Alexandra Billings Quotes

As the bills fall into the jar, Alexandra takes her hand. “Come on Mackenzie, let’s go to the American Girl store and spend some of Uncle Drew’s money.” “Okay!

Alexandra was one of those people who had gone through life at no cost to themselves; had she been obliged to pay any emotional bills during her earthly life, Jean Louise could imagine her stopping at the check-in desk in heaven and demanding a refund.

Even when faced with it, the truth eludes me. I much prefer the world I create to the world I inhabit.

Plopped in the middle of a rehearsal, surrounded by queers and show tunes, there was magic. I was free and unbound and filled with wonder.

I was an outcast. I simply wasn’t one of the shiny gay boys. California living was gorgeous. California living was surreal. But the sheer blinding truth of it made me want to flee.

Then he opened his blood-red-lipsticked mouth, and in his best Bea Arthur contralto he warbled, “Call me Helga.” He was a United States senator. Still is, I think.

and I wanted everyone to see me the way I wanted to be seen. But that was not what happened. People see what you show them, and many times, what I showed them had very little to do with who I was. I wanted to be them. I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be anyone who wasn’t me.

I began to rediscover a voice I thought I’d lost. And hearing myself, I began to shatter and fall apart. I was held by Chrisanne, and I was seen by Honey, and I slowly realized, like Dorothy had in her own fairy tale, that this magical sound I thought I’d lost had actually been with me all the time.

The next day, Proposition Eight passed and suddenly, because I was a Transgender Female and I had fallen in love with a Cisgender Female, what we were last night was no longer what we were this morning. But just as it had been the first time . . . there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Her need to dominate and hold power became a source of emotional violence in our house. She was the woman. I was not. That was that.

I finally became the first Trans assistant professor in the history of the CSULB Theatre Arts Department. I now had a “real” career. I was a legitimate certified teacher. I was here, grounded and making my way through it all over again, but this time I wasn’t going to let go. I wanted tenure.

My father was buried a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, and my uncle Chuck let me know that when they folded the flag, they usually give it to the oldest living female of the family. He asked if I wanted to receive it. I refused it. I didn’t want a flag, and I didn’t want a ceremony, and I didn’t want guns going off, and I didn’t want a reception. I wanted my parents back.

Driving through the gates of Paramount studios is surreal, but driving through the gates of Paramount studios when you actually work there is something else entirely.

I had met the cast a week or so prior at the table read, where everyone gathers around a large table and reads the words of the script for the very first time. Jeffrey and I had chatted for a few minutes.

There is a truth and a power in singing, and I was nowhere near ready to begin to excavate.

I never hooked because I was forced to. I wanted to hook. I liked it. I liked the power and the control I had, especially over men. I had accumulated so much resentment that keeping them at bay was a pleasure.

I had wanted a man so that I could be a woman. I wanted all the things I had read about and all the things I had seen in movies—someone to open my door, put on my coat, carry me, lift me, get things for me, make sure I was okay and beautiful and alive on the planet and that I mattered. I wanted a man to hear me and walk like a man with me, so that other people would see that I was not the man.

My instincts have always been my greatest savior, and they were in high gear. Ultimately, my self-protective carapace actually saved my life. Luckily, my parents gave in with the stipulation that if within the span of one year I was not working steadily as an actor, I would go to school.

I had had affairs with women in this way, emotional and kind and loving, but the men I’d been with had been all about sex. As I grew into my idea of the feminine construct, which I knew only from what I had witnessed and what I had been taught, the idea of being with men should have made more sense to me. It didn’t.

At least our stories were beginning to be noticed as part of the human experience. That was a victory. At least . . . that’s what I tried to convince myself of. The actress who replaced me was Felicity Huffman. The movie was Transamerica.

