How has therapy helped your work as an artist in regards to gender, race, and sexuality in creativity? by Kyle Phoenix

It, self introspection, even done in the boundaries of therapy, really is the only way to blossom any form of talent. I spend a lot of my time not simply teaching but designing ideas, curriculum, projects for students to develop them—-so I'm constantly looking at, measuring, contemplating the development process. What I am lucky to have done, though I wasn’t considering it as feeding into my interests/career path then, is being a teacher’s Asst. in undergraduate. What this meant was that I was developing (writing, reading, critical thinking) but I was also witnessing/absorbing teaching, higher levels of writing, reading, class and curriculum design and the measurement of whether students/myself were progressing.

Polite/Federman/Feldman

In their classes we would submit a 10 page project, 3x a semester, read it aloud and critique/be critiqued You provided the other 25 to 30 students a copy of your project—-that was in lieu of buying a book for the class. What i can tell you is that the challenge was doubled in that you were trying to come up with something original and you had to stand and read your work and then get about a half an hour of detailed feedback and questions. I did this for about 5 years, sometimes as many as three classes a semester where I also acted as essentially an administrative TA.

Irving Feldman was what I dubbed Hard Master from Asian ideologies of training. He was often brutal, dismissive, eviscerating of student’s work. he and I once closed out a class, arguing back and forth over one of my pieces about whether it was grounded in Black Rage or manhood rage. We were both right. I would sit at his right hand at a thirty foot long conference table and he would slowly go around the room and then almost as the final act, ask me to give my input.

By the time I’d advanced to his classes, I had a reputation, not only as the only undergraduate TA in the entirety of the SUNY system but also as being deeply invested in the work itself. Not just my own, but the other students. My attention to the work of others was my trying to de-code what worked, didn’t work, was unique, was problematic, was interesting, etc.—-to enhance my own abilities. There were many times when someone did something, created something that was beyond my thinking and i was duly impressed. So by the time Feldman got around to me I had gone through the 10 page piece half a dozen times, with a pen, marking up, asking questions, etc..

(He would later tell Carlene at a cocktail party at how impressed he was at my attention to the works of others and how good my work was. To my face he was pleasant, direct but not effusive with praise.)

In class he laid out very strict boundaries for poetry and then for prose. For prose one had to not write in any genre—no mysteries, no sci-fi, no guns, no vampires, none of that. You had to write a story with dialogue. because I’d taken his class before I was ready with years of training in how to write a story but I would say half the class, coming in to masturbate their ideas into their favorite genre were often deeply perplexed and gobsmacked at the challenge.

Federman’s classes were more—-raucous, fun but with a firm underpinning of thought and work. his specialty was experimental fiction so he encouraged folk to go out on a limb. He spent the first two weeks giving examples of experimental writing, lectures and discussions, some readings and then projects were due. Part of the challenge of the class was to create something outlandish, big, good and still maintain control of it. His biggest compliments were—-”There's Something Here, but it needs a lot more work”, “This is yet another Great American Failure”, “Yes, you’re onto something.”—-He recommended myself and another young man, who was ill, to publishers, the young man, a year before me, but there was a greater urgency to his work/time as he was working, supporting a family and ostensibly, dying.

Federman was in many ways the Chaos Master—-whose antics, and thick, impossibly French accent, experimental OUT THERE ways of seeing words, writing, the page itself, were so chaotic as to be almost impossible to understand, because the point was to create your own controlled chaos.

Carlene Hatcher Polite, who wore expensive, custom made haute couture with jewelry and necklaces and bangles and berets, made of the finest materials on Earth, purchased from all over the planet—-often teased classes, while dancing in front of the room, that she was the Monkey Master—-but she was in fact the Soft Master. She was the firmest, gentlest, complimentary, loving teacher who was also deeply, deeply grounded in knowledge, reading and sussing out bs. Her methodology was to announce that on the first day everyone would be getting an A. It could be either for Asshole or Awesome, it was up to you to interpret the A. She suggested some books, you could buy them or not, and she gave two, one page assignments for the entire semester.

Some thought her class an easy A. Her class was in truth an experience that would broaden you if you could patiently engage it. Some did, some didn’t. I became her first TA after John Ransom, gone then a decade, though many had applied. She felt, also teaching Black Literature and Prose Writing that unfortunately too many non-Black students knew Black history, literature better than Black students and were more qualified. Until I came along.

There were other professors—-Stacy Hubbard and Professor Fred See, who were instrumental in getting me to visit Princeton

(as a recommendation to Toni Morrison, who was also Carlene’s cousin) and then teach me how to think about teaching. Hubbard’s class on 19th century domesticity was a center point for me and when I first became aware that the professors talked about me behind the scenes.

In an effort to become a stronger student, having entered at 21, I took advice from another student who has a school program, Where There’s A Will There’s An A—-one of the tactics being to to purchase the books for college classes the semester before going into the class. Thereby creating long term planning and a deep familiarity with the work. I did so for several classes so when my name popped up on Hubbard’s class list plus my being known for TAing Federman and Polite’s classes, Hubbard told me she was excited. because of my pre-reading, a rather dense subject—-19th Century Domesticity—-I was a superstar at discussing in class, understanding what she meant, where she was going, the thrill of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie!)

I give the above as a sort of an insight into my first formal, competitive development as a writer—-Debbie Freeman, Dr. WH Hunter and Denise Donnelly, along with Ann Campbell at John Jay High School, my first formal mentors in writing/reading/filmmaking, and then Harold Williams in an extension program I did at Long Island University—-all before SUNY.

To illustrate the development process in myself, my mentors work (then Professor Stephen Brookfield and Professor Elana Sigall at Columbia) I look back and I have done so with current students, to how others did and did not develop fro SUNY.

