Cidny Bullens

like to call it the hips and lips. I had the lips, and I had the the moves, and I just wanted to be Mick Jagger. And so when I they were coming to Lynn, Massachusetts, which was on their first ever tour of the US. I think I may be wrong about that, but I think it was. And H and I went and I wandered around in the crowd.

It was all kids. There were very few adults. It was on this muddy field outside and Lynn Massachusetts, and uh, the story which I described in the book in my memoir, I did work my way up front, and a kind police officer let me into that forbidden zone between the wooden horses, remember those bob the wood absolutely back then that that provided whatever security was going to be, like they were going to hold anything back, and the stage between the sawhorses and the stage. So I was right there,

feet away from Mick Jagger watching him. And as the story goes, there was a terrific thunderstorm and it started raining really hard, and for some reason in my in my imagination or in my view, the electricity just you know, infused the crowd, and the crowd and the stones were infusing the crowd, and suddenly there was this burst of eight thousand kids toward the stage, toward me, and uh, I got caught up in it, and the stones ran off the stage. Uh. You know, the limos were parked

right to the side of the stage. Back in those days. We didn't have all the security, as I said, And I got swept up into the crowd and there was tear gas and it was pouring rain with lightning, and it was a movie scene. And I got pushed up into the limbo right there with Mick Jagger's face looking at me. It was just wild. It was great. I loved it. That was to me. It was all I needed to know that this was what I wanted to do.

It was rock and roll. It was the mud, it was the grit, it was the music, It was the fans, it was the the electricity of it. Loved it.

to Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson. They loved jazz for which I'm really grateful because even though I don't play jazz, it was a wonderful education on you know music. And they weren't classical people they didn't like I mean, my parents were middle class from Boston, you know, they didn't listen to classical music. However, I will put this caveat on. My mother made all five kids sit down and watch Leonard Bernstein.

And yeah, they were a phenomenon and they did change forever and ever the landscape of music and pop music and maybe other music. And yeah, I was swept up into it as much as anybody else. I wasn't one of those girls screaming and crying and doing all that, and you know that gets into the other part of my story. But I loved the music and what I loved about the Beatles. So there's two things, the Stones

and the Beatles. What I loved about the Stones, I said, you know, the grit, the rock, the beat the influence of the blues and so on, R and B. What I loved about the Beatles was the melody and the harmonies. Because I was born, I believe with a sense of harmony.

You know, I love to harmonize. Even when I was a little kid, somebody would be singing on the radio or whatever, or in our house, and I would start harmonizing, and my sisters and brother and I we would sing and I would be the harmony, and and so it to me. They were the melody, they were the music, and the Stones were the beat the grit. And I loved them. I loved them both for those different reasons.

what I want to do. And it just I just got You used the word swept before I got swept into that rhythm, into that and I keep using the word grit because that's what I felt. It was this energy, of this kinetic energy, which of course became you know, the anathematic people who didn't want who thought rock and roll was the devil's music. Well that's what back in the day, right, That's what infused me. So I had already decided on some level that I was going to

be in music. I mean I used to imitate I was six years old, imitating Elvis Presley and for my parents at their parties, you know, and lip syncing. And you know, I started playing piano. I'm not a piano great piano player. I'm a still in novice fifty sixty years later, but I did start making up my own songs and the piano I started, you know, air guitar playing before I even started playing. And so I was

infused with the music at an early age. But the Beatles and the Stones when I was a teenager or what put me over the edge. And I mean I started writing songs even when I was about twelve or thirteen, but they were more of the folky kind of things until the Beatles and the Stones came along. So they are what put me on the track of real rock and roll.

came there. I mean all the old blues guys, you know, John Lee Hooker, you know Sunny Terry and Brownie McGhee, you know, all the people who played at like Club forty seven in Boston would come up to the King's Rook and play there as well. And I used to go there and do the the hout Nanny night and you know Monday nights. You know, I'd play my guitar and I did that kind of thing. So, yeah, I played in high school.

and I was not a happy camper. I had, you know, I had started smoking weed, you know, and doing all the things that we did back then in the mid sixties, and my home life was chaotic at best, and I just said, I'm out of here. And my thought at fifteen years old, because I had this fantasy about Greenwich Village.

Greenwich Village was the place to be, you know, it had all those folk clubs that were now they had some other stuff going on with the music and with rock and all that, and I just said, that's where I'm going. So a friend who said I'll go with you, who was a year older and had twenty dollars which

I didn't have, so and so I ran away. One night, I told my mother I was going to the library with Jane, my friend, and I walked up to her house from my house and then we walked onto Route one, which we both lived near, and caught walked down to the gas station wherever the bus from where Greyhound came from north to south, and took a bus into Boston and then switched and took a bus and arrived in New York City at about two thirty in the morning into a port authority and there we were fifteen and

sixteen year old girls, even though nobody knew whether I was a boy or a girl, because that's the way I liked it. And you know, not knowing a thing, never having been in New York, not knowing what to do or where to go or anything. And a very after a couple of attempts of guys trying to pick us up, this very attractive, tall black man approached just and said, do you need a place to go? And I looked him in the eye and I knew that

he was safe. And he grabbed Jane's bag, which was very heavy, and my I only had a backpack, and he walked us side of the Port Authority down eighth Avenue or whatever it was, and into a YMCA on the thirty fourth Street YMCA, and that's where we stayed

for the first night. And then we found a hotel, a flea bag I like to say, a flea bag hotel in Washington Square and for two fifty a night, two dollars and fifty cents a night, and you know, it was a flea bag hotel, and now, of course it's still there, it's just not a flea bag hotel anymore. And we were there for a while, about a week or so, and then I started getting hints that my

mother was looking for me. I had a friend who was at Ris, not Rizstie, that was in Rhode Island, Pratt in Brooklyn, Pratt Art School, the art school, an older friend from high school, and my mother had contacted her. This little bit is not in my book, but it is.

coerced her into saying where I was. So a few days later there was a big knock at our door, our hotel door, and then they busted in. We hid. It makes me laugh now, you know. One of us went under the bed, one went in the closet. You know, there was no place to hide. It's a hotel room. Where are you going to hide, you know, And and a small one at that. And they came in and dragged us out. They told us, and know un certain we had befriended. Let me back up a little bit.

