Work Text:
Sidney opened the door to the VIP tent, surprised to find Klinger already there, sitting on a chair.
“Klinger,” Sidney said, moving himself to stand in front of Klinger. He was clutching a purse in a way that reminded Sidney of a specific infuriating brand of old ladies. In-fact, Klinger’s entire get-up did. He supposed that’s what the corporal was going for this afternoon.
“My, how you’ve grown,” Sidney teased, wishing he could just go to sleep and rest his head wound. But he liked Klinger. Even if Klinger was just cross-dressing to get out of the army, he couldn’t help but feel a kind of kinship. “Seems like just this morning you were a little girl in Mary Janes.” Still, he found all of Klinger’s other scams annoying.
Klinger shifted in his chair. Was he nervous? “Can I talk to you, Major?” Klinger was nervous. But about what? “I hear you got your shingle out.”
Sidney had no idea why Klinger would be nervous, although he should have known that the corporal would use Potter assigning him to the camp as an excuse to try for a Section Eight. Again .
“I realize I’ve only told you about a hundred and twelve times,” Sidney replied as he laid down on his bed, “But I can’t help you with the Section Eight routine.”
“Oh, I don’t want to talk about getting out.” Klinger pulled his chair closer to the bed, right up to the head, where Sidney could easily turn to look at him. “I want to talk about- being crazy.”
Klinger was most certainly nervous. And Sidney was starting to have a suspicion about why. He shifted into psychiatrist mode. “Well this is a novel approach,” but Sidney didn’t betray his concern. He needed to keep things casual, coax Klinger into opening up. “Go on.”
“No, I mean it,” Klinger took a breath, “I’m afraid I’m going crazy.”
That confirmed his suspicions. It was time to get to work. As Sidney sunk fully into psychiatrist mode, he realized it would be ridiculous to do therapy if he was the one laying down. As much as his head protested, he got back up into a sitting position and faced Klinger.
“You want me to lie down?” Klinger asked.
Sidney couldn’t lose the moment. “What’s the problem?”
“Well,” Klinger began. He was very uncomfortable. Klinger wasn’t used to this kind of vulnerability. At this point, he was like a mouse, cautiously approaching an outstretched hand of food. At this stage, the most important part was not to spook him. “I look at myself in the mirror lately,” Klinger continued, "and I see this guy in earrings, pillbox hat, veil- maybe even a choker of pearls. And I ask myself- ‘would a sane man dress like this?'"
There it was- the denouement. Sidney had already formulated the first steps of his strategy. He’d written tactics; all on his own, it’s not like his colleagues would even accept such mental colonization was even a problem, for these situations. Although usually the patient was coming from a different direction. But it should still work.
Klinger wasn’t done. “I’m tryin’ to convince them, and I think I’m convincing myself.”
“You’re actually worried?” Sidney asked. He fully believed Klinger already, but by getting him to affirm it, the healing process would be easier.
“Major, I think I’m really going nuts.” Klinger wasn’t just nervous, he was terrified. “Gina Lollobrigida used to make me drool, and last week I looked at a picture of this beautiful voluptuous woman, and all I could think of was,” Now Klinger was doing his best to hide his terror behind his standard theatricality. “‘How could she wear a peasant blouse with a tweed skirt?’ Now is that el flippo or what?”
First it seemed most prudent to calm Klinger down. “Well I can say,” Sidney began, “with a hundred percent certainty, that you're not going insane.”
“How do you know Major?” Klinger said like a drowning man trying to grab onto a life-raft. Unfortunately, for him, the answer was more complicated than something like ‘because only a sane person would ask that’.
“Because transvestites aren't insane.”
“But why wouldn't they be?” The cognitive dissonance was starting to set in. “Why else would someone want to wear a dress?”
