Keys of Life
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009A local trans musician went through hell to get here.
Organ donor: Desiree Hines gives back to the LGBT community in her work with the Traverse Arts Project.
Vivacious 29-year-old Desiree Hines has a laugh that fills the First Unitarian Church just as grandly as the pipe organ she plays there. As part-time music associate, her hands move across three tiers of keyboards, her feet work pedals and when she pulls out the stoppers, the great hall explodes with sound.
As a transsexual African-American female organist, Hines has encountered her fair share of discrimination in a field dominated by white men. But along her rough road she’s developed a commitment to visibility. The director of the Traverse Arts Project (TAP)’s upcoming LGBT festival, Hines sat down to talk with PW about her long journey.
What made you decide to become an organist?
“I was about 15 and I turned on the TV and there’s this woman playing this beautiful, majestic pipe organ. She had these glittery clothes and glittery organ-playing shoes and big blond hair. At the end of the program she goes, ‘My name is Diane Bish and you’ve been watching The Joy of Music.’ That’s when I had a divine calling to me saying, ‘This is the instrument for you.’”
When did you first know you wanted to change genders?
“I dealt with gender issues all my life. I remember telling my mother, ‘I feel like I’m a girl and not a boy.’ My mother felt it was something she saw a long time ago. At Mississippi College, I would periodically dress as Desiree. One day [the chair of the music department] told me I had been seen off campus dressed as a woman. He asked if I needed to go to the counseling center. I guess with it being a Southern Baptist school, they wanted me to get counseling. That’s when I knew it was time to go. “
How did you end up at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.?
“I didn’t have very much money, and I told [university organist/asst. professor of music] Jim Holloway, ‘I can get a plane ticket, but I don’t know if I have enough money to get a hotel or anything.’ He said, ‘My wife and I have a big house in Washington. Don’t worry about food, don’t worry about a place to stay. Let’s get you up here to audition.’ We had that connection both being from the South, both being from very struggling homes.”
How did you tell him you wanted to live as a woman?
“Jim knew that I had a preference for men, but I didn’t tell him I was trans and had been dealing with gender-identity issues. So the PLU faculty person for the GLBT group initiated the conversation and Jim said the thing would be preparing the campus for my being the first transsexual student to actually live at PLU. He took initiative and we got in touch with housing and made certain arrangements.”
Did you ever get to work with Jim?
“No. I remember very vividly the morning of May 17th. I was at home in Mississippi cooking my mother breakfast. It was 9:47 in the morning. The phone rang and Mama picked it up. It was Dr. Paulson from PLU and I was very giddy, very happy—oh, they’re calling from PLU! I heard Mama go, “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” She closes her eyes and tears start coming out. [I take the phone and they tell me] the day before a gunman had come onto campus and shot Jim. And I’m just like running around the house with the phone. And I sit down and I just say, ‘Dr. Paulson, is Jim dead?’ She said yes, and I threw the phone—you know, the typical African-American reaction of death to people that they love. I had lost a brother, I had lost sister and I had now lost Jim.”
Was it hard to go to PLU without Jim advocating for you?
“The director of housing at PLU was a wonderful man and he rallied to have me housed in traditional female dorms though I had not undergone sex reassignment surgery. But about a week before school he says, ‘Well, I have some bad news. If you’re going to live in the dorms, you have to live in a male wing or we have to put you in South Hall,” which was apartment-style living. It inflated [my cost of living] tremendously. Not only was I dealing with bereavement of Jim’s death but I got about six weeks into the semester and I had absolutely no money. I had no job. I had no food. I had nothing. I went to the counseling center at the school and just had a nervous breakdown. [But] the student life office had a program where they could loan students emergency money. That provided a good buffer. I had a good bit of friends—if they had a 20-meal-a-week plan, they’d say, ‘Here, two swipes—one for Desiree.’”
How did you progress with your gender transition?
“The staff who ran the medical center created an agreement with a doctor in Seattle. I would go once a semester for major checkups and the school health clinic gave me my hormone shots, prescriptions for my pills and took my hormone levels. Student insurance paid for it so they were very supportive. But the [VP of student life] told me in a meeting, ‘We understand you would like to live in a traditional dorm, but this is what’s best for everyone,’ which translates to: Other people don’t want you there.”
Is that why you left?
“In order to get a degree in music, depending on your competence, you have to be in an ensemble. I was told that because I didn’t have my surgery yet, I couldn’t be in the women’s chorus. I left that meeting, went to a practice room, got my scores and I couldn’t even practice. I failed my jury that semester. It was just too much. I started looking at places that were nonsectarian with organ programs. I auditioned for Chicago College of Performing Arts, got in and went to Chicago. But I owed PLU money [so I couldn’t matriculate]. I secured a very small job with a conservative firm and they terminated me—I think it had come back in that my birth sex was male. Finally the money just got so little, I didn’t have any place to go, and it hit me: Desiree, you’re homeless. I contacted an agency that worked with GLBT people of color in Chicago. They found me a transitional housing program for young adults. I told someone this past weekend that I must really love being an organist if I’ve gone through this hell and high water to get here.”
And now that you’re in the profession, are things easier?
“The organ is primarily associated with Caucasian houses of worship, and is predominantly played by Caucasian men. Being unique in the field as African-American and open and out as a transwoman has its hurdles. It’s almost as though the pot calls the kettle black because most of those Caucasian men are gay and they’re closeted. I run into them sometimes when I’m having drinks at Knock or Bump and it’s a very insular community and they’re not very friendly. The younger generation, we have a much lighter sense of being. The fact that we can be proud and be out and say, ‘If this church doesn’t want to hire me, fuck you, I’ll find someone that will.’ There have been hurdles to jump through, but someone’s got to so other people won’t have them.”
Oh, 