In One Person

as it
is
, but I’m not complaining about it.”
    “This is my Juliet,” I told young Kittredge. “My best girl, Gee. Okay,” I said to Gee, “let’s hear it.”
    “‘My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late!’” my Juliet said.
    “That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her, but young Kittredge was just staring at her; I couldn’t tell if he admired her or suspected her.
    “What kind of name is
Gee
?” Kittredge’s son asked her. I could see that my best girl’s confidence was a little shaken; here was a handsome, rather worldly-looking man—someone
not
from our Favorite River community, where Gee had earned our respect and had developed much confidence in herself
as a woman
. I could see that Gee was doubting herself. I knew what she was thinking—in young Kittredge’s presence, and under his intimidating scrutiny. Do I look
passable
? Gee was wondering.
    “Gee is just a made-up name,” the young girl evasively told him.
    “What’s your
real
name?” Kittredge’s son asked her.
    “I was George Montgomery, at birth. I’m going to be
Georgia
Montgomery later,” Gee told him. “Right now, I’m just Gee. I’m a boy who’s becoming a girl—I’m
in transition
,” my Juliet said to young Kittredge.
    “That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her again. “I think you said that perfectly.”
    One glance at Kittredge’s son told me: He’d had no idea that Gee was a work-in-progress; he hadn’t known she was a transgender kid, on her brave way to becoming a woman. One glance at Gee told me that she knew she’d been
passable
; I think that gave my Juliet a ton of confidence. I realize now that if Kittredge’s son had said anything disrespectful to Gee, I would have tried to kill him.
    At that moment, Manfred arrived. “The wrestler is here!” someone shouted—my Mercutio, maybe, or it might have been my gay Benvolio.
    “We have our Tybalt!” my strong Nurse called to Gee and me.
    “Ah, at last,” I said. “We’re ready.”
    Gee was running toward the stage—as if her next life depended on starting this delayed rehearsal. “Good luck—break a leg,” young Kittredge called after her. Just like his father—you couldn’t read his tone of voice. Was he being sincere or sarcastic?
    I could see that my most assertive Nurse had pulled Manfred aside. No doubt, she was filling the hot-tempered Tybalt in—she wanted “the wrestler ” to know there was a potential problem, a creep (as she’d called young Kittredge) in the audience. I was ushering Kittredge’s son to an aisle between the horseshoe-shaped seats, just accompanying the young man to the nearest exit, when Manfred presented himself in the aisle—as ready for a fight as Tybalt ever was.
    When Manfred wanted to speak privately to me, he always spoke in German; he knew I’d lived in Vienna and could still speak a little German, albeit badly. Manfred politely asked if there was anything he could do to help me—in German.
    Fucking
wrestlers
! I saw that my Tybalt had lost half his mustache; they’d had to shave one side of his lip before they gave him the stitches! (Manfred would have to shave the other half of his lip before we were in performance; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a Tybalt with only half a mustache.)
    “Your German is pretty good,” young Kittredge, sounding surprised, said to Manfred.
    “It ought to be—I’m German,” Manfred told him aggressively, in English.
    “This is my Tybalt. He’s also a wrestler, like your father,” I said to Kittredge’s son. They shook hands a little tentatively. “I’ll be right there, Manfred—you can wait onstage for me. Nice lip,” I told him, as he was going down the aisle to the stage.
    Young Kittredge reluctantly shook my hand at the exit door. He was still agitated; he’d had more to say, but—in at least one way—he was
not
like his father. Whatever one thinks of Kittredge, I can tell you this: He was a cruel fucker, but he was a fighter. The son, whether he had wrestled or not, needed just one look at Manfred; Kittredge’s son was no fighter.
    “Look, here it is—I just have to say this,” young Kittredge said; he almost couldn’t look at me. “I don’t know you, I admit—I don’t have a clue who my father really was, either. But I’ve read all your books, and I know what you do—I mean, in your
writing
. You make all these sexual extremes seem normal—that’s what you do.