Highland Park resident, Austin Morreale talks about his good family life growing up, and living in Atlanta when he worked in advertising. It took him several years to begin exploring his gender identity, and health diagnoses halted his first efforts in transitioning. Not long after finishing his medical treatments related to health concerns, he started the process of transitioning again.He describes his family’s reaction to his transition, as well as his experiences with health care as a transgender person.
Austin works for the non-profit NeighborCorps. This interview was conducted in 2017 when Austin had just begun working for NeighborCorps. Please see his follow-up interview, from September 11, 2020, that is focused on his work at the reentry program.
“And I struggle– and it’s funny, this is probably the only thing in the whole process of transitioning, being transgender, this is really the thing that I struggle with the most, I struggle with getting rid of my first name, because I feel like it would be disrespectful or, not betraying, but dishonoring my mom, so I’ve tried searching through a bunch of Serbian– my mom was Serbian– so I’ve tried to find a bunch of Serbian names, male names that begin with M, and none of them really work, and so it just keeps getting pushed off and pushed off, because I just, it doesn’t really feel right to do it, even though I know that she would be completely fine with me doing it, because she would not want me to be uncomfortable and to have names that don’t match, but that is my main struggle throughout it all, is this emotional tie for my first name. ”
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TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by John Keller and June Titus
New Brunswick, New Jersey
October 5, 2017
Transcription by Elise Brancheau
Fantastic. So, my name is John Keller, and we’re conducting this oral history on October 5, 2017. We’re located at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and I’m joined by fellow oral historian–
(JT): June Titus.
Great. And our interviewee today is–
Austin Morreale.
Fantastic. And Austin, what town do you live in currently?
Highland Park, New Jersey.
Fantastic. Great, so we’ll just get started from the beginning. Where were you born?
I was actually born in Summit, New Jersey.
Oh, great.
And left before probably I was one year old. And then– so I find it ironic that I ended up back up here, forty-something years later.
Was your family from the area originally?
Um– no. My dad was from Middletown, New York, originally, and my mother was from a little town in Ohio called– well, actually, Pennsylvania, and then Ohio– Bobtown Pennsylvania, and then Youngstown, Ohio. But my dad was originally in human resources and personnel, and they traveled around quite a bit.
And then, when you left, where did you [inaudible]
Oh, from New Jersey, I believe we went to Connecticut, but by the time I was ten, we had lived in Summit, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Greensboro, North Carolina for three months, and then a small town in western New York– I don’t think I left any out, and then we ended up in Knoxville, Tennessee when I was ten, and ended up pretty much staying there until I went away to college. Once we were living in Knoxville, and we hit the four-year mark, that was actually the longest we had ever lived anywhere, so it was quite an accomplishment. But everybody always thinks my dad– they always ask if I was an Army brat, but it was just my dad would get sent around to help open up new factories or new corporate headquarters for the company he was working with, and we would go with him, obviously.
Were there any other siblings in your family?
Yeah, I’ve got one brother who is four years older than I am.
When you were born, when you were a little kid, you were obviously moving around to a lot of these different places; were you always all living in the same house?
Oh yes, definitely. And honestly, my childhood, I really describe it– it couldn’t have been any more like Leave it to Beaver, I mean, it really– I mean, of course it had its hiccups, but overall, I mean, it was very, you know, we tried to eat dinner together in the evenings whenever possible, we did our chores, we had our after-school activities. Mom and Dad tried to always parent with love and discipline, there were always family conversations with a lesson at the end, but it was, you know, I couldn’t really have asked for a better family situation growing up.
What are some of your earliest memories of your parents or family time at home?
Some of my earliest memories are when we were living in western New York, and we lived in a tiny little town a little bit outside of Buffalo, and just the snow, I mean, the crazy amounts of snow we would get, and having to help my dad shovel, even as a little kid. And then, when we lived for, I think it was probably about three-and-a-half years, in that town in western New York, that was kind of like my idyllic childhood, because it was a town of maybe, probably not even seven thousand people at the time, maybe four thousand, and even as a kid, between the ages of five to nine years old, we could walk everywhere at any time of the day; when it was time to come home, my mom would just ring a big dinner bell on the side of the house and we could hear it wherever, and “Oh! It’s time to come home.” There was a creek running through the downtown that would ice over in the winter, and everybody would go ice skating, it was ridiculously like Norman Rockwell. And a lot of my– even though it was only, like I said, about three-and-a-half years, a lot of my childhood memories are from that time, just because I thought it was the best place ever to be a little kid. And then we also, when we were living in western New York, my dad had grown up in Middletown, New York, and his parents had a little cabin, and it was basically a cabin on a lake in the Catskills, so we would go over to that cabin on Wolf Lake a lot, and just spend weekends there, and his siblings would bring their families down, so there was a lot of mini family reunions all the time at this tiny little cabin with one bathroom with a lot of people in it, and it was a great, again, Norman Rockwell, idyllic lake. There weren’t speed boats allowed on the lake; if you had a motor, it was this tiny little motor that you put on the back of your rowboat, but nobody ever even did that, it was just these tiny little sailboats and rowboats and canoes, and it was just great, with my cousins and my grandparents and my dad’s side of the family, and then we would see my mom’s side of the family when we would go and spend the summers– for about a week we’d go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and that’s when we would see my mom’s side of the family, and we did that from like, age five through high school and into early college, and those were wonderful summers. We would get– there were basically little apartments, and then we ended up actually renting houses, but I was the youngest of all the cousins, so I got special treatment from all my bigger cousins, and got to tag along with all of them, but it was just great– great memories.
So what about– you said that both of your parents had siblings, so you had cousins on both sides. How many? Were there a lot of them?
Let’s see– my Uncle Dave and Aunt Ba , they had four kids within their family, so on my dad’s side of the family, four, six, about ten or so on my dad’s side of the family, plus my brother and me, and then when we would go to the Outer Banks, my mom’s brother, they have– about five cousins in that family, and those cousins would always bring friends with them, and it would just– that would always just expand year after year, it would get bigger and bigger. And I always dreamed of when I would get to bring my friends, my college friends, but that never happened. [laughter]
Because you were the youngest?
Exactly, by then they were done with it and on with their own families, but it was absolutely wonderful times, and when I still think of the beach, I still default to the Outer Banks, definitely. And my uncle, my dad’s little brother, lives in the cabin now that we all used to go and visit, and he’s been living there actually pretty much since my grandparents died, and he keeps saying “Come up! Bring the kids, bring Jenn and the kids,” except he’s got a dog and I believe he’s got a cat, and our kids are definitely allergic to cats, but I’d love to, you know, if I could leave my family behind for a weekend, I’d love to go back up there for a weekend, just, because I’m sure he’s not made many changes to the place, and I’m sure it’s really similar to what it was thirty, forty years ago.
Did your mom work?