Kevin-Kayelyn, Nick and Jennifer

Kevin and I met in middle school and then he went off to SUNY Buffalo. I followed, first visiting, and then having a spiritual epiphany there, two years later. My family thought because we were best friends I chose Buffalo over NY or Pennsylvania schools I'd applied to but it was the spiritual epiphany. By the time I got to Buffalo, Kevin had semi-transformed into Kayelyn, a transgender person. I say semi because insanely in single sex shared room rooms, Kevin-Kaye would live, but tell other people, that it was a administrative mix up. Kevin and I had created comic books, he wanting to be an illustrator in middle and high school.

Kaye and I did a dozen in-house sex and sexuality workshops, being written up in local magazines and newspapers—-but I opted out of doing more—-I had come to Buffalo to pursue learning, writing, an English degree (maybe), not to be a vanguard about sexuality, publicly. I started writing for the school magazine, the school newspaper, and several school chapbooks, periodicals—-all at the same time.

Nick was a student who had flunked out of Brooklyn College and the following year got in to UB. We met, the first time I remember, at a chapbook meeting, where he came across a crowded room to squeeze into a seat next to me. I noticed it/him as odd. He then went out of this way to become my friend and it became obvious to me and dozens of others, that though he had a girlfriend, he was gay and interested in me romantically. He eventually came out to me and admitted all kinds of same sex shenanigans. He was also an aspiring writer.

Jennifer Karmin was a student and one of the creators/editors of the chapbook I was an editor for, and then President, and submitting work to. She was also in many of the classes I was, writing, poetry her specialty, particularly in women’s studies. She took to Federman's experimental style and even embraced the critique process, once calling me years later, know my embracing of the classes as a student and TA—-yes, I still had my copy of her work in storage, so I was able to give her a copy.

Starting with Jennifer and perhaps a couple of others that I wasn’t as close to, know about, she’s achieved success, directly in writing, poetry, being published, teaching, etc.. What she and I were “known” for around SUNY, we maintained and became, in our careers as well. She dressed and giggled like a hippie—-almost three decades out of her “time” but her work, I remember as being searing, playful, thoughtful, polemic. Then, and in retrospect, I would have bet on her becoming what she has become today.

Kaye and Nick not so much.

What I learned from Kaye, transgenderism, transsexuality, was that there’s a healthy way to do it and a non-healthy way. Kaye did it the decidedly non-healthy way. She was at SUNY for 7+ years, maintaining a 1.0 GPA but shielded from expulsion due to presenting trans to the school. She didn’t do the psychiatric care, the psychological counseling, the correct medical counseling for hormones. Instead she did hair dye, padding, and eventually illegal hormones.

We insanely became roommates for a couple of years, her driving me into therapy and then permanently severing the relationship when her inviting vagrants into the house to “draw”, her illegal drug use, her eating disorders, depression, tantrums—-a whole mélange of comorbidities—-simply grew to be too much.

• Having grown up in a dysfunctional household, I made allowances for such people—-I take full responsibility for—-eventually a therapist pointing out that Kaye and others (Nick, my family) gave me something to do, a veil which to help, fix, attend to, so that I didn’t have to admit and manage my prodigiousness and surround myself with contemporaries.
• I chose broken people so I wouldn’t feel bad about being capable of so much more.
• I also chose them because as an only child I didn’t grow up lonely, but I was deeply enamored with having close friends, best friends—-not even paying close attention to how Kaye and Nick resented one another because the other co-opted my attention from them, their dysfunction, their wants from me.

I offer insight to that dynamic to Nick’s closeted, unwanted homosexuality and Kaye’s body dysmorphia from sexual abuse as a child by an adult, which she termed the “best sex of her life”, as indicative of the impediments to their art, to their development.

Jennifer and I talked about her sense of attachment and guilt to her blind father, who I met at an event, and being a woman, a White woman, trying to establish her own identity. Though we had a blistering confrontation in the meeting where I became President of the chapbook she started—-she was demeaning/condescending towards my nomination—-when I apologized to her afterwards and invited her—-and as my mother designed, to ferret out hard workers—-those, on the invitations, who had worked hard to make the magazine happen for years prior to me—-Jennifer and her boyfriend, showed up proudly smiling to my apartment for dinner. My mothers' point, she a psychology major from Baruch, was that only people who honestly knew they had worked hard would show up—-even Nick didn’t show up.

In many ways, Jennifer and I, in our prodigiousness and development and hardworking mindset were/are, the same and we were also in our early 20s, able to maturely express ourselves and heal an argument.

Nick wanted to be a writer but was constantly sort of impaling those around him for pity, at the father who’d died in a car accident, when he was a child. He kept a shroud of perpetual depression, sadness about him and passive aggressively manipulated those around him with it. Trying to be a hyper-heterosexual male when in fact he wasn’t and then trying to stand constantly next to me as a friend—-for some sort of seduction/feelings—-undid his talent. I watched from across the Feldman conference table as he excoriated Nick’s lackadaisical work.

(I felt only pity for him then—-Feldman had told me the horrible things Nick had told him about me before class, including that he needed all of his copied projects back as I might cast a voodoo spell on him with it. Yes, he obviously, as several professors pointed out—-he told a mutual Italian professor that he needed an incomplete because my mother had died, she hadn’t—-in fact, I took a semester off to work full time to pay for school. He had many mental issues, that one.)

But what I’ll offer of Kaye and Nick’s burgeoning talent was that their mental bullshit got in the way.

After college, Kaye eventually just leaving in year 8—-I pointed out to Kaye when she introduced a post-op trans friend who was a lawyer—-that the law degree was probably obtained pre-coming out as trans. Kaye asked how I knew and I pointed out that all of the trans folk I’d met through her had accomplished nothing beyond being transgender and basic survival (and I’d funded the apartment, making twice as much as Kaye by 25 and helping her get professional jobs.)

