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.