She did. She was a teacher for the majority of her life; that is actually how she and my father met. They met in Germany when she was a teacher at the military, the school where the children of servicemen and women would go to, and my dad was on base, he was in the army. So they met over in Germany. But my mom was a teacher for the majority of her life, and then towards the end, for the last, I don’t know, maybe, not even ten years or so, she was a real estate agent. But I think her passion was definitely teaching more so than real estate. But yeah, she taught– she started out with remedial reading, and then language arts.
So after you– so you said, you kind of listed all the places you had lived, and then, remind me, what else were you when you finally settled in to [inaudible]
About ten, right before fifth grade.
Okay. And then, what was the reason for– was that just a more stable job that your dad–
He was working for Magnavox, I think at that time it was Magnavox, and that office or corporate office just kept him on there as director of personnel instead of having him go and open up other offices.
So how many schools had you been in by this point?
That I have recollection of, there had been– Michigan, Leroy– I have recollection of three– I’m not sure if there was like, preschool or anything in Connecticut or not, but–
Did you like school?
Oh yeah, I loved school.
What did you love about it?
I mean, I liked classes, but I also liked it for social reasons. I always found that I had my school friends, and then, kind of like, my neighborhood friends, and never the twain shall meet, it seemed. But I always liked school. I always got along with my teachers, I always did well in school, I was active in clubs and I played soccer as soon as it became– I got old enough to be, like, a school sport, I was on the school soccer team, but yeah, I always liked school.
So when your family had settled in Tennessee, was it kind of a different style of life or pace of life?
It was different to me because I couldn’t wrap my head originally around the concept of subdivisions as far as neighborhoods go. It just, we didn’t have those in Leroy, New York– Leroy was just a town. But in Knoxville, I would ask someone where they lived and they would give me the name of their subdivision, and I got very confused, because I thought, “Oh I thought you lived here in Knoxville,” you know, but they would say “Oh no, I live in Foxfire,” or “I live in Farmington” or “I live in Village Green,” which just meant their little community; it took me a while to wrap my head around that. But I had a very difficult time moving away from Leroy, New York. I remember I actually– the day the appraiser came to the house in New York, I remember I lay in bed crying and cursing out the appraiser because I did not want to leave Leroy, because I just loved it there so much. But, you know, I made the adjustment to Knoxville fine, it took a while to get used to not being able to walk everywhere, and having to be dependent on Mom and Dad to drive places, but, you know, Leroy being a small town, it wasn’t fast-paced, and so there wasn’t your stereotypical fast-paced northern vibe, and then switching to slow-paced South, it wasn’t that, it was just more of getting used to not having the freedom that I had had of being able to walk downtown and walk all over the place.
Did you spend a lot of time with your brother?
No. [laughter]
What was the age difference again?
Four years. Yeah, he and I have always had basically completely different interests. Growing up, I was always into sports and I would be outside playing sports with all the neighborhood kids, and I’m not really sure what he and his friends were up to, I feel like it had something to do with, like, military or, I dunno, campaigns or something with toy soldiers. But we did not really hang out much at all. We didn’t not like each other, we got– to this day, we get along– but we just weren’t close, you know, terribly close, because we didn’t have much in common. And we would spend a good deal of time doing our separate things and see each other at the family dinner and–
Did you have any really close friends as a kid?
Oh yeah, definitely. Oh yeah, I still remember them to this day. I don't keep in touch with them; you know, sometimes I look for them on Facebook. And I still remember the ones from, like, New York, and then in Knoxville, definitely had good friends growing up through elementary school and then middle school and high school. Definitely. And I keep in touch with maybe less than a handful of them, which is why I find it interesting– my fiance, Jen, is born and raised in New Jersey, has never really, well she's traveled outside of New Jersey, but she's never lived outside of New Jersey, and she is still friends with her best friends from third grade, and still actively engages with them in, like, an actual friendship, and that just blows my mind, because that's so foreign to me. Like, one of them was just over to the house the other night, and this is so strange to me that you guys have known each other this long and have continued this active friendship for so long, because I'm good to be, you know, still talking now and then to someone from high school. But, you know, thanks to Facebook, that's easier.
Did you spend a lot of time or any time with your grandparents?
My mom's parents both died well before I was even thought of. They both died in the '50s, or late '50s, early '60s, but I think it was probably late '50s, but my father's parents spent a lot of time either at their cabin at Wolf Lake or when we'd go visit them in Middletown. My grandmother and I played a lot of Scrabble together; we spent a lot of time, and she did not take it easy on me. She did not care if I was eight years old, she was gonna win. And we played a lot of card games together. And then my grandfather and I would go fishing; he was a serious fisherman. And he and I would go fishing, and they had a tradition that I didn't ever make it to because he passed away before I hit the right age, but I can't remember what the age was–
[Recording Interruption]
[End of First Audio Recording]
[Beginning of Second Audio Recording]
So you said you went to public school the whole time, and then, so you were in fifth grade, so then when you got into sixth grade, middle school, was that like, anything different?
I mean, logistically, yes, but I don't remember it being traumatic, which– our youngest daughter is now a sixth-grader, and I keep trying to think back as I watched her get ready for sixth grade this year, and just the angst and the stress and the anxiety, and I was trying to reach back into the recesses of my mind and remember if I had any of that, and I couldn't, and I fear that that made me not a very empathetic parent, but she weathered it fine, she's doing great. But I feel like, if my memory is correct, that the transition from elementary school to middle school was all right. I was not told anything to the contrary from my parents, so I think I did okay.
Do you have any strong memories from around that time?
The main memories I have were that the middle school in sixth and seventh grade that I went to was a complete dump. It was decrepit, it was falling apart, and they were in the process of building a new one, which I then went to in eighth grade, but the teachers were great and the academics were great, but the physical condition of the school was terrible. And I remember certain teachers that I really liked, and it's funny, I was just thinking about some of them the other day, and then a couple– one in particular still sticks out that I didn't care for very much at all.
What didn't you like about them?
Really, her teaching style. It was also a math class, which I never really enjoyed, so she had that going against her, too. But I really was fortunate, and I just had amazing language arts teachers, and I think they really helped foster my love of reading and writing from, like, sixth grade and seventh grade and eighth grade, it was just a very strong language arts program. I mean, middle school– I watch our eighth-grader deal with it, and I just don't remember it being that painful, I don't know. Maybe my fiance Jen says, "Well that's because you were probably approaching it from a different mindset because you're trans," and I say, "Yeah, but back then I wasn't, I was still, you know, living and functioning as female," and thank god it wasn't as emotionally challenging as it is for the seventh– Bella's in seventh grade, but as it seems to be for seventh graders. But middle school I liked all right, it wasn't like the best of times, but–
You said you liked language arts a lot; did you do a lot of writing?
