"A movie studio?" I asked.

"Just like Hollywood, only New Jersey is cheaper," Marty said.

We whisked out over the city. We did fly as high as some of the tops of buildings, but the pilot weaved his way through them as we sprung out into the wide open as we crossed a river and headed directly west.

Marty was as interested in the scenery as I was. I didn't know there were so many buildings or so many people. There wasn't hardly anyone in Eagle Point because they're all in New York City.

It took about ten minutes for us to get where we were going.

Marty held my hand as we dashed out of the helicopter heading for a food truck that was sitting beside a building with a line of people waiting to order lunch.

I was starved.

"Here's Marty. Let him order gang," a silver haired man said.

The line shifted away from the window of the truck, and Marty walked up.

"Reubin on rye," Marty said to the woman inside the window. "I recommend the Reubin. I've been dying for one of those since we left this morning. You won't be disappointed."

The line shifted back into place when we stepped to one side. Five minutes later the woman stuck her head out of the window.

"Marty. Orders up. I gave you the French fries you like."

We moved to an area with picnic tables and two dozen people were sitting around eating as they chatted.

"You didn't pay for our food," I mentioned.

"It's free. I discovered these people and this food a couple of years ago. They work for me and feed my crew. Lord knows I pay them little enough, the least I can do it feed them. We're like a family."

"What are they shooting?" I asked.

"The She She Is Is A He."

"Trans?"

"See the young man at the table over there?" Marty said, using his head to indicate where.

"Uh huh."

"He's trans. Wonderful actor. He looks twelve but he's eighteen. I saw him on a talk show a year ago. Took me some time to track him down, but I asked him if we could tell his story. It was not exactly an easy sell. He didn't want to become a spectacle. He's quite an intelligent young man, but he didn't fancy himself an actor."

"How's he doing?"

"Frank's a natural. My director told him, 'Be yourself.'"

"And so Frank plays Frank. He's an impressive young man. We start with a young child who first indicates she is not a she. No, she didn't pick it up in school. Actually, he had a stay at home mom, and she noticed that Fran liked the cars and trucks better than the dolls. Fran was better at most games than the boys who she intimidated to no end with her authoritative style. They went to counseling and after about ten sessions with both her mother and Fran together, the counselor floated the idea that Fran might be Frank. We use the real counselor, Amon Horn. He's as natural as Frank, and the woman playing his mother is an accurate portrayal. She went to live with Frank's family for weeks before we started filming. She makes an excellent Charlotte. Frank and Patricia are buddies. Charlotte relates the same way to Frank as Patricia does."

"Sounds fantastic," I said. "Too little is known about trans. I only know what is said on television and in stories about people who object to trans people. As one of the fathers in the audience said, 'If he was my kid, I'd beat him black and blue if he wanted to wear a dress.'"

"That is what we are fighting. How do people become so ignorant?"

"Oh, it's easy," I said.

Marty laughed.

"How's your sandwich?"

"I've never tasted anything like it. A Reuben? The flavors all mingle together in a rather tasty way."

"Yes, they do," Marty agreed.

I came from a place where food was simply prepared. Your potatoes went in one spot, your peas in their own spot, and the chicken had a spot all its own. You want potatoes, you have potatoes, or peas, or a bite of chicken. The Reuben's flavors mingled together and collided inside your mouth, and then they exploded all over your tastebuds, and you couldn't wait to get another bite. I almost bit off one of my fingers feasting on it.

Marty thought of having a second Reuben, but he decided against it. I definitely wanted another one, but there must have been 10,000 calories in one of those suckers.

The fries were coated in a seasoning I didn't recognize, but it made them crunchy and flavorful to bite into. Marty went to an open cooler and he brought me back a ginger ale and he took a Pepsi. They were icy cold and once the sandwich was gone, it did a fine job of helping to wash down the French fries.

It was some time later that we sat off to one side watching the director have a meeting with several members of the cast. The cameramen, three of them, stood behind the director with the sound men, also three of them.

"Okay, doctor's office, scene nine act two. Take your place. We'll try to get this in one shot. Lights…, cameras, action."

"I want you to describe what you are feeling right now, Fran."

"I feel like me. I feel okay. I feel a bit confused by some of your questions. I don't know what you want."