“Now I disagree with my colleagues on this matter,” Sidney tried to stay calm and keep his own emotions out of this. He was with a patient. He wasn’t defending his ideas in front of other doctors. “But the point of psychiatry shouldn't be to make a person normal, but to ease the suffering their mind is causing them. What someone does in the bedroom or wears shouldn't be any of our concern.”
Klinger seemed to accept that proposition. Sidney was a doctor, and they were to be taken at their word. He had no idea that it was such a radical idea Sidney would end up completely discredited if he said it too loud. “Okay, so there's no chance I'm crazy. But I mean, I could still be an actual transvestite.”
“What would be so bad about that?” Sidney asked, dryly. The game had begun.
Klinger didn’t respond at first. Sidney knew, that as Klinger wrinkled his brow, he was coming to realize he had no explanation for a belief he had held for so long, one that he saw as inherent.
When the silence became too awkward, Klinger went to change the subject. “Okay then, what are they like?” That tracked, Klinger was questioning everything he’d been told about what "real" transvestites are like. “You have to know some, if you're so certain they're not crazy.”
“Well usually when they're cross-dressing it's a persona, with a new name and pronouns,” Sidney replied, “For some people, it's nothing more than a costume, a character they're playing for the night. But for others, it's the clothes they have to put on the next morning that's a costume- to protect and hide their true selves.” Sidney had met several of both varieties, what with the kind of groups he was involved with.
“Oh so I should be telling everyone to call me Maxine? Then I'd actually get the Section Eight?”
This was something Sidney had always wanted to talk to Klinger about. Even outside of camaraderie, Klinger was just an interesting question, asking where exactly was the line between performance and reality. “Klinger, I know you're smart enough to understand what a Section Eight would actually entail. You don't want that. Remember when we first met, I offered you an out? I knew you were faking, people like-” No, even will how openly they were talking, he still couldn’t. “-People like that, are acutely aware of their own sex. They don't go walking around like you do. They keep their preferences hidden. But you didn't want it on your record that you were a transvestite and a homosexual. It isn't like your uncle's time, they don't just send you home. They-” Images of what Sidney had heard of, read, and even seen flashed through his head. Stories he’d heard from both sides of the equation. Of people like him. Sidney managed to recover. He couldn’t show any of his own emotions. This wasn’t the place. “They try to 'treat' you. I was just going to fudge some papers and send you home with the cards of a few friends of mine. But if you had actually convinced a psychiatrist. Someone who wasn't like me…” Still, they wouldn’t stop. Sidney’s greatest fear- the one that terrified him more than the war itself- had slipped out of its box.
Sidney took a deep breath and gave his head a little shake. That seemed to work. This wasn’t the time or the place. He did his best to fall back into psychiatry mode.
“Sorry,” Sidney returned his focus to Klinger’s face. Had the corporal noticed anything? “As I was saying, you don't have to worry about being insane.”
“But what about how into fashion I've become?” Klinger was still worried, “It's not just a game or a way to pass the time, I want to wear the latest fashions.”
“There's nothing wrong with that.” Sidney knew it would take many sessions for the message, that being a transvestite wasn’t wrong, to get through. The brain likes familiar patterns, and such an idea ran contrary to everything Klinger had ever been told. But Sidney didn’t have several sessions. Hopefully just one would be enough to lay the groundwork.
“Fashion could just something you enjoy,” Sidney continued, “ Men's fashion just doesn't have that many options. That's just one of the benefits of women’s fashion. You know why feminists have been wearing men's pants since their movement began?”
“Oh, of course. They're way easier to move around in,” Explaining the differences between the two seemed to have brought Klinger back to his comfort zone. “That's why sometimes I wear fatigues with earrings and maybe a scarf. I just couldn't get the work done otherwise. If I didn’t do work, Potter and Major Houlihan yell at me. Sometimes I can get by in a bloomers or a skirt, so I'll wear that.”
“So there are pros and cons to each kind of dress,” Sidney gently led Klinger down this line of reasoning. “I’m sure there are also some women’s clothes you wouldn’t wear in certain situations either.”