Oh my god, yes. Yes. I still, to this day, I have boxes with everything I ever wrote. And the first thing I ever wrote, actually, I dictated to my mom, because I didn't know how to write, and it was called "The Adventures of the Happy Little Man," and I still have it. She wrote the words and I illustrated it; it's a wonderful piece of literature–
[laughter]
Available on Audible– but I still have it. And I've got everything I wrote– it's just in this box of notebooks and loose-leaf stapled together. I would stay up writing till, like, four o'clock in the morning, then have to get up and deal with school, but I was absolutely obsessed with writing; I loved it. I remember in seventh grade during reading class, we got a writing assignment, and kids used to ask Mr. Campbell, "How long does it have to be?" And I would see them struggling to get three pages out; meanwhile, I'd be on page seven, you know, handwritten– loved writing. Then, unfortunately, I became a writer in advertising, and I think once I did that, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was sit down and write for fun. And now it's a constant struggle; I know that I need to write for myself, and I've got so much stuff in my mind that I'm constantly writing in my head, it just never makes it onto the computer or onto the paper. But that's gonna change. Writing, reading, loved it. Still do, I just don't do it nearly as much. I actually, for a brief time, was in the MFA program at Drew in Madison, New Jersey, in their MFA in poetry program, because I thought that is what I wanted to do, and that I was gonna take that MFA and somehow parlay that into a profitable position to be determined, but financially it ended up, I had to drop out of the program. But yeah, I love writing, reading.
So that was middle school, then when you made the transition to high school, any big changes, or, was it just kind of similar?
No, because I think having soccer be such a big part of my life, I think that kind of made it easy in a sense, and this also was true for college, but I had the soccer team to, I guess, provide a support system, because my high school was about two thousand people, which is a decent-sized high school, I think, and there were about five hundred people in my graduating class, but going from the middle school into high school, at least I knew that I had my friends from the soccer team, and the interesting thing was, for the high school I went to, there was my middle school and then another middle school, Cedar Bluff Middle School, which fed– those were the two feeder schools, really, into my high school, and my mom taught at Cedar Bluff, and she would come home when I was in middle school telling me stories about her students, and so then when I got to high school, I met all these students, and one in particular, Ginger Montgomery, my mom thought this girl hung the moon, and Ginger and I became really good friends. But Ginger was not the angel my mom thought she was. And Ginger and I would go out, and perhaps do things we shouldn't be doing.
Like?
You know, in this case, for instance, we'll just say, perhaps someone, like, was smoking cigarettes very innocently, and I'd come home, and it wouldn't even be me this time, and my mom would smell it on me, and I would be like, "Mom, it was Ginger!" And my mom would be like, "Ginger would never do that!" [laughter] And I could not win at all with that, because she just had this image of Ginger after teaching her in middle school that Ginger was this perfect little angel, and I was like, "No, she's not, Mom, she even cuts classes!" "She does not!" Okay, Mom. It was just funny because I had heard all these stories about these kids and then I got to meet them, and they had heard stories about me too through my mom in class, and got to meet me, so that was pretty interesting. High school, I knew some people that I went with I think probably think it was the best four years of their life, especially based upon some of their Facebook posts, I think they still might be living in high school. I could take or leave it; I enjoyed some of my classes, I had different pockets of friends– like I had my soccer friends, and then I had my friends from Baskin Robbins where I worked, so I had different pockets of friends that I would kind of bounce around, and I was close with certain people from each group, but there wasn't, like, one big, really tight group. I did a lot of, like, floating from group to group depending on the event or the situation, or time of year, even, depending on what was going on.
What was it like working at Baskin Robbins? How long did you work there?
Oh, I loved it. I worked there for like two years during high school, and then I liked it so much that my freshman year at college I worked there at Christmas break and summer break. It was great. It was mainly great because the owners of the store would leave us to our own devices after a certain hour, and all hell would break loose [laughter]. I mean, people would still get served, and customers were taken care of, but as soon as it was time to shut the doors, there was, while we cleaned up for the night, fun was definitely had during that clean-up time. Yeah.
Was it always in your mind that you were going to go to college? Was that always a thing–
Yeah, I don't think it was even, I don't even know that it was in my consideration set not to.
Were both of your parents college graduates?
Mhm, yes. College, graduate school, yeah.
And so when you were, kind of like, figuring that out, what was your decision-making process of trying to determine that?
I initially thought I was going to go to Miami of Ohio in Oxford, Ohio, because there's a strong tradition of going there on my mom's brother's side of the family. There're professors from Miami of Ohio on that side of the family, cousins had gone there, and that was it, that was where I was gonna go– till we went and visited and I tried to talk with the soccer coach, and it was such a miserable experience, I was like, no. Because I knew soccer was going to be a part of my college experience. So then I had to rethink things. And then I had met the soccer coach from the University of the South, Sewanee, his name was Todd, through being part of the Tennessee state team, and I had spent some time down at Sewanee because we'd go down there to practice and have mini camps, and so Sewanee started entering my mind. The funny thing is, Sewanee is– at the time I was there, it was a thousand students, but on ten thousand acres, at the top of a mountain, in the middle of basically nowhere in between Chattanooga and Nashville. And when my brother had been looking at colleges four years prior, my parents had tossed that idea, Sewanee, briefly out to him, even though it was not his cup of tea at all. But the first time I went to Sewanee, and saw just how remote it was, and that there's nothing there except the school, and the town at the time consisted of a grocery store and one little pub, and that's really about it, I came back and I was like, how can you think about sending your own flesh and blood, how you could you think about sending Tony to Sewanee? And then I end up going there. But I was just aghast that they would send their own child to this, you know, mountaintop. But basically, once I began a relationship with Todd, the soccer coach, I knew that's where I wanted to go, just because he was an amazing soccer coach, but he was also just an amazing man, and a couple of girls that I knew from the private schools in Chattanooga were going to Sewanee, so I had a couple of friends who wanted to go there as well; one of my best guy friends from high school was interested in going there, so I wouldn't be going there completely alone. But yeah, once I set my mind on going there, I said "This is going to be it." Applied to a couple of other places, just in case, but I pretty much focused in on Sewanee. And I was interested in a liberal arts education, versus anything too laser-focused right off the bat. And it was only two-and-a-half-ish hours from home, which I thought was a good distance– not too close, not too far.
Did you have a major going right in, or–
When I went in, I thought I was going to be a religion major. That changed, but I've always been interested in religion. And actually, I just did a talk about this at our church last weekend, but when I was really little, I actually wanted to be a priest– what was I thinking? But I've always been interested in religion and comparative religions and philosophy of religion. And going into Sewanee that fall, I was really thinking– and it's an Episcopalian university– I had been raised Episcopalian– so I was like, "I'm going to major in religion. What I'll do with that, I don't know." But after my first couple of religion classes, I was like, "I think I'll go with English instead." [laughter] And I think it was just, the professors were a little dull, because later on, I took some classes with just the most dynamic religion professors, and I'm sure if I had had them at the beginning of my time, I'd probably be a religion major doing who-knows-what right now. But I ended up becoming an English major in the English department at Sewanee's incredibly strong– they put out the Sewanee Review journal comes out of Sewanee– and once I settled on English, there was no–
And you played soccer throughout?