I offer these personal asides, insights into the idea of development to look at, as I have for myself and then into other students—-what works and doesn’t work, what derails potential talent.

It took Kaye 30 years to get an Associates Degree. What derailed Kaye was body dysmorphia, trans issues. Kaye never/still hasn’t pursued legal sexual reassignment surgery—-often lamenting a base confusion to progress.

Was Kevin a good artist? Was Kaye?

From Middle school through high school, Kevin was male appearing presenting and art was his refuge. Coming out at college seemed to have stuck Kaye, erased Kevin, yes, but fundamentally embedded Kaye as an identity who simply didn’t move in anyway. It was like becoming Kaye—-neither fully male nor female, was Kaye’s accomplishment. I didn’t see that then——we’d spent 10+ years going to school together, growing up, so I considered Kevin/Kaye like a sibling. And what I’ve learned as an only child with a faux sibling, is that you excuse their insanity.

In me, Kaye found a friend who simply accepted Kevin becoming Kaye. But in accepting Kaye, the closest to not caring about stepping on trans toes—-Kaye perfected using trans as both a shield and weapon against everyone from family to friends—-recruiting obese White women as coteries to make her appear more attractive. I once quipped to Kaye that eventually she would find a way to rid herself of me, our friendship, as she had done to others, particularly those who knew her as Kevin previously.

Ironically, I was the one to rid myself of Kaye (and Nick) but how did I get attached to them beyond friendship, love, desire for close friends/siblings?

My parents with their dysfunction drug and alcohol issues presented, invented the role for me to be the caretaker, the helper, the fixer, to broken people. And no one was more broken than Kaye and Nick—-amongst others I’ve met over the years. As a manipulative tactic at a restaurant, while trying to convince me to have sex with him, Nick insightfully mentioned that I would grow, blossom, when I rid myself of Kaye and my family. What he didn’t see in that moment was my being struck, not by his just being right—-but realizing he was as cancerous, as those he mentioned.

My Power

Growing up in that dysfunction chaos I learned to be a super helper, people pleaser, fixer, because it gave me passive aggressive control and manipulative power over sometimes my family but definitely Kaye and Nick. I got to dysfunction control people, make them dependent upon me through my love and acceptance of their rank insanity. Which translated into my feeling valuable, loved, attended to and it also served to allow me to push my burgeoning, outsized, talent aside—-so I was amazing-rocking 7, when I was really a True 12. But in my minimizing myself by surrounding myself with such self-destructive people, their dysfunction, it allowed me to be slightly bigger than them—-say they were 5s. So it served my ego in a dysfunctional way, as it also served me not advancing to my possibilities.

What shifted was siting across from Nick where I had once thought his masculinity comforting, a safe space, he seemed small, sniveling, talentless, gossipy, full of faggotry (years later as an LGBTSGL Youth Coordinator that was a term we used for outlandish sexuality related dysfunction). I remember thinking even his teeth looked yellowing, from smoking, spaced and rat-like.

Kaye as a roommate, once I recognized her projected insanity, and got into therapy to find out why I was mired in crazy, became passively attacking towards me/the apartment, willing to destroy it all—-with her divorced parents having homes she could go to—-all of my family thousands of miles away, down South—-her upending of the apartment potentially leaving me homeless.

I threw Kaye out and stood on my own two feet—I always had, I’d merely been holding/propping her up too and was fine afterwards in the apartment for quite some time (I’d been afraid of the rent alone though I made plenty. or more aptly, I was afraid of being alone, but within a year of ousting Kaye, with therapy, had worked that out, seen that as a false delusion of weakness. All that I had done for others was proof of my tenacity, brains, strength, etc..)

Nick I simply couldn’t fathom caring for anymore, he was so….pathetic. Almost avidly so. He allowed himself to be horribly abused (supposedly. he was a pathological liar so when me, his exes, friends, sat down, we had to piece together truth from his manipulations, years after.) by others.

When Carlene met Kaye at a university event, a few days later she asked my permission to tell me a truth—-and told me that she didn’t expect Kaye to be so fragile of a human being. And further that I would be friends with such a fragile person.

When she met Nick, she thought him small, weak.

Federman, when I introduced Nick to him, having known his ex-girlfriend, understood him as being gay, talentless. My mentors saw them clearly. Of course then my mentors were 40+ years older than us but after throwing Kaye out, I went on an apartment cleaning binge. Like scrubbing floors on my knees with Pine Sol. In my frenzy, Carlene gently, insightfully suggested that it wasn’t simply cleaning that I was cleansing my space from an unclean spirit—Kaye.

I wanted them both to be great artists—-with me. Though I saw the inherent, constant, profound limitations in their work.

True Development

To the idea of development—-I, having survived my dysfunctional abusive, family—-had significant amounts of therapy with family once they got sober, then LGBT youth groups with counselors to fortify my identity around sexuality, then groups, even at university, for years, around dealing with childhood sexual abuse, then after university, a year long therapist, when I saw Kaye’s deterioration and effect, towards me.

I also had at least 10 mentors by then focused on my writing and I was being regularly published in high school, college, and then even in college, referred to publications and publishers around the world, being published there too. Sometimes I look back and see—-in the face of Kaye and Nick’s stunted creativity. It must have been on some level, the vitriol they launched at me in covert and overt ways, resentment building in them, jealousy, envy. I often teach now how as an only child, I had no framework context for jealousy/envy until them because I was essentially unto myself. Is this what siblings teach everyone else?

Was Nick a good artist? Was he a writer?

No. And I was ashamed to be witness to Federman and Feldman telling him that. I was hurt for someone I cared for, being hurt.

