#psujacqueline

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JACQULINE BEISTE

☆ FULL NAME: Jacqueline “Jax” Vaughn Beiste ☆ GENDER: Ciswoman ☆ PRONOUNS: She/Her ☆ AGE: 38 (November 14th, 1986) ☆ TYPE: Half sibling; solo (open to twin) ☆ HOMETOWN: Chicago, Illinois ☆ JOB: Professor of Theatre Studies at PSU; Actor; Founder and Director of Broken Wing Theatre Company ☆ SCHOOL: PSU Alumni ☆ SEXUALITY: Lesbian ☆ FACECLAIM: Sophia Bush

ABOUT JACQUELINE

(tw mentions of child abuse and domestic violence, bullying, transphobia, suicide, suicide attempt, self-harm)

Above all else, Jax loves her dad. Sheldon is her hero, her knight in shining armour, her papa bear, and when life gets her down, she knows she can always go and see him and he’ll out her whole world to rights like he always has. The same cannot be said for the other half of her gene pool though, her sperm donor was the human embodiment of trash that had been left out on the highway and baked in the Milwaukee sun, and while Jax wasn’t usually the kind of person to wish death upon someone, she was really glad that Cooter Menkins was dead.

She doesn’t remember a lot of her parent’s tumultuous marriage being that she was very young when they were still married, but what she does remember is a lot of yelling, smashing of plates and glasses, and bruises on her dad. It was tense, and frightening, and Jax spent many nights hiding under her comforter wishing the yelling would stop. Her dad would always come in to see her though, and every night, no matter what Cooter had said or done, her dad would get up on the bed next to her, pull her into his arms, and read her a bedtime story until she fell asleep against him. Jax, even at four and five years old, wished that her parents would just split up, would stop yelling at each other all the time and just be happy. She didn’t like Cooter, even then. He always shouted at her for the smallest thing, locked her in her bedroom when her dad wasn’t home so he “didn’t have to deal with her”, and treated her dad appallingly. But still, her dad stayed with him for reasons Jax didn’t understand, right up until the day she knocked orange juice over the kitchen table during breakfast one morning.

Cooter backhanded her so hard across the face that six year old Jax fell out of her chair, too shocked to even cry as she looked up at him towering over her, screaming at her that she was “stupid” and “useless”. And then, as sudden as the slap, she watched transfixed as her father’s fist drove hard in Cooter’s face and knocked him out cold, his expression one of pure, white hot rage. Once Cooter hit the floor, her dad scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the bedroom, telling her to pack some of her favourite toys and books into a bag while he packed some clothes, and they spent the next week living in a hotel room.

Her dad tried to make it an adventure, but Jax was still shaken by the events at breakfast, and to this day she still doesn’t drink OJ. However, her dad endeavoured to cheer her up and make the most of things, and by the time they returned home, Cooter nowhere to be seen, Jax was happy to just have her dad around from now on. She expressed an interest in learning the violin and the piano, so Sheldon got her a tutor for both, attended every recital, encouraged her every time she had a moment of doubt with an odd, nonsensical saying, a kiss to her forehead, and an affectionate Punkin’ to complete the magic spell it seemed to weave on her that made her feel stronger and braver than she actually was.

Jax was ten when her dad sat her down and told her that he wasn’t going to be “mom” anymore but “dad” instead, that the way he looked was going to change a lot but he was still the same person on the inside that he’d always been, and he still loved her just as much as he always had. Maybe she should have celebrated it more, but as it was Jax simply smiled at him, shrugged a little and said “Okay Dad. Can we have pizza for dinner?”, and Sheldon had simply laughed warmly, scooped her and her siblings into his arms and hugged them all tightly. To Jax, it wasn’t a big deal, “mom” or “dad”, she knew he always had her back, and that was the only thing that mattered to her.

What did bother her was the way that her classmates talked about her dad, the names they called him when he came to her recitals or to see her in school plays, and more than once Jax got in trouble for fighting with other kids when they went too far. Sheldon had sat her down when she received a two week suspension for punching a particularly vile jock in the face for the slurs he had used against both her dad and another classmate of colour and told her that this response to bullies had to stop. “You can’t solve anything with your fists Punkin’.” He sighed, “I know you’re defending me, but you’re just giving them what they want. Don’t be like Cooter, put your fists down, and use that big kind heart of yours instead.”

His words had landed hard, and Jax never raised her hands against anyone again, determined to prove that she was her father’s daughter and not her sperm donors. She still had quite the blazing temper, but Jax learned to control it and to ignore the jeers as best as she could. It helped that at age twelve she met and became instant friends with the new transfer student Angel. They were funny, and kind, and kind of a dork, but that was why Jax loved them, and suddenly, being the openly queer kid with the transgender dad wasn’t nearly as hard because Angel understood what it was like to be bullied and judged for being different too. When thirteen year old Jax heard about Cooter’s “untimely death”, she felt nothing, and while that bothered her a little bit it didn’t stop her “borrowing” her dad’s credit card to send Sue Sylvester a fruit basket (because even if it had been an accident she was still grateful knowing that her sperm donor couldn’t bother anyone ever again), to which Sheldon had tried to tell her off but was somewhat undermined by the gut busting fit of laughter he’d burst into before chastising her, and Jax was happy to simply agree to ask before using his credit card again.