Mhm
Kind of balanced both–
Yeah, I probably focused more on soccer than I did on school, and maybe also on partying more than on school, and ended up on academic probation, probably within my first two months my freshman year, but, you know, I turned things around, I got through. It was a learning experience. But to go from high school where, for the most part, I breezed through classes, I mean I was in advanced classes in high school, and they were still pretty easy, and then to get to Sewanee– [laughter] I was not prepared. My high school did a terrible job at preparing us for college. I was completely just walloped over the head and did not know the proper way to really study and did not fare terribly well for a while there. There was definitely a bit of an adjustment period.
What was your social network like in college? Did you have a solid group that you always hung out with?
My freshman year, yes. Freshman year started out– always defaults to the soccer team. The soccer team freshman year, hung out with the girls' team and then the guys' team, we were super tight, and it was amazing, and the upperclasswomen provided much-needed guidance to me along the way and kicked me in the ass a few times when I needed to be kicked in the ass. And then second semester freshman year, we didn't have national sororities, we had local sororities, AKA drinking clubs, if you will. They would never call them that, but it's basically what they were. And sorority rush was second semester freshman year. And so second semester the sorority basically became my social outlet. But the people that went in with my pledge class were already people that I was friends with going in, and then the rest of the time there I kind of bounced between soccer, sorority, random people here and there, and again it was similar to like in high school where there was a constellation of friend groups that I kind of popped in and out of, depending on what was going on or who was around. But there are still a handful of people from Sewanee that I still keep in touch with that I would consider close friends.
And then as college was kind of winding down, did you have, like, a path, did you know what you were going to set out to do?
I had an idea that I wanted to write, but I just didn't know in what capacity that was gonna find itself. And then as I was trying to figure out how that writing was going to play out, I moved back home and learned about a school in Atlanta called The Portfolio Center, and it was an advertising school that focused on the creative side of advertising, and they had an art direction program, graphic design program, copy-writing program, photography and illustration, and it was a two-year program, and I said, "Let's give it a shot!" So I applied, got accepted, and moved to Atlanta, about nine months after getting out of college to start going to the Portfolio Center. And the idea with the Portfolio Center is you're going to class and building a portfolio of actual ads, so that when you go into an agency you actually have a book to show them instead of just walking in there with nothing. And right out of Portfolio Center, got a job in Atlanta at an agency and stayed in advertising for about seven years, writing.
What kind of work did you do?
This was before the internet was popular, so we were doing mainly print ads, a lot of print ads, but also a lot of TV ads and radio ads, primarily for– do we have Crystal restaurants up here?
I don't think we have–
It's similar to White Castle. Crystal was one of my main accounts at one of my agencies. World Championship Wrestling was one of our accounts. One of the big bread companies that I can't remember the name of– But we did, you know– At Ogilvy and Mather, which was the biggest agency I worked at, we did some nice work for some big accounts, but I also worked at tiny little agencies that only worked local accounts, but it was a lot of print advertising.
What were you doing, the illustrations and the–
I was just doing the copy for it, and then would be paired with an art director/designer.
Was that something that– so how did you get there, I guess, is the question?
I realized I wanted to write, but I realized I wanted to make money and write [laughter]. And after I got out of Sewanee, I did a lot of networking with graduates from Sewanee that were in Knoxville or in the Knoxville area, and the more people I talked with about, "I want to write, but I want to also be able to have it as my only job, I don't want to write on the side and have another career," they were like, "You should consider advertising, and you should definitely consider this school in Atlanta." And then I realized as I looked around my room at home, because my parents hadn't taken everything down yet, I had obviously always been interested in advertising, because it wasn't covered with, like, necessarily posters of, like, rock bands and stuff, it was covered with ads that I like that had headlines that I thought were really good or design layout that was really good, and I thought, hmm, you know, this makes sense.
Do you remember any moments as you were going through this, like, how you would talk to your family about these things, or moments that you had with your parents, as you were going through these transition phases in life, you know, and then slowly becoming an adult?
I don't remember any specific conversation, like, for instance, getting ready to move to Atlanta, other than it was definitely time for me to go, because we were definitely butting heads a lot, to the point where my dad at one point was like, "You can just leave now if you want, instead of leaving with our help." But other than, you know, those few times like that, they were always incredibly supportive of me, in really whatever I did. And from the get-go, they always let me know that they loved me and they supported me, and even if they didn't necessarily agree with me, they still loved me. Though they were completely supportive of me going to Atlanta, they thought Portfolio Center was a great idea, they were a lot more comfortable because one of my best friends from college, he was living in Atlanta, so they felt good that, you know, he was there, and that I had other friends from college down there. But they were always supportive when there were moments of change or transition like that. And I remember one thing my dad did, because I don't know if at that time he necessarily knew what else to do, because, you know, his baby was getting ready to leave, he bought me a pasta bowl to take with me to my new apartment. And I still have it. But you know, that was like his contribution to me getting ready to start life on my own, was this green and white, gigantic pasta bowl. But yeah, they have always been very supportive of most of my decisions. [laughter] Positive decisions.
So you moved to Atlanta after college, and that was kind of like the first time you were living on your own, pretty much?
Yeah, I mean, other than, like, the dorm in college, yeah.
What was that like?
It was interesting. My roommate and I didn't know each other. She was going to advertising school as well; we had talked on the phone a couple times, but the day she moved up to bring her stuff into the apartment was the first day we met, and luckily we got along great. We didn't spend much time together; our apartment, she had her room and her bathroom, and I had my room and my bathroom, so unless we happened to bump into each other in the kitchen, our schedules were really opposite. She had her friends from the Portfolio Center. I really spent most of my time with friends from college, but when we did spend time together, we got along great; we used to have great parties together, so the living situation was great. I had a good friend network from college already established, I was making new friends with the kids that I was going to advertising school with. Atlanta, while a "big city," yes, it is, but it's really not; in my mind, it's like a lot of little neighborhoods stuck together, and then you've got tall buildings that nobody used to go to. Because when I lived there, nobody went downtown; now it's completely different. So I found Atlanta to be completely manageable, and I think it was a good city for me to kind of jump off into; I can't imagine jumping off into a New York City or, you know, like San Francisco or something like that. I'm glad that I went to a more maneuverable place.
So at any point during this time, either high school or college, or now that you were out of college, were you dating at all?
