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As a couple, Mona Rios and Boe Randal have lived one of the most dramatic transgender stories possible--a man who became a woman married to a woman who became a man. Within the marriage, each has been the husband, each has been the wife. Neither of them uses those terms however; they prefer the word "spouse."
When discussing their 30-year relationship, even they sometimes get confused. But like many couples, they vividly remember the moment they met.
Rios, then 14, had recently arrived in Los Angeles, leaving what she calls a dysfunctional family situation in Northern California to live with one of her mother's ex-boyfriends. Randal and his family were neighbors in the Hollywood apartment building. "I remember he walked into my room just as
I was putting on my makeup and he just stood there," Rios says, "and stared."
In that moment, the two discovered a deep and enduring bond. Both had been dressing, and living, as the opposite sex since they were very young. When they first met, Boe's name was Karen Ann, and Mona's was William John.
Although they did not become a couple until much later, for the next 20 years, they were more than friends, they were family. They hung out together, ran around together, partied together. For Rios, especially, Randal was always a safe haven, the one person who never required an explanation, the one person who understood. One horrible night, Rios remembers, she had "my 'Crying Game' moment." A new boyfriend, became enraged and tried to kill her when he discovered her anatomy was not female. She fled to Randal's apartment, naked, for protection.
So when she entered her 30s and decided that she really needed to settle down, she turned to her closest friend to see if somehow they could fashion a "normal" life, as a couple.
At the time, Rios, who was taking female hormones, thought of herself as a feminine gay man, and Randal considered himself a lesbian. But they decided to give it a shot.
"It seemed like the natural thing to do," says Randal.
"We loved each other," says Rios. "We still do."They got married, and four months later, Randal was pregnant, which was a bit of a shock; he had never had the desire to parent a child, much less carry one. Rios, on the other hand, was ecstatic. In an effort to conform to their new roles, they joined a church where cross-dressing was not acceptable. So Rios stopped taking hormones, put away her dresses and donned a suit--"I had to learn to walk in boys' shoes; I had never worn them," she says--and Randal struggled into his first skirt, his first pair of heels.
"Oh, man, I hated it," he says now, laughing. "And it was awful, I felt like everyone was staring at me."
"They were staring at you," Rios says. "You looked like a football player in those dresses. And he was so rebellious. He would not do any of the things around the house a woman is supposed to do."
"I'd never done them," Randal says, holding his hands up, palms out. "I tried it for eight months. And then I said, forget it. I gave my purses to her."
He went back to his big T-shirts, his baggy jeans.
When their daughter, Elizabeth, was born, it became clear that the parental roles were not going to follow conventional rules either. Rios, although then still making a go of it as a male, felt all the maternal urges that Randal did not.
"I'm definitely more of a father," Randal says.
Although Rios continued for a while to present herself as a male, she still cross-dressed in private, and after a few years, she began taking hormones again and dressing pretty much full time. To the world, they look like an average family--Rios is slender and lithe enough to be a dancer, her dark hair pulled back from a heart-shaped face, and Randal is wide-eyed, wide-shouldered and boyishly friendly. But from the time 10-year-old Elizabeth was small, her parents have been completely open about their biological history and their choices.
"I would rather deal with it now," says Rios, "than have her grow up and hate us for lying to her or hiding things."
Until about two years ago, they believed that there was no one out there like them. They did not realize that the word "transgender" even existed. Although they knew of transsexual women, the ones they had seen on television did not seem to speak for, or to, either Rios or Randal. And they didn't know a transsexual man was even possible. Then one day while on the Internet, Rios discovered several transgender Web sites; a while later, Randal saw a couple of advertisements for female-to-male support groups in a local free newspaper. "I'm reading these things and thinking, 'Hey, that's me,' " he says.
"It was just such a relief," says Rios, "you know, to find other people like us, to know, oh that's who we are."
Since then they have embraced their new lives. They've had their names changed on their driver's licenses and transitioned at work, where neither one encountered any real problems. The bathroom issue that baffles so many employers was not an obstacle--at the manufacturing plant where Rios works on the assembly line, there is only one lavatory, and Randal has long used the men's room at his IBM office. "I never have any trouble there," he says.
"Back when I was trying to be a girl, I would walk into the women's room, and women would yell."
Both are planning to have chest surgery in the near future, although neither has immediate plans for genital surgery. Their daughter, they say, has adjusted to their new identities. "She knows who had her," says Randal. "But she usually calls me Boe, or Dad."
"I told her I would always be her father," says Rios, "and she sometimes calls me Dad, but when we're in public, she calls me Mom. I tell her not to worry about what other people think. I don't any more. You have to be who you are."
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