Billy Huff wanted to make a bold statement.
But around 7 p.m. on Friday night, just as he was scheduled to begin his performance, he sat on a bench outside of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center nursing a cocktail.
“I’m terrified,” he admitted.
Who could blame him?
Huff, a college professor, is transitioning from female to male. And he was preparing to literally bare all—body and soul—and answer the public’s questions about being transgender.
“One of the things I teach is queer theory, and that is all about investigating the shame attached to bodies and especially to specific bodies. Instead of being defensive about it, we should be offensive about it,” he had explained over the phone the night before. It troubled him, he said, to see messages on social media with subject lines such as “Things to Never Ask a Transgendered Person.” He’s an educator. He wants to inform. And he wants to end the shame.
The performance, “Ask Me Anything,” involved Huff standing naked while collaborating artists Rachel Bass and Leila Mesdaghi invited viewers to write their questions. Bass would project the questions on to Huff’s body. He wouldn’t speak during the event, but he’d make eye contact with anyone who entered the space, daring them to look, to wonder and to ask. He’ll answer each question on a blog, https://askmeanything567.wordpress.com/
“This is going to give people an opportunity to connect with someone on a human-to- human level,” said Bass, whose art focuses on social justice and politics. “I think it’s a incredibly generous gift that Billy is offering the community.”
Huff positioned himself, symbolically, at the far wall of a bathroom located in a secondary gallery, separated from the main space where photographer Mila Bridger was celebrating the opening of her #Unexpected portrait exhibit. Bridger, who says she loves artistic collaboration, met Huff through Mesdaghi and welcomed the addition of the show.
Huff had decided to leave Fort Myers, where he taught at Florida Gulf Coast University, for Tampa in the hopes of finding more diversity and better tolerance. Not long ago, while working on his laptop at a local Starbucks, a woman bluntly told him, “I shouldn’t be out in public where there are children.” He landed a position at the University of South Florida.
This is the first time he’s done such a public display.
“Tampa is a friendlier place, but it’s more important to do it somewhere that isn’t,” he said. He credited the Davis Arts Center for letting artists express themselves, regardless of subject matter. (The arts center for its part stresses that the Huff’s views are his own, but affirmed its commitment to supporting artists).
In spite of his pre-performance worries, Huff encountered a largely supportive crowd.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Willow Cada, 23, a Naples resident who says she has a few friends who are transgender and wished they could have seen Huff. “I think it’s so cool.”
The questions included the anatomical: “Have you had surgery to have your breasts removed?” “How do you have sex?” “How long of a process from start to finish?” And they touched on the emotional: “Do you feel more spiritually evolved and/or more integrated as a whole person having experienced both genders?” “What can you say to people living under the pressure of ‘what will people think?’”
Toward the end of the night, three women entered the bathroom and, each in turn, offered Huff a hug. His expression, which he’d kept deliberately emotionless, broke into a grateful smile.
Huff hopes to have his answers posted on the blog this weekend. He stresses that he is speaking only as himself. “Caitlyn Jenner and I, I would assure you, would probably answer them very differently,” he quipped.
