He was imagining this?
SS: Yeah, and he said, "You had these goofy huge earrings on, and you wore these great big white pumps."
This was a dream he had?
SS: Yeah. It's just the things people think when they think of a guy coming to work dressed as a woman.
Somebody you worked with.
SS: Oh absolutely, a good friend. And they were being very honest with me, with their fears and trepidations. I said, "I would think your reactions would be extremely appropriate, and it probably looks stupid in your dream as well. So I'm not comin' to work lookin' like Aunt Bea, and I'm not going to dress in drag.
KD: Steve is a conservative, professional, deliberative person.
Aunt Bea's conservative...
KD: Susan's going to be a conservative, professional, deliberative person. The person of Susan is the same as the person of Steve. He has not undergone a personality transplant, that he's going to dress in flamboyant clothing, have big old gaudy earrings, look like Aunt Bea.
Well, what is your personal style as a woman?
SS: Same as a guy. It's very conservative.
What kind of clothes, hairstyle? Have you imagined this?
SS: Well, absolutely. One of the things I was predicating that quote unquote transition plan is I want to have my own hair. So it was something as basic as that. I need to have my hair grow. As a guy I got a haircut every other week, sometimes every week. So I've had to let it grow, I don't want to grow make-believe hair. That was going to take time just to let my hair grow. I would be wearing the same kind of business suits I do as a guy, only more feminine, and as a woman, but it would not be looking like the Aunt Bea people had envisioned in their dreams, which again is a very humanistic, understandable fear. During the meetings a couple of times, I was joking with the cops. We were joking about these whole aspects of me coming to work as a woman, and they were trying to understand what that meant. So they were asking good questions, "If you get past this, do you still want to come out with us?"
The cops were asking you that?
SS: Absolutely. You know, are you still going to want to train with the SWAT team? Well, why would I not want to train with the SWAT team?
The cover of Creative Loafing this week is going to be the Largo city seal with WRONG across it in rainbow-colored letters. How do you respond to that?
SS: The City of Largo is a city of progress, and I've said...
I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm saying the city of Largo made a mistake—
SS: They made a mistake, they made a mistake—
And they're wrong about it, and they should fix it.
SS: I'm hopin' that they will. I'm realistic, it may be too late for them to go back and undo what time has done, but certainly as media continues to expand and I become more of a public figure that may or may not be possible. My first love is being manager of an organization I've devoted 17 years to and I believe it's possible. It's not going to be easy. I indicated in my letter to employees that the transition is going to be awkward, and it was going to require a tremendous amount of sensitivity and flexibility and I suspect a certain degree of good humor on my part.
On everybody's.
SS: Moreso me. When you do as much training with as many employees as I do, if you can't laugh at yourself at the potential absurdity of these kind of changes...then you oughta stay home. You oughta stay home.
Tell me about your job. What would be a typical day for you as a city manager?
SS: I had the best job in the city, and I still have the best job in the city. I've not been fired yet. I was always known for getting out and about. The week prior to this thing blowing up I was working on a street crew — um, digging out a median — so that a fire truck I was on six weeks ago could make the turn easier. Because I listened to everybody in the back of the truck whine about the fact that they couldn't go over the median, so I said, "I can do that." And someone said, "It's not as easy as you think it is, boss." "Well, tell you what — put me on the work site, let me see how complicated this can be." Sure enough, it was more complicated than I thought.