We had befriended a couple of drug addicts who were in the hotel, and they were nice guys older than us, and they had entered one of the guy's rooms and beaten the guy up. We didn't see him, We never saw him, but they told us it was it was a scene again, another movie scene, and dragged us down the stairs. And there was my mother and my aunt, her sister who lived in New Jersey, who was the socialite that I talk about in the book. And I

was not happy. I did not want to go home, in fact, because I knew that my mother was looking for me, and the police were out looking for me. I had decided that I was I don't even know why I was. One of the guys who we were talking to in the hotel had a friend in Philadelphia or something. I don't quite remember, but we were going to be on our way to Philadelphia the next day because I knew my mother was in town, so I

had no intention of ever going home again. At fifteen, I did not want to go home, and in that, you know, I don't What I do talk about in the book, which we haven't talked about here, is that I did think, before I knew my mother was in town, that I could get some kind of work as a

musician in one of these folk clubs or something. And I went around, knocked on the doors during the day, went in, you know, talked to the managers, you know, trying to get some connection of how I could, you know, get some work, even if it was, you know, passing the hat, which I, by the way, did later when I went back to school in New York City, I did work at the folk clubs passing the hat. So

that was the runaway story. They did take me back to Topsfield, Massachusetts and My mother was a force to be reckoned with, with all her issues, and she convinced the school board, who wanted nothing to do with me, to not expel me. They did. They did expel my friend Jane, and they didn't expel me. And I went back to school unhappily. But that was the story of my running away. But I did run away after that again, but not it wasn't quite as dramatic.

and stuff. But anyway, and then my mother said, no, you've got your going to school, so pick a school. You're going to go to and that's what's going to happen. And I ended up going to New York to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. So back to New York I went. And it was a great experience for me actually to go to the Academy. It was taught me a lot. I still have you know, a couple of my best friends in my roommate from those days is still my closest friend. And it was a great experience.

I actually learned a lot. I got rid of my Boston accent, which I can bring back in any time if you want to hear it. In fact, whenever I get within one hundred miles of Massachusetts or you know, New England, it comes back automatically. But you know, I learned some great life lessons there. I had a great time. I started doing more drugs and drinking a little bit, but which I talk about in the book later what happened. But my mother was right, you know, I needed that time.

I needed that experience to be in a I'm going to say in a controlled environment, although I'll say not controlled structured environment.

just I couldn't get work. I mean, I did get called back for some you know, for not Jesus Christ Superstar, I've forgotten the name of it now, but I got called for some things that were musicals because I did sing and play guitar and so on, and I did finally, after many, many, many rejections, and I hated auditioning, by the way, but after many rejections, I got cast in a Broadway show because I played guitar quote like a guy,

Oh ask me. And I get cast in the band of the musical Lisistrata, which is a Greek play with Molina mccurree. For those of you of a certain age, She was the lead in a movie called Never on Sunday, and she was a big Greek star and it was directed by Michael Kachianus, who was a great Greek director and both of whom had made their way into American movies, and so it was a big deal. I was. So I was put in the band, but then they gave me three lines because they liked me. I was the

youngest member of the cast. There was all these big Broadway show stars in the cast, you know, and so I did that. It flopped, so it wasn't a big thing, but but I made money. I made some money. I you know, was living in Greenwich Village in a you know, apartment with three other people, and so I got that. But then I decided that acting really wasn't what I wanted to do. But I'd keep it in my back pocket and I'd go to LA and I'd see if I could find some work there, either as an actor

or a musician. And that's when my career started. When I went to La.

one of those random things. My life, as you will read in the book those of you choose to read it, is a series of coincidences of who I meet and how it leads me to one thing and the other, which is why the title the Cosmic rock Star applies, cosmic being the operative word, meaning you know, I'm not a rock star on earth, but my life was lived

like one. And anyway, so Helen Gorman, this guy who I had randomly met in New York City, and we became acquaintances, and he liked me, you know, and and he called his friend of a friend who called another friend who happened to be Helen Gorman. And Helen Gorman turned out to be the the producer of the Johnny of the Jay Leno Show. And you know, she went on to do great things. But at the time she was writing for The Hollywood Reporter, which still is in

existence today. Weekly rag out for the for the show business and she was friends with Diane Bennett, who also wrote for The Hollywood Reporter. So Helen Gorman let me sleep on her couch and for a long time actually, until she kicked me out. And you know the stories Bob go, you know, they weave into each other. So you know, I can stop, I can go, I can,

you know, well tell us about meeting Bob Crue. Yeah. So, so the Diane Bennett reference is because one day I got a job in a gas station on little Santa Monica Boulevard, which is no longer there. The gas station Jerry's Phillips sixty six, you know, and I had worked in a gas station in high schools. I loved pumping gas. These were before self serve, and I loved working on cars. I can't couldn't do much, you know, oil changes and stuff.

I'm not a mechanic, but anyway, I loved being around that atmosphere and getting dirty and all that stuff because I was really not that. Women don't like that too, and women aren't great mechanics. But in those days, you know, I it was just to guys thing to do. So but Jerry I went around to try to find work, and Jerry gave me a job and working at the

gas station. So I came home to Helen Gorman's one afternoon, all right from work, and she said, change your clothes, get your little three inch reel to reel demo tape which I had recorded in New York before I came of a few songs I had written. And you're going to go to this house in Beverly Hills, to Diane Bennett's house, and she's having a dinner party and Bob crue is going to be there.

you to go into that house. Do not go into the house. Said okay, So I get in her car. I find the gate, you know, gated gated, big house in the flats, but it was gated and it's starting

to go up Cold Water Canyon or something. And I go in and I go to the entrance and I knock on the door or ring the bell, and after a few minutes, this guy opens the door and it's this very handsome charism I could tell that charisma was oozing out of him, very flamboyant, you know, with a low cut bell bottoms with the big belt buckle and a shirt open and blonde hair kind of almost toewish

shoulders and opens the door. And I was a little stunned because I thought somebody who was a servant or a maid or something was gonna housekeeper was going to come to the door. And I said, I'm here to give Bob, to give this tape to Bob Crue. And he said, well, I'm Bob Crue, and he literally reached grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the house. And I was like, oh, no, you know, because I'm telling you, Helen Gorman must have told me a hundred times do not go into the house. Do not go

into the house. So I'm like, oh, shoot, you know, I'm in trouble. So he drags me, and it was the servants enterest So we go through the kitchen and into the living room, which was kind of like a living room, and then there was a dining area with a step above in another area of the house, but they were conjoined, and and here's all these people standing around and and Diane Bennett gives me the devil's look, and Bob goes set an. We hadn't even talked nothing.

