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Jane and me

By Leopard J. Ferry

March 13, 2006

San Diego--I’m sitting out on the back patio of Hennessey’s in Carlsbad waiting for Jane Doe. The only problem is, I don’t know what she looks like with her clothes on.

Anyone who’s looked at the Rants and Raves section of Craigslist San Diego can tell you what Jane Doe looks like in the raw. On the open bulletin board (http://sandiego.craigslist.org/rnr/), she’s a headstrong, extremely fit exhibitionist who regularly posts nude and erotic photos of herself.

At conjoined tables by the wall, there’s a group of eight that includes two women. There’s no use looking at the women’s faces—nobody’s seen Jane’s face. It’s best to look for breast implants and a taut physique. None of the women fit the profile.

Jane Doe is shrewd, though, and it’s easy to imagine her doctoring photos so she looks sufficiently different for Craigslist.

We make eye contact. I walk over. “Are you Jane?”

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She’s with her photographer, Michael, and after introductions I comment on the feature.

“Don’t put that in the story!” she pleads.

Jane, wearing a loose green blouse and loose jeans, doesn’t look like Jane. There’re no platform shoes. There’s no mini skirt or halter top. She’s not posing, or bent over, or throwing her ass in anyone’s face. She’s just a chick at a plastic table on a cool sunny afternoon.

And she’s got green eyes.

I wanted to interview Jane Doe in person to put to rest the notion she was a guy. The rumors have been circulating ever since she began posting last fall. With her toned, muscular body and smallish hips, she’s been attacked by some Craigslist readers as being a post-op transsexual.

Jane is all woman. Of course, I don’t check out the equipment, but that’s the one thing that isn’t necessary. Everybody’s seen that. Instead, in the first few minutes of our conversation, I note the face, the hands, the movement. I hear the voice. She has neither the telltale sign of transgender—an Adam’s apple—nor facial hair. She isn’t a man, she isn’t a monster.

Her photographer, Michael, is 40 years old and photographs for the jewelry industry in Carlsbad. He’s wearing a black knit cap, black leather jacket, and gold loop earrings. His build is slender and has the angular facial features and deep wisdom lines of a younger Robert Redford.

During our conversation, Jane speaks animatedly and with the little rhetorical flourishes of someone who regularly spars with the less rational. Sarcasm appears frequently. To drive home the obvious, she deepens her voice and enunciates every syllable. To mimic exasperation, she raises her voice and strangles her words.

Jane returned to Craigslist about three weeks ago, after a three-month absence. During her hiatus, someone pretending to be an acquaintance of Jane posted a message claiming that Jane had withdrawn from CL in order to tend to a family emergency back east.

“I don’t know where that came from,” she says.

She explains that she took a break because her original photographer, who was her roommate at the time, moved back to Kentucky to be with her family. Also, she concedes, “The board was starting to get so negative. I mean, I expect it, obviously. I’m okay with it. But it got so negative, I didn’t look at it.”

Back in November, Jane interacted more with the board, frequently thanking a fawning group of supporters and jousting with a bilious group of detractors. This time around, though, she’s more aloof, perhaps wiser. She explains that it’s a waste of energy to take on critics in a forum such as Rants & Raves, where everyone can post anonymously.

“I’ve been called a female body builder, too skinny, concentration camp survivor, a tranny--”

“I like ‘greyhound,’” Michael interjects.

“A ‘shaved greyhound,’” she says derisively.

The tranny comments get to her and Michael alike. “Please make sure that you say she’s a woman,” Michael implores, “because that is so disturbing.”

(Continued)

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