Angel and Jax stayed close all through middle school and into high school, ignoring the circulating rumours about them dating (they weren’t, but Angel had been her first kiss during a production of Beauty and the Beast which had lead to more than a few sniggers from their classmates about how it was Beiste and the Beast), and spent pretty much every day together. They were both in orchestra, Jax with her violin and Angel with their flute, both into musical and regular theatre, both loved English, Drama and History. If there was such a thing as platonic soulmates, that would be Jax and Angel, she adored them. But high school was a whole other world, and the bullying that Jax and Angel faced got worse.

They had things thrown at them, food dumped on their heads, chewing stuck in their hair, it was awful and it showed no sign of letting up. Jax had been home sick when Angel had their clothes stolen from their locker while they were in the gym showers before being shoved outside of the locker room in nothing but a towel that was promptly ripped from them. She wonders even now if things would have been different if she hadn’t faked being sick to get out of gym that day, wonders if she could have changed the trajectory of things had she been there to protect them. But she wasn’t, and after that day Angel was different. They were quiet anyway, but now they were withdrawn and almost sullen, barely talking to even Jax, dropping out of clubs and the plans that they made, and nothing Jax said or did seemed to help make it any better.

The day that she found out Angel had taken their own life was perhaps the worst day of her own. Jax had been getting ready for school when Sheldon has come into her room, tears in his eyes and told her the news, holding Jax as she screamed and sobbed, as she demanded to see Angel, telling her dad that this was all just some awful mix up or mistake, that there was no way that Angel was gone, that they’d just leave her alone like this. But they were gone, and Jax suddenly had this hole inside of her, a piece of herself dead and buried with Angel. She hadn’t been the most mentally healthy before Angel died, on account of the relentless bullying, but after they were gone Jax spiralled into a very dark place. She hadn’t appreciated how much of the bullying Angel had shielded her from until they weren’t there to do it anymore, but it got far, far worse now that she was on her own.

Just shy of a year after Angel died, Jax attempted to take her own life at seventeen. School was unbearable without them, she was sick of being shoved around and having things thrown at her and being tripped and mocked in the hallways. Sick of all the girls calling her a pervert every time she so much as glanced in her direction, sick of all the boys trying to grope her as she passed, sick of the teachers not doing anything to stop it. Her younger brother was home from school too that day, and he was the one that found her on the bathroom floor, calling their dad who turned the car around and went straight back home only ten minutes into his journey. He rushed Jax to the hospital when he found them both on the bathroom, and thankfully the doctors and nurses saved her life.

When Jax woke up in the hospital, with her dad asleep in the chair next to her bed, realising that she was still here, she burst into tears. That woke Sheldon up, and as she choked out apologies between her sobs, he simply shushed her and climbed onto the bed next to her as he had done when she was young, pulled her gently into his arms, and told her through barely held back tears of his own that he loved her, she had nothing to be sorry for, and that they could fix this, they could fix anything as long as they were together. Jax cried herself to sleep in his arms that day, and many days after that.

But Sheldon stayed true to his word and stuck by Jax’s side like glue, made sure that she felt how much her family loved her, that her support system was there to catch her, and things began to change. He pulled her from her high school after a series of very strong words for the faculty that had failed his daughter and proceed to home school her himself for the remainder of her high school years, still graduating with a decent GPA in the end and grateful for all the time that Sheldon had taken to take care of her. He’d also made sure she went to therapy to deal with everything, and while still depressed and anxious a lot, Jax started to feel like herself again.

She still missed Angel terribly, and on her eighteenth birthday she went to a tattoo shop and got an angel wing tattooed on her heel in their memory, a piece of them to carry with her wherever she went. Jax also took a gap year after high school to focus on getting better rather than anything else, and while recovery is never linear and she had a few setbacks, Jax was ready to go to college a year later, opting for PSU to remain close to her family. At first, Jax was studying to become a doctor, but quickly found it to be incredibly difficult and boring, wanting to show her dad that it had been worth saving her life, despite being stressed and absolutely miserable.

Sheldon could see this and gently asked her if this was what she wanted to do, and after a bit more prompting, Jax confessed that she didn’t want to be a doctor, that she wanted to be an actor, wanted to study theatre and drama but that she didn’t want to disappoint him. Sheldon had once again simply hugged her, kissed her forehead, and said “Punkin’, ��you can’t make a zebra be a sheep. I’m proud of you no matter what you do, so stop making yourself miserable to try and impress me.”