He drags me by the arm into the living room and says to Diane set another place at the dinner table. It was really something, and so Diane was really agitated and mad. But of course Bob Crewe had say over everything. He was the star of the evening. And so I sat down to dinner and with I don't know eight or twelve people, ten people, and it was just that a wild you know, another coincidence where one of the

people at the table had said, you look familiar. He looked at me, and it turned out that we had sat beside each other on a plane going from New York to Los Angeles, and he was the road manager for Frank Sinatra and fly in the family Stone, And I mean, how does that happen? You know? And there's another part of that where they, you know, I wasn't supposed to be in first class and that that flight, you know. But here I was this young kid, and I had somehow they bumped me up to first class.

I don't even remember why. And and I sat beside this guy and here he was at this dinner table months later with Bob Crewe and Diane Bennett, and he gave me his phone number, took me to some studios and blah blah blah. But that's where I met Bob Crewe, who becomes and still is a part of the rest of my life, you know. And and Bob Crewe I got kicked out of. I guess I'll go on with the story I got. I went back to Helen Gorman's.

Of course, I got kicked out because I had done the one thing I was supposed to do, which was go into the house. So Helen Gorman kicked me out of her apartment. And she should have anyway, I was there for like a month, you know, And so I only number I had in my pocket was Bob crue. And I called Bob from a phone booth the next day and said, I'm I need a place to stay. I had no money, no place to stay. I was making like two bucks an hour at the gas station. And he said, call me back in an hour, and

so I did. I called it. And there's other parts of the story which you'll read about in the book. But I called him back in the meantime. I had found a place to stay with some runaways in that hour. So I called him back and I said, I found a place to stay. He said, good, be in the studio at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. I want you to

sing backup on a record I'm producing. It's just I mean, I'm pausing because even my own life, you know, when I think about these things, how things happened, how interconnected things were, the coincidences. If you believe in coincidences, you know how the connectors of my life just keep going

and going and going. And from that moment where I went to the studio the next day, I took the bus to I can't I think it was hit Factory or one of those places in LA in the middle of Hollywood, and sound factory one of those and Hit factories in New York. I think it was sound fact And I walked in and started singing backup vocals for Bob Crue, and I never stopped. I didn't stop just.

few months. Then Bob asked me to move in, and I moved into his storage unit on which was actually like a basement apartment or little studio apartment done in the basement of his penthouse, a building on Appian Way, not Appian Way. That's where he lived later in Hollywood, West Hollywood. And so I moved into his storage unit and I started really being his gopher protege. I went with him everywhere. I drove him around, I did tasks

for him, I did errands for him. I answered the phone for him, and in return say it like that, because to me, it was in return what I got was an education in the music business as well as production and studio work, because I sat beside him when he worked with Hank Sakala, the great you know engineer, and Tom Dowd another great engineer. You know, look these people up, they've they're on every album from from those days,

the sixties and the seventies and onward. You know, I got to meet Jerry Wexler and Joe Smith, you know, and people who in the business. I mean, Jerry Wexler and I became friends. I'm still friends with his wife Renee today, and you know, sit in the rooms when deals were made, I got to I just he just took me everywhere I was. I was like almost like a fly on the wall. And I sat beside him at the consoles with those great engineers, and I looked and I learned, and I asked questions, and I got

to do an input. You know, I got to have input in these things, not without asking or not without somebody asking me. I didn't interject myself where I wasn't involved. I was a sponge. So Bob Crue, for all his craziness and as a you know, as a human, he was brilliant and a genius. He invented pop music basically with Four Seasons and Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels. He invented Frankie Valley. Frankie Valley didn't sing in Falsetto before Bob Crue got to him. You know, I was there.

I was there when they did My eyes doored you. I was one of the background singers, you know, and and swearing to God and in the later for it, Frankie Valley hits and I was there. I watched Bob Crue go into the studio and sing frank Frankie Valley's part for Frankie Valley, and then Frankie Valley would go in and imitate Bob Crewe. Not that Frankie Valley didn't

have his own voice. He did, but it was you know, I owe Bob Crewe a lot, and he was not a perfect person, you know, he was a very flawed person. But he gave me my the foundation of my career. And and then as the story goes, as you will read, I ended up marrying his brother and my two children, you know, are from Dan Crewe and Bob Crewe was the uncle. And the story goes on from there.

started uh. But that wasn't the beginning of my personal career because that song was a Bob Crue production and I sang on you know, I say, I was in disco Texas. If somebody really does their deep dive into me and asks me about disco texts and the sex, so lets I know they've done a deep dive into me. And so I was on those records too, and uh and Bob. This is a bone of contention for me because the one thing Bob did which I kind of regret in my you know, in my career, was that

he encouraged me to sing in a high voice. And it started with that single My Happy Birthday Baby, which if you can find I doubt anybody can. It was on twentieth Century Fox at the time, the album the label, and he said, you've got to sing in a high voice. You've got to sing in a high voice. I had an alto naturally low voice, not quite as low as it is today, but I had a naturally low voice.

If you find the bootlegs of the Rolling Thunder review, which I did, you'll hear me sing in my natural voice. But he said, you got to sing in a high voice, you know, like Frankie Valley. It has more energy, it has more oo, you know, people relate to it or whatever. So I started singing in this I you know, I didn't want to, but I did. And then you know the end of that story is is that I sang my first two albums in that high voice, which I can't listen to still today. The good songs, but the

high voice. Nah. So but Bob was an influence on me and I started that started off my career and through Bob, I met Bobby Newarth through you know and I, as I said, Jerry Wexler and other people, and through Bob Newarth, I ended up doing some of the Rolling Thunder review and meeting those guys who are still friends of mine. And you know, it's it's multi layered.

started with the titles Lady Marmalade, you know. You know they were talking about you know, and I can't remember now whether Kenny had come up with a riff on the piano or whether Bob just said, I want to write a song about a hooker in New Orleans, you know. And but that's what he did. He started, and and Bob didn't play an instrument. He didn't play an instrument. He didn't He he sang the melody. He made up beats. You know, he clap his hands or stomp his feat

and you know, you know, snap his fingers. He was a big finger snapper. And he would sing the melody and he sometimes it was nonsensical words, which I still do today as well, just to get the flavor, the feeling of what words would be fit into those points in the song. And he was brilliant, and he was just brilliant. And yeah, Desmond Child, I met Desmond in nineteen eighty, I think, and we became friends back then, and.

