Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 21:00:08 -0000 From: Beverly Taff Subject: Dog Day Afternoon 1 Dog-Day Afternoon By Beverly Taff CHAPTER 1 I must confess that I'd always felt I was a woman locked up in a man's body. I know this usually sounds tedious to those who have made the transition. The expression has become a trite simplification used by the media to describe what is really a desperately difficult rite of passage. Every one of those brave individuals, who starts the journey and finally makes it through the dark days of transition, has their own story of despair and desperation. How they discovered in early childhood, that 'things weren't right'. It usually hits them as soon as they are aware of the two different sexes; how society treats them differently and expects different things of them. It hit me very early, probably as soon as I realised I was dressed differently from my sisters and I had to sleep in a different bedroom. It didn't help when I discovered that everything expected of me was different from what was expected of my sisters. I won't go into it all here. There's not enough time and everybody who's been there knows what those expectations are. By the time I was twelve things had reached breaking point. Several suicide attempts and numerous appearances before the juvenile courts had finally precipitated me into a 'big-city' children's psychiatric unit. There in a final act of terminal desperation, I had tried to castrate myself in some forlorn hope of preventing the onset of puberty and my acquiring those male characteristics I so detested. The castration was only partly successful. Being a coward at heart, I had used a dangerous slow strangulation of my testicles technique that had almost caused gangrene and nearly killed me. I lost one testicle but the doctors managed to 'save' the other. It was only then that I was finally forced revealed my innermost secret wish to become a proper girl in a proper girl's body. The psychiatrist had already anticipated my condition but he had waited until my crazy desperate act had driven me to declare it for myself. He told me that my actions were sufficient proof enough to demonstrate that I was what I said I was, a true transsexual. As we chatted at length he finally declared that he might be able to do something for me. For a few brief minutes I was on cloud nine. Then after he had raised my hopes, he brought me crashing down to Earth again. I would have to wait until I was sixteen. After delivering the first sympathetic words I had ever heard, he then twisted the metaphorical knife in my guts. He said that very little could be done because there were not enough funds available for the psychiatric unit to treat me as I wished to be treated. He also confirmed that my parent's family medical insurance sure as hell wouldn't pay for the treatment. The cost of the surgery would be prohibitive. Until I was sixteen and legally competent to declare my wishes before the courts nothing could be done for me. I would also be expected to find my own funds. I just wanted to die! 'Two more years of torment and desperation!' When my family learned of my transsexualism, they washed their hands of me. They had always considered my effeminacy to be an expression of homosexuality and their inherent homophobia found the hard truth of my transsexualism impossible to accept. This new development put me utterly beyond the pail and they were brutally frank about their feelings. Bluntly, I was told that, because they had four other remaining children to devote their efforts upon, they reckoned that one out of five was a percentage failure that they could accept. My three sisters and my brother were all 'normal' so my parents could afford to 'lose' one. My name was hardly mentioned ever again. I became a 'none-person' as far as my family were concerned. At sixteen I was released from the children's psychiatric unit and advised that I would somehow have to find gainful employment if I wished accumulate the thousands of dollars necessary to pay for all the necessary surgery and treatment. Fortunately the Psychiatric unit had done me one small favour. Because of lack of funds and fear of the law concerning legal consent, the doctors had been forced to avoid the issue of pre-sixteen reassignment surgery. Fortunately those same doctors in acknowledging my transsexualism had seen fit to suspend my puberty by administering 'blocker hormones'. Consequently, I left the children's unit as a sort of androgynous individual of indeterminate sexual appearance. The problem was that I now wanted to take feminization drugs but that took a huge chunk out of what little wages my menial jobs could earn. These menial jobs invariably involved cleaning and serving, usually in nightclubs that catered to the deviant underclass of 'big-city' America. I soon rediscovered that an individual with no high school diploma would not get a worthwhile job anywhere. I had of course known this since God knows when, but to have it thrown in your face as you searched for jobs only made it worse. No reputable firm was prepared to employ somebody with obvious mental health problems and of indeterminate sex! This meant no 'women's' clerical work because women were uncomfortable around sexual deviants. Alternatively 'men's' labouring jobs were denied to me. What good was a skinny little runt with no muscles? Any sort of childcare work was also taboo. No authority would employ a sexually dysphoric misfit around children. I seemed to find myself always standing at the edge of a precipice looking into a lifetime of sexual anguish. All hope of ever saving enough money drifted further out of reach. I was tempted to rob a bank but I couldn't muster the courage. I already knew what horrors prison held if I was caught. For the sexually androgynous, it was like childcare abuse again but in spades! It was inevitable that I should start seeking work in the less reputable areas of the sexual underworld where my transsexualism inevitably drove me. Here at least I found some anonymity and a little bit more sympathy. The money I earned never seemed to quite meet the costs of running my pathetic life. The cost supplying sufficient drugs to combat the detested testosterone was prohibitive. That last damnable vestige of my masculinity continually pumped the hated hormone into my body. I had considered a second attempt at castration but the doctors at the children's unit had warned me that my first attempt had caused serious damage. Their repair work had been little short of a finger in the dyke and they cautioned me that any effort to remove the remaining testicle could result in a fatal haemorrhage. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The choice seemed to be death or masculinity. Never enough money to pay for surgery or buy sufficient drugs. I was becoming desperate and my life was going down the pan! There was one small ray of hope however. After cleaning bars, serving booze and scrubbing toilets in the most squalid clubs in the twilight zone, a 'girl' eventually picks up some useful stuff. By keeping my ears and eyes open, whilst keeping my mouth and legs shut, I managed to get by. I learned what was available to transsexuals but the knowledge only reinforced what I already knew. I was never going to save enough to get that all- important operation, leastways not in the good old' US of A. Surgeons charged just too dammed much! I knew that the same procedures were available abroad for a lot less money, Thailand and North Africa to name but two places. To this end I kept my head down and decided that the procedure plus the airfare to a foreign country, was just about all I could manage; if I cut a hell of a lot of corners! Re-doubling my efforts. I took extra menial work in the less reputable clubs. Fortunately, one of my jobs involved general cleaning at a bar where transvestites and transsexuals held their weekly get-together. The boss was a tranny and had a lot of sympathy for my plight He respected me when he learned of my desperate ambition and my determination not to sink into prostitution. In my head I was a respectable girl despite all outward appearances. Recognising my situation, the boss slowly came to trust me as I persevered and scrupulously kept my slate clean. I was honest about the money and kept a close watch on the booze being served across the bar. More importantly, I worked my butt off cleaning the lavatories. The trannies and real girls all confirmed that clean toilets were a huge factor concerning their choice of club. There's nothing a girl hates more than piss stains on the seats and urine-flooded floors whilst the toilet roll lies soaked and useless unravelled on the floor. My boss became impressed as the club takings soared. Eventually he allowed me to kip down in a backroom to save on renting an apartment. It was one of the first breaks I ever got. The pay was poor but as a live-in cleaner, I no longer had to find rent. I also had access to the computer in the boss's office. Before long, as other casual workers left their jobs in the club, I climbed the ladder and became general factotum, full-time barmaid and cleaner. I learned how to surf the web and discovered many places that offered sexual re-assignment surgery. This knowledge, backed up with a slightly improved financial situation, eventually got me started. One afternoon I discovered an advert on the net asking for volunteers in some new experimental techniques involving reassignment surgery. The work was being done abroad, but the advert was Internet wide so I responded. It required transsexual volunteers to undergo new surgical procedures coupled with organ transplants. All the volunteer had to do, was turn up and sign a disclaimer. 'I could only try,' I thought, so I showed my boss the advert and asked his opinion. To my surprise, I learned that my boss had once been a doctor. He had been sacked from the practice because of some legal issues with his transvestism and practicing medicine. It was to do with women's gynaecological stuff and so on. Disillusioned with his partner's insensitivity and lack of support, he had turned his back on medicine for several years. Lately though, since opening his modest little club he had met many sexually dysphoric individuals and he realized he might be able to do things for them. He was an excellent listener and offered sympathetic advice across the bar on many a night. The idea of my undergoing 'experimental treatment' intrigued him but he became seriously concerned for me. "You ought to be careful Beverly" he cautioned, "just remember there's not much legal protection in these foreign countries and if things go wrong; well God knows!" "So." I countered. "It's all that legal stuff that fucked up my chances to grow up as a girl! If those doctors hadn't been so chicken- shit afraid of the law, I would be fixed by now. Look at me! I might as well be dead!" He wagged his head softly and a small tear leaked from his eye. I knew he was sympathetic. `God-dammit!' I thought. `He was one of us anyway.' I knew where his sympathies lay. "You're right Beverly, but I have to warn you of the dangers. I don't want to see you hurt." I knew he was right but I was getting desperate. My boss further suggested that the experiments were probably being conducted abroad to avoid litigation if things went wrong. "It might even be easier to dispose of your body if things go totally wrong. It'll be risky Beverly, and you can bet you'll have no legal protection." His words fell on deaf ears. It seemed that my opportunity to spend the few remaining years of my youth as a functioning girl was disappearing fast as my single testicle continued it's remorseless production of the hated testosterone. With tears of frustration blinding my eyes, I stumbled up to my flat and studied my finances once more. I calculated that I had just enough savings for a return airfare and a brief hotel stay to recuperate; I applied to take part in the trials. E-mail arrived a couple of days later asking to know my circumstances and any evidence of my trans-sexual condition. It was an easy job to reproduce all my medical files and demonstrate that I was a confirmed transsexual. Four years of files from the children's psychiatric unit clinched it and I was accepted for the trials. A few weeks of frantic activity next found me on rout to North Africa. My boss drove me to the airport and wished me luck. "The job's still there for you when you comeback. Just be careful! I'm really worried for you kid. That's all I can say. I want you back." With that reassurance ringing in my ears I boarded the plane and set off for North Africa. Several changes of planes eventually found me on a local internal flight and I finally arrived somewhere a long way south of the Atlas Mountains deep in the Sahara desert.