I would go on dates– [laughter] and there were gentlemen who wanted to date me, but funny– I wasn't interested! [laughter] Hmm! Yeah, so, in Atlanta, there were a couple of guys that I would go on dates with, and at this point, even though in college for my senior year I had had been in a physical relationship with a female friend of mine, I did not think I was gay. That just didn't cross my mind. I was like, oh, this girl and I are just sleeping together for a year– I'm not gay. And then, she was a year behind me, and she would come visit on weekends, and I thought she was starting to get very clingy, you know, for people that are just friends, and then she started talking about moving to Atlanta, and we would live together, and I was like, oh no, what is going on here, this is crazy, because, you know, I'm going to be going out with this guy, and that guy, and I don't know– And we never of course spoke about what was happening with us, because why would we do that and be healthy? So I would go on dates with guys now and then, and wonder why I was doing it, because I would be bored to tears, or I would be out with someone and just be like, boy, we're really good friends, aren't we? And most of the time I would be wishing that I was hanging out with one particular other friend of mine who had graduated with me who lived in Atlanta, who I found myself very drawn to, but still didn't know why. So finally it dawned on me, hmm, maybe I am gay, because I don't want to do anything with the guys who are interested in me, and I really want to spend a lot of time with Paige. And finally I was like, okay, I'm going to stop whatever's going on with the guys, just stop that, because it's a waste of everybody's time, so I instead will pine after Paige for about a year and a half, because she was off dating and having a fabulous gay life. And I would accompany her; we'd all go out, and then I would go home alone, of course, and cry and, you know, put myself to bed.
Did you ever have a resistance to identifying as gay?
No, you know, it just, this is gonna sound crazy, but it never really– it never was a conscious moment where like, I was like, oh– there was never a defining time like, I still, I never really "came out," I just started hanging out with Paige and other gay women and gay men more and more and more, but I never, like, made an announcement to any of my friends, "Oh hey, I'm gay!" I did have more of a coming out with my dad, but as far as my friend group in Atlanta, it was just kind of this seamless transition, like, but there was no inner turmoil, I wasn't, like, struggling with it, I wasn't repulsed by what I had done for a year in college at all. I was just– it was just like I woke up and was like, oh, I'm now just going to go down this path. It was very strange, actually, because there was no light bulb going off–
Were you having thoughts about transitioning genders at this point?
No, that didn't even cross my mind at that point.
So how long– was this, kind of like, emblematic of your entire time in Atlanta, or that kind of whole phase was a lot of– that's basically the tempo of life?
Well Paige and I did finally get together. I had my John Hughes movie moment, where everything worked out [laughter]
Not all of us get that!
Yeah, I know. [laughter] And we were together for two-and-a-half years, and I helped raise her son, which is a whole other story, for about the first two years of his life. I'm still his, well now I guess his godfather? Godparent? And then we broke up. And then I dated– it was shorter relationships after Paige, after that. And I would say it wasn't really until maybe 2006 or so that I really started thinking more, paying more attention to gender identity and pronoun usage, because there was a period where I was very proud of my butch identity, and very active in the butch/femme community, and was existing in that world for a while, and then from there I began to pay more attention to gender identity and started reading more and learning more about transgender individuals, and started, I think in maybe 2007 or so, started wanting to go by male pronouns among my close friends, even though I had not done anything to transition physically, but I knew that these particular friends would be supportive of it, and so even though I'm sure a lot of people in public were confused when someone was saying "He, he," and here I am sitting with, you know, like, DD breasts, you know, my friends were all for it, and that's what mattered to me. And then I had always liked my middle name, Austin, from when I was the littlest of kids, I had always loved my middle name, and my legal first name is Mara, and I finally around that same time, was like, "Why can't I go by my middle name? Hey, can you guys start calling me Austin?" And so the majority of my friends made a pretty easy change, again, even though I hadn't done any physical transition yet, and again, this was all happening in Atlanta, I was keeping it– I hadn't bothered at this point sharing anything about transitioning or even thinking more about gender identity with my family, my dad and my brother; at this point, my mom passed away in '95, so she wasn't a consideration. But at that point it was all pronouns and nouns and descriptors that really were beginning to matter to me, and words– words have always meant a lot to me and mattered, and they were beginning to matter a lot more as they became more personal, and then finally I was just like, you know, I think it's time to just really consider transitioning fully, and not having to deal with the disconnect between the male pronouns and the male adjectives and the male descriptors, but having, you know, this gigantic chest, and, you know, this squeaky high voice. So then around 2008, 2009, started looking into that seriously, and did start transitioning, got on testosterone, and had my top surgery scheduled in Atlanta. But then was diagnosed with cancer and another disease called aplastic anemia, where my blood cells were eating each other, and I was diagnosed with these diseases at the same time. And I said, "I think my transition can wait. I think I need to focus on living right now," because the cancer was stage III-c uterine cancer and the aplastic anemia in and of itself can be terminal. And they had never seen anybody with both of these diseases at the same time so they had no idea how to treat me. And honestly, at that point, the last thing– I was like, I don't care about transitioning, I just need to focus on healing and getting through this and living and fighting this, and did. And once that was over, pretty much as soon as I finished my last radiation treatment, got my radiation oncologist's blessing and got my hematologist's blessing to leave Atlanta; about two months later I moved up here, and within the year, was starting on testosterone and had top surgery.
And when did you move back?
I moved up here in August– well I should say, I moved to New York City in August of 2010, and then stayed with a friend who was kind enough to let me and my dogs crash with her, and stayed there for a couple of months, and then moved into New Jersey that October.
What was the impetus to move to this area?
Jen. I had met my now-fiance, Jen, in 2008; she had been in Atlanta on a conference, and we had randomly ran into each other, and I had not been out socially in ages, and I had never hit on anybody at a bar, honest to god, until that night, and the rest is history. We did long-distance for a little bit, a couple years, but she was not going to leave New Jersey, she had her two kids, all her friends, all her family, her support was up here, and I was ready to leave Atlanta, so I was like, sure, why not? And it kind of felt like I had just dealt with cancer and this aplastic anemia, and it kind of felt like a good time to start over.
You had mentioned that your mom passed away in 1995
Yes.
Were you in college at the time?
No, I was about halfway through Portfolio Center.
Oh okay. And is there anything you want to say about that, about her passing?
I wish I had done, in hindsight, of course, I wish I had done things differently. I just thank god that my sister-in-law is an amazing person and was an amazing daughter to my mother, because, while I could not be there, even though I could have been there, Sheila was there. My mom, she had cancer for a few years, and sort of toward the very end when she was in the hospital, Sheila and my brother would go back to Knoxville– they were living outside Nashville, and Sheila would, you know, be in the hospital room with my mom, helping her eat, and helping her get her ice chips and everything, and I was hiding in Atlanta drinking and staying removed from that situation to a degree. But again, of course, if I could do it again I would obviously have gone up to see Mom more often than I had, but at the time, I did what I knew to do. But before she passed away, I wrote her and my dad a long letter allying I think some concerns she had about me, and some worries, some parental concerns and stuff like that, so I know that when she did pass away, she went with a sense of peace about me.