Ned Sherrin Ned Sherrin is a satirist, novelist, anthologist, film producer, and celebrated theater director who has been at the heart of British broadcasting and the arts for more than fifty years. I had met Diana, Princess of Wales--perhaps “I had been presented to” is more accurate--in lineups after charity shows that I had been compering and at which she was the royal guest of honor. There were the usual polite exchanges. On royal visits backstage, Princess Alexandra was the most relaxed, on occasion wickedly suggesting that she caught a glimpse of romantic chemistry between two performers and setting off giggles. Princess Margaret was the most artistically acute, the Queen the most conscientious; although she did once sweep past me to get to Bill Haley, of whom she was a fan. Prince Edward could, at one time, be persuaded to do an irreverent impression of his older brother, Prince Charles. Princess Diana seemed to enjoy herself, but she was still new to the job and did not linger down the line. Around this time, a friend of mine opened a restaurant in London. From one conversation, I gathered that although it was packed in the evenings, business was slow at lunchtime. Soon afterward, I got a very “cloak-and-dagger” phone call from him. He spoke in hushed tones, muttering something like “Lunch next Wednesday, small party, royal person, hush-hush.” From this, I inferred that he wanted me and, I had no doubt, other friends to bring a small party to dress the restaurant, to which he was bringing the “royal person” in a bid to up its fashionable appeal during the day. When Wednesday dawned, the luncheon clashed with a couple of meetings, and although feeling disloyal, I did not see how I was going to be able to round up three or four people--even for a free lunch. Guiltily, I rang his office and apologized profusely to his secretary for not being able to make it. The next morning, he telephoned, puzzled and aggrieved. “There were only going to be the four of us,” he said. “Princess Diana had been looking forward to meeting you properly. She was very disappointed that you couldn’t make it.” I felt suitably stupid--but, as luck had it, a few weeks later I found myself sitting next to her at a charity dinner at the Garrick Club. I explained the whole disastrous misunderstanding, and we had a very jolly time laughing at the coincidence that she was dining at this exclusive club before her husband, who had just been elected a member with some publicity. Prince Charles was in the hospital at the time recuperating from a polo injury. Although hindsight tells us that the marriage was already in difficulties, that was not generally known, so in answer to my inquiries, she replied sympathetically that he was recovering well. We talked a lot about the theater and her faux pas some years before when she had been to Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and confessed to the star, Penelope Keith, that it was the first Coward play that she had seen. “The first,” said Penelope, shocked. “Well,” Diana said to me, “I was only eighteen!” Our meeting was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and as we were both working a lot for AIDS charities, we had many notes to compare and friends to mourn. The evening ended with a dance--but being no Travolta myself, I doubt that my partnering was the high point for her.

The breaking and falling apart and the worrying and the discovering and the exploring and the loving and the regretting and the forgiveness—all these emotions are human. I believe there is a divine sense of being in every single moment.

Blind luck can only go so far. No one’s that lucky. There has to be something else going on. Every day when I walk into class, you remind me that I can survive anything—that there is an inexplicable force at work. As you go through life, you bring with you a glorious sense of self and the courage to reflect, fall down, and crumble. I have seen you time after time get right back up off the floor and try again. That’s divine. That’s power.

My wife is an unbelievable student. I watched as she confronted her life and death with wit and smarts and facts and grace and more courage than I ever thought possible. And one by one, moment by moment, my Watching became Doing. I did stuff. I brought her things. I took her here and there—made sure she wasn’t late for this and that.

In all fairy tales, there are witches and dragons. There are heroes and magical talismans. There are tornadoes, red shoes, and yellow brick roads. There are close calls and near misses. There are beautiful endings and insidious beginnings. There are births. There are deaths. And for me, there was a princess asleep in the heart space of a presumed prince. And I was lucky enough to marry her.

Each transition should be a party. If one receives an invitation and does not wish to attend, please RSVP and leave a present at the door.

Maryland’s largest school district grants teachers a ridiculously paltry two days of paid maternity leave—zero employer-paid days for adoptive leave, paternity leave, or other family leave issues—and actively opposed a state bill to improve paid family leave.

16. Love will tear us apart (Joy Division) 15. Ain't no sunshine (Bill Withers) 14. Sound of silence (Simon and Garfunkel) 13. My way (Frank Sinatra) 12. All by myself (Eric Carmen)  11. Yesterday (The Beatles) 10. Without you (Harry Nilsson)  9. Seasons in the sun (Terry Jacks)  8. Fix You (Coldplay)  7. My heart will go on (Celine Dion)  6. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen/Alexandra Burke/Jeff Buckley)  5. Nothing compares 2 U (Prince/Sinead O'Connor)  4. I will always love you (Whitney Houston)