When I was a much younger version of myself, I never thought that I would become a transsexual. In other words, a woman. Everyone who knew me would have thought that I would be happily married with a good wife and astounding children. No one would have thought it. I changed like a fish in the night waiting to swim amongst the other fish. To be…. A woman. It was the hardest thing I have done not knowing what my mother who had died would think. I was very good at singing and the only person I had ever truly cared for besides Maria who was Nikolas, my half-brother’s wife was my own mother who tried her best to raise a good son. Not that I wasn’t a good son, but I had hated my father for every reason that my mother had died.
***
I clearly had a deep voice and I was able to sing at deep tones although I often wondered what I would look like in a fashion magazine, all buffed up, a sudden thought occurred to me. I could be a body builder and show off how buff I was with my already lithe small and frail body. I was a well-rounded boy becoming a man growing up but I sadly never had any friends to depend upon and share my most beloved secrets with.
***
It started in elementary school when I found out I was pre-mature but healthy as a boy. No, no. being premature had nothing to do with change of sex or how I dressed but how I had seen the world. I wrote my first poem to a lovely little lady and I had found that I was easily laughed at in elementary.
I thought she would be sweet about it but, coming to think of my past, I