The Bewitched Prince: Finding My Trans Pen-Pal in the Archives

by Sy Auerbach

He goes by a few names: F. Simpson, Frank, Franni, Francis. Each time I see his all-caps thin handwriting on an envelope, I feel the familiar rush: another letter from my pen-pal. I’ve been volunteering in the GLBT Historical Society’s archives for nearly half a year under the generous tutelage of reference archivist Isaac Fellman. Mondays are my favorite days, as we two trans men spend time amongst queers’ whispers, giggles, tales, tears, sex, paperwork and art.

After processing an addition to the Screaming Queens collection, my first, I am now sorting through 16 cartons, an addition to the Nancy Stoller (formerly Shaw) Papers. Nancy is a lesbian and former Community Studies Professor at UC Santa Cruz, a writer and activist, known particularly for her decades of work about incarcerated women’s health care. She also sued the university after being denied tenure due to discrimination against her politics, gender and sexuality and won back her job.

A Familiar Face

I find Frank’s letters amidst a waterfall in stasis of Nancy’s dream journals, intimate letters tied with ribbon, buttons, “Gays find this offensive” stickers, an Amsterdam Gay Games silver medal and a plethora of sociological research. The first letter was addressed to Nancy and mailed from Pomona, California on December 6, 1978. “Meant to send this a week ago,” writes Frank on the back of the envelope. Inside is a giant piece of graph paper, folded in half until it fits in my palm. The paper is covered in long handwriting, surrounding a self-portrait of a spectral, rugged face. Over a year and a half into my own transition, I recognized that face, a burgeoning cowboy (or cowboi) on testosterone.

The letter was a deep dive into transition, phalloplasty, and growing up trans in the early 1940s. “What maleness has meant to me all my life has been my favorite trip: a fantasy to rival Tolkien’s books,” Frank writes, “A bewitched prince here from a foreign land, maybe even outer space.” I was hooked. The letter went on. Frank had been in prison and afterwards he went to school for mechanical engineering. During the day, I was horrified to read, he worked making weapons for the government. At night he used his engineering skills to design better packers and dildos he would never make but wanted to exist.

He had used his salary to move to a fixer-upper in Pomona, did all the work himself, is lonely, wants love, and recently, as of 1978, traded in his Volkswagen bus for a motorcycle. He tells Nancy now that he is more financially stable he will send a donation to support her work with incarcerated people. From all three of Frank’s letters, these are the few details I have. Some shocked me, especially his line of work. It was hard to reconcile my feeling of intimacy with the flesh and blood facts of Frank along with the mystery of what I didn’t know but felt when I saw his face.

My Internal Archive

The fullness of my first meeting with Frank in all of its conflict and connection led Frank to become a permanent part of my own internal archive. Despite his contradictions, we are in a similar plane, physical or supernatural, nudging our bodies towards the place where we feel better. I don’t excuse him, yet I still hope to communicate with him. In his last letter, he was planning to ride his new motorcycle up the coast to visit San Francisco. I hope to find out if he did.

Sy Auerbach (he/him, they/them) is a volunteer at the GLBT Historical Society’s archives.