But now I see, as a teacher, he didn’t put in not just the work that I and others (Jennifer Karmin for one) did, he also spent an inordinate amount of time hiding his true identity/sexuality, just as Kaye spent an inordinate amount of time building such a fragile one. Years later he sent a manuscript to a publisher/editor I incidentally know. I read it and understood why it was summarily rejected. He hadn’t put in the work—-Feldman's singular class, the writing one, he did in 6 years of undergraduate work—-I think I did like 30, and I know Jennifer did as many too. I often debate contacting her and asking her about her experiences with advancing, ability, etc., I suspect we had more in common than even I knew then because we were slightly separated by school-class, age, gender, and culture.

I felt guilty for being talented, celebrated, awarded. I felt a little shamed of myself. I downplayed myself. I segmented my life, into portions of Dysfunction Land I visited and played in, surveyed, judged and then I went back to my ever expanding Talent Land——where I even started getting paid for appearances-readings, short stories, etc. as far back as SUNY, never telling Kaye or Nick about the money, the recognition——and I slowly over the years stopped inviting them, minimized my accomplishments.

Over a Decade Later

Now over a decade later, I’m just all busting out with over a hundred books published, a TV show for 15 years, thousands of blogs and articles, hundreds of videos, work at corporations, charter schools, the NYDOE. and NYU. and Columbia University. I am rough, still got some stuff to work on, achievement of what my talent promised my mentors. Kaye and Nick, by internet searches and reporting friends in common, are not. I still wrestle with my prodigiousness even as I mostly don’t care what others think of me. It becomes sort of a totem to focus on not caring, and be so productively and demonstratively out—-you can Google my identity in many deeper ways than most people. Though I am recognized mostly here in NY because of the TV show, and workshops/teaching, I equate it closer to popularity than “fame”—-ironically, fame never being my goal as I do things that make me popular and will edge me towards popularity-notoriety-mayhap, fame.

I have had to slowly grow into my destiny, my prodigiousness, my abilities and artistic abilities—-accept them, flourish, embrace it, not sacrifice it for anything but air and water. I live by CANI in my art Constant And Never-ending Improvement. I am fascinated and live in anticipatory delight to see, in a decade, to look back on my creations, then again in 20 years, 30, 40, 50.

Yes, I sometimes feel sadness for the people whom I have had to leave behind, who I was using, harming in my attentions, as they would never fit, or satisfy me. Perhaps that’s why I try to patiently teach students, to make up for misusing my abilities, now to convey, to listen, to help, to fix in positive, directed, boundary based ways. I look back on my students I’ve mentored with a firm hand and so far, I’m marking myself a strong 80% success rate. I’ll get better.

Yes, my students, discussing development and success have helped me use the internet to I Spy into the lives of dozens of people—-friends, ex-lovers, family, etc. and we sit in a classroom dissecting them—-what they were, are, what didn’t become, what I remember. All of us learn, see my mistakes, the potential pitfalls, the areas where Kaye and Nick and others needed deep therapeutic help, still do. I forgive myself for settling for them, my work is my apology, my recompense to the world for wasting time in such a dysfunctionally self-indulgent series of friendships, relationships, even family engagements. Perhaps in another world, I wrote even more, more, more, more, spread myself further, faster without them. But then would I have as much grist for my creative mill?

When you know better, you do better.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

How does it feel to be in therapy with a good psychologist? How can you tell if you're seeing a good psychologist or not? by Kyle Phoenix

Elizabeth looked like a Romulan. She was (hopefully) a lesbian, short and deeply, deeply, deeply no nonsense but also deeply, deeply perceptive, empathic and had amazing foresight. I found her, went to her because of Marianne Williamson. Williamson had said in one of her lectures that I would listen to on cassette: “If you find yourself in an insane argument with a friend, lover, family member—-the entrance of God/the Holy Spirit is to recognize it in that moment. See that YOU are in this situation. And within 24 hours get into therapy.”

I had a friend from middle school all the way through post-undergrad, who started out as Kevin. Now anyone with reasonably good vision could tell that Kevin was not going to be heterosexual. He was light skinned, sleight, delicate in mannerisms——and often wanted to be Storm from the X-Men when we boys would play X-Men. At 18 I came out—-family therapist, high school therapist-counselor, another best friend who I was briefly in a relationship with—-went through it all but I didn’t really talk to Kevin about it as he had left NYC.

My mother got laid off right as high school ended, she got a big payout eventually but for a while with careful budgeting and my working full-time, we maintained splitting the mortgage on our co-op apartment. Kevin went off to college and I stayed in NYC, working for a couple of years. Business and money worked out a couple of years later, and I visited Kevin. In Buffalo I had a spiritual epiphany that it was the next move. I paid for it myself and went off to college. Which would've been Kevin’s 2nd year. But after the first year, Kevin started dressing in women’s clothing and changed his name to Kaye. And insisted that he, now a she, lived in the male dorms because of a technical snafu.

Yeah, right.

We had discussed our sexualities a year before when I was relating a story on the phone about going on my first internet date with a nerdy guy. Kevin/Kaye stopped me, shocked it was a guy. I said yes, a guy, and continue on with the story——-Kevin/Kaye stops me again and announces being a transsexual (technically with no surgery or doctor involved transgender)—-and I was like ok……and continued on with my hilarious tale about a weird date. Kaye stops me again and asks do I know what that is?—-and I’m like yes, I do—-and continue with my story….

