Autumn Changes --Part 3

by Red Jordan Arobateau

(My Unofficial Semi-Autobiography.): Published in 5 volumes, (aprox 1,400 pages). . Typewritten in the authors original font and not spell checked. Some marvelously funny episodes, an adequate amount of sex scenes, illicit sex clubs, dominatrix, drag queens, & all kinds of case situations of other trans people, are illustrated in this information packed book. AUTUMN CHANGES is first and foremost an art book about FTM’s (and MTF’s) and all other kinfolk on the gender spectrum including those who transition back and forth from one end to the other! This is not merely fiction, it’s history. We must mention AUTUMN CHANGES quotes everybody; Red’s own classic lines from different volumes of his prose & poetry--and other authors; from Kathy Acker to President Ronald Ragen. The Bible. And Djuna Barnes. This book is so engrossing, it must read, read & read! If one part doesn’t get to you pick it up and begin somewhere else! Excerpts of this epic work have appeared in the FTMI Newsletter. this is the opening volume of RJA’s life work, his Unofficial Semi-Autobiography; 1,600 pages long, which has been divided into 5 parts for publishing purposes in the underground RED JORDAN PRESS. Each volume is sold individually or the whole set together. This book in its original typewritten font, unspellchecked, is a collectors dream! AUTUMN CHANGES begins with 2 short introductory pieces. TALES OF TRANSMAN Parts 1 & 2, where we encounter the 5 year old Red in his family home on the South Side of Chicago. Scenes switch fast up to 1998, still female bodied, then jumps back to 1948, to depict more of Red’s history as a boy/girl; a mixed raced tomboy, that defines his childhood in the colored ghetto of Chicago’s South Side. Glimpses of this early crossdresser (age 7), playing baseball outdoors in the alley with other boys, or inside with chemistry, and erector sets & refusing to play with dolls. Becoming aware of his sexuality later in teenage, by reading pulp novels such as Journey to a Woman, and Ann Bannon’s Bebo Brinker series. In some instances AUTUMN CHANGES resembles the whole regular shebang of trans auto biographies -- except this one is different----Transman is an artist, a spiritual searcher, & a sexual libertine. Arobateau’s style is to flash back & forth in his memories rather then a typical linear progression. A different date annotates the subsequent paragraph, and locates the reader immediate in 1972 Transman purchases a kingsized bed.--Visualizing many hot naked females in it. Does not realize it will be nearly 15 solid years of more aloneness interspersed by 4 or 5 aborted relationships and a dozen 20-minute hookers, until he meets his wife. AUTUMN CHANGES is a bookfull of procedural information about FTM’s & MTF’s as well; something most trans books (fiction/autobiographies) don’t have. Usually being about either one or the other; although the majority of it is about the It is August 1998. 3 weeks away from top surgery. 2 months until his first hormone shot. A picture of the guys assembled at a support One handsome stocky male--with a totally flat chest leads the group. A greater butch then the others, he observes. Jealously wells up in Transman. This is how he longs to look! Without hormone shots he never will. This book’s snapshots flash back and forth. Red Jordan Arobateau, teenager. Young adult in his 20’s. And middle age. How change hurts his wife of 16 years--the lovely How do you really think I’m going to react to this sex change? Says the wife at last, wearily.... I haven’t thought about it really. Confesses Transman. He’s so tired. It is the era of the transgender clinic. We see the Famous Tom Waddell facility in which we get a view of flamboyant colorful girls as well as the

434 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 20, 2012

About the author

Born to a Honduran father [in 1943] who came to Chicago and married a light-skinned Black woman, [he] lives in San Francisco, describing [him]self as "a [...] born-again christian, mongrel [the Mongrels are a group [...] born of mixed heritage], & witness on the sea of life".

(from Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby)