated with my husband

'cause he's never had to worry

about anyone other than himself.

Not just him, most men.

- Bill and I have been
together for some time,

Bill's a regular guy, normal.

Most couples have to determine

whether they're sexually compatible.

Bill and I had to figure out
if we were sexually possible.

- And what does Bill
think of your situation?

- Bill thinks of my situation

as like a toothache that
the dentist has to pull.

- But what does Bill know?

- Well, Bill knows what you know.

- Well, what do I know?

- You tell me.

- I once dated a man who worked

on the railroad and he didn't know.

When I finally told him,

he was in shock but we worked it out.

You never know what people want

or how they might react.
And my sex is just one part

of who I am.

- I guess I think sometimes

about the risk and walking through doors

that you can't walk back out of

and sometimes research feels like that.

And so we have this social scientific

and medical archive
where trans people come

and they talk and they're not passive.

They don't lack the ability to do things.

They're not, they have, you know,

they have agency. They talk
back, they look at the camera,

they make gestures,

they refuse to answer things.

They are people, but they're not recorded

as people and so the thing that they're

so conscious of is that they're always

in the frame, and Garfinkel
or Stoller is outside.

And at the end of the day,

he turns off the tape recorder,

puts his suit jacket back on,

goes and gets in his car in the
parking lot and drives home.

But for the trans people
that he's studying,

they never get that moment, right?

They're always inside the
frame and I think that

part of what's so hard to try

and do research differently

than those people did in the
mid-century as trans people,

is that we're not able to
leave the frame either.

We never exit and so I guess
sometimes I feel afraid

that if I walk into this library
and I go into this archive,

I'm never going to walk back out.

- Have you heard of the
work of Dr. Harry Benjamin?

- I did speak to Dr.
Benjamin, but $20 a visit?

That's outrageous.

I have friends who know doctors

who will prescribe
hormones for much cheaper.

- Can you tell me about your experiences

with doctors at UCLA?

- Yeah, I see Dr. Lubin.

He kind of seems like a girl himself.

I also see Stoller, Goodwin,
Rosen and Garfinkel.

I can't tell if they are trying to help me

or just help themselves.

- I've been in contact
with Dr. Elmer Belt,

Christine Jorgensen put
me in touch with him.

He's one of the better surgeons.

- Not all surgeons are good
at these types of procedures?

- I always say there are
three kinds of doctors.

There are those who are willing.

There are those who
acknowledge that something must

be done but aren't willing to do it.

And those who wouldn't do
it even if they knew how.

I've learned to tell which
is which very quickly.

- Trans medicine is sort of a kind

of accidental stepchild or sibling

to the medicalization of intersex

infants and children and
adults. And it's really kind

of a painful tale where we start

to see this divergence where
trans people are asking

for the very things and being
told they can't have them

that are being really violently

and forcibly imposed on intersex folks.

- Are you interested in the surgery?

- Some people say maybe
you'll get fixed like

that Christine Jorgensen. Maybe.

- But do you ever feel
embarrassed by your situation?

- I've been in many
rooms with many doctors.

I'm not embarrassed.

- But they're going

to remove incredibly
important parts of your body.

(laughing)

Why are you laughing?

- Oh, I don't know.

Why don't you just put it in a little box

so I can pet it and keep
it for the rest of my life.

- Aren't you worried about complications?

- This is the upmost complication.

- [Jules Voiceover] I can
remember at the very beginning

of graduate school I read a
kind of sensationalist kind

of salacious sort of paragraph about Agnes

that implied the thing
that was really interesting

about her was that she
tricked Dr. Robert Stoller

at UCLA into thinking

that she was somehow
biologically intersex in some way

when really she had been a trans teenager.

And I think the story

that I read suggested she
was stealing estrogen pills

from her mother or something like that.

- Are you taking any medication?

- Well, that's a loaded question.

- Why would it be loaded?

- Sometimes I take alka
tablets or aspirin.

- And then once the lie was
revealed many years later

after she had gotten what
she wanted which was surgery,

the doctors were left with
a kind of bitter taste

in their mouth.