"I want some understanding of your thoughts. We've talked about school, and we've covered your home life. I've seen your family and they all know we're trying to get to the bottom of the confusion you speak of."

"I like playing with the boys. Not like, 'Oh, she's a girl. Be careful with her kind of play. I want to rough house, throw a baseball. I want to run with other boys. No I don't want to run, I want to beat other boys when we run. I think baseball is my fav. I have my own spot and my own position. I like the outfield. I like to run, but I really like to hit the ball."

"Girls do all those things. Some don't do them very well, and some do them almost as well as you do."

"How do you feel about girls?"

"They're okay. I feel like I'm out of place when I am with girls. They do silly stuff. They're smart and all. I'm not sure they aren't smarter than me, but they talk about the dumbest stuff. I have no interest in California Barbi or what she's up to."

"How do you feel about GI Joe?"

For the first time Fran looked up from her hands.

"My father doesn't like it when I play with my GI Joe."

"I'm not your dad. It's just me and you. You can tell me."

"I feel different when I play with my GI Joe. I've got to hide him from my father. He steals him. I bought him with my own money. He has no right to take what belongs to me. That's wrong. My mother goes to find him once Dad hides him. Then, a few days later, he disappears."

"Dolls?" he asked.

"I have two," Fran said.

"How do you feel about them?"

"They're okay."

"Do you play with them?"

"Not so much. I used to. I had other dolls. Who needs 30 dolls?"

"Yes, two is a good number," the doctor said.

"Do you like to talk about yourself? How you feel?"

"No. I feel how I feel. I don't need to talk about it."

"You know I'm trying to help you to be less confused?"

"I guess. If I don't come, Mom gets angry."

"How does that make you feel?"

"Like she doesn't understand me. I don't know why I need to talk to you. I feel fine. I don't need a doctor. I need to be allowed to express myself in the way that's comfortable to me. I need to be left alone."

"No, I don't suspect you do, but your mom likes you talking to me. I'm trained to help kids figure out the confusion, but you don't seem all that confused about what you like and such."

She looked up at the doctor when she heard this. It was obvious she'd been reevaluating what she thought about him. He might not be all that bad. She knew what she liked. No one liked what she liked. They didn't need to.

"Do you have a boyfriend, Fran?"

"I've got all kinds of boy friends. I play with them and we do all kinds of stuff together."

"Do you play in one of your dresses?"

"Jeans. I like wearing jeans. It's what all the boys wear."

The cameras began to pull back out of the office that only had two sides to it. The last shot had Fran and the doctor looking eye to eye.

"Cut. I think we got it. We'll look it over at the end of the day. Charlotte, we'll need you and the doctor in the next scene."

I got up to get a ginger ale, and Marty went over to talk to the director. I held out his Pepsi, when he came back to sit.

"Thank you. Just what the doctor ordered."

The cast members all stood to watch what was an important scene. It blocked our clear view of the set, but we could see what was going on.

"Lights, cameras, action," the director said.

"How do you handle Fran's clothes. I mean when she gets up in the morning, what do you say about the way she dresses?"

"She is always wearing jeans. I tell her to go put on something more suitable if she's doing anything but going out to play. If her father sees his little girl in jeans, he's beside himself worrying about her mental health. I'm worried about his mental health. I expect him to stroke out one day, after he gets in from work and the GI Joe is where he sees it, or she doesn't hear him come in and she pops up in jeans and a tee-shirt."

"She wears jeans when she plays? Many girls wear jeans too. My girls are always in jeans. That isn't material to Fran's situation."

"She'd wear them all the time if I didn't ask her to change."

"Ask? You ask her to change. 'Why don't you put on a dress?'"

"More like, 'Put on a dress. We're going to the doctor's office.'"

"She's in jeans," the doctor said.

"I try to correct her. She's hardheaded. Arguing upsets both of us. If her father isn't around, I don't mention it as often, I'd like it if this just stopped being an issue."

"Correct? As in right, and incorrect, as in wrong?"

Charlotte looked at the doctor as if she was analyzing his words.

"Wrong?" the mother said. "I'm a terrible mother. My daughter refuses to listen to me. Why can't she be like other little girls?"

"You've got to realize, when you are correcting her, she feels like she is doing something wrong. She'll do it your way to keep the peace, but when she tells you what is on her mind. Maybe you need to hear what she is telling you."

