The Tranmasculine Erma Bombeck

Every day I live in fear of becoming the transmasculine Erma Bombeck – but would it really be that bad? A friendly working relationship with the Family Circus guy (who I’m sure is really nice, no matter what anyone says about that strip), a reliable column, put out a book every two years from mostly already-published work, a fat lecture-circuit budget, a couple of kids, a couple of failed pilots just so you could say you’d been to LA, grand marshal in the Rose Parade, leaving your papers to your alma mater – you could do worse than having trans dads carefully cutting out your columns and pasting them to the fridge (the good indoor fridge, not the supplementary Popsicles-and-game-meat fridge out in the garage). And it wouldn’t take that much tweaking to get there…

Bibliography:

At Tit’s End, Doubleday, 1967

Just Wait Until You’re A Trans Elder Yourself, Doubleday, 1971, co-written with Bil Keane of Family Circus

I Lost Everything in the Post-Gender Depression, Doubleday, 1974.

The Grass is Always Greener Over the Informed-Consent Clinic, McGraw-Hill, 1976.

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What’s With All These Fleshy Drupes?, McGraw-Hill, 1978.

Uncle Erma's Gender Cope Book, McGraw-Hill, 1979.

Seahorse Parenting: The Second Oldest Profession, 1983.

Family — The Ties that Bind And How To Bind Safely At Family Events, 1987.

When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home: Navigating The TSA As A Transsexual, 1991.

A Marriage Made in Heaven...or Too Tired For Polyamory, 1993

All I Know About Passing Behavior I learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room, Harper Collins, 1995

Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Most Operated-On Humorist, Andrew McMeel Publishing, 1996

I hear when you’re freezing to death, you hardly even notice. Just feels like you’re getting warmer, and then everything’s over. (I’m quitting nicotine gum again. Day three. I feel like my tongue is dying and everything else in my body is moving backwards. More as things develop.)