And I remember reading it and thinking

this whole thing is a lie.

You know, I remember thinking
this passage is a lie.

It's not telling the real story.

- And what do you think of the lie?

- I think that we are only

human if we're allowed to be anti-heroes.

- [Host] So tell me, Agnes.

- What?

- [Host] What's next?

- So what's next.

My whole life. .

has been wrapped up
getting this one thing.

Agnes, as you know,

somebody who manipulated
the system is sort

of an anti-hero in a lot of ways.

So I'm okay with the lie.

You know, I think that we do
what we have to do to survive.

- Do you ever modify your story?

- I use everything from
my past that I can.

- Everything?

- I don't change any details.

- Maybe the response is
I don't tell anything

that might give it away. Like
maybe there's like a shorter-

- I think there's a-

- It's like a-

- It's the same thing I do,
it's like you share a lot,

you just omit some things, you know?

- Do you ever feel like a fraud?

- Only when I'm dressed like a woman.

When I get mail delivered to
my house in my female name,

I just say it's for a neighbor.

- Many white lies.

- Oh yeah, many.

- I felt like for so long,

I felt this need to refer
to my own authenticity

to sort of like cite my own authenticity

as like the measure of why I
needed people to treat me well.

Like how real of a man I was.

- And I love what you say, you know,

I realized looking back
that there were things

that I had to say about myself

in order for people to respect me.

What's an example of
something like that for you?

- Saying, like, when you call me 'she'

it makes me throw up.

Like I would make up that I had
these like physical symptoms

which in retrospect I actually did, like,

I was experiencing like full
body dissociation and stuff

but I didn't like, it was
like the distress that I felt,

I felt like I had to
legitimize it by being like,

I'm throwing up or like, I can't sleep.

Well, I actually couldn't sleep.

That was true. But just stuff like that.

I would come up with these weird things

'cause it was like the
lie was better for the,

like, I thought that
the lie would sound more

like the truth to them.

- I have a tricky
relationship to the truth

for myself in terms of just the paradox

of my own body and what society
might call a lie, you know,

or sometimes what I might call a lie

if I'm just passing

and that doesn't necessarily
represent my existence

then it's like, yeah,
I think the truth is,

you know, it does start to
fall into that construct

of like who can afford
certain truths and who cannot.

- In Agnes' time, you know,

trans folks were encouraged to
present plausible narratives

which were made up stories about

where they came from and who they were.

So you would say, I came from a farm.

I was, you know, the prom queen.

It's like, whatever the story might be,

that is conflated with the notion

that trans people are
presenting a false persona.

- I just don't think that's
unique to trans people though.

- Tell me more.

- Well, people are constantly
performing a certain self

in order, you know, to a certain end.

That's just what we do.

I mean, it's another
version of code switching.

It's additionally I think exasperated

because of the sense of duplicity

and performance being an
aspect of transness itself.

- To me too it speaks to this management

of these layers of disclosure
where I'll tell one kind

of story in public and I'll hold

another story in private
because I have a broader agenda.

- That's right.

- And I wonder,

what role does truth play in your agenda?

- Truth is a, ugh, what
do I even say about truth?

I don't know what the hell truth is.

I mean, I know some experiences have

a certain kind of resonance
that I might describe

with a lowercase t, truth,

I don't know, what do you mean by that?

Why are you asking that question?

- Now, I have a very hard question.

Do you have any regrets?

- That's your hard question?

- How do you justify the lies?

- How do you justify your questions?

- We've all been misled so many times

and we can watch it happen in real time.

Garfinkel is misleading America, right?

Or Mike Wallace is misleading America.

Trans people are slyly misleading

every non-trans person they talk

to in order to protect
themselves, to save themselves.

Medicine has misled us to believe

that being trans is some
sort of medical condition,

social science has misled us to believe

that being trans is to be
deviant. But, you know,

trans people have also misled each other

and told half-truths
and we've tried our best

in really difficult
conditions to find ways

to talk about ourselves
and defend ourselves,

a lot of which are extremely imperfect.

