Patti Spangler’s life reads like an American road movie rewritten by truth, courage, and hard-earned self-understanding. Known to many as “Trucker Patti,” she has lived multiple lives across decades, identities, highways, and closets, not as an act of reinvention, but as survival. Born intersex with XXY chromosomes, Patti spent much of her life carrying a secret that shaped every decision she made, from love and marriage to career and geography. She was a Bourbon Street showgirl under the neon lights of New Orleans, a long-haul truck driver crisscrossing America in deliberate anonymity, a Navy musician navigating fear and loss, and a woman who spent 25 years passing flawlessly as “ordinary” while paying the price in silence.
Patti’s story is not about spectacle, it is about endurance, honesty, and the slow reclaiming of joy. Through satellite radio conversations on SiriusXM OutQ, Patti found community while driving alone through the night, and eventually the courage to come out again, this time with intention and purpose. Her story, captured in Beau J. Genot's documentary Trucker Patti (2014) and shared through activism and education, challenges not only straight audiences, but also LGBTQ communities, to expand their understanding of gender, intersex experiences, and the cost of invisibility. This is a conversation about closets and courage, glamour and grief, love and regret, fear and freedom, and what it really means to live an authentic life when the world keeps telling you to hide.
Monika: Patti, before we get into anything deep, I have to ask, when you were cruising America’s highways as Trucker Patti, did it ever feel a little like the Convoy movie, and did you meet as many handsome drivers as Kris Kristofferson?
Patti: I did meet a few handsome drivers, but honestly, most were pretty ordinary, and some were downright smarmy. The real romance for me wasn’t in the men; it was in the landscape. The beauty of the scenery, especially at sunrise or late at night, was what made the job feel magical.
Monika: You know, whenever I drive and make a tiny mistake, all the male drivers seem to assume I’m hopeless just because I’m a woman. Did you have to prove to the trucker world that a woman could handle a rig just as well as any man?
Patti: In the beginning, yes. When I started driving in the late ’80s, there weren’t many women out there on their own. Everyone used the CB radio back then, and sometimes I’d hear chatter when I was backing into a dock. It always made me laugh because backing up was something I was genuinely good at. Over time, I found that most drivers were helpful and respectful. The few who weren’t, I simply ignored. Eventually, my skills spoke for themselves.
Monika: Out on those highways, were you often spotting fellow women behind the wheel, or was it mostly a sea of men?
Patti: At first, it was almost entirely men. Most of the women I saw were co‑drivers with their husbands. But by the mid‑2000s, things had changed dramatically. There were many more solo women drivers, and it felt like the industry was finally opening up in a meaningful way.
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| The documentary by Beau J. Genot. |
Monika: I know how to change a tyre myself, though I always worry whether my nails survive it. Did you have to learn all the trucker skills like that while on the road?
Patti: I went to truck‑driving school in San Diego, so I learned the basics there, everything from safety checks to handling freight. But by the 2000s, trucks had become so mechanically sophisticated that drivers weren’t allowed to do much hands‑on maintenance anymore. And companies realized that having drivers load or unload freight by hand caused too much fatigue, the major cause of accidents, so that part of the job faded away too. In a way, the industry became more specialized and safer for drivers.
Monika: When you used to stop over for the night, that must have felt a little scary being a lone woman behind the wheel. Or did it never bother you?
Patti: I actually felt very secure in my truck. I was always careful about where I parked for the night, choosing well‑lit or busy areas whenever possible. And I had my dog with me, she was my early‑warning system and made me feel even safer. With those precautions, I rarely felt afraid.
Monika: Let’s change the gears then. Your story is different from mine and most of the girls I have interviewed in an important way, because you are intersex and were born with Klinefelter syndrome, an XXY chromosomal variation. Do you remember the moment a doctor finally gave you that diagnosis? What did it feel like to have a name for something that had shaped your life for so long?
Patti: I started my transition in New Orleans in 1977. In the spring of 1978, I moved back to my mom’s place in Modesto, California, to start college. That same fall, I learned about Stanford University Medical Center’s Gender Dysphoria Clinic. I went there for hormones and was referred to an endocrinologist, who diagnosed me with Klinefelter syndrome. As she explained what that meant, so many pieces of the confusion in my life suddenly started to make sense. I had known from my earliest memories, probably around age three, that I was supposed to be a girl. By age four, I understood that this was something I could not talk about with anyone, so when I said my bedtime prayers, I always asked God to let me wake up as a girl. That did not happen for another twenty-four years.
Monika: Even so, the diagnosis did provide you with additional answers about yourself.
Patti: The diagnosis also explained why I started developing breasts at twelve, why I had no noticeable Adam’s apple, very little facial or body hair, and why my voice was so high. I was elated to go home and tell my mom, who was a registered nurse and one hundred percent supportive of me, unlike most of the rest of my family, that there was actually a medical reason why I was the way I was. At that point, I had no clue how much I still needed to learn about being intersex, because there are so many variations. It was 1978, and information was scarce.
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| In one of the drag shows in the 80s. |
Monika: Klinefelter syndrome is often associated with things like delayed or incomplete puberty, lower testosterone levels, less facial or body hair, or even breast development. Looking back, did any of those signs raise questions for you before a doctor ever put a name to it, or did everything only make sense in hindsight?
Patti: No doctor had ever even hinted that Klinefelter syndrome existed. To this day, I still wonder how I managed to pass my physical to join the Navy. It was noted on my exit physical that I had a micropenis and “pendulous” breasts, and I still love the term “pendulous.” Looking back now, it feels surreal that all of this was documented and yet never explained.
