The Gift of Rage
By Billi Gordon, PhD
Chapter One
According to my mother I was conceived on a January Sunday in 1954 on the living room couch – this information being conveyed to me as a 5 year old, along with other details like the specific coital position (“booty-backing”). According to my father I was conceived somewhere else entirely, at a different time, and by another man. I never really stood a chance at being normal. But then again, normal is just another word for common…
While the evidence about my biological origin is inconclusive as to when, where, and with whom, Wilbert Gordon was the man married to my mother; his name was listed on my birth certificate; and I called him daddy. At least no one disputes that I was born on September 2 in a small Roman Catholic Hospital in Dowagiac, Michigan.
Dowagiac is about 120 miles around Lake Michigan from Chicago and 30 miles north of The University of Notre Dame in South Bend Indiana. Dowagiac was predominantly Catholic and typical of the little blue-collar towns that freckled the bosom of Ike and Mamie’s America – in a time when men were men and women were grateful.
I’ve been told all too many times by way too many people about my birth. When the doctor announced, “It’s a boy!” my mother turned to the nun helping with the delivery and implored, “Please Mother Mary-Timothy… tell me he’s not half-white!”—And that was the end of my typical, healthy, Midwestern-baby boomer phase…
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When I first met Billi at the UCLA Brainmapping Center, he had just finished his PhD in neuroscience and weighed over 600 pounds. His journey there had been circuitous, taking him through a Catholic Seminary to Hollywood to sex-work.
After discovering the joy of drag in college, Billi spent more and more time in drag, before eventually changing gender identities and living full-time as a woman for most of the 80s and 90s (note: I’m using male pronouns because that was his identify when I knew him). He even earned roles as an actress in Coming to America and Married with Children. When he died he left behind this amazing but unfinished memoir. So if you enjoyed the start, there’s a lot more where that came from.
To help the book find a publisher, I’m building a list of interested readers. There is absolutely no commitment, and I’ll only contact you occasionally with more excerpts or updates on publication. Help Billi’s enthralling and important story be shared with the world and leave your email address below… and you’ll also get the rest of the Chapter 1 excerpt to keep reading!