my own choices, you know. But it was available then with Bob all the time, and he, you know, he'd make himself a drink and make me one, you know. Well, okay, you know, and he started, you know, he was into cocaine, and so I got into cocaine and which was my downfall. And he didn't push me into a relationship with this woman, but he encouraged things. I mean, I was very very naive, you know. I mean, you know, I look back and I just put my head in my hands, you know,

because I was very gullible. I was very naive. I you know, I just didn't think through things and didn't see behind the curtains, and so Bob encouraged me into this relationship. But you know, I mean it was my choice and I didn't really have a relationship with this woman, although she wanted one. But it was where I started my hard drug uses because and this story is in the book and it still gives makes me kind of sick to my stomach. When it was hard for me

to write that in the book. It was hard for me to really be honest about how how far down I went and what happened, and you know, taking responsibility for my own choices in getting into drugs. But this woman, Sue, shot up cocaine and one night she invited me to do that and I had had enough to drink, and for whatever reason, I said okay, And that was my bottom, you know a few months after that, because I continued to do it, and luckily I got sober, you know, not long after that.

a guy who's gonna you know who. I recommended you because they wanted somebody who could sing in a young woman's voice, a young girl's voice. And I suggested you just ironic when you know my whole story, And I said, okay. And I assumed that it was background vocals for a movie soundtrack. That's all I knew. I had dead, no name or nothing. So this guy called me Lewis Saint Louis, and he was one of the producers, and he said, I want you to come in and sing, you know,

just be at the studio. Again. I thought it was background vocals, and I was going to get paid ninety dollars, you know, which was the going rate for three hour session back then. So I was thrilled. And I walk in and Lewis says to me, we'd like you to sing lead on this song. And I was like lead, okay, But it was unexpected and it was Freddie my love on the Grease movie soundtracked. So after I did that one,

he said how about this one? And it was raining on prom night and I said great, and then and then I sang a duet called Mooning with Lewis. So I did three lead vocals on that album, all because of Bob Crue, which people still come up to me today. Go the Grease movie soundtrack, you know, it's still one of those things that people hang on to.

little about business. I'd been in on some of these conversations with Bob Crue and stuff, but I was naive. I was happy to get paid whatever I was getting paid, and I worked for Bob for basically nothing, so, you know, except a place to live. So I but this voice in my head said say no. So I said no, and the guy went what And I said no. He said, let me call you back. So a day later, I'm not sure how long, another guy calls and he says, we'll give you thirty thousand dollars in cash if you

sign a release. And I was not stupid. So I might have been naive, but I was not stupid. But I had no real money. I mean, I'd done a couple of gigs with Elton John and I had some I had a nice apartment. I was living in Hollywood Hills. You know, I got a car. I was sober. I was doing a sessions here and there. You know, I was okay, but I didn't you know, I wasn't rich. I didn't have a lot of money. So thirty thousand dollars back in nineteen seventy seven was a lot of money.

It's still a lot of money. And that little voice inside my head said say no, and so I said no. And at the time, this manager, Tony Defreese was courting me, who I had not met yet. But Bobby Newarth had talked to Tony. He was doing a project with Tony and said, Tony, you got to talk to Cindy Bullen's you guys should get together. So Tony had heard some stuff that I'd done and knew what I had done, and he was courting me. So I told I just happened to be on the phone with him. He was

in New York. I was in LA and I said, you know, I've got this thing where they you know, the Grease movie santre He said, let me take care of it. So Tony Defreese doesn't have the greatest reputation, but he did me that favor, and so I got a royalty, a royalty from that Grease album. And like I said, there is there are tentacles. At the time, I did make a lot of money. Now I was naive and stupid and young, and the money was spent without me knowing, and we're not going to go into

that story. And I invested in some things that I was told to invest in, which I made no money from, so that money didn't last a long time. I didn't spend it. I bought a car, That's what I bought. I bought a Jeep Cherok wagon and which was twelve thousand dollars in cash. And that's what I did. But here's the tentacle I want to talk about. Can I do this? Can I Okay? Years later and we'll get to this. I'm sure we'll get to this, But I

want to say how these things weave together. Years later, after the death of my daughter, my younger daughter, Jesse, who was eleven, and I was writing. So I know I'm jumping ahead, but I have to tell this. I'm jumping ahead. I was writing. I had written some songs. I didn't know it was going to become an album from nineteen ninety seven in ninety eight.

had no business in the music nothing, knew nothing. She kept asking me if I had received grease from movie soundtrack royalties, and I'm like, what are you talking about. I don't know. I didn't I was in grief. My daughter had died. I was not thinking about anything. She kept asking me. She was like, she had this thing from heaven or wherever, the universe or whatever. Anyway. I finally said, Okay, Nancy, I'll find out. So I asked Dan, who's my husband, who was in the music business, this

and new publishing and everything. He found out that I hadn't been paid for seven years. So that money that came in the accumulation of seven years royalties paid for my album Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth, which became my signature album. It's my legacy. So that's a little tentacle from the Grease movies.

you know, just hang out with the guys. And I loved hanging out at Cherokee Studios. When they moved to Airfax Avenue, I just loved it, and I was friends with them, and people would come in and I would just be there anyway. So one day I was rehearsing with Bob Crue for a project that he wanted to

put together, and it was stupid. It was not something I liked, and I was mad at him, and because he was not yet sober, and it was lashing out, and so I left that rehearsal and went to Cherokee Studios, where I knew they were doing a press party for Neil Sedaka, who was a hit songwriter and singer in the sixties who had signed with Rocket Records and was having a comeback single in nineteen This was nineteen seventy.

