Interview with Sophie Marie White
SL Ziegler Interviews Sophie Marie White. Sophie is a trans woman and uses she/her pronouns.
We talk about the many jobs she’s had and being out in Houma.
Interviewee: Sophie Marie White
Interviewer: S.L. Ziegler
Transcriber: Dre Tarleton
January 25, 2021
Location of Interviewee: Houma
[Transcript altered slightly for clarity and length]
S.L. ZIEGLER: This is S.L. Ziegler sitting down remotely with Sophie Marie White. Sophie is a trans woman and uses she/her pronouns. Today is January 25, 2021. And we're meeting remotely using Zoom because the COVID-19 pandemic is still going. Sophie, as we discussed before, this interview is part of the Louisiana Trans Oral History Project. The goal is to gather real world examples of what it means to be trans in Louisiana, here in the early 21st century, and to donate these interviews to the T Harry Williams Oral History Center at LSU, if you so choose, and to put them, in part or in whole, on the project's website and throughout all our multiple promotional and story sharing tools and devices. Please know that you can stop this interview at any time, and if you have any questions about this or anything else, you can reach out to me at any time. Please also know that these interviews are a joint project between you and me, so just like we talked about, we'll share the transcriptions with you, you'll have a chance to review them, and any portion of them to be deidentified, restricted or change as deemed necessary because this is your story and we just want to promote it. Could I just get a verbal acknowledgement that, that is everything that you knew was going to happen today?
SOPHIE MARIE WHITE: That is everything that you told me, and everything's fine. Ready to go.
ZIEGLER: Thank you so much. Well, with that out of the way, maybe we'll just start at the beginning. So, can you tell us where and when you were born?
WHITE: I was born in a land far, far... No. Anyway, I was born in Houma, LA, in the 50s, so I'm relatively old. I grew up in South Louisiana, never really moved away from my home until I was in my mid 20s, and then I moved to Atlanta for a while. And I wind up deciding Atlanta was too big. I didn't want to raise my children in Atlanta, so I decided to move back home to Houma, so I'm back in the town I started with.
ZIEGLER: So, you're in Houma now? Is that correct?
WHITE: Yes. Yeah.
ZIEGLER: And what brought you to Atlanta?
WHITE: An ex girlfriend who dumped me right after I got there. Actually, that was a different reason to move. That was the mid 80s, the first oil crash that really happened, destroyed Houma, destroyed South Louisiana, basically, and it was time for me to move out and grow up.
ZIEGLER: Do you feel like you did that in Atlanta?
WHITE: I think so. Mostly. Yeah, Atlanta was good. I did a lot in Atlanta. It was good. It was good. I actually got married in Atlanta, and it was a good time.
ZIEGLER: How long were you there?
WHITE: I was there somewhere around between 15 and 20 years. Me and time don't get along. Time keeps moving and I keep thinking I'm 20 years ago.
ZIEGLER: So, then, when you came back to Houma, you came back with your spouse?
WHITE: Yes. Well, I came back as Rory, which is my previous name. I moved back 20, 22 years ago, and right around that time, maybe a little bit after that, is when I started seeing some dysphoria, but I didn't understand it at the time. I think that's the biggest issue that a lot of trans people, especially back then, we didn't know what to call it, we didn't know what it was. I had no clue at all. I went through, gosh, so many different things in my own head, as to what it was. I knew things didn't fit. I always seemed like an outcast in my life. Always on the outside looking in.
If you go back in time in my life, there was a lot of places where things just didn't line up. Once I figured out I was trans, all that kind of shifted and made sense at one time. And I think that was an eye opening moment, where it really started making sense. The problem is, in my childhood and stuff like that, I don't have that moment where I thought I was female. I always liked being with females, I liked just being around them, I liked to do what they do. There's so many little things. By themselves, it's no big deal, but if you put it all together, it makes a history that really [inaubidle 00:05:17]
The big question is, I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood, which I'm not sure why I don't have any, but I really don't have any of my early childhood at all. I have little pieces and parts here and there, when I try and really think about it or somebody brings up something that brings up a memory, and I'm not sure why that is. I also don't want to, because for a long time, I was exploring it with my therapist as to how did I think back then, and I don't want to make up a story in my own mind to justify what's going on now. I want the answer, and I don't have that answer, and it's really kind of bothered me, I want to say, probably 10 years, I've been trying to figure that out. But I haven't, and I don't think an answer's actually out there.