Klinger nodded.
“Society has just designated some for men and others for women. What society thinks changes over time. Not too long ago, anything other than a full dress would be unthinkable for women. For the Romans, only barbarians wore pants.”
“So am I a transvestite?” Sidney had to feel pity for Klinger, desperately looking for an external answer to a question he could only answer for himself, yet lacked the ability too.
“You could be. Or you could just be a man who likes to wear skirts and loves fashion. Transvestism usually involves some kind of identity- a new persona- whether kept or discarded. it's not like that for you.”
“But Doc, what about the time I got psycho-whatever rashes when I changed back into uniform after Henry died?” Well that really was a surprise. Something that could be gender dysphoria. Klinger certainly didn’t have any physical dysphoria, he would have mentioned it already, but his own subconscious was distressed when he wasn’t wearing women’s clothing.
“That would be psychosomatic,” Sidney didn’t let any of his confusion show through. Time to go calmly, and gather more information. “And changing back into dresses helped it?”
“Instantly. Hawkeye said that it was because the dresses were my way to rebel against the army.”
“Hawkeye was only partially right about that. Normally the brain tells its person when it's stressed directly. Or by doing things like making your hands sweat or your stomach turn. But sometimes it skips those steps. While your mind protects you from the stress, it goes straight to your body and manifests with very real pain.”
“So I get stressed when I'm not in a dress?” This development seemed to be shaking Klinger’s confidence as much as it was Sidney’s.
Still, Sidney appeared calm. “Well yes. But haven't you worn fatigues since then?”
“Well sometimes. Usually I got to wear a slip under it. Jewelry helps. It's never been as bad as a full rash again, but I always feel better once I change back.”
That certainly was some kind of gender-related dysphoria. What Klinger said about feeling better once he could change back into his normal clothes (Sidney even surprised himself when he realized he thought of Klinger’s women's clothes as his normal ones) was consistent with what many of the transvestites who saw their persona as their real self said.
Instead of jumping into that, Sidney went with offering an explanation for the one-off appearance of the rash. “Well when the rash appeared, you were already grieving Henry and unsure about what kind of C.O. Potter would be. Not wearing the clothes you wanted to was just the last straw. Maybe Hawkeye was right about it being your way to rebel, or maybe, no matter how much you like to pretend it's for the Section Eight, your subconscious just legitimately enjoys dressing up.”
As soon as Sidney said that, he was worried he’d pushed a bit too far and Klinger had shut down. He didn’t say anything and just said in the middle distance, thinking. Was the suggestion that Klinger’s subconscious simply enjoyed dressing up too much? Would Klinger close off and Sidney loose all of his rapport?
After a long moment, “...Doc…” Klinger was barely audible.
“Yes?” Sidney asked, hoping he hadn’t blundered too badly.
“..will I go back to normal after the war?” In that moment, Klinger presented with more naked and vulnerable fear then he'd ever shown before.
“Perhaps,” Sidney didn’t want to give false hope. Maybe he could even convince Klinger that being normal- whatever that even was- wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
From Klinger’s face, that one word answer didn’t seem to be enough. Sidney tried some more comfort. “Creating coping mechanisms for stressful situations is fairly common. You might not need this way to rebel, express, and distract yourself when you're safe in Toledo."
“But what if this isn't a coping mechanism?” At this point Klinger exploded in fear and his next words just came slipping out. “What if this is just what I enjoy? What if I was just looking for an excuse to start? And now I can't go back? I know how the real world works. I know it's not like the camp.”
Oh, this wasn’t an internalized thing. It was a perfectly rational external fear. Those were harder to deal with, because there was very little he could ever do.
While Sidney sat there thinking, Klinger composed himself. He took a handkerchief out of his purse and dabbed his eyes a bit.
“You-you,” Klinger finally spoke up, he was still a bit shaken, "said something earlier about giving me the cards of some of your friends?”