and there probably was a couple other people. And I'm in the control room watching this press party what I call like looking into a fish bowl of all these press people and publicists. And Neil Sadaka was in there, and so there wasn't stars or anything. It was all press people and there was Elton standing in the corner. And for I don't even remember what I was thinking. I just turned to the guys and I said I'm

going in. I'm going to go in there. And they said, no, you're not, you can't go in, and I said, yes, I can. I opened the door and walked in and headed straight for the food. This is the absolute truth. I didn't go right up to Elton. I didn't have that much hutzbah, you know. I walked to the food. I got a glass of wine or something and some carrots and crew de tee or whatever, and I'm like standing there hoping that something, you know, I don't even

know what. Anyway, I started talking to this one guy. I can't remember who it was or what he did. And I said, yeah, I work with Bob Crewe, and of course everybody knew Bob Cruise, so I was, you know, valid, you know, and you know, I'm a background singer. I

sing with Bob Crue. I had not yet sung in the Grease movie contrac This is nineteen seventy five, and I had, you know, met Bobby new Earth and stuff, so I knew some people and I said that, and so we started talking and I expected to be kicked out, but I wasn't. And out of the corner of my eye he went away, that guy I was talking to, and I'm standing there again, and out of the corner

of my eye, I see Elton walking toward me. And my first thought was he's going to kick me out, which is stupid because Elton wouldn't be the one to kick me out, but that's what I thought. And he walks up and he says, verbatim I'll never forget it. Hi, my name is Elton. I don't believe we've met yet. And I went completely black, you know, I said, Hi, my name is Cindy, but I really don't remember anything

else we said. And but we talked for a few minutes and until one of his people came up and kind of dragged him away, and nobody kicked me out. And then so I'm like, okay, I'm here. I start talking to some other people, and then a woman walks up to me, a young woman, and she asks me what I do, and I said, well, I'm you know, I'm a singer, you know, like with all the you know, whatever I could put into that. And we talked for

a minute. She goes away, and I hang out for a little while longer, and I'm just about to leave because I'd met Elton by this time. What else am I going to do? And I go up to her hold on a second, just and I mean, she walks up to me, and it turns out her name is Connie Pappus and she works with Elton and in his

management with John Reid. She works with John Reid Management, And she says to me, what are you doing for the next two months, and I thought, uh oh, and this, I'm going to tell the whole story because it it is it. I did know what I was doing for the next two months. I was supposed to go on the road with the Rolling Thunder Review with Bob Dylan. That's a whole nother story that's in the book. But I said, I don't know why, And she said, Elton wants to know if you want to go on the

road with him. Now this isn't an hour later from when I met him. He hadn't heard me sing. He The reason for him to walk up to me, you know, was I think to see if I was a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, because I had a very androgynous look. So here's what I think happened. So this was a Wednesday night. It was September seventeenth to nineteen seventy five Wednesday. The rehearsals for the road started Friday, two days from when. So the next day, so I so I was like, what do I do.

I've got to choose between Elton John and Bob Dylan because the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Review is going to start like in two weeks from then, and they were overlapping, so I couldn't do both. I had to choose between Bob Dylan and Elton John, and I chose Elton, much

to Bobby Newris's Chagrinny never forgave me. And so the next day on Thursday, and I was living in a little hovel on Honey Drive in Hollywood, on the bottom of Laurel Canyon, and a limo pulls up and drops off a stack of Elton John records, even in those days, and I had a turntable on the floor. I had no furniture except a couch, no table, no coffee table, no nothing. I had a single bed and a couch. So my turntable was on the floor of this hovel.

And I'm supposed to learn these songs before the next day when I go to rehearsal. But anyway, my feeling on how I got that was two is twofold. I think Elton liked the liked me. I think he liked the way I looked. But Connie Pappis sister is Renee Pappis, who is married to Jerry Wexler, So I think that con somehow they had to I'm sure somebody said to Elton you know, you can't just hire this kid because you we got to find out if they can sing.

So I think what happened? I should ask Renee because she and was that somebody said to Elton, you got to find out, So Connie, I don't know. Probably I think Jerry Wexler probably said, yeah, I go for it. You know, they probably got, you know, through those circles. So I ended up on the road rehearsing with Elton john in two days after I met him.

and Bobby Newarth, those three people. If you look on the back of my first album, Desire Why, you'll see it's dedicated to three people, three men, Bob Crue, Bobby Newirth and Elton John Because those three guys really and they each saw different things than me. But whatever they saw, they brought me into their worlds and they elevated me to a different plane. They educated me the elevation, They taught me things. They they allowed me to, you know, become more of who I was and as an artist

and uh and as a human. So being with Elton was an education first of all about what it was like to be the most famous person on earth at that time. He was the Taylor Swift of the mid seventies, you know, and it burst my bubble of to understand what happens when you're that famous personally to someone. But it was also fun. It was it was he was so kind and loving to me. He he brought me everywhere. He took me to England. I had, you know, so

many private moments with him. He took me. I mean, I went to dinner with Shirley Maclain and you know, I mean, and it wasn't just about the famous people that he introduced me to or the places. It was the intimate moments that we had together in talking or just being together. And I will cherish those for the rest of my life. And singing on the you know, being asked to sing on the Don't Go Break in My Heart, I sang all.

the time. You know. I don't know what conceptions people have about Elton John, but he is one of the most kind, loving people I've ever known, and he cares. He cares. He cares about people both individually and of course we all know what he's done with the AIDS Foundation and more things like that, raising millions and millions and millions of dollars for those in need. And yeah, is he complicated. Absolutely, you can't not be and be that famous. You can't. You can't navigate in the world

without having some defense systems and so on. But I him, I absolutely adore him.

And it was basically that that was the reconciliation. I mean, I made amends when I got sober, I made amends to him for it, and you know, and he said, you don't owe me any amends but the incident itself. And to be perfectly honest with you, I really didn't want to write about that incident at all because it's a blip in our relationship. The reason I wrote about that incident where and it was me. I mean, he he had his part in it, but it was my

reaction that that was the issue. But I wrote about it because it led to my my looking in word at myself and saying, what the heck are you doing and why? And you got to get your shit together to myself. But anyway, so the incident was that we were on stage in Greenville, South Carolina, Greensboro, South Carolina, and some one of those anyway, uh, And it was at the end of a long two tours put together.

Everybody was exhausted. We it was just everybody was exhausted, and you know it was there was a lot of drug usage, there was a lot of I'm speaking for myself, you know, I was out of control on a lot of levels. And this one night, something happen in one of the songs and toward the end of the set and the music kind of hung there, and the background vocalists, of which I was one of three, could have could either make come in at the time we were supposed

to come in or let it just play out. And we came in and at the time we were supposed to, and of course we should have waited for the for Elton to do whatever he was going to do. And Elton turned around and gave us the finger, and I went ballistic and I the song finished. I mean, it's in much more detail in the book. The song finished, and I went off stage and went into the dressing room and it was crowded with people, and I put my finger in his face and I said, don't to

ever do that to me again. I took it. You know, it wasn't about me. He wasn't even given their finger to the three of us. But I was so you know, I was doing a lot of cocaine. I was drinking. I was My ego was out of control at that point, and uh, you know, I I so, I you know, I went in and put my finger in his face, and he was stunned and started to you know, we started to get into it, and I, of course was

as I talk about in the book. I was pulled away by everybody who was around, taken by the bodyguards out of the room, and thrown into a shower stall somewhere down the hall. And I knew I had completely screwed up. I knew because you know, I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but you know, when you're doing something and you can see yourself doing something and you're going, what the heck am I doing? I'm not, you know, you're kind of outside your self doing something.