ZIEGLER: So, you were saying that when you figured out you were trans, everything sort of made a lot of sense, which makes a lot of sense. Are you comfortable saying a little bit about how it is that you came to understand that you were trans?
WHITE: Sure. I can tell you my trans journey, I guess would be a good way to put it. It's one of those things where you don't feel you fit, and it's kind of always haunts you. But then, one day I bought something for my wife, and at an impulse I decided to put it on. When I did, the world made sense. It was like, "Oh, no. This is..." And she didn't respond very well to it, so that was interesting. But from that point on, everything kind of made sense to me.
And then I started... Well, we go through the five stages of grief, or whatever they call it, where denial is the first thing. Then I started, "No, I'm not that. It's got to be something else." I went through everything, from am I gay and just don't want to admit it? Am I just a crossdresser? There are so many little things, because I didn't want to admit that I was trans. I didn't want to be transgender. I wanted to just be who I am.
The problem is that I got pushed really hard. I got to a point where it became it was either suicide or come out as trans. Which a lot of us, 46% of us, actually get to that point, where we attempt suicide. It's horrible. And we feel like we don't have any outlet to do anything. The world is changing, just not fast enough. Which is a good thing because we're starting to understand more and be more open to stuff. When I transitioned, which is about around three years ago now, I was petrified. I was ashamed. I felt guilty. I didn't want the world to know, and I battled that for a long time.
But when you get to the point of suicide... I don't think people understand that point where you get so much into your own head and think the world is just not that good, that you're willing to leave it because you're afraid to say who you are. And a lot of it, I think, is based on perceptions of how people are going to accept you. Because we already have an internal thing of not being accepted because we don't feel like we fit in the guy group, or we don't feel like we fit in the girl group. We're kind of a no man's land in between, where we just don't feel like we fit anywhere.
Since I've transitioned, I've noticed I feel so much just better with myself. I feel like I belong, which has been really good. When I decided to transition, one of the first things that I thought about was just pulling up stakes and moving to another town. Because I didn't want people I knew to know that I transitioned, that I see myself as a female, because we heard so many horror stories. Like your family's going to leave y'all, your kids are gonna leave you, every friend you have is going to leave you, nobody's going to understand it. They just can't take it.
And that's not true. I haven't lost any friends. I'm still married, been married for 30 years. It's been a tough journey the last several, but we've gotten to the point now where it's kind of getting okay. Things are back to a normal. It's a big thing to ask somebody because when you're married, they're going to be on their own transition if they stay with you. They have to transition, and I don't think people understand that. They don't give their partners time, or they expect, "Everyone today is going to use my new pronouns. Everyone's going to use my new name." No.
I've always been, I don't want people to do stuff because I make them do stuff. I want people to do stuff because they want to do stuff. And you'll notice how people will start changing. And I understand sometimes it really gets to you. It hasn't that much for me, but every now and then it does, where somebody misgenders constantly, and it's like, "Oh, that's pretty annoying."
But I think it's all a double edged sword, if you get so caught up in that, that it can do more harm than good. Because it does break off relationships. It does. I had a few people ghost me for a while. I don't know if you're familiar with what ghosting is. Ghosting is where they just kind of stick around, but they don't really respond to you anymore. At the same time, they don't get rid of you. Again, after a while, they seemed to come back around. Sometimes it takes a while. I mean, it took me 20 years to accept who I am. It's going to take people a while to accept you. I mean, I get that.
I got to say, after I came out, a lot of the stress in my relationship kind of started going away. And I think my wife saw that, and we're getting to a new normal. It's different, but there's a lot of love there. We really like each other. We get along really well. We have a lot of the same interests. And since I've transitioned, a lot of the underlying tension we had is going away, which is really a wonderful thing.