When I look back, that was the first clearing of the mountain range of Kaye’s issues—-not the transgenderism, but that other people make it their priority. Narcissism or malignant narcissism, is something you can experience from others, but I think especially when you’re a child/teenager with them, not understand-notice.

narcissism

1. excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. Similar :vanity self-love self-admiration self-adulation self-absorption self-obsession conceit self-conceit self-centeredness self-regard egotism ego is egocentricity egomania Opposite:modesty diffidence

• PSYCHOLOGY: selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.
• PSYCHOANALYSIS: self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder.

malignant narcissism

What are the signs of a malignant narcissist?

Kernberg described malignant narcissism as a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and egosyntonic aggression. Other symptoms may include an absence of conscience, a psychological need for power, and a sense of importance (grandiosity).

I didn’t know the above definitions then at 18 to 21 but what I will offer to understand both of us is that one thing Kaye and I shared in common was having been sexually abused as young children. However we diverged in how we related to it. I related to it as an issue that I eventually told therapists about in family therapy, and attended for 2 years, Incest Anonymous meetings, before 21. My concern with it was distinguishment between abuse and my own identity/sexuality.

Kaye thought, being raped by a neighbor starting at 6 years old and forward, was the best sex of his/her life. Kevin’s parents were also extremely emotionally and physically abusive, breaking up in his teens, and eventually he went to live with his father’s new family—-wife and daughter—-which is how they were able to get him to college.

My parents were dysfunctional, having substance abuse issues until my early teens. We got into family therapy and they into AA and NA, and they stayed sober for over 25+ years. My mother was also a psychology major at Baruch, my father studying political science at Pace. But the importance of this was they were both college educated and my mother didn't see anything “wrong” or judgmental about therapy—-which is unusual for Black people/families. It explained why Kevin/Kaye and her family never did family therapy, personal therapy—-they just sort of mowed along, sweeping drama away or under the carpet, normalizing abuse.

I see that now with all of my years of clinical training, personal therapy, professional work counseling and teaching, but then Kevin, then, that time, Kaye, was my closest friend from middle school and it was a bonus that Buffalo could hold so much for me, after my spiritual epiphany, because I had a friend there. My family (and maybe Kaye) thought I went there because Kaye was there when it was in fact the reverse—-I went there to go there and Kaye was also there. But if I distill it through narcissism, I can see Kaye thinking it was about her. However there were two times in college that I had to distance myself from Kaye—-individuation—-one because Kaye’s totality of identity was being trans and two because even then Kaye did stalking behaviors of guys that became legendary and were uncomfortable.

I can say/see now that Kaye was codependent and I was building my own individuation, from first my family, and then from Kaye’s codependency, which was offensive to both. My sexuality was not my primary identity, nor was talking about it, using it as a social/emotional weapon-shield against others my interest. Kaye and I had helped out Resident Advisors doing sex and sexuality workshops, a dozen or so, around campus, to thousands of student, but for me it was like a clarification of myself and an underline to the point that I am a man first and if you don't like some aspect of my identity—-fuck off, don’t bring me your shit. However if you bring me some shit—-I will fuck you up just like any other man that you try to cross/attack. It was a lone wolf growl and stand to the masses.

A decade later when I started teaching sex, sexuality, relationships—-my tact changed. lol I’m much more gentle now and it is directly about teaching. But I still hold personal boundaries. Kaye on the other hand wanted you immersed in Trans Kaye World and sought out broken people—-extremely obese White women—-she went through a handful—-until they transferred their codependency to a fiancée, husband or others. She would also stalk young men, her MO to sit for hours, trapping them in their rooms into faux emotional entanglements. They all at some point outgrew the faux attention she lavished on their wounds—-they got lives, relationships—-leaving Kaye, again, alone in the mind-empty-prison that is narcissism. Now I understand that the oddness I sensed about Kaye was the emptiness of the abused child hurt to malignant narcissism. But when it was evident others were growing, tired of Trans World, Kaye would drop them, move away from them. I told Kaye then that one day, realizing that I was no longer fascinated by her trans aspect, she would seek to remove me too.

Again, I can see all of this much clearer in hindsight.

I was also in an incest therapy student group for a year in college, wrote stories/interviews about it for the magazine, and then got my own apartment and did therapy after a huge illness/exhaustion from essentially taking on too much in my own independence.

I also had friends beyond my/their sexuality, dated, had relationships, sex, was the first undergrad TA to two professors in SUNY, wrote for magazines, newspapers, ran clubs, was referred to publishers and worked sometimes as much as 5 part time jobs/hustles at a time to earn my way/pay for school. I had a full social, educational and professional life beyond race-sexuality; I become popular for being out and those integrations and interests.

Kaye languished in school academically, working but never progressing, especially in a place, the university, of such ambition. Kaye was there for 7 years with a 1.0 GPA, transsexuality, only once seeing a psychiatrist briefly to get hormones, but no therapist, became Kaye’s sole focus besides physical existence. Again today, I would immediately spot such mental narrowness but Kaye had, in me, the infusion of 10+ years of friendship prior to her transitioning, my mother even having taken her in when her father/family kicked her out for presenting as Kaye. I saw Kaye in many ways as a sibling.

But I had my own life and eventually when I finished in Buffalo, went to Pennsylvania briefly to work—my mother had found me a job—-but quickly realized her and my stepfather’s dysfunction was no longer healthy and went to Philadelphia. I called Kaye and family to let them know I was safe but I needed a break from them all. I had two friends from Buffalo who had gone to Swarthmore college as student and employee so I stayed with them and then moved back to NYC. I worked diligently for Manpower from upper PA to Philly and then NYC so that in 6 months I’d gone from $7.25 an hour to $46k a year, at a permanent position. Kaye, at my prodding of her languishing, moved back to NYC ahead of me (leaving my stuff in her Buffalo basement to be picked over) back to her father’s, making $10 an hour. Eventually on the strength of my salary, we got a 2 bedroom in Flushing, Queens.

