Date Night: Silver Spring

Still from Regretters.

Yesterday afternoon, there was an item on my Outlook calendar that said "Go Home on Time For Once!!!" Yes, that's three exclamation points. I really meant it. But after a long day of dressing like a superhero (I was one of two Wonder Woman-ses--the other was seven years old--and one of the students wore an orange wig and came as ME!), cleaning up and re-dressing a student who had an accident (par for the course for me, but I had to tell her she could pretend she was wearing Beyonce's old jeans to get her to go back to class), handling the mishegoss that comes with a fire drill, and doing my regular old job, there was no way I could actually only put in an eight-hour day.

So, there was nothing I wanted more when I got on the bus home from Bethesda than to hang out with Jake for the night. We had movie-going plans, and since my bus got stuck in earlier-than-expected traffic, I had to hit the box office for tickets before running up to the apartment to change into a dress (not wanting to wear my sweaty-from-camp Wonder Woman T-shirt out for the night), and then straight out for our date.

Totally worth it.

This week is SilverDocs at the AFI, and again, it's one of those things that would be a shame to miss considering it's right across the street from my apartment. People come from all over the world to this festival; how could I miss it?

Last night, we had tickets to Regretters, a film about two Swedish men who had gotten gender reassignment surgery to become women...and then took it back! One of them, Orlando, had a second reassignment surgery, and now considered himself a sort of "third gender," neither male nor female, but with male sex characteristics. The other, Mikael, lived as Mikaela for eight years, and still wasn't happy with who he was. In the last shot of the movie, we see him being wheeled into the OR for his second reassignment surgery.

The film was fascinating for many reasons, one of which was their rationales for getting the surgery in the first place. We usually hear stories about people "feeling trapped in the wrong body," and then feeling more complete when they have the gender signifiers they've always thought they should have. Orlando was a gay man in a time and a country where being gay was illegal. He figured life would just be easier as a woman, since he has "feminine mannerisms" anyway. Mikael learned from a young age to be scared of men, and never had satisfying interactions with women; he figured he could relate to women better if he was one. But he found that people treat women differently than they did men, he never really felt like a woman, and he still felt awkward around people; being a woman didn't turn out to be the cure-all he thought it would have been.

The movie is set up as a conversation between these two men: one who just wants to feel comfortable with himself as a human being and fade into the background, and one who loves being flamboyant and noticeable. (In Stockholm, Orlando is easily recognized as "the man in the red suit"; he wears sequins and earrings, and has his platinum hair heavily styled.) There are home movies and slides interspersed throughout the narrative, so we can see who these men are and were. The filmmaker appeared for a Q&A afterward, and it was good to hear that the movie had been embraced by the transgender community, since it was pretty controversial. I'm going to be thinking about this for a while.

The movie was preceded by I'm Just Anneke, a short film about a 12-year-old girl who is taking hormone blockers to put off puberty until she decides whether she wants to live her life as a boy or girl. The most interesting part of this movie for me was Anneke's mother declaring "I was always the fat girl who got chosen last in gym class. How could I not support my daughter, and who she chooses to be?" And "She's choosing to be who she is. I don't think I know who I am, even as a grownup."

We went to Ghar-E-Kabab for dinner afterwards. Vegetable Momo, Lamb Saag, and homemade Indian ice cream makes for a great after-movie, end-of-date-night meal.

Tonight: Stones in Exile!