Ray Ramsey flexed his index and middle fingers a lot, creating air quotes around a word that’s easily mocked.
Or at least open to interpretation.
Ramsey, a 20-year-old transgender man, never followed the “norm” while growing up in Concord, and he’s not following it now, either.
It was at Memorial Field three years ago when Ramsey and Concord High made the community rethink traditional roles and labels, after he was named Homecoming King at halftime of a Tide football game.
And it was there recently, on a bright, breezy day, that Ramsey and his girlfriend of two years, 18-year-old Ivy Noel, walked the grounds, hand in hand, a couple answering to no one but each other, figuring it’s time that the world around them was left to figure out their relationship.
Ramsey works at the Hooksett tolls rest area, at the general store, and takes classes at NHTI, pursuing a business degree.
Noel starts classes at Colby-Sawyer College this month and wants to be a veterinarian. They met at band camp and live together in Concord. If they stick together, they might want kids. Noel wants a dog, perhaps two.
They appreciate the country’s changing culture, but know the process is ongoing.
“The way a lot of people view it now is the way discrimination was viewed so many years ago,” Ramsey said. “There are still some people who have their beliefs that aren’t okay with it, but it’s something that is publicly acceptable, and that is exactly how I think it’s going to happen in the future.”
Perhaps it’s fitting that Ramsey was sitting in the center of the busy Hooksett rest area, blending in, speaking casually, barely noticed. Travelers were too busy to worry about the young man in their midst, the one who’s helped turn labels and traditional roles upside down, featuring an easy smile along the way.
He’s got a slight build, glasses and short dark hair swept to the side. He’s had a double mastectomy, 80 percent of which was paid for through insurance, that was made simpler because he had small breasts to begin with. Testosterone has given him an Adam’s apple, facial hair, plus a deeper voice. Reconstructive surgery, Ramsey hopes, will one day follow.
There are tattoos on Ramsey’s right arm, a trumpet and a guitar, just two of the many instruments he plays. He wore a blue shirt with a “Raymond” name tag, part of the uniform for his job at the rest stop’s general store.
At the store, where he’s worked for two years, he’s out front, on a stage of sorts, greeting people from all over, some of whom have no filter.
“The hardest experience I’ve had, especially being in a customer service job, is with kids,” Ramsey said. “Before I was on testosterone and surgery, they don’t know when it’s not okay to say something like, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ The parent will tell them, ‘You can’t say that! I’m so sorry.’ It’s fine. It happens all the time. Kids are curious and they want to know.”
As a grade-school kid Ramsey, then named Rachel, knew he was different, choosing to have short hair, wear jeans and show an interest in monster trucks. No braids, no dresses, no blouses, no dolls.
Then, figuring he was gay because of his attraction to girls, Ramsey had trouble following the “norm” there, too, feeling more like a heterosexual man than a lesbian.
To Ramsey, “norm” became a hollow word, full of subjectivity, lacking in concrete truth.
His response at the time?
Move over, Rachel.
Make way for Ray Ramsey.
“My mind and personality don’t match up with the body that is on the outside,” Ramsey explained. “With gay people it does, and that’s how they want to interact sexually. With me, it was almost like when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see myself.”
Some segments of society don’t understand transgender individuals, can’t cope with them and have no interest in trying. Violence based on hatred and bigotry happens.
Not here, Ramsey says. Not in Concord. Ramsey has tapped into his potential and is, finally, loving life.
“All of their school systems here are very well educated, very willing to work with you,” Ramsey said of his time as a student in Concord. “I’d walk from school and hear ‘faggot’ from a car window, and that kind of hurt, but I was never abused face to face. People know it’s okay. They know it’s not this demon thing living inside you. It’s who you are.”
His thoughts on being transgender flow like the notes from a guitar, French horn or piano – the instruments he loves to play. And when it comes to his deepest feelings about labels, about what’s normal and what isn’t, what’s acceptable and what isn’t, Ramsey is an open book, ready to let you flip through the pages of his life.
Who better, then, to be Concord High School’s first transgender Homecoming King, announced at a football game in October 2013, an honor that attracted national attention? Whether he knows it or not, Ramsey is an ambassador for new schools of thought, new roads to travel.
Ramsey, by merely being himself, is pushing an evolutionary process, as is this entire community, led, in part, by former Concord High principal Gene Connolly, who’s suffering from ALS and retired in June.
“Not only did (being named Homecoming King) hit me that my peers liked me enough to do that, but so many people were willing to go against the ‘norm’ to let me be a part of things like I was born male,” Ramsey said, offering more air quotes. “Overall the entire experience was groundbreaking to me, from the nomination to the moment (Connolly) announced it at the game and everyone in the grandstands went wild.”
To be sure, Ramsey is lucky that his parents are who they are. Said his father, Dave Ramsey of Concord, “My main concern was the fear that he might not be choosing the easiest path in life. But after experiencing the situation, I realized it wasn’t so much the path he chose, it was more of a choice of whether he should hide it or not. I had to grow to understand that. I was never disappointed or upset. My major concern was that my kids’ lives were as smooth and as easy as possible.”