You had mentioned at one point that you'd never really had a tumultuous coming out moment, or a singular moment, but that you did have something with your dad
Oh yes.
Like, some sort of coming out moment with your dad.
Oh, my mom passed away November 1; I was supposed to go to my brother's and sister-in-law's that Thanksgiving, and my dad was gonna be there, and Paige and I had– you're going to think I'm a terrible person– Paige and I had gotten together– Paige and I were not together, but she was one of my best friends, so she had gone to my mom's funeral in Knoxville with me. We got together that weekend and kind of started sort of dating after that, but then the night before I was supposed to leave for Thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving immediately after my mom had died, she was like, "We should just be friends, this is a terrible idea, I don't know what we were thinking, duh duh duh," and I'm like, [laughter] okay? Meanwhile, I've been in love with her for at least a year and I'm totally crushed, so I got no sleep that night, I was a complete wreck, and I just could not bring myself to drive up to Nashville, and it got to the point where my brother got on the phone, he's like, "You'd better get your ass up here," you know, "This is the first holiday without Mom, Dad's here." I was like, "Tony, I–" I can't even remember what I told him, why I wasn't making it, and then it got to the point where a friend of my father's called me from Chicago, and was like, "I don't know what's going on down there, but you'd better get here," so I was like, "Okay, okay, I'll go!" So I finally got up there at about nine o'clock; I missed Thanksgiving dinner, missed everything, and I figured I owed it to my dad to tell him what was going on. So we went for a walk that night around the subdivision, and I explained to him, you know, that Paige and I were not just– well, we were back to being good friends, but there was a moment there where we were not just good friends, and that I was in fact gay, and you know, duh duh duh duh duh, and, um, he didn't take it that well, but he didn't take it as bad as I think he would've had he still not been grieving my mom's loss so recently, 'cause later on, a year or so later when he came and visited, he had some less friendly words for me, but always telling me that he loved me, but that he didn't necessarily, couldn't wrap his head around things. But that Thanksgiving was a pretty tough Thanksgiving. And then I had to explain to my brother why I had completely ruined Thanksgiving as well, and he and Sheila couldn't have cared less, you know, "We're just glad that you're okay, we were worried something was really wrong," but I think I definitely broke my dad's heart a little bit that night, and then when I told him I was transitioning, I definitely broke the rest of it when I did that, 'cause he finally came around to the idea of me being gay, and he would ask if I had any "friends," and I said, "Yes, Dad, I have lots of friends." He's like, "Um, do you have any 'special' friends?" "Yeah, Dad, I have lots of special friends." It would go on like that until I finally got him to, you know, ask if I had a girlfriend. But he would come around, he got to the point where we would all, you know, if I was dating someone, we'd go out and he and Paige and I would do things together; he became good friends with Paige's parents. So after Paige and I got back together and did things the right way, post-that funeral tryst. But then when I told him that I was going to transition, he could not wrap his head around that. Because while I think that in his life he had met, you know, gay people, his neighbors were gay, I don't know that he was aware of ever having met anyone who was transgender, and he, when he heard about my plans to have top surgery, all he could imagine was me mutilating, quote unquote "mutilating" my body, and, you know, he kept saying, "What did Mom and I do wrong?" and was really internalizing it and putting it on himself. And it took a while, but he is, he was good. And I mean, my dad's 82, so the concept of, you know, transgender and gender identity is definitely not something that he deals with with his age group very often, but he still sometimes calls me Mara, and I'm okay with that. You know, he tries, he really does try. Sometimes he calls me "she.” I'm okay with that. He's 82. You know, he's known me as his daughter for the majority of my life. You know, he still sometimes in public will say "dear," you know, call me "dear" or "honey," and I'm like, “Do I look like a dear or a honey, Dad?” But, you know, whatever. It is what it is. But the most amazing thing was, I think it was maybe two years ago, his siblings were all in the Northeast, and he was like, "Hey, I'm coming up, and all my siblings, we're all gonna come down and we're gonna have a mini family reunion there in Highland Park." And I was like, "Well, Dad, I've got a beard now," you know? Because none of his siblings, I had not told my aunts and uncles about transitioning, and he was like, "Well, I guess they're just gonna see you with a beard." So that night I dashed off this e-mail to my aunts and uncles and was like, "Um, you may notice something different about me," [laughter] you know, and they, it didn't matter one iota to them. My Uncle John, my dad's little brother, he said, "You know, you were always my favorite niece; now you're my favorite nephew." Like, totally–
How did your brother feel about that?
[laughter] You know, he– I haven't told him that! [laughter] You know, totally not the reaction I would have expected, because they are older, I have a feeling they're all Republicans– I can't confirm that, but I do feel that way, but that weekend they just, it was the same amount of love they've always shown me. My dad had met Jen and the kids before, but they met the rest of– my aunts and uncles met my fiance and the kids. One of my cousins actually came as well and he was totally cool with everything. I've since then gotten in touch with cousins related to those aunts and uncles that I hadn't been in touch with in quite a while, and everybody is just wonderfully supportive. And that weekend, I had no idea what to expect, but it had not have gone any better.
When was this?
This is probably, maybe two or three years ago?
When you were, I mean you talked about obviously having the access to healthcare when you had cancer–
Yes.
And then when you were kind of in the process of figuring out access to healthcare or access to doctors in terms of your transition, was that a challenging process, or were you able to find someone?
When I was in Atlanta, before I knew I had cancer, I was beginning to take testosterone. I was going to– there was a, it's called Feminist Women's Health Clinic, or that's what it used to be called. They provided all kinds of healthcare to women and then they also provided exams and testosterone and therapy for transgender individuals, so that's where I started going, and it was– access to Feminist Women's Health Center was incredibly easy. And if I had not gone there and done the follow-up, which they insist you do, you know, to keep getting the testosterone, I would not have realized my blood levels were as bad as they were, and realized something was going on. And then when I realized that something was very wrong with me, I didn't have insurance. And so I went to Grady Hospital in Atlanta, and Grady, if you're from Atlanta, is the hospital you don't want to go to unless you've been a victim of a gunshot. And there's actually bumper stickers that say, "If I have a gunshot wound, take me to Grady”, that's it. Because it's in the, like, grungy part of downtown, it's indigent care, it's homeless, it's poor people, it's drug addicts, it's not pretty, it's amazing and they saved my life there. And I got, they call it a Grady Card, 'cause I had quit working, and to prove that I had no income, and for a while was allowed to get services without expectation of payment, but then after a certain point, they did expect payment, but unfortunately I was not able to pay them back. But they not once hesitated, they did not hesitate once taking care of me through– I was initially hospitalized in January of 2010 for ten days, released, and then I had to go back and was hospitalized, I think, for about twelve days or so, and then after that had follow-up radiation and all kinds of appointments. Never once was there a hiccup of, "Oh, you're not insured? We're not gonna, you know, touch you." And like I said, people turned their noses up at Grady; I'm a fan. And if you guys watch The Walking Dead– are you Walking Dead fans?