ZIEGLER: I appreciate you sharing all of that. Sophie, I wanted to start clapping when you got to the part that you're still married and that you haven't lost any friends. I really think that's absolutely beautiful. So, I guess, if you wouldn't mind helping out with the timeline, you transitioned about three years ago. You were fighting it for a while. How long do you think? Maybe since that time you first thought maybe you were?
WHITE: Well, I say even before then. It takes you a while to figure out why you don't. You know,when I was a teenager, I had a lot of guys hit on me. They thought I was gay. I can tell you I'm not gay. Well, I guess it would depend on which way you look at it.
ZIEGLER: I know. It gets complicated.
WHITE: I'm not a gay guy. I know that now. I can tell you absolutely what I'm not. It's a lot harder for me to tell you what I am. I'm not a crossdresser. When I first started, you did wigs and fake boobs. I don't want that. That doesn't do anything at all for me. Luckily, I still have most of my hair. I need surgery, but anyway, we'll talk about that in time, but I didn't want anything that's fake. I really didn't, and I think that was the biggest thing that bothered me, was not being fake. Being true of what you really are and how you are and what you look like. I think a lot of that is just coming to terms with it.
For years, it's like Survivor. We want to fit in on an island, and everything to be fine and everything to go fine, but at the same time, we feel like outsiders, that we're not there with the other people. I did a lot of the guy stuff and I think a lot of that was adrenaline rushes. I got hooked on adrenaline for a while. I raced formula cars. I worked on an ambulance. I worked on a fire truck. I did all the manly stuff, but I never really had any true sense of belonging, and also I guess self worth, which is really a big deal because I had no self worth for a long time, especially when I really started transitioning.
And I did it in stages. The first thing I did was I started searching the Internet and I started with the... What do you call those? I can't think right now. The over the counter, not drugs, but what are they? The supplements. I started every supplement out there. I tried every single supplement known. And at the same time I was doing that, I was saying, "Oh, I can't be trans." But I was looking for hormone supplements to change who I was, which that dichotomy is really kind of weird. You won't admit to yourself but you'll do all that stuff to change.
And I think that's just coming to terms with who you are, and that took quite a few years. Like I said, me and time, I have an issue with time. I can't tell. So, I peg a lot of these things to events that happen, where I know the dates of those events. I was a doctor for a football team. We traveled around the arena sports for a while in Louisiana. I did a lot of guy stuff, almost to the point of being overboard. I even tried body building for a little while, and none of those things made sense to me. It definitely wasn't me, but I was trying to be that square peg in that round hole and I just kept pounding away at it. It doesn't work. Just in case you were wondering. It doesn't work.
ZIEGLER: Do you mind if we dwell for just a second on some of these things that you have just sort of tossed out. So, you were a sports doctor, you raced cars, you were a firefighter, is that right?
WHITE: Yeah. When I first got out of high school, I went to work for the local fire department, which is the Houma Fire Department, here in Houma. I was with them for four or five years, I think. I was about being ready to be promoted to captain. I had passed the exam. I would have been the youngest captain on the fire apartment at that time, and I wound up quitting because I was making $550 dollars a month. The money just wasn't there. I loved the job, everything was great.
After that I went to selling jewelry. I've always loved jewelry, but as a guy, I never really felt comfortable wearing it. As a female, I do love it. I usually wear some sort of jewelry. So, anyway, I moved to Atlanta and when I moved to Atlanta, one of the things I did was I went back to, I had gotten certified as an EMT, and I when I got to Georgia, I thought one of the things that would be easy to do is... Well, actually, I worked as a jeweler at first for a couple of years, and then decided, I was sitting on my bench and just being unhappy. And I said, "You know what? It'd be nice to be on a French riviera." So, I pulled up stakes and went there for a little while. When I got back, I decided that I was going to go back to school, so I started at Georgia State.