Accepting a transgender lifestyle isn’t exactly an ideal path to smooth sailing. Even being gay would have been easier for others to understand and accept, and that’s the direction in which Ramsey’s journey began. With respect to children’s clothing, it’s not so much what he wore, but what he chose not to wear.
“My parents and grandmother and anyone who would take me shopping, I never shopped in the girls’ section,” Ramsey said. “I always liked boys’ clothes better, and I always had a short haircut. Never once in my life did I find a dress or a skirt to wear. I wore a dress maybe when I was a baby. (I wore) collared shirts for picture day at school. Never a blouse.”
As the years passed, Ramsey, still labeling himself a girl, knew full well “she” was attracted to girls, not boys.
“In middle school we started learning about that kind of stuff,” Ramsey said. “So when I learned about girls, I said, ‘Oh, that’s what I am, I like girls, have for a long time.’ So from eighth grade to junior year in high school, I was just a lesbian.”
Ramsey left a note by the coffee pot, telling Dave Ramsey that his daughter Rachel was a lesbian. Ray had always communicated sensitive information to his father this way, with a note and some anxiety.
“I wanted him to think it over for a night,” Ray said. “I didn’t know how my family views were on that because no one had talked about it before. It wasn’t a topic of choice.”
Ramsey recalled his father saying something like this: “I just want you to know I’m totally fine with it and you can be who you want to be. I fully support you if this is what you actually want, and I know your mother is like that and I know your sister is like that and we will make the rest of the family like that.”
Still, as a gay girl, Ramsey never felt comfortable, through the rest of junior high, or into high school. “It was not quite right,” Ramsey said. “Something was still missing.”
Then things got really complicated. Ramsey and his sister, Robin Ramsey, enjoyed watching DeGrassi, a TV show about teens that included a transgender male. Ramsey, Robin noticed, paid special attention when the character appeared on screen.
“You could tell there was a fascination or this clicking going on in his brain,” said Robin, who’s 23. “A lot of nights I would sit there and be like, ‘Just ask him,’ especially after he came out as gay. But I never did.”
When Ramsey, then a high school junior, eventually admitted to Robin that he was, indeed, transgender, her response to him was, “Duh.”
Said David Ramsey, “It’s been very smooth. Ray has made it really easy.”
The community has made it easy for Ray. As he said when referring to the transgender bathroom issues in North Carolina, “It’s crazy to hear about somewhere else, that if I were to live there, my life would be totally different. Not just being able to go into that bathroom, but would I be going through these changes right now? Would I come out to my friends? Would I come out to my family?”
For those in his family who weren’t convinced that this was a lifelong change – and Ramsey said there were some who, indeed, resisted – a confirmation of sorts came during that Concord High Homecoming celebration, at halftime of that football game at Memorial Field.
There, after Ramsey played in the marching band and sang the National Anthem, he was waved up to the press box by Connolly, the Concord High principal.
Connolly revealed that Ramsey had been named Homecoming King, which would become official at halftime. Word later surfaced in several national news outlets, about the student, born a girl, who was crowned king.
“I remember (Connolly) being so proud of me and hugging me,” Ramsey said. “Mr. Connolly and I always had an amazing relationship, but he was definitely a big impact on everything I accomplished in high school. He was always there for me, pushing me to do things. He was so proud of the school for what we had accomplished (that) he still talks about it today, as he mentioned it in his (graduation) speech this year.”
Connolly retired after that speech, slowed by ALS. He continues to adjust to a disease that steals mobility and speech. Meanwhile, Ramsey’s pursuit of a new identity took a giant step earlier this month, when his father and grandfather, slow to recognize Ramsey’s new gender, went on a weekend getaway to the family cabin in Pittsburg.
There, three years since Ramsey stepped from the shadows, his grandfather began to use his grandson’s new name, while also using the proper pronoun.
“He referred to me as Raymond and called me ‘he’,” Ramsey said. “That was the first time because he would not remember, or he would not put the effort into it.”
Added Dave Ramsey, “It was a growth process, absolutely, more with the relatives. We just tried to refer to him as Ray around them, and he has an understanding that it is an adjustment for all of us.”
That extends to Ramsey’s love life. He met Noel at high school band camp. They’ve been a couple for two years, after becoming best friends at Concord High. She heard taunts after Ramsey was named Homecoming King.
“Some people in my class knew we were really close and would ask, ‘How do you feel about having two Homecoming Queens?’ ” Noel said. “Those were just jerks, and I was not afraid to tell them off. All of our friends were super excited.”
She sees nothing strange in their relationship, saying, “He was my best friend before we did anything romantically, so that’s why I think we’re working out. I’ve never been involved with a girl, so Ray, in my head, has always been a guy. The fact that he was transgender didn’t change the way I felt about him at all.”
It was obvious on that recent windy day at Memorial Field. Ramsey and Noel posed for pictures on the bleachers overlooking the football field, site of a major event in his life.
He has no illusions that all of society has come along for the ride. “The world is changing,” he said, “and it can be hard for a variety of people to adapt to it. I’m just one puzzle piece.”
Then Ramsey flexed his index and middle fingers one more time, questioning the significance of a word he finds vague.
“People have more recognition for (transgender people) than they did 10 to 15 years back,” he said. “As far as cultural ‘norms’ go, we’re catching up fast.”
(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304 or
rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)