I've seen two seasons.
Well, Grady is the hospital that Beth was taken to. So if you ever watch it, that's– and I knew that was the hospital she was gonna end up in– but it's an amazing place, and they were completely– at that point I had been on testosterone, so I had a few little whiskers coming in, but I still hadn't had top surgery yet, so I'm sure people were confused, but they were so good about being respectful of pronouns, and they were so good about calling me Austin, even though my legal name still, and still is Mara Austin Morreale. When my dad and Kay, his wife, came down to visit, my dad and Kay at this point are still calling me Mara, and "she, she, she," and the doctors and the nurses are "Austin," "he, he, he," and I was like, "Yes!" So that was absolutely amazing. Then when I moved up here, I was lucky enough to find an endocrinologist that had experience working with some transgender individuals who accepted my insurance once I got my full-time job, and he's been amazing as far as not just with my testosterone but with holistic healthcare in general. My general practitioner is absolutely amazing; she is my go-to if I– 'cause I ask her, "Can you refer me to a queer-friendly blankedy-blank," and she does. And then when I had top surgery, I interviewed, yeah, I guess I interviewed a couple different doctors, and felt most comfortable with a doctor out in Long Branch, and it wasn't covered by insurance, but we were able to, through different payment options and whatnot, pay for most of it. But I've been pretty lucky being able to navigate the healthcare, but I am back in a situation now where I do not have insurance anymore, 'cause I just quit my job with benefits to take a job without benefits. You might say "Why?" [laughter] But it's to fight for the greater good. But the next couple of months are gonna be tricky; I'm gonna be very careful, obviously, about what prescriptions I get filled, and I'm not gonna do any daredevil stunts or anything, but I'm still gonna be focusing on making sure that I can still get my testosterone, obviously, and have access to at least my primary care physician. But I know that I have had it much easier than, so– I mean, so many people. I don't really have any, like, horror stories of, you know, problems as far as healthcare goes, I don't– nobody has threatened to kick me out of my family because of being transgender, and I am so fortunate for that. And I definitely realize that.
So what work are you doing now?
I work for a nonprofit called NeighborCorps. We work with individuals who are in the Middlesex County jail, helping them reenter the community, partnering them with teams of volunteers to help ensure that their reentry back into their community goes as smoothly and as successfully as possible. And I'm on my third week with them.
Awesome. Congrats!
Thank you.
So what's your position with them?
Service director. Yeah, but everybody– when I told them I was leaving– I was working at a hotel, you know, benefits, not great pay, but better pay than this nonprofit, and everybody thought, "You're crazy. What are you doing?" I was like, "You don't understand, I will be so much happier without the stress and the misery of the hotel job, plus I'm doing something to help people."
Yeah.
'Cause after the Pulse, Orlando shooting, that weekend, in addition to the Pulse shooting, a couple of other things happened that just woke me up, and I said, "I need to end up working in a situation that will let me help people." And it took me a little bit over a year to get there, but I finally did, and I was like, I'm not gonna turn that opportunity down.
You know, it's kind of interesting. You mention the Pulse shooting, and it makes me think of other, kind of, moments, like, momentous moments that kind of shift or guide our lives, and I was just wondering if you thought of any other moments that were significant or kind of pop out in your memory.
Definitely that one.
Was it because it had to deal with the queer community?
Yeah, and that weekend, three things– that Friday night, I was in– I go to the Reformed Church of Highland Park, and they have a group called the Women's Covenant, and they were showing a documentary about a trans man who was a priest, who'd become a priest– I can't remember what denomination, but they were showing the documentary to the Women's Covenant, and they asked me if I would come watch the movie and then be available for questions as, like, the token trans person. And I was like, sure. And so I watched it, and, you know, it was a pretty decent film, and then during the– then came the Q & A, and at this point, even though I'd been going to the church, I didn't really know anybody in this particular group; a lot of them were a little bit older women, not necessarily people I would have socialized with. But we just had the best time during the Q & A session, and I felt so good about being able to educate them on something that's completely foreign to them, and I let them know, you know, that you're safe with me, ask whatever you want to ask, don't worry about feeling stupid, you know, just ask it, and I will do my best to try to shed some light on if you're confused, or ignorant, or whatever the situation may be, and so I left that Friday night just, like, on a high, and I was like, I need to do something that lets me help people and educate people. That was Friday, and then Saturday night I was out trying to enjoy myself at a friend's birthday party, and my phone kept blowing up with calls from the hotel where I work, and it was the most ridiculous phone calls and texts about stuff that could've been dealt with on property; there's no need to involve me. And it just escalated out of control all the way to the general manager. And I thought, this is– and that was just kind of the, I guess, the peak or the culmination of work stuff that summer, and that Saturday night I was like, this is ridiculous; I should not be here, eleven o'clock at night, having my phone ringing nonstop, text messages nonstop, about something so trivial when it comes to it, and of course I woke up the next morning to find out about the shooting in Orlando, and it was like the triumvirate of events. I was like, I need to do something good, I need to be of use. And with the Pulse shooting, I think it really got to me, because I was like, that could have been me. I mean, the one lesbian bar in Atlanta we all went to, you know, that could have been us, you know, twenty years ago, so easily, because, you know, that's the one place where you go and you think it's okay and safe to be, and it turns out it's not. But yeah, that definitely got me thinking I needed to start shifting my focus of what I wanted to do with my life. And then Angelina Jolie helped, too. I don't even know how I found a clip of her, because I do not surf YouTube looking for Angelina Jolie videos–
[laughter]
I swear! But somehow I ended up with one, and it was her speaking at a– some awards show, but not like an Oscars, it was some humanitarian thing, and she was saying that how her mom had told her, if she does nothing else in her life, to be of use. And that, right there, I was like, lights went off, bells started chiming, I was like, that's it, I need to be of use. Because I've maybe been of use here and there in a small capacity, but I need to find a way that I can be of use, you know, forty, fifty hours a week. And so that kind of started the process of ending up where I am now.
How about your work with Who Is My Neighbor? How does that fit into your life?
I am not doing very much with them. My fiance Jen has actually stepped in and is kind of– well I should say "may" be working with them on providing some diversity aspect; she and another Latina from the community are going to step in, but now that I'm with Who Is My Neighbor, I'm going to focus on Who Is My Neighbor– I mean, I'm sorry, NeighborCorps.