Monika: You began your adult life following what many people would have seen as a very traditional path. In the late 1970s, you married your high school sweetheart, Sherri. Looking back, was that choice more about survival, about hiding, or simply about doing what you believed was expected of you at the time?
Patti: Sherri was my best friend. I was struggling with my sexuality, and because so many of my friends were getting married, I thought that marriage might cure my attraction to men. At that point in my life, I had never met an openly gay man and did not even truly understand what “queer” meant, other than that it was bad. I cannot believe how naive I was. Marrying her was a terrible thing to do to my best friend, and I carried that guilt for many years, even after I finally began to understand myself.
Monika: I wonder if joining the Navy was also, in some way, a test, a chance to see whether you could become the kind of man the world expected you to be.
Patti: Not really. I was living in a very dysfunctional home, and when my hopes of going away to college were crushed by my asshole stepfather, I joined the Navy to get away and to spite him. I was cheap labor at the family liquor store, and I told no one I was leaving for boot camp until I had already signed my enlistment papers. He was not happy, and honestly, that only confirmed for me that I had made the right decision.
Monika: Many transgender women describe an early period where attraction to men was present before they fully understood or could articulate their female identity. Was there a similar phase in your life, where sexuality was clearer than gender, or did your experience unfold differently?
Patti: My gender was always clear in my mind. What was unclear was how I was ever going to make being a girl actually happen in the real world. When I developed an attraction to boys at age thirteen, it was just confusing, because it did not fit into any framework I had been given. I knew who I was, but I had no language, no roadmap, and no examples to guide me.
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| In the Navy Steel Band, back row, second from right. |
Monika: When you came out as gay while in the Navy, it cost you your marriage and your career, but not your integrity. What did it take, at twenty-two, to stand in front of your commanding officer and insist you had done nothing dishonorable?
Patti: I was a musician in the Navy and a member of a small, specialized group that played steel drums from Trinidad. I came out to my bandmates, and since musicians tend to be more tolerant, it was not a big deal. I had not been caught in any compromising position that would embarrass them, and because I had turned myself in, they were supportive. We were only about ten people, and we were pretty tight. We were attached to the larger base band, and one of my friends found out through the grapevine that my very homophobic commanding officer was planning to make an example of me, and that some guys were supposedly going to beat me up before I could get off the base. That really pissed me off. I was naive, but I was not stupid.
I had talked to a lawyer and learned that they had to give me a general discharge under honorable conditions, because I had not broken any articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As for getting beaten up, that just enraged my bandmates and my chief, and I went nowhere on base without a few of them in tow. Facing the CO and listening to the horrible, degrading, and completely untrue things he said to me was humiliating, but that humiliation was softened by the fact that I got my honorable discharge and left the base unscathed. Walking away intact felt like a quiet victory.
Monika: Do you remember the first time you met a transgender woman? How did you become Rita Merrill?
Patti: I think we all remember the first transgender woman we ever meet. I had discovered drag several months before I got out of the Navy. I made friends at the first gay bar I ever went to, the Bourbon Pub in the French Quarter, and one of them happened to be a drag queen. Long story short, he put me in drag, we went out, and everyone I met thought I was a cisgender woman. He took me to the club where he performed, and I fell in love with performing almost immediately.
It was after one of my shows that I met Samantha, a very pretty, very fishy girl. We went out for a drink after the show, and she explained to me what a transsexual was. I instantly knew I had found my people. My stage name came from my mom’s first name and the last name of my best friend in grade school, and once I stepped into it, it felt strangely inevitable. When I became a bartender at the Midship, the bar the working girls frequented, some of the girls started calling me “Rita Real” because at first many of the girls who didn't know me thought the owner of the bar had hired a cisgender woman and at first were not happy as all the other bartenders were trans.
Monika: Bourbon Street has a way of amplifying everything, beauty, bravado, danger, and desire. What did it feel like stepping onto that stage at the Silver Frolics as Rita Merrill, under those lights, at that moment in your life?
Patti: It felt weird, and that feeling never quite went away, which is why I only worked there for six months. It was one thing to perform in a drag bar with adoring gays and lesbians, and quite another to perform for straight tourists who looked at me like I was a freak. I loved being on stage, but I never fully felt seen for who I was.
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| Promo photo of Sandra Sextion. And Silver Frolics girls: Sandra and Patti (on the right). |
Monika: When you look back at those years in New Orleans, performing at places like Fat Sam’s Speakeasy, do you remember more freedom, or more fear, or were the two inseparable?
Patti: Definitely freedom. I was way too naive to feel fear, and I felt completely safe in the gay bars. In hindsight, I realize how vulnerable I probably was, but at the time, I was just finally living, and that feeling outweighed everything else.
Monika: Sandra Sexton was a star, and it was a badly kept secret that she was transgender too. What did it mean to share space with someone like her, even quietly, at a time when visibility itself was risky?
Patti: Sandra was a very beautiful, petite woman, and she was just as beautiful on the inside. She went out of her way to be one of the girls whenever she came over to hang out with us at the Frolics. I think the reason she was never publicly outed was because of the kind of woman she was, gracious, kind, and never threatening. I definitely learned a lesson in kindness from Sandra, simply by watching how she moved through the world.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Patti Spangler.
The main photo by Pascal Halim Photography.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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