If you are
transgendered [sic], the feeling of wanting your body to match the sex you
feel you are never goes away. For some, though, especially those who
grew up before trans people were widely out and advocating for
equality, these feelings were often compartmentalized and rarely
acted upon. Now that gender reassignment has become much more
commonplace, many of these people may feel increasing pressure to
finally undergo the procedures they have always secretly wanted.
Ken Koch was one of
those people. Married twice, a veteran, and a world traveler, a
health scare when he was sixty-three prompted him to acknowledge the
feelings that had plagued him since he was a small child. By
undergoing a host of procedures, he radically changed his appearance
and became Anne Koch. In the process though, Anne lost everything
that Ken had accomplished. She had to remake herself from the ground
up. Hoping to help other people in her age bracket who may be
considering transitioning, Anne describes the step by step procedures
that she underwent, and shares the cost to her personal life, in
order to show seniors that although it is never too late to become
the person you always knew you were, it is better to go into that new
life prepared for some serious challenges. Both a fascinating memoir
of a well-educated man growing up trans yet repressed in the
mid-twentieth century, and a guidebook to navigating the tricky
waters of gender reassignment as a senior, It Never Goes Away
shows how what we see in the television world of Transparent
translates in real life.