NeighborCorps [laughter]
Yeah, I get them confused– they're so similar! And we're all at the church together.
True, true, true. Do you have any questions?
JT: Yeah, I guess maybe just– could you talk a little bit more about kind of coming up here and what it was like to transition into life with Jen and the kids?
Yeah. I would like to say it was easy [laughter]. When I first came up, I stayed with my friend in New York City, and Jen at the time was living with, and her kids, were living with her sister in Highland Park, so before I got a job, I would job hunt all day and then come and visit in the evenings, and commute late evening, and then late, late at night. And that got kind of tiring. But I had to do it. And then once I got a job, I was working in Lawrenceville, but still staying with my friend in New York, so that got to be– I don't even know what time I was getting up in the morning to catch the train to get to the Edison station to get my car to get down to Lawrenceville, and then trying to work in seeing Jen and the kids among all that. And so then I finally moved into Highland Park and stayed– I house sat a friend's house for a couple of months, and then Jen and the kids and I moved into a tiny little apartment, and I think if we were still there, we probably– we wouldn't be together anymore. It was too small, we were constantly on top of each other, and I had never lived with– except for, like, my roommate in Atlanta or my college roommate, I'd never lived with anybody before. Even when Paige and I were together, we never officially lived together, I just always stayed at her place; I still had my place, but I was never there. So this was a big adjustment, going from having my stuff the way I want it to be, my things where they should be, to, you know, chaos, basically. 'Cause at the time, the kids were maybe three and five, I think, in this tiny apartment. Jen and I didn't even have a door on our bedroom, because if we kept the door on it, on the bedroom, it wouldn't shut, 'cause it would hit the bed, so we had to take the door off and put, like, one of those cheap plastic accordion doors, so there was no privacy, no sound barrier there– it took a lot of adjusting to. And now we're in a house, so there's more room, so we have more breathing space, we can, you know, we're not on top of each other. I have surrendered; I now know that I have two areas that I can keep organized the way I want them to be organized, and the rest is chaos and fair game. I will never win that battle, and I have to just let my OCD go. And it drives me crazy. But I mean, I'm still adjusting, even though it's been like seven years, 'cause it's just so ingrained in me that things should be my way, you know, and my way is the right way, and even if I can't justify to the kids why that's how you do it, I still know that it should be done. And when they ask, "Well, why should I do it this way?" I sometimes can't tell them, I just– "Because."
[laughter]
[laughter] But I mean, Jen is very much a feeler and comes from an emotional place, and I am much more of a task-oriented person, so we still to this day are still trying to compromise and learn how to make that work to the best of its ability, because she could care less about my list of things to do, and sometimes I could care less about what she's feeling, let's be honest [laughter], but we're getting there, you know, I make a concerted effort to ask her how she's feeling or what she feels about certain things, and make an effort to, you know, to not deluge her with things that have to be done. So, you know, it's definitely still a work in progress. And throw a deaf, crazy pit bull into the mix, and it's–
JT: [laughter]
Yeah. Oh, deaf, crazy, super anxious pit bull into the mix, and it's just chaos all the time.
JT: I think one more thing is that we like to have people– I don't think you ever stated your birth date, just where you were born.
Yeah, March 19, 1971.
And born in Summit, New Jersey.
Yes.
I remember that.
And a quick story about that: a few years– maybe three or four years ago, we were up in Westfield, and that's– when I was born in Summit, that's where we were living at the time. And I was like, I called my dad, was like "Dad, hey, we're up in Westfield. Do you remember the address of where we used to live?" "Oh, uh, I think it's blankedy-blank 92, you know, whatever, Maple Street." So we put it into the GPS, we drive by, and it is this huge, huge old house, and I'm like, what happened over the years? You know, we really, Benjamin Button-ed it here and went the wrong way. And I was like, I called him back a few minutes, I was like, "Dad, are you sure that was the right address?" He's like, "No, no, no, wrong– that's completely the wrong address." We drive– put the right address in, see the much more modest house, I was like, "Okay, this makes much more sense." Yeah, because Jen was looking at me when we went by the first house, and she's like, "What?!" You know, "No, this cannot be what you came from." I was like, "I don't think it is either, 'cause if it is, somebody took a wrong turn at some point in their life, because this is not what I'm accustomed to." But my dad was like, "Yeah, no, completely wrong house." Yeah.
Anything else you feel like you would have been asked if you were asking the questions?
No, I don't think so. I don't know, one thing– I don't know if this is important, or if anybody would find it interesting: I have not legally changed my name. My name legally is still Mara Austin Morreale, which, when it comes to healthcare, makes it fun, 'cause I'll be sitting in the waiting room, for a new doctor, you know, of course, and the nurse will come out and say "Mara Morreale?" And I'll stand up and they continue to look around the room and say, "No no, Mara Morreale," and I say, "No no, Mara Morreale, that's me!" And, you know, then they kind of get this very confused look on their face, and as we're walking back I then have to, you know, "I'm transgender," and then even though on all the forms I fill out I put "Please call me by my middle name," and eventually they get there, but it presents some interesting moments in doctors' offices, and even– I was getting read to have surgery, because I had cancer on my eyelid, and I was on the gurney getting ready to go into the operating room, and mentioned something about having uterine cancer, because the majority of the team knew that I was transgender, but one of the doctors didn't, and he thought I was just kidding, he was like, "Oh, uterine cancer, ha ha ha," and [laughter] Jen and I looked at him and we were both like, "No, really." I was like, "I had uterine cancer, I'm transgender." And he was like, "Oh!"
JK & JT: [laughter]
I know that I– well, I should, I guess get around to changing my name legally, for lots of reasons, to make things easier on me, to avoid discomfort at doctors' office or on the way to the operating room, but I haven't yet. One, financially, 'cause it does cost a couple hundred dollars, but also I was named after my mother. "Mara" is a diminutive of "Mary." And I struggle– and it's funny, this is probably the only thing in the whole process of transitioning, being transgender, this is really the thing that I struggle with the most, I struggle with getting rid of my first name, because I feel like it would be disrespectful or, not betraying, but dishonoring my mom, so I've tried searching through a bunch of Serbian– my mom was Serbian– so I've tried to find a bunch of Serbian names, male names that begin with M, and none of them really work, and so it just keeps getting pushed off and pushed off, because I just, it doesn't really feel right to do it, even though I know that she would be completely fine with me doing it, because she would not want me to be uncomfortable and to have names that don't match, but that is my main struggle throughout it all, is this emotional tie for my first name. And I never disliked my first name; I don't have bad connections with Mara or when I was Mara, but that's really the thing that holds me back from changing it, is the tie to my mother. So, to this day I still am Mara Austin Morreale, which confuses a lot of people. [laughter] As it should. But oh well.
Great. Anything else? I'll go ahead and stop the recorder now.
[END OF INTERVIEW]