My Shit

My family, friends, lovers, ex lovers, even one of my professors-mentors-friend, Carlene Hatcher Polite, who called Kaye ‘fragile” upon meeting her in Buffalo—-told me all kinds of warnings about Kaye. But again, I’m an only child, Kaye was like a sibling, and my dysfunctional parents had taught me to take care of broken people. I helped Kaye get better temp assignments at Manpower—-I would be on the phone with her talking her through basic computer stuff when she was at a job; my mother sold her furniture for her bedroom—-she had none and reneged on the $50 owed; I made sure Kaye ate healthily—-she normally didn’t sometimes having a bagel for the day—-so as to stay thin—-which defeated the point of the illegal hormones Kaye was buying from other trans folk in NYC because you need body fat to convert to female curvature; I encouraged Kaye’s ignored, nascent artistic ability; I helped buy better more feminine clothing for Kaye—-Kaye always dressed in two extremes—-very gender plain/neutral so was immediately “clocked” as trans or extremely slutty—-once wearing a mini-skirt so short they sent her home from work at Citibank.

Then Kaye would invite men—-like total strangers back home, not just fun 20s hook ups, but vagrants outside of bodegas—-homeless immigrants—-to do naked drawings of them, the #7 train conductor, any male, that would pay Kaye attention.

Finally coming home one night, the building was surrounded by police cars and I tentatively asked them what happened. They said there had been a push in robbery——amazingly NOT to our apartment—-but I realized the insanity of what I was living in—-working 80 to 100 weeks and trying to contain, appease Kaye. My job then had loaned me a lot of computer equipment that I had in the dining room and I came home one night, the door wide open, because Kaye had rushed into her back bedroom with the #7 train (married) conductor…..and forgot to lock or even close the door.

I realized then that Kaye’s life, possessions, were essentially a bag of clothes, comic books and CDs and lots and lots of makeup. By then Kaye was doing illegal silicone injections under her chest to simulate breasts—both me and her stepmother, a nurse, freaking out about the health implications of the actions, silicone eventually building, hardening in her body cause damage and toxic poisoning..

I was meanwhile building a career, had gone on a tear of learning how to date by going out with 100+ (non-sexually) to learn the socialization, get over the anxiety of dating men, had made lots of friends and was basically doing well but I had this trans gremlin in the house. I included Kaye in everything form business dinners (where my boss then quizzed Kaye about had he seen her in a magazine or on 10th or 12th avenue—-where trans folk did solicitation work…..which in retrospect said something about him. lol) Kaye was constantly up and down emotionally and worried that I wanted my then boyfriend, Danny to move in. He made one comment about how he would love to paint the living room and Kaye knew I must be planning something. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even in love with Danny. He was just part of my Dating Process Workshop—-and one of the 100+ that was suitable to exclusively date more.

Finally Kaye and I are in this huge argument about her having all these really strange men over, leaving the door open, the police outside, the fact that I was always hesitant to trust Kaye with money—-so we paid halvies on everything—-which threw off the timing of everything being paid on time—-I hadn’t connected that I was abysmal with money as a reaction to not trusting Kaye.

Kaye screams at me, hysterical and crying, enraged, unhinged: “You didn’t tell me where you were!!!!!”

She meant the 3 month break after school, where I called everyone but hadn’t gone into specific of being in Philly, even to Kaye because of my family’s stuff and my knowing my mother could easily walk into Kaye’s fragile head and get my location out of her.

That was two years prior to that. And in the complete breakdown, I saw how mentally unhinged Kaye was……and I heard Marianne Williamson’s advice.

I realized that for being in this mess, I too, was crazy.

I took the next day off and found Elizabeth, the therapist through an LGBT center.

Elizabeth, the Therapist

You spend about 2 sessions catching the therapist up on your life, with them asking pointed questions as to why you made the move to get yourself there. Generally what they’re looking for is your cognitive dissonance—-where the idea of being emotionally healthy/a good life is in combat-contrast to whatever is happening—-addiction, relationships, internalized issues. Then they give you feedback-correction towards what is working and not working in your behavior. They enforce personal accountability.

I was friends with Kaye. I took on, encouraged Kaye to move in with me when I didn’t need Kaye’s money to afford the apartment.

Why did you do those things, Kyle? What were you thinking?

The first thing we tackled was my commitment to the therapy itself. It was across town and a few blocks down—-so I would go during lunch on Tuesdays. I was routinely 15 minutes late or so. She confronted me about it and we saw that I was letting my boss push through my boundaries. I was working an 80 to 100 hour week, including weekends, so why couldn't I, once a week, have more than a 60 minute minute lunch break?—-as the therapy was 60 minutes.

Elizabeth made it clear that was paying $50 to $75 an hour I think, for 1pm to 2pm. She was there, ready, willing and able at 1pm. But she’d be stopping our session at 2pm, even if I arrived at 1:50 PM. And I would still be charged for a full sessions. When I thought I was important enough for an hour, I’d make the necessary changes to my life/schedule and speak up.

Bitch cleaned my clock.

And, I told Arthur, my yes, slightly idiot boss, that on Tuesdays I’d be gone from 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM.

Then Elizabeth explained to me that my relationships were going to change because of the work with her. First, primarily my relationship with Kaye. Kaye would then react to the new way in which Elizabeth would be teaching me to act and Kaye’s reaction would be one/both of two ways—-one, Kaye would try and incite me, seduce me, cajole me, into buddy-buddy friendship with her again. If that did not work, Kaye would then find ways to overtly or passively, attack me, as I was different and not playing into the dynamic. That would leave the alternative of ending the friendship or changing it. It would be up to me what I chose of those two routes and then afterwards what I established to Kaye, would be my new ways of acting.