But at the time, it's like what can I do? Have school and work at the same time because I had to support myself, and I wind up going back, getting on an ambulance actually. I had to redo my EMT certification and all that kind of stuff. And I wound up working at Grady Hospital EMS, which is Fulton County 911, which is Downtown Atlanta. It was incredible but I also got PTSD from there because the volume was just so high. You saw stuff that people really shouldn't see. I worked there probably for five years, and then towards the end of that, I started going to chiropractic college, and worked on the ambulance for the first couple of years, and after that I realized I couldn't be both at the same time.
And then that same time, I wound up getting married. I've been married for right at 30 years now. It's been a very interesting ride. Back in the 70s, I did drag racing, and then when I got back to Louisiana, somewhere around early 2000s, I bought a Corvette and I decided that I wanted to race it, and after a couple of times, I was driving with an instructor on learning how to drive. Because after you race the first time you realize you really can't drive. Everybody thinks they can drive because they don't have to do it. So, I got an instructor to teach me how to race, and then wound up, on the last lap that we were making, he goes, "Okay, last lap." He shouldn't have never said that to me because I pushed it a little bit too far, and we wound up hitting the wall at about 100 miles an hour.
It was bad. He tore his rotator cuff. The car was totaled. And I went on to a couple of other Corvettes, and then I wound up going to the Ferrari for a little while. I was racing one day and I went from first to reverse trying to hit second gear, and tore up the transmission and realized I couldn't afford to drive Ferrari to race in any way, and that's when I moved over to formula cars. Formula cars, they're interesting. They, especially the last car I drove, which was a Formula 2000, which has the wings on the front and the back of the car, those are very unforgiving cars. You have to know what you're doing or you're going to crash.
And the problem is, the speeds that you're at usually doesn't work out very well. Either you're stuck to the track or you're off the track. The car, it'll start sliding a little bit. Formula car doesn't slide. Either it's stuck down or it's moving. That's kind of a little bit of... The last time I raced was about 2012. I don't necessarily miss it. I remember one time, I was starting to worry. It's like, "What happens if I get in a wreck?" Because I had my toenails painted. Some of the things I did early in my transition was I started wearing women's underwear. I started painting my toenails, things that people couldn't see that made me feel better. And also took some of the pressure off.
But then I started worrying, well, what happens if I do get it in a wreck? The first thing they'll see is, "Why are your toenails painted?" Before I transitioned actually, but I guess the thing would be to tell you my history of my evolution here, would be the best way to do this. I don't know how long ago it is now. I think it's around six years now that my mother and brother died on the same weekend.
ZIEGLER: Oh, wow. I'm sorry.
WHITE: Within an hour. I got a call from one of my brothers and he said, "Mom is unconscious. They're bringing her to the hospital." And they said, "Can you meet us at the hospital?" I said, "Sure. Give me a moment. I'll close up my office here, and then I'll head out and meet you at the hospital." And as I was walking out the door, I got a call from the Sheriff. I looked at the ID on the phone that said Sheriff. And I was like, "Oh, why is he calling me?" I picked it up and he said, "Hey, I just want to let you know that your brother is being life flighted out of the Gulf. They're doing CPR, but they don't think he's going to make it."
So, he's going to the same hospital as my mother. When I got to the hospital, he had landed and they had pronounced him dead when they got him to the hospital. My mother was there and she was in a coma, and she lingered on for another couple of days, and wound up having both of them, and then we buried them together a week later. Which was extremely traumatic to me.
Another couple of years later, I had something happen to my family that just really took me out of stuff emotionally and I spent about six months worrying and working on that. And when that was over, all of a sudden I realized I no longer had my gender issues under control. I lost control of it. Because that's one thing you know. I can always put it back in the box, I can always just work around it. There's something I can do to make it feel better and it wasn't any big deal. I no longer had that control anymore. I seriously really lost it.
I'd gone to Austin, TX. They had a film festival there because I had been making movies for a while now, and the film festival, on my way home... Well, actually, what happened was, on my way there, I decided to paint my toenails. So, I stopped at a place in Houston and had my toenails done. So, I went and I stayed with a friend. There was a bunch of writers, because I also write screenplays and books and stuff like that. We were supposed to be seven or eight of us staying at a friend of ours' house. Everybody was pitching in. It was going to be just a wonderful time.