And that's the way it was. As I'm pointing my finger in his face, don't ever do that to me again, I'm going, what the hell are you doing? You know? And anyway, he didn't speak to me for the rest of the tour, and it was it crushed me, and I knew I was wrong. And I don't blame him. I mean, he was hurt. I know. I know a lot of the details that I don't put in the book, the private details about what happened after, you know, and how he felt. But I say in the book I

had betrayed as trust and I did, you know. And it was a turning point for me in terms of looking at my own self and my own actions and my own what I was, where I was, and I it was the beginning of the end for me in terms of my drug usage and my alcohol usage. It took another two months for me to get sober, but it was it was the beginning of the end. And that's why I bring it up in the book because it's not really relevant, I mean, to anything else in

my mind. And and Elton and I we reconciled right after the tour, you know, and there was no no harm done. And when I did, when I did get sober and made an amends, I wrote him a letter. He wrote me back, and you know, making amends for that, which is one of the steps in alcoholics anonymous. And I'm breaking my own inanimity, but I can do that after forty seven years, and you know, I had to make amends to him, and I did, and to other people who are on that tour. He never he said,

you don't owe me any amends. You know, it just just happened. And but it was the incident that was kind of the last Neon sign for me. You're in trouble, Cindy, get it together. You're going down the wrong path. And because I had heard him so badly. Let's jump forward. You end up marrying Bob, who's brother who you say in the book from the beginning is gay. Yeah, you also say, although it's not really clear that you are gay. But at that time, were you only with women or

were you with men too, or what? So? I had very few relationships, in fact, almost none, because I didn't know. I mean, I kind of thought, well, maybe I'm gay, you know, because I'm attracted to women, but I'm also you know, have some attraction to men and so on. But I always felt like I was a guy. I always felt like I was a guy from the time I was three years old and I told my mother, I'm a guy. I'm a boy. Don't call me Cindy,

I'm a boy. So so, but growing up in puberty and then beyond and then not knowing, you know, nobody knew anything about the word transgender wasn't even in the vocabulary. There was no word transgender back then. It was transsexual if anything, and it was kind of a pathological, you know condition. And so yes, Dan, Dan, and I I was I did have some attraction to men and and but I didn't have a lot of relationship Bob. I didn't. I avoided them like the plague because I didn't know

who I was. I didn't feel like I was in the wrong body. So I didn't really want to, you know, I just it was I just wanted to stay away from physical contact as much as possible with anybody. And but I did have a couple of short relationships with women, one in high school and one afterwards. But I I didn't consider myself gay, although I thought, well, that's what I must be. Anyway, I met Dan through Bob, obviously, and he was completely gay, had never had a relationship

with a woman before. And when he was older. He's older than me, He's sixteen years older. And we met and we had an attraction to each other, and we had a little fling for about eight months, and then we didn't and then we after we both got sober in AA. Bob got sober too, he and we were friends. He said to me, I think we should get married, and I said, you're crazy. I don't want to get married.

I met in the middle trying, you know that I was recording my first album, and this was in nineteen seventy eight, and I was, you know, on the road and doing my thing and trying to become a rock star. He said, we have the same values. We have, you know, we should get married. And you know, finally, after a while I said yes, because I was getting beaten up in the record business. And you know, I love Dan. I still love him today. I'll see him next week.

But you know, I I just thought, well, if I'm not going to be able to be a rock star, because in nineteen seventy nine, a lot of stuff started happening and I and you know, I was nominated for a Grammy and good stuff and all that, and then the record companies folded, and you you know all the story. Plus yes, I was being told to be more feminine if I wanted to get ahead in the music business. And I said, no, not changing who I am, I can't. And that didn't go over real well. And so I

married Dan and we had two kids. We moved back East and we had a monogamous relationship. It wasn't an arrangement like somebody think, oh, well, okay, he's gay and you're trands and you know whatever. But we didn't. We tried. I don't even know why, but we tried to be a normal couple. And of course we weren't, so it led to a lot of issues, but we had two beautiful children and we're still friends.

and so time was running out for me. But I did, in the back of my mind somewhere want to have kids. And I thought, Okay, if the music business isn't going to happen for me, then you know, I want to have kids. And Dan and I did discuss the fact that we weren't normal. I hate that we use the word normal. We weren't typical male, female, married couple having children, but we both wanted kids and we did.

of fell away. And here we were going to preschool with you know, the Montessori school and all these you know, straight couples and you know, living in Westport, Connecticut, and we both Dan and I really tried to fit in and do you know all the things that parents, young parents do and with the kids, and I listen, I loved having children. There's nothing about having children that I regret, even with the death of my younger daughter. And I

loved being pregnant. I loved breastfeeding. I loved being a mother. I still love I love being a grandparent. But that wasn't what the struggle was. The struggle was presenting as a straight couple, even though we didn't lie, we just were and trying to fit the square peg of a relationship or a couple into the round hole of Westport, Connecticut and what that meant. And it was a struggle. And I was still I still had some creativetivity left in me, and I still had the desire to write

and perform and record. So that presented its own struggle for me because I had kids.

So grief, grief has a has a life of its own, and it and it and it grows and changes and shifts and sometimes it metastasized in the early days and and and then it kind of shifts around to different places in your life. It's an entity all its own and it's always there. And so Jesse's death presented me not only with abject grief, which I had to go through and did go through, but it also gave me a different life on a bunch of levels. It gave me a different life because you're never the same person

after the death of a child. It affected my relationship with my older daughter. Of course it affected her, her sibling died. It affected my relationship with life, but it also now looking back, and it's going to be next month, it'll be twenty seven years since her death. It's a lifetime, actually be twenty eight years. Twenty eight years, and her death gave me a new life. I can only say that now and have only been able to say that for the last ten years, let's say, or fifteen years,

because she gave me a different life. She made me a more compassionate person. She gave me the gifts of those songs from somewhere between heaven and Earth that were all channeled from and I'm using that word loosely from a different place in me that before that album and after that album. Nope, those songs that I wrote before and after do not have the same depth or weight of those songs. They didn't cut those songs before and after. It didn't come from the same place those ten songs

