Yesterday, as I was chatting on the phone with one of my best friends from grad school, I noticed the Priority Mail envelope outside my front door, the envelope that I had anxiously been awaiting for a few days. Excited, I interrupted my friend mid-sentence, opened the door, grabbed the envelope and ripped it open: there, inside it, was my new Italian passport, bearing my chosen name and affirmed sex ‘M’.
Ten days prior, I was walking into the Italian Consulate in Chicago, dressed in the most standard masculine way with grey men’s pants and a light-blue button-down shirt (but also wearing my queer Pride rainbow wristband). As I walked through the door of the suite on the 18th floor of a skyscraper in downtown, for a brief moment I wondered whether I’d have to speak Italian or English. The question was soon answered, as the Carabiniere greeted me, “Buongiorno”. Despite being perfectly bilingual for English & Italian, I found myself struggling with the words stuck in my throat. I was nervous, emotional, still afraid that something might go wrong.
The Carabiniere checked me in — his slightly southern Italian accent and his “friendly formal” attitude so familiar, coming back to me from some long-buried-yet-not-forgotten depths. And so reminiscent of my father — himself a man from southern Italy and in the armed forces for most of his life.
I was almost forty-five minutes early so I was asked to sit and wait to be called, and assured that the colleague at “window #4” would help me very soon. I went to sit and as I put down my bag and jacket, part of my nerves let go and the welled up emotions broke the dam, overflowing. I sat and cried. The tears just flowed out uncontrollably from my eyes, nose running, as I thought to myself, half laughing, “Here I am to be registered as a ‘man’ and I’m crying! So much for ‘boys don’t cry!’”
Fortunately, I had some time to regain composure before I was called up to “window #4” and asked to hand over the paperwork for the passport renewal. But I was still anxious and my nerves showed. Again, the person serving me was formal in that somehow typically Italian “formal” way and as he typed my data into the computer he must have noticed my birthdate/birthday and said, “Auguri!” (i.e. “Happy birthday!”). Among other things, I had to hand him my old passport, with my given name and assigned sex ‘F’, which made me really nervous, so I sort of asked/reminded him that I had been assured that all the paperwork for my name & sex change had been approved and registered — to which he replied, again in that “friendly formal” way, “Si’, si’, e’ tutto a posto”. In fact, he filled out the paper form for males (Italian grammar is very gendered so there are two different forms for females & males) and handed it over for me to revise and sign. And yet, as he held my old passport and inserted my biometric data into the computer, he asked me, “Quanto e’ alta?”, using the feminine to ask my height. I answered his question telling myself quietly that I would let it go this one time but, if it happened again, I would correct him and tell him to use the masculine for me in Italian. That ended up not being necessary, though. The rest of the interaction went smoothly and his attitude got gentler as we proceeded with the paperwork. Until, at the very end, when everything was done, he said, with a kind, sympathetic tone, “E’ stata lunga, eh?” (i.e. “It’s been a long time coming?”). The genuine kindness in the tone of his question touched me so I answered sincerely, drawing a deep breath: “Si’, tra la difficolta’ a prenotare un appuntamento e il cambio sesso c’e’ voluto un anno e mezzo…!” (i.e. “Yes, between the difficulty to get an appointment and the sex change, it’s taken a year and a half”). Then, his final reassuring, sympathetic remark: “Non si preoccupi, adesso e’ tutto a posto” (“Don’t worry, now it’s all settled”).
I took a deep breath and tried to still my mind, my emotions, to get myself together as best I could before heading out into the bustling downtown again. I walked over to the Carabiniere to retrieve my cell-phone and asked him where the bathroom was. And without a moment’s hesitation, with no hint of a doubt, he gave me the code & directions for the men’s room.
At 44, in a city that until then had had nothing to do with me personally, I was born again.
And that night, I went out to celebrate with one of my closest straight guy friends, wearing leggings and a skirt and a shirt and tie. Not only am I a man who can cry: I’m also a man who enjoys wearing skirts sometimes!
As I sit and write all this, my new Italian passport, bearing my chosen name and affirmed sex ‘M’, is sitting on my desk right next to my laptop. The photo on it is awful but it’s me and it really looks like a man. And as one of my closest cis-het buddies said to me when I showed it to him yesterday: “Every guy has at least one picture that looks like a mugshot: take it as additional validation!”
The Little Prince and the Fox 