When I got there, I was the only one the first day, and she said, "Well, make yourself at home." And for some reason, I took off my shoes and socks. She looked at my toenails and she goes, "Oh, those are cute." And then it was over, like no big deal. I was like, "Oh, that's cool." Well, the next day, we had people show up and I kept my shoes on. So then she goes, "Hey, you got to see his toenails." I was like, "Oh, shit. Here we go. Now everybody's going to know I paint my toenails." Everybody's first reaction was, "Oh." And then they forgot about it and moved on, which is usual for most things I see that we worry so much about. It's like, "Oh, okay," and then they move on and they either make a joke out of it or whatever, and they kind of move on.
Now, that weekend, on my way home, I started looking for a place to kill myself. I just couldn't take it anymore. I had gotten to that point where I had gotten my car up to speed four or five times. It wasn't good. I wind up calling my best friend at the time and told him that I was transgender. I don't think he believed me at first, but the good thing was I knew he would be accepting because he has a trans son.
Although, it's really interesting because before then, we have conversations about transgender, it would kind of come up and we would talk about it. I remember one time he'd tell me, "You don't understand anything about trans." And I am trans. He just kept saying... "Yeah, I do." I couldn't tell him, though, at that time. I couldn't enter that conversation because I didn't want him to know. I didn't want anybody to know. I really didn't. But it had gotten to the point where I was looking for a place to kill myself. He wound up talking me into getting a therapist, which was probably the best move I made.
I got a therapist. The biggest things about getting a therapist, though, is you're not all of a sudden better. Actually, I think you get even closer to that suicidal stuff because everything starts becoming real. It seems like it's almost a fantasy or something outside of you, but until you get a handle on it, you don't get better. Actually, I think I got closer to the edge.
A few weeks later I had to go to New York. I'd won a contest writing, and I wound up going to New York, and I visited a friend of mine while I was there, and their business has several floors, in one of the skyscrapers across from Rockefeller Center. And she said, "Come on outside. I want to show you the view." I guess it was a nice view because all I could do was think about jumping. I couldn't do anything else but think about jumping while I was looking off of there. Of course, I didn't. At least, I don't think I did. But it was getting a lot more real, it was happening a lot more often, the suicide ideology.
When I came back home, things weren't going very well for me. I was drinking very heavily, although people never noticed it because I would drink at night. When I got home, I would drink five or six 36 ounce things of rum and coke. I'll splash a Diet Coke. I didn't realize how much I was drinking, about a gallon of rum a week. I was drinking a lot. I was drinking about a gallon of rum a week, which is not quite a fifth a day. It's a lot. I wound up, I was going to New Orleans. I worked on a film and we were having a showing of the film. I headed towards New Orleans, and I go, "You know what? I did it as a favor to people. I really don't like the subject matter. The film, I did it as a favor to somebody. Why am I going here?" And I wound up turning around and going home.
I got home and I sat on the sofa, and I opened up a beer. I took one sip and I said, "You know what? I just don't feel good." And I told my wife I'm going to go to bed. I went to bed, and that was like 7:00 at night. Fifteen minutes later, I was throwing up blood in the bathroom. I had a perforated ulcer. I wound up going to the hospital. I was stressed out of my mind. It was just getting worse and worse.
When I was in the hospital, I wouldn't tell the doctors what I was on. I couldn't do it. I figured if I told them I was on, and at that time, I was actually on estrogen. I was self medicating and getting it over the internet. And I just wouldn't tell them. I wouldn't tell them anything. I remember after I left the hospital I was thinking, "I'm going to die because I'm embarrassed." It's a big deal, and I wound up getting a doctor, because my therapist kept pushing me and my friend kept pushing me, real subtly, not really hard, but they did.