from that album came from. And that's that album continues to this day. I get emails from people, you know, messages from people. I have to answer one today. I just got, you know that about somebody listening to that album after the death of someone a loved one. Mostly it's children, but it could be anybody saying how profoundly it affected them to this day. That album is my legacy. There's other things to the book and one person show and another show, you know, things like that, But that

album is my true legacy. There is and that would not the horrible thing about it. And it brought me back into the music business, to that album. So I I would much rather have a tall, redheaded adult standing in front of me, who's my beautiful daughter, than I would all the rest of the life that came in the last twenty eight years, but her gifts to me in her death, I would not have the same life. I would not have been the most more compassionate or would have had my legacy. I would have just been

another struggling whatever. And so it's a complicated issue about the death of a child. But does the grief go away? Nope, it doesn't. And there are choices to be made when a child dies. You either live or you die figuratively or live or physically. Because I know parents who have

physically died from the death of their children. So somehow, in some way I chose to live and I can't take credit really for somewhere between Heaven and Earth, that album and those songs, other than the fact that I was compelled to show up to do them, to write them, and to record them, and then the powers that be took over and took it in a direction and took it out into the world that I had no intention of doing myself.

became symbol for her. I have tons of cardinals in my yard, you know, And but I think of her even beyond the cardinals and stuff. I think of her all the time. I've got her pictures right here. I've got pictures right here. She's become a part of me in you know, she's become a part of my own being. I feel like I'm walking around and that part of my mission here on earth is to let people know that she lived and that she was important, and that part of my gifts come which I just said, are

from her. And so she's always with me at all times, and I never there's not a day that goes by. I don't know that she's not a part of my day.

It is a physiological condition. And I mean I have known since I was three years old. As I meant before that, I was a boy at that time, a boy in a girl's body, and one of There is a spectrum of transgenderness too, I mean people transgenderness. That's not even a word, but there is a spectrum, and there are people who feel differently than I do. There are people who are on a different part of the spectrum, who feel that they're gender fluid or something like that.

I am on the real side, you know, flat end of the spectrum where I never in my life felt like a female. I don't relate to women, never did relate to women. I loved being a mother, I loved being pregnant, I loved breastfeeding. But I even then, even at nine months pregnant, I didn't relate to being a woman. I was just a vessel carrying a baby. And I I just so sociologically it's difficult, I look even though

no one. I mean, I've been, Believe me, I've been in men's rooms in Fenway Park and Jillette Stadium and Titans Nissan State. You know I've been. I've been in men's room and gas stations out in the middle of Nebraska. You know, no one will ever look at me and say there's something about that guy that looks like a woman. Nobody. But I still look over my shoulder. I am still aware of where I am at all times in public,

you know, and what's around me. If I go into a restroom and into a stall, if you want to get personal about it, I make I have to, you know, I make sure that I'm safe. It's a shame that, as I said, that people don't and don't want to understand. They don't want to believe that this is just a human condition, just like other human conditions. I say at the end of my book in the epilogue, you know, if we are indeed the most advanced species on Earth,

then wouldn't we by definition be the most diverse. And we are diverse, you know, we are. We don't look at whatever that fish is or whatever that bug is where the male gives birth and say that's an anomaly of nature. We say, oh, that's a male fish who gives birth. Wow. You know. It's the misinformation and the disinformation, as people like to say about trans people that bothers

me the most. And that's why I'm an advocate, and I try to speak out loud about being trans. Now, we could get into a whole political discussion about why there are bathroom bills. Guess what, there's not a bathroom bill because somebody's afraid that I'm going to walk into a men's room. Nobody knows. I could stand washing my hands beside Mitch McConnell or you know, one of the red wing, red wing I was gonna say, red neck,

right wing, one of the right wing politicians. I could stand beside any one of them in a restroom washing my hands and they wouldn't know. Why do they have bathroom bills? Why is it illegal for me to walk into a restroom in many states? Even though I do anyway? Because it's the trans women who they're afraid of. Men are afraid of trans women. It threatens their masculinity for some reason. And yeah, I could go on a whole diatribe and I won't, but it, you know, we have

to educate. That's the only way we can do it. And the only you know, I'm out. I'm an out trans person, you know. And do I worry every once in a while that some person's gonna say, uh, you know, Sydney Bullens is a trans person and doesn't deserve to live. Yeah, I worry about that sometimes, but I can't live my life doing that. What I can live my life doing is talking about it, writing about it. You know the thing about my story, Bob, which you got when you

wrote about it, you got it. It's a human story. It's not about being a transgender person who happened to have a career in rock and roll or happen to have kids, even though that thread runs through the book along with the music. It's a human story. My story is human. I lived as a woman for sixty one years. I had two babies. I watched one of them take their last breath. I have four beautiful granddaughters, grandbabies, two

granddaughters and two grandsons, four beautiful grandchildren. You know, I'm a grandparent. I act like a grandparent. I'm not a freak or an anomaly or a deranged person. I contribute to my community, and that's what we really That's what my book is about. It's about a human story. So that maybe if somebody chooses to read it, although it's got trands in the title, maybe they'll have a different view.

Maybe they'll get a different perspective. Maybe they'll say, you know what, maybe I can learn a little bit from this. And I don't want to start pontificating, but it bugs me. Yeah, And I'm afraid for the trans people. And know I'm not always comfortable in the world, but I'm comfortable within myself and I don't regret making the decision, even though let's get honest here, it's harder for me in the music business. It's harder for me out in the world.

It's harder for me to meet people. It's harder for me to tell my story. Somebody says, what do you do? Well?

I said, I'm you know, I'm one of those songwriters in Nashville. He looks up my name and I had to turn to him and I said, wait until I leave before you look me up. And I laughed and he put his phone away. So it's harder for me to live in the world as a trans person. But do I regret it, No, because I am being the person that I am meant to be and part of that. When when my siblings didn't want me to transition, when I told them I was going to one of my

sisters said why, why, why why? And I said, well, there's a couple of reasons. One is I I want to see what it feels like to be in the body it was meant to have, minus a few things. Two, if I can, because I'm a known person in certain communities, maybe not a household name, but I'm a public figure. If I can change one person's opinion about what a

transperson is, then it's worth it to me. Just like I did with the death of a child, I affected, not me, that music affected a lot of people in a positive way in expressing their grief, in knowing they weren't alone, whatever it was so with somewhere between heaven and Earth. So now it's this. Now I'm a transperson.

If I can affect anybody to maybe take it just a little bit of a deeper beak into what it is to be transgender, or to empathize a little bit with the fact that this is a human condition, then it's worth it to me.