"She hardly talks at all. She looks perturbed with me, and then she does whatever it is the right way," the mother said.

"Right and wrong? Have you ever thought that it isn't right or wrong. It simply is what it is, Charlotte. We're all different. Some differences are small and less noticeable. Other differences are huge and need attention. If she prefers vanilla ice cream and you want to buy chocolate, how would you handle that."

"That's hardly an issue, Doctor."

"Differences. Some small. Some big."

"I don't know any more. I don't know what to do."

"There is how she wants to do it, and what makes you happy with her, even if it isn't what she wants. What is she feeling?"

"I'm the parent. She's the child. Of course she listens to me."

"Not listen. Responding to your displeasure with her choices. You're right. She's wrong?"

"How does she learn if I don't tell her what's right and wrong?"

"A person's behavior isn't always a matter of right and wrong. Some behaviors are innate. She tells you how she feels and what she wants, but you don't want to accept it as your image of an adolescent girl. Her image of herself isn't the same as your image of her. She does what will please you. One day this difficulty might pass. She might accept herself as an adolescent girl. You keep acting like you're displeased with her, and I'm afraid, one day, she is going to leave and not come back."

"Because I want her to act more like she's a girl?"

"You want her to act like she is anything but how she sees herself. It's called gender dysphoria. It's when someone feels uncomfortable with how they are perceived or not feeling like you were born with the genitals associated with your outward appearance. Your daughter is young. She might self adjust and she might not. The harder you push the more her resistance is going to grow."

"I don't understand. She's a girl. Why can't she act like one?"

"Put yourself in her place. She knows what she wants. You want something entirely different for her. She's unhappy because what you want isn't what makes her happy. She wants to be happy. Do you think she's doing what she does simply to piss you and your husband off? What child wants her parents to reject who she is?"

"I don't know what she wants ," Charlotte said. "We aren't rejecting her. We want her to act like a young lady."

"I'm going to suggest you listen in on our next session. It's time you need to hear what is going on inside of Fran. I don't think she is ready to open up with you sitting in the room with her, but I think she'll sit still for allowing you to listen in. I haven't suggested it to her, but I think it will help you understand your daughter better," the doctor said.

"Cameras dolly back, and cut. Good. Good. I think you nailed it. Charlotte has heard the doctor at last. Right and wrong isn't the issue."

"What do you think?" Martin asked.

We stood to stretch our legs.

"I want to hear Charlotte's answer."

"No answer," the director said.

He walked up to stand beside Marty.

"I don't understand," I said.

"Join the club. Trans has been with us from the beginning of time," the director said. "Like so many human conditions, tradition keeps anyone from doing too vigorous an investigation of such things. Tradition says to stop you anyway possible if you tread on sacred ground."

"What is sacred ground?"

"Anything people hanging on to tradition say it is," the director said.

"I don't get it. Who hangs on to ignorance?"

"Those People in power who want to stir up the proletariat to distract them from the slight of hand they employ to steal the working class blind," the director said. "Or the dictator wants to amuse himself watching the working class blame each other for their misery."

"Maybe ignorance is the cause of their misery."

"I can see we have a budding socialist in our midst," the director said. "The last meaning in the list of meanings for proletariat people used to do manual labor for long enough each day to keep them from having the time to look around to see what's really going on."

"Why not educate themselves and get rid of the real problem."

"They need to take Dear Leaders word for who is causing the problem. They work twelve hours a day seven days a week to keep bread on the table for them and their nineteen kids."

"Maybe they should stop making babies," I said.

"Goes back to your question about ignorance. They know how to work, sleep, and make babies. You want to take making babies away? It's the only fun they have. It does have an inconvenient byproduct."

"You'd think if a guy came in dead tired from work, because he's feeding ten kids who are waiting for him. He might think twice before he goes for number eleven."

"Ah, we've gotten to the root of the problem. There's no time to think. That gets us back to tradition. Dear Leader says, "Trans folks are the problem, and that's good enough for the proletariat."

"I never heard trans people mentioned while I grew up," I said.

"Neither have the majority of the people heard about it. There is one human condition that can never be accepted, being different. Being different equates to being evil. It may indicate you are in league with the devil," the director said.

"What devil? We are living in the twenty-first century. No devil."