I wound up getting a doctor, and one thing I think that, up until that time, I wouldn't say that I was really trans, even though I was. When she started doing the history and stuff, she wrote, "Male to female transgender" in my chart, and I was petrified. I was horrified of that. But I think that's one of the better things she did, because it made me see it. That's me. It was disconcerting. My suicidal stuff was still prevalent a little bit then. Actually, right after that, it got really bad one last time. And then, finally, the way I did it was I decided to start playing parts in movies, the acting. And tried to get female roles, whether it was a drag queen or just anything that was kind of female, in order to be able to play a female part and have a reason to dress up and people see me as female.
I also, during that time up until my therapist, I would go out of town and I would be me. I'd learned how to do that. I would go to seminars and during a seminar, as long as it was away from here, I could go ahead and dress up, and usually I'd go to gay bars because gay people don't really care if somebody's trans. It became this whole thing that I did. And then I started doing the movie stuff, and that was to let other people see me as a female and have a reason for it, so it's not that big of a shock to them.
That worked pretty well. But then, finally, since my practice in Houma went really down. There's various reasons for that, and I think part of it was because I just wasn't happy, but I started working for another doctor in Covington at the same time while I was working down here. And all of a sudden, I decided one day that I was going to transition. And what I did was I transitioned but I started doing it only when I was in New Orleans. I'd go to New Orleans. New Orleans is about an hour from me. When I went to New Orleans, I was female, and when I came home, I was male. And that worked for a little while.
And then, finally, one day I just said, "I just can't do it anymore." After the last suicide thing, it was like, "I'm going to die or transition." I started wearing androgynous clothes in the office for a little bit, and then, finally, one day, I said, "You know what? That's it. It's done." I put on a dress, and I went to the office and I haven't worn guy clothes in, I guess, a little bit over two years. Probably about two years. And until this weekend, which I decided to play a part as a guy in a movie, I wrote a series that I'm trying to get made, and the main character is transgender, and they go from the process from male to female. It's not what the movie's about. It's something that complicates the movie an awful lot, and I think it works for the character very well. Suicidal and other stuff going on with them, and it's from being transgender. And I think people don't ever really see that journey. And I would love to play the part.
So, I decided to take a male role to see how I would do. It was interesting. A couple of days before, I was real apprehensive about it, just for being there. Because I hadn't worn male clothes in probably years, except for maybe I wear jeans and a T-shirt to work on stuff, but other than that, I hadn't worn male clothes. When I went to set, a couple of days before, my anxiety started going up. But the day of, everything was kind of fine. I went to set. Everything was good.
So, when I got on set, everything was fine. Although, about halfway through... Well, actually, when I got to set, I decided that. Actually, I got a story where I did that one time, where I showed up as female, when I was supposed to be playing a guy. This was when I first started acting, actually, and I got fired from the project for being trans. And at the time, I didn't make a big deal of it. I would now because it was really wrong, and the guy that fired me, the director and the writer, are both gay, which I think is just horrendous how a lot of gay people are more against trans people than some of the other people in the community, which I don't understand. I wish it was all everybody kind of accepts everybody. We're the minority. We should all stick together.
But anyway, getting back to the set. After I get dressed for the male, it really transformed me pretty well. One of the people came up to me and goes, and she said something weird like we hadn't met. We had just met five minutes earlier. And then all of a sudden she comes up and she goes, "Oh, I didn't recognize you without a mask on." Because actors, we have to take our mask off and play the part. I think it was more, "Oh, I just met you as a female and now I'm seeing you as a guy. I didn't recognize you."
So, I think that was pretty interesting. Although, about halfway through being this guy, and everybody referring to me as he, I started getting in my own head. Like, how can anybody take me as female hunk, and, "The world's never going to see me as a female." It just starts playing those mind games with yourself. I said something to the director, he said he, and I said, "Uh, she." And he changed. He made a conscious effort to change pronouns, which I love. Anybody under 25 would do that. It's the old people like us that have issues with it. It just takes us, because it's foreign to us. We don't understand it. But a lot of people under 30, people don't really care. The acceptance has been really great from that community. My kids are all in their 20s, so they're fine. They seem to have quite accepted it. When I first came out, one almost said, "It's about time." And the other one said, "I knew." Now, the third, I couldn't get a sense one way or the other. But two of them definitely knew I was trans in some way.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, how did that feel?