So Jax switched to a drama and theatre studies double major, and soon found her tribe of people. While none of them were Angel, she still loved her new friends and was beyond grateful that college was a far better experience than school had ever been. While at PSU, Jax did a few local theatre productions too, and found that her passion was for the stage and not the screen, but having no complaints about that. Musical or not, her feet and skills belonged to the theatre and she knew that Angel would’ve loved that. And while Jax loved California and being close to her family, she knew that the heart of the theatre scene lay on the other side of the country, so after graduating she decided to pick up and move to New York.

New York was difficult though. It was hard being that far away from her family and the people that supported her through everything, and harder still to break into to the theatre business. It caused Jax to relapse into self-harm after several months of living on her own, and one night things suddenly felt very scary so she called her dad. Sheldon stayed on the phone with her all night, asking her if she need him to fly over to her, but after their long talk Jax turned him down. She knew she had to learn to stand on her own two feet, and instead they compromised by Jax agreeing to call him every night for the next two weeks. Their nightly phone call became a little ritual that kept Jax grounded, and while the frequency dropped to every other night and then weekly, she was grateful to have that lifeline when she needed it.

Her theatre roles began to pick up, and while she never seemed to land that big breakout role, Jax enjoyed her roles in several Off Broadway productions, and even landed a few minor movie and tv roles as well. Eventually, she landed the starring role in a pilot that would have her playing a doctor (no the irony was not lost on her) that brought her back to LA, but while they shot almost a full season of episodes, the network elected not to pick up her show, and Jax found herself a little depressed again. She’d had enough of the fickle world of acting at this point, and decided to settle back home again, applying and getting the Professor of Theatre Studies job at PSU three years ago.

Jax loved being back home, and teaching gave her a new lease on life, grateful to be away from all the pressures of trying to land a new role. She still acts on occasion when the right job comes her way, but her energy is now poured into a different project instead, and that is the Broken Wing Theatre Company. Jax wanted to do something to honour Angel, has done for a long time but could never find the right way to do it, until one of her students mentioned something about wishing there had been a queer safe place when they were growing up to explore the theatrical arts before college, somewhere they could just be themselves. It clicked in place, that was the perfect way to keep their memory alive, and so she established Broken Wing as an LGBTQ+ Youth Theatre Group, completely free and run by volunteers that puts on three productions a year and runs an extensive summer programme too. She loves it, and she might be prouder of it than anything else she’s ever done in her life. She hopes Angel would be too.

Life is pretty good for Jax these days, with one niggling exception: her ex. You see, Jax has dated on and off her whole life, never really settling down with anyone for very long, too restless for that. But this ex was different, they’d dated for nearly two years, and despite the fact that their relationship had at times been rather toxic (never abusive, just a lot of misplaced jealously and a lack of communication mostly), Jax couldn’t seem to let them go completely. One phone call or chance meeting out and about, and she’d find herself in bed with them again, and no matter how many times she swore blind that this was the last time, it never was.

Still, her frustrating love life aside, Jax is thriving in the world for a change, accompanied by her fur babies Doug and Ollie, and very grateful that her dad turned around and came home that day over twenty years ago.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Sheldon Beiste did not have an easy life growing up as a closeted transgender man in Milwaukee. He always felt like a misfit and wrong somehow, but that didn’t stop him working towards his life goals. After suffering a bad ACL injury in college, Sheldon’s dreams of (then) being the first female quarterback for the Green Bay Packers went up in smoke, but that didn’t deter him. Instead he changed his college major and became a football coach, starting with his home team of the Milwaukee Badgers and gradually building a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense kind of a coach. His success with the Badgers lead to more and more opportunities and eventually he coached the Chicago Bears to their 1986 Superbowl win. He settled as the Bears coach in Illinois for a little while and met his first husband, finding himself pregnant, deciding a little stability would be the right thing to do for his family.

After divorcing his first husband, Sheldon had a couple of other boyfriends but never really settled with another man, far more concerned with his children and their wellbeing than he was with his own romantic life. Being a dad was by far a greater achievement than any football tournament, and after two consecutive Superbowl wins with the 49ers in San Fransico, Sheldon retired from coaching to focus on his family instead. It was a few years later that Sheldon realised that all these weird and uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about his body weren’t normal insecurities that women had, and finally admitted to himself to that he was, in fact, a transgender man.

He didn’t care about anyone’s opinions on his gender other than his children, and thankfully they loved him just the same as “dad” as they had as “mom”. Sheldon did experience some initial backlash in terms of his career, but eventually landed himself a sports correspondent job on CNN. That involved into his own sports radio talk show The Beiste Is Loose, before eventually turning into a late night talk show host for The Late Late Show. He still talks about football as much as he can, but he enjoys sharing his homespun sayings with his guests and being “the friendliest face in late night television”.