"Dear Leader does not agree. He knows about good and evil. How else could he be Dear Leader. He tells us who is responsible. He wouldn't lie. Why would our leader lie to us?"

"Frank? Evil. He's a child."

"See, he's bedeviled you. He's about your age."

"I 'd love to keep going around in circles with you two, but we've got to be going, I just came for the Rueben," Marty said.

The director laughed.

I didn't laugh. I saw nothing funny about hatred.

I thought the director was good at directing. Listening to him explain what I was seeing made no sense. No one was quite as stupid as he seemed to think they were.

As the helicopter lifted off the cast and crew stood waving as we lifted off and went west toward the city.

We ran out to get clear of the blades and the helicopter jumped up and dashed off toward the north.

"I didn't care for your director," I said, after Marty closed the sliding doors behind us.

"He's well respected. The studio has used him before. Cast and crew love him," Marty said.

"Blaming everything on the working class people for the problems seems to ignore the real trouble."

"You ever tried to go head to head with a politician? These days, anything negative they bury in money. They have propagandists preaching the party line 24/7. You step out of line, you lose access. You loose access, you're looking for another job. The deck is stacked to keep people in power who know better than to try to get too ambitious. They can stay on the gravy train as long as they stay in step with the money."

"What does that have to do with whatever he said the working class people were responsible for? I am working class people. I was."

"I don't want to argue, Dearest."

"I'm just angry about what he said."

"He made his point. You want to rip his head off. I get it."

"I don't want to rip anything off of anyone," I said, getting angry with Marty for taking his side.

"The system is fixed. Only people who are going to play ball get the money to run for office. Stay in line and ride the gravy train. You'll get rich, even if you can't do anything for the people who voted for you. Oh, they'll throw crumbs, while they clean out the treasury."

"What's that got to do with working people being stupid?"

"You missed the point. Working class people are kept too busy trying to keep bread on the table to be able to pay much attention. They are kept in the dark by 24/7 propaganda preaching the party line."

"That man bathes in the facts of life. He lived with Frank's family. Actors were in and out of their house for months. They were listening, investigating, reading studies and autobiographies that told the story of trans people. Did you know that women fought in the Revolutionary War and in the Civil War?"

"I never heard that."

"Most people haven't. It's called carefully created history to feed to the people. The women may have been patriotic. Maybe their husband or son were killed. Maybe they were trans and felt they had to fight."

"Why doesn't anyone know that?" I asked.

"Lots of reasons. It wasn't spoke about when a doctor came upon a man who died in his care, and after they are unable to save them, while readying the body for burial, the man turns out to have lady parts. It wasn't talked about. If she was fighting in the war, she was buried with the name she fought under. There wasn't time to ask the reason why."

"Washington knew it. Grant and other Civil War generals knew women fought as men. There was no physical. You were given a gun if you didn't bring a gun with you, and you were pointed at the enemy."

"I never knew that. Were they trans? Woman that died in wars?"

"No one knows. They were accepted as men when they fought. They were buried as men when they died. No one argued with that and history doesn't write inconvenient truths. The American story is a heroic tale that goes from the discovery of the country to men walking on the moon. It's told by the winners, and only a few courageous souls did tell the truth about how it was done. They write books for universities and people who want to read the true story about how it was done."

"What I learned in school wasn't the whole story?"

"Hardly," Marty said. "It's the story according to the government."

"Your director is smarter than I am about trans people?"

"He studied one trans person, read about many, and spoke to shrinks and counselors. He did the best investigation he could do. Most directors want to produce a remarkable piece of art everyone loves."

"No one will love this one? Maybe LGBTQ people. Do you think I'm stupid? I didn't know any of what you told me. How is it you know so much about trans?"

"You think I make a movie about a trans child and I wouldn't educate myself on the condition? There isn't a lot of in depth studies on the transgender condition. Like most homosexual issues, they are kept hidden because revealing your particular letter in the LGBTQ world might get you ruined, killed, or worse. If you search, you can find the people who are investigating the trans condition."

"Of course making a movie about something means immersing yourself in the subject matter. I should have known he was speaking from some base of knowledge I don't have. You must think I'm stupid for saying what I said."

"You know better than that. Okay, you want to know what I think? Okay, I think I'm falling in love with you. Does that make me stupid?"


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"Met"

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"New York"

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