- So, you know, obviously,

I'm sparking wildly
with some of the things

that you're saying and thinking

so much about documentary
as another method

of authority and as another method

of excavation and
interrogation and thinking

about my role as a white,

trans masculine person
in collaboration with a,

you know, institutionally
embedded, cis, punk, academic,

like we didn't rehearse
that summary of identity,

but you know,

and like what role can collaboration

and storytelling play in
shifting the terms of engagement?

And I don't know, like,

I'm not sure that we can
shift the terms of engagement.

I'm really not.

- That question of, can we move the frame?

Can we do things differently?

I don't know.

All I know is I can't do that by myself

but with both of you, yeah,

a little bit more,

with everyone in this project, a lot more,

with everyone watching who's going to be,

I hope changed by what they see.

That's a lot of people all of a sudden.

- You have a very interesting story.

Have you ever considered writing a memoir?

- Doctor asked me to
write my autobiography.

I thought the only reason

to do it is if it would help someone.

- Maybe people with your
condition would benefit

from this program.

- And that relates to what?

- One of the other women

that I've spoken to on this subject,

there couldn't have been
a more lonely person.

She was very young, very passable

but she's still faced many

of the troubles common to people like you.

- My life isn't troubled.

There's no reason to be lonely.

People choose to be.

We are here.

- Have I said something wrong?

- I think you're wrong
about a lot of things.

- Thank you for speaking
with me tonight, Denny.

- I bet I've been some
help with your program.

- We end as we began,

asking questions that
do not yet have answers.

In the eyes of some,

these individuals represent new frontiers

of scientific progress,

in the eyes of others,

they pose a threat to the
very fabric of American life.

Whether a sign of innovation or inversion,

only time will tell.

From our studios in
Los Angeles, goodnight.

- One of the many lies of visibility is

that being seen is your emancipation.

We've almost limited our imagination about

what a good trans life would
be or what freedom means

and associated it with
publicity or visibility.

And even if that's so obviously not true

for people whose visibility
puts them in danger,

I don't know why we don't ask more often,

what would it feel like to be left alone?

What's the right to be invisible?

And there are so many
forms of invisibility

that we get to see, even in this archive.

The doctor, the scientist, the white man,

the non-trans person
who kind of just fades

into the background because
we don't linger on them.

We take them for granted.

They make sense in this place.

So even when they're on screen,

they're relatively invisible.

But I think sometimes we might look

at an archive like this
and say, oh, what a shame.

There's no Mexican Americans
and LA was full of them.

There are no immigrants from Asia, right?

There aren't that many more young people,

there aren't any really old people.

Ah, it's so unrepresentative.

It's so sad that we
didn't get those stories.

Is it though?

I mean, I think, and this
is kind of challenging

because it asks you

to go somewhere where we have no evidence,

everyone who's not on screen
might've been damn happy

that they weren't because they didn't have

to be put in these situations that were

so difficult. And so I think something

that we overlook when returning
to the past and noting,

oh, it's such a partial account,

we're missing so many people's lives,

yeah, it's not because
they didn't exist though,

and what they were doing

with their lives might have
so exceeded our imagination

that one thing I like

to think about is they get the last laugh.

And the fact that we don't know

who they are says very little

about them and everything about us.

And so I think there's something

that we're searching for here
that is bigger than any of us

because you can't carry those burdens.

People like Agnes lived impossible lives.

But they lived impossible lives.

Agnes did the impossible.

She outwitted every clinician
that she worked with.

She got what she needed.

She transitioned and then she
comes back and she tells them?

Okay, we don't get
everything that she's done.

We don't know what her motives were,

but she made that work.

And we're still living impossible
lives today and so to me,

even if I don't see myself in Agnes,

if I don't need Agnes'
story to make the things

that are hard in my life
work, I still need her.

You know, I still need to go there.

I still need to know

that her impossibility
wasn't the end of the story.

And that there is something

within the impossible

or in between a truth and a
lie where life takes place.

(gentle upbeat music)