WHITE: Liberating. Because I was so worried about... The people that's important in your life, telling them is one of the hardest things you will ever do. To admit who you are to them is daunting. The task is unbelievable. It took, I got to tell you, four or five times before the first person, to say anything. And then each time it gets a little easier. Although, what I did was I think I did one of the smartest things I did was I listed everybody in my inner circle and all my friends that I really knew and cared about, and I came up with a list of about 50 people, and I sat down with each of them in person and told them in person what was going on with me. And I think that's one of the best moves that I did because I really told them my story. I told them about the suicide. I told them everything. I didn't keep anything back.
The hardest ones I had was my little brother. He has turned very religious, deacon in the church and all this other kind of stuff. And it's like, he's going to be the worst. When I went to tell him, I told him and I didn't linger around. Later that day, all of a sudden I realized that I was furious at everything. I was mad. I was like, "Oh, I had prepared to have a fight with my little brother because of his religious stuff, but I never got it." He's actually been extremely receptive to accepting me. Now, he does say little things every now and then, which is some of the religious stuff coming out, but it's not a condemnation of me.
So, like I said, everybody's on their own transition. Everybody's got to transition and catch up with you. But I, at the same time, understand some of this can go horribly wrong. A friend of mine, Emma Palmintier, her family didn't accept her. She actually went home, Baton Rouge, to visit the family, and her dad was yelling at her about wearing a dress and all this other stuff. She wound up killing herself in front of her family. So, I understand how bad this stuff can be, and how real this stuff can be.
I didn't get that from my family, for whatever reason, which is a good thing. One of the things, I guess when my mother passed, I always wanted to tell my mom, but I never did. I tried to tell her. Gosh, I tried to tell her probably ten times. And the last day, I decided, "Today's the day I'm going to tell her." I went in there and I said, "Mom, I got something to tell you." And she goes, "Can my aunt and my grandfather listen?" And I was like, "They died 20 years ago." And she was seeing people that weren't there, and I just didn't do it. I never did. I did tell her on her death bed, when she was unconscious, but it's not [inaudible] never telling that. Because it's effected me much, but it really has.
I told my father. His biggest thing was, "Well, I won't tell anybody. I won't tell your brothers. Everything's fine. Your secret's safe with me." But now he's in assisted living and he has a little bit of dementia, and it's like, "Why are you wearing a dress today?" So, he's outing me every time I got to visit him. The last time I went, and I haven't seen him in a while because of COVID, I went in and he didn't say anything about the dress. I pretty much always wear dresses now, for the most part. And at the end of it, one of his biggest things in life is he had four boys, and they said something about the four boys. I said, "No, dad. You have three boys and me." And he goes, "What, you're not a boy anymore?" And I said, "Yup." And he turned around, looks at me, and he goes, "Well, I guess you're not." And just kind of moved on.
That, it was so accepting that it was like, "Wow, he's starting to see who I am." And that did me a lot of good, to be honest with you, that he's seeing the real me. I want people to know who I am. I hid it for so long. It's time. It's time to just be. And I noticed that the further into transition I go, the less I think about all that stuff. All that stuff has really kind of gone away. When I first transitioned, it's like you want to tell everybody and stuff. You finally got up the courage and you do it. Mail man walks in and it's like, "Hey, how you doing? I'm trans." But then after a while, you don't want to be seen as trans. You just want to be seen as female. You just want to blend in. You just want to go stealth or undercover, whatever you want to call it. I want it to no longer be an issue. I just want to just live who I am. That's where I'm at.
ZIEGLER: Yeah. I have a question for you, and I guess I'll just phrase it the best that I can, and we'll just say practice. You were mentioning before that it was after you came back from Atlanta that you really started to deal with gender and what gender meant to you, and started your journey. I wonder if there was anything. One of the points of this project or the goal is with this project, the oral history project, is to really think about how, and if at all, our place here in Louisiana affects what it means to be trans. Sort of what it means to be ourselves. Do you have a sense of whether or not your location in Houma had something to do with, like your return to Houma, to your hometown, where you knew so many people, had anything to do with the time table of your transition?