Sidney was surprised that it was Klinger who came up with such a good idea. But it was. Sidney could feel himself slipping out of psychiatrist mode. Now he was helping Klinger with an external problem.
“That would be a good idea,” he replied, as he grabbed some army station from his desk and began to write out a few names and addresses. He made sure not to include any kind of header. “Unfortunately, I don't know anyone in the Midwest. I'll just write down a few names and addresses for the coasts. And then a few, um...establishments that might help. Mentioning my name should be enough to get you in the door. Try to keep this list secret. My friends wouldn’t enjoy being on a list together.”
Sidney held his pen over the paper when he realized he couldn’t come up with any more names. Then a strange wave of melancholy washed over him as he stared at the ink drying.
“I’m sorry.”
It was only after uttering those words that Sidney realized he’d slipped entirely out of psychiatrist mode. He hadn’t taken a moment to think about how his words would effect Klinger. He said them with no purpose, they just fell out.
Now it was Klinger’s turn to worry about Sidney. “For what Doc?”
Sidney turned to Klinger, unwittingly letting the last of his walls down. “That the world is like this. For all my talking, for all my studying, often times the world is a greater enemy than a patient's own mind. When that's the case, there's nothing I can do. But I want you to know, I'll always be there for you. Not just as a psychiatrist. People like us,” What Sidney had just admitted to in that moment didn’t register to him, and it wasn’t clear if it even did for Klinger. “We need to stick together. And whether you want it to be a hobby or an identity, there- there's a community out there in the real world.”
“Doc, are- are you crying?”
Cautiously Sidney brought his hand up to his cheeks. They were wet. The heat of shame rushed through him. It hadn’t nothing to do with the topic. It was just the unprofessional-ism of it all.
“Sorry,” Sidney mumbled out as he handed Klinger the paper and then looked away. “I'm- I'm glad I could help you.”
Klinger took the paper, folded it up, and placed it in his purse.
Then he reached out and placed a comforting hand on Sidney’s shoulder, breaking him out of his own emotions. “Doc, it looks like you got a lot more of a stake in these kinds of things than I do. And I guess you don’t even have anyone to go to that’s safe. Since that’s the case, I should probably thank you for helping me so much even if this might turn out not to be too big for me. Really. Thank you for talking to me and giving me those names.”
Klinger let go of Sidney’s shoulder.
“You’re welcome Klinger,” Sidney tried to bring the 4077th’s trademark irreverence back into the conversation. “I mean dealing with this kind of stuff is my job as a psychiatrist. But most of us definitely wouldn’t have given you this kind of service.”
Klinger nodded and left Sidney’s tent, probably to go work on his sewing. Sidney laid back down on his bed. Klinger sure was a mystery, defying any kind of explanation from either way of looking at these kinds of things. He wasn’t sure what kind of understanding of his identity Klinger left the tent with, but he knew that whatever it was, that strange small corporal was better off for the conversation. And in a way, he was as well.
Later that night, when Father Mulcahy came into his tent, reminding him of all the success he’d had, Sidney wasn’t just thinking about Tom’s rage, the constant questions he asked himself if it really was moral to send kids back to the front when otherwise they'd be sent home, or the sick feeling he got whenever he had to work some kid out of his perfectly rational fear of the war. He thought about that young woman (she most certainly was a woman, no matter what society said) he was tasked to treat years ago. She was the one who taught him about the importance of community for deviants like them and introduced him to some of the friends he told Klinger about. Sidney was the one who signed the papers that got her out of the mental hospital. He needed to remember that as unwinnable as the fight seemed and now messed up the world was, every single person he helped was still important. Every little problem he fixed. Tikkun Olam- repairing the world, just like his rabbi taught him when he was a kid. That was why he became a psychiatrist, to repair minds. And why he couldn't just stay quite and protect himself. He might never change the world, but he could still help people.
How ironic was it that it took a Catholic priest to remind him of that?