I've done a lot of things there. When I started transitioning, the local networks did stories on me as like, oh you know this, you know this person is transitioning, and what a great story this is and great for them and me, and you know, little did I know, and its been twelve years that the world that we would become trans people would become the number one targeted group of all the vitriol, that the violence that trans people

encounter is off the charts. So, as I said, it's harder, and especially living now in a red state, even though Nashville is a blue city, and having all these laws passed and everything else, it's much harder. One of the reasons I moved back to Maine. Not that there aren't people who disagree in Maine too, you know, every place has its as it's you know, divisions, but uh yeah, it's it is harder. It's much harder, Okay.

We need every single person. I'm privileged. I'm lucky. First of all, I have support human support for me personally. My family, my friends, my colleagues, you know, support me in what I've done in terms of transitioning and who I am now and who they want me to be and how they want me to be. So I'm supported. I also am invisible two people who don't know me. Like I said, I can walk down the street and no one's going to be the wiser. No one ever raises their eyebrows at me. I'm just a guy. I'm

an old man. You know, I'm just another old white guy, you know that's wandering through the world. And so I have privilege in that I'm now seen as an older white male, and believe me, I have I'm like a fly on the wall. I'm like a spy because i was a woman for sixty years and now I've been a guy, and I there are believe me, there are big differences. But I'm privileged. Not everybody is. And my

concern now more than anything is the trans youth. And there are a lot of organizations out there for trans youth, but it's the youth who are being punished now more than anything with the laws that are being taken away about trans care. And people can have their opinions about this stuff, but you know, you don't have the right to take away what someone needs to live their life.

There's going to be and I hate to be so crass about it, but each state Ohio being the last last week that takes away trans care for youth is causing the death of kids. There are kids who will commit suicide because they don't think they have any options left in becoming who they feel they are. And that's not a joke. There's no fun in that. You know, there's no you know, people who you know, they brush

off trans people. You know, Oh, they're just crazy, you know, blah blah blah, there is no there's only two genders and all this bullshit. You know, you don't know. They're ignorant. If you were inside my body, you would know. You can't be inside my body any more than you can understand what it's like to lose a child. If you haven't, you can't understand what it's like to be transgender. And I don't expect anybody to understand. What I expect is that you let me live and that you don't make

decisions and assumptions about my life. For me, it's the same with Roe v. Wade. But we could get into women, you know, we could go into all of that stuff too. Don't you who don't know anything about me make decisions about my life. Believe me, it's not just the trans youth medical care that's going to be taken away. These people in these states want to take away all transcare for all trans people, which means I take testosterone. You know, they want to take that away from me. They don't

Florida the law or Texas. I can't remember which one, but just in the last week or so, you can't have your name. My name is Sydney now right, I have a license it says Sydney Bullens mail my birthday, all of that now. I think it's the state of Texas. I couldn't be wrong, so I don't want to. But in some state, just in the last week or two, it is now illegal to have my I couldn't have Cindy on my license, Sydney. I'd have to have Cindy Bulloans on my license looking like I look, you know,

don't take away my right to exist. And that's what I have to say about it.

serious consideration. There are differences between transitioning with trans women and trans men. There are different procedures, different costs, so it's not a one, one size fits all decision. I know people who feel that they are transgender, who have never transitioned and who will never transition because they don't want to go through the hardships of transitioning, or they don't have the cost of doing it, or they're afraid

for their lives and their livelihoods. Because many trans people lose jobs or don't get jobs because they're trans. They're a transperson. We're discriminated against. So there's so many considerations that it's not just a one sentence or a one even a one paragraph answer. But the but what I would say is talk to people. You know what I did, well, I read every book I could get my hands on.

I went on I did find some books written by trans people, and I read every one of them that I could, and I watched YouTube videos of trans people there were I had no idea there was so many trans people out there who were transitioning, and and I did a lot of I went to my doctor, I went to a gender therapist in Boston so that I could because I never talked about it. I never I put it so far back in the back of my mind that I didn't keep up with it. I didn't,

you know. I mean, I read Chaz Bono's book before I decided to transition, just because you know, it was there. But I never. If you had told me a day before I decided that I had to look into it, that I was going to look into it, I would have told you were crazy. I was living my life. I was Cindy Bullen's I had grandchildren by that time. I was in the refugees and doing some gigs and you know, hi, but I had to do it. So

there's a lot to consider. And I would just say, find as many resources as you possibly can before you move forward with it. But let me just tell you something. Once I knew it was possible for me, there was no going back. There was no going back, even though I talk about it in the book that yes no, yes, no, yes no. But all the while I was transitioning, even though I was afraid at certain points.

about depicting trans people. And my hope was and I actually developed a TV pilot with a writer in Hollywood. We haven't sold it yet, but we're developing a TV pilot about a trans character.

for example. You know, And so I'm trying to interject, you know, little incidences and idiosyncrasies about being trans, and so I think that Hollywood needs to educate themselves as much as possible so that those idiosyncrasies and the reality of being trands, not just the violent part and not just the horrible parts of what happens, and not just making you know, comedies about us, but really having an in depth view of what it is and in a character and the pathos of it.

they don't care. What's your pronoun them? Okay, you know, all right, they don't care. They don't care if you're a trans girl or a trans boy, or you're you know, a they or you know, they don't care. Now, if you're brought up by somebody who is vitriolic and and doesn't understand as a young person, then you're going to have your parents' viewpoint more than not. But there are

more people. But you know, evolution goes on whether we like it or not, and sooner or later, all of us old white guys are going to be dead, and the younger people are going to bring us up. If we can live that long, if we can retain our democracy, if we can retain our planet, then these which is really the critical question, these young people will show the way. I have great faith in the young people. I have a twenty six year old step You know, I have

great faith. My daughter is forty, but she's you know hip, you know, she's she knows, she doesn't care, she doesn't care for her kids are gay, straight, whatever they are. You know. It's so the hope that I have is with the young people, and we do have advocates, and that beyond the young people, and I hope to be one of them. I hope that people will hear my story and ask me questions and understand that I'm just

a human being. You know, I'm a human being who has lived a full, complicated, not easy life with lots of bells and whistles, and that there's more about us that you know. You've heard this term before, but it stands true here too. There's more about me, you know, us all being alike, trans people and non trans people being alike. Then there are differences because we're all human. So I have hope, but I go into the glass half empty thing a lot. I have to pull myself out of the bottom of the glass.