WHITE: I don't think so. Although I've never thought of that, to be honest with you. But I did think for the longest time that I wouldn't be accepted. I can't say I've had anybody really not accept me, with the exception of one elderly gentleman. He came in. He was, God, he had to be in the mid-80s, something like that. He walks in and he says something, and I said, "Well, I'm the doctor." And he goes, "You're one of them weirdos, huh?" And I said, "Yup, that's me." And he wasn't ready for that answer, and it kind of stopped him. He thought it was going to get me riled up or something, and it didn't at the time.
I said, "How can I help you?" Back when I was more in my other thing, I would have thrown him out. I really would have. I just wouldn't have put up with it. I think my transition's made me a lot softer on people and a lot more accepting of other people. I started talking to him and he goes, "Yeah, I got one of those weirdos in my family." And I was like, "Oh." And he goes, "I haven't talked with them in years." And I was like, "Oh, God, you know what you're missing?" And I just started pouring this guilt trip on him. I almost wondered if the universe didn't put us together so that I could open up him to the possibility of talking with his family. I think it would be a wonderful thing if that happened.
He wound up letting me treat him. He was good. About two weeks later, I had kind of forgot about him. And about two weeks later, I got a phone call, and it was the guy. He said, "I just wanted to let you know, you really helped me out, and if I have any other problems, I'm going to come back and see you." And I think it was his way of giving me an apology. I really do. You think about why people do things and why they do these things certain ways. I think it was his method of apologizing to me, which is…
And then hopefully he hooked up with his family and really is able to understand we're not really freaks. We're just different than what you're used to. Everybody's saying there's a whole lot of more trans people. No, there's I think a lot more people finally admitting that they are. We've always been here. We will be here forever. We've been here since the beginning, and that's the way we are. Throughout history there's many, many types of people that are trans.
ZIEGLER: The older gentleman that you mentioned, that was a patient at your chiropractor office.
WHITE: Yeah. Yeah.
ZIEGLER: You're still a practicing chiropractor.
WHITE: Yes, I am. I'm still practicing currently.
ZIEGLER: You're also an actor. An actress.
WHITE: Yes.
ZIEGLER: And a screenwriter.
WHITE: Yeah. I've always worn multiple hats in my life.
ZIEGLER: I love it. We haven't even had a chance to talk about any of that, but it sounds fantastic. What I do want to do, though, is be respectful of your time, so let me ask you this last question in closing. So, again, this project, the tagline is that we're sharing our stories with each other and with the world. That latter part has to do with, in part, the possible donation to this to the T. Harry Williams Oral History Center at LSU for long term preservation. So, if somebody were to be watching this, listening to this or reading the transcript or whatever in 30 years, say, for instance, some period in time, I wonder do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to communicate about what it means to be trans in Louisiana, here in 2021.
WHITE: In 2021, it's a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be horrible. I thought everybody would reject me. It's been the furthest from the truth. I haven't really had anybody reject me to my face. I'm sure there's some. You get to the point where you just don't care anymore. You have to do what's good for you, and I really got to the point of either I was going to find a large thing to jump off of, or I was going to transition, and I wound up transitioning.
Hopefully in 30 years, things will be a lot different, where it won't be an issue any longer. You can be who you are and nobody really cares. A lot of people that were friends of mine have stayed friends of mine. We still talk. I still have a number of people I'm very close to. It was hard for my wife to accept it for the longest time. It was hard for me to accept it for the longest time. But once we got through it, it really kind of made life a lot better. It got rid of the elephant in the room. It's no longer an issue. Life is getting to a new normal. We talk a lot more, we can share things. There's a reason why I used to cry in movies.
ZIEGLER: That's lovely. Thank you for that. And let me just take a moment to thank you again for participating. Your story is just a wonderful story, and I know that it'll do a lot of people a lot of good, should we be able to share it.
WHITE: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And like I said, I'm just trying to be who I am, and nobody else, kind of. For the longest time, I tried to fit into that square hole. Just doesn't happen. I am who I am and it's very liberating, finally, so that's me.