Elizabeth explained that with specific instructions and feedback, she would ultimately be teaching me to get a life. That my dysfunctional upbringing had taught me to seek out broken people, because they were “normal” to me based upon my family. She could see that I had spent years aiding/trying to fix Kaye—-from school to the apartment to work to even getting her furniture to sleep on to clothing to food to emotional/identity support.

Kaye’s stepmother had given us blow up mattresses when we moved in and Kaye had sleeping on that and milk crates as furniture—-I had found a furniture store that sold me a king sized bed, a month into moving in, and then bought furniture and my mother gave me a living room set and other furnishings when she moved from Pennsylvania. But I had INCLUDED Kaye into that and that’s how their whole furniture-$50 imbroglio had started.

Elizabeth pointed out, the stuff between my mother and I was between us—-and yes, a gift. But I shouldn’t have included Kaye at all and left Kaye sleeping on the floor/air mattress and crates. It was not my job in life or friendship to intercede to fix what a grown adult could see needed fixing for themselves.

Oh. Wow. Yeah, Elizabeth was on a tear! lol

Six months into therapy my birthday was coming up so I decided a restaurant I’d been going to on dates and with coworkers, would be great for a birthday party. Kaye and I had started having dinner parties at the apartment every few months—-and it was Elizabeth who pointed it—-90% of the people there were my friends and coworkers and family. Again I was providing socialization for Kaye beyond going out to nightclubs. Elizabeth’s point was that I was attempting in my own way to live a normal adult social life but was trying to drag Kaye along into it out of misspent loyalty.

First I started hosting dinner parties at home for small groups 4 to 12 people, on my schedule, my dime, my friends and family. Nothing extreme or rowdy and letting Kaye know ahead of time. By this time though she wasn’t speaking to me. She would come in during the dinner party, walking through the living room and then slam into her bedroom, not to be seen again.

Pennyfeather’s was a restaurant I went to at least once a week so I pulled together invites, a reservation, and people from as far away as Philadelphia came—-like 40 people in all rolled through that night to have dinner and brought me gifts. It was spectacular. I took a cab back home from Manhattan to Queens, loaded down with gift boxes and bags, and left them in the living room—-tipsy and happy.

The next day Kaye offered me a comic book (the entrée Elizabeth had predicted) and I told her, honestly, that I already had it. When I told Elizabeth she said my reaction was perfect and that it would signal one to Kaye that the old dynamic was no longer available, and that I would have to prepare myself for the next action, which would be some sort of attack.

Elizabeth was also hipping me to the fact that my normalized living life was an affront to Kaye. I had boyfriends, dated regularly, had normal and loving friends and coworkers. I was more okay than Kaye probably felt inside. But all of those normal things I was seeking to build and maintain, were a threat to Kaye because they supplanted my attention to Kaye, Kaye’s life, Kaye’s needs, etc..

The beauty of this is that Elizabeth then went deeper and was able to illustrate to me how family history had led me into this behavioral path. How even when I got sick sophomore year and my mother took me to our family counselor’s doctor friend, his analysis had been correct. I chose lesser people to fix/fixate upon out of a guilt for my prodigious and an avoidance of doing the work (my writing, creativity, teaching, etc.) that I was clearly apparently capable of by the fact of so many accomplishments. I was in some ways punishing myself, purposefully limiting myself, with dysfunctional relationships.

Oh. WOW.

Ironically, further in college a gay guy, Nick who was secretly gay and came out to me and about all of his male to male sexual escapades and had said to me that my life would improve/change—-I would grow, when I got rid of both Kaye and my mother. I remember in that moment, knowing all the lies he’d said about me to others around campus to students, friends, professors—-that he was part of that triangle problem people, and that I had to get rid of all three of them. He offered me sex, to his pleasure, and I refused and rejected him, permanently, got rid of him.

I will say that this is where the previous counseling, sexuality counseling in high school, Incest Anonymous 2 year sitting in meetings weekly and even the college incest group and research-writing articles, helped immensely. I had strong sexuality and sex boundaries, always have, which is one of the reasons I see that I am—-after having had a lot of fun before college, during it, afterwards, for decades, HIV-. I could see the unhealthiness in Nick, his predatoriness, his lies, his manipulations, his passive aggressiveness and walk away from it. And I heard Dr. Persaud when he explained how my exhaustion and breakdown were from being surrounded by unhealthy people I was trying to fix, help, save.

What kept me tied to Kaye for a few more years after the Nick dinner/dissolution/rejection?

I would say a near sibling attachment and that extra decade of connection. To that tracking, when my mother died a few years ago, I counted her as the last major person-force I was in obligation to. I learned years and years past getting rid of Kaye, boundaries with my mother, but her death, a relief, also reinforced to me getting rid of malignant narcissists—-my mother, Nick, Kaye, my father, my sexually abusing cousins (who yes, have tried to establish contact with me—-as all rapists think is normal to do), and even eventually newer friends and students whom the dynamics of our relationship made it difficult to immediately see and recognize as an element of my own internalized propensity dynamic.

Kaye’s Empire Strikes Back

Kaye then decided in the middle of a renewed lease for 2 more years, after the initial 1, that she’s going to move out and announces it. I told her that she signed a lease and I would hold or sue her to it. We did not have to be friends, we could just be roommates, pay our half and move on when it ended. Elizabeth pointed out that this was the attack she was talking about because Kaye knew to break the lease, I would be left homeless—-she was to move back to Long Island, into her father's house, as she had been, 2.5 years before, when I helped her out of there. Kaye was mature enough to be aware of the fact that while I still made more money than her—-a year or more of having to compensate for the void of her half—-would “hurt” me. again Kaye was putting me in a vise to return to our old dynamic or she’d hurt me.

Elizabeth was good.

I called Kaye’s bluff and stood by my threat to sue her if she left before the end of the lease she’d co-signed. This was in the summer. By fall, still working my long hours, I get home one night and the cable TV is off. I call, having made my regular $50 payments to each—-and it turns out for the past 3 months, I’ve been the only one making the halvsies payment. I check and it’s the same with the electric and the rent.

I talked to the landlord—-who was fed up with this hopscotch payment game—-worked out how to pay him off, with grace time, and they threw out Kaye, and I stayed and paid off the lease and left. Because she wouldn’t pay him, she lost everything but the literally the outfit she was wearing one day when the locks were changed—years worth of stuff——and went back her fathers’ for several years——to ultimately complete and work her way out of the house at her capability level (enhanced by me from $10 an hour to $18. But to accomplish it on her own .)

Insanely, my mother then made her move—-in retrospect, when I mentioned to Carlene that I was scrubbing the whole apartment on my hands and knees with Pine Sol, she suggested it sounded less like an eviction of a roommate, than cleaning the space from an unclean spirit—-the next layer of dysfunction arose.

Yes, like a bad trilogy.

My mother in her insane designs wanted to leave the husband/stepfather she’d bought with her money (now gone) when I’d left for college. I was busy pulling together a $5000 payment to the landlord to buy out my remaining months—-in one month, she came up and started shopping in my apartment—-books, clothes, etc., even as I was introducing her to my boss to get her a full time job at the company down South, paying for her flights and food, etc.. I eventually threw her out a few hours before her train home with the instruction to sit at Amtrak and think about what got her there. And when I closed the door, I felt good——I had stood up to and changed all my attenuations to dysfunction.

Elizabeth calmly asked why I had even invited my mother up, a week after throwing Kaye out, us having discussed her history and unhealthy behaviors.

Yes, Elizabeth was right and we spent a few more months now really excavating and unearthing and dissecting then dispersing, the root of my dysfunction to help the broken, fix them, forgive them.

I spent a solid year in therapy with Elizabeth where she cleaned up my perception and relationship with my last two malignant narcissists, besides Nick, perhaps family more difficult to pinpoint than lovers. I can tell you that with them, in my 20s, I was often seething, enraged—-probably from all the shit sandwiches I was voluntarily making from their dysfunction and eating. I routinely used to rock myself to sleep at night with the refrain “I don’t want to die.” as a mantra. I suspect in many ways, even in my own anger and depression, they, were killing me, inside, until I admitted that they were knives and bullets to me that I willingly stood still for, never refuted, or refused.

Were there more people like them?

Yes, but not in the exact same way because once there was smoke, some burning embers, in the people around me, Elizabeth had taught me how to recognize it, confront it, have a boundary about it, walk away.

Kaye spent a handful of years living in her father’s house with her stepmother and younger w/ baby/favored sister. It took her years to get out on her own as she should’ve rightfully done. But she continues, after 20+ years to shoot illegal hormones, pad bras and refute psychiatric or psychological help-work. She went back to school and after 9 years of amassed credits, got an associates degree but her art came across my desk/school, and it’s still juvenile. It didn’t develop because so much of Kaye’s identity was focused onto being Kaye as trans. 30+ years of art is still in its’ nascent stage.

Nick wanted to be a writer and continues to be secretly gay, married and has a child named after (insanely) his ex-girlfriend—-who dumped him soon after I did. He too had aspirations of art—-writing a novel—-I even introduced him to Carlene and Raymond Federman, the superstar writing teachers and acclaimed writers, I worked for. But I didn’t understand then, but do now, he had a mix of envy-attraction-anger at me. I’m an only child, envy and jealousy, from him, Kaye, my mother, was difficult for me to see and recognize until Elizabeth. His manuscript, which went to a friend in publishing, so I read it, was as a professor, Irving Feldman, described his work (as I sat across in class) as (still) pedantic. So he continues living a dual life, lying, having sex with his wife, and secretly, men.

My mother eventually ate herself into heart issues, severe diabetes, leg amputation, strokes. I was healthy enough to help financially and emotionally from afar with boundaries, cutting her and my fool stepfather off when they transgressed, but man enough and strong enough to be present and forgive in the end, and even bring her back to NY as she requested before she died. I forgave her then and so her passing was less grief, less pain than I had ever expected it would be. It was relief. it was sad but expected and peaceful. Forgiveness being the release of the idea that i ever thought she could or should be different than what she was. Forgiveness is accepting reality as it is, not as we would want it to be.

I did another year of therapy with a young lady Allison about 5 years after Elizabeth as sort of a tune up in my 30s. It was good for a year then I switched to a Life Coach for 6 months—-who helped me propel myself into a good non-profit, from the corrupt ones I’d been with, making twice as much and then to Columbia University——narrowing and focusing, on teaching. Through that time at Columbia, Professor Stephen Brookfield advised me through mentorship and his awesome classes, to write books—-of all I’d been teaching over the years.

So I wrote and published 100+. lol

I have come into my prodigiousness. another 200+ books planned through 2025. A TV show, videos, blogs and articles and interviews all over the world.

I dream of them, the three, I had to exorcise while they were alive, that Elizabeth taught me how to. But I think like the other folk I dream about they are simply bigger pieces of flotsam in the sea of my consciousness—-occasionally popping up as a memory or some good times or even when I’ve serendipitously come across their work and seen that I was being generous with my praise and encouragement years ago.

I chose to have them, including my mother in some ways, as lesser people in my life so that I didn’t have to show up for my Life’s Purpose, for my destiny, my work. To do the work. I used those broken people to distract me from doing the work, as a way of being active, but lazy in my truth. I couldn’t see myself clearly because I smeared them and others across my eyes, my lens, my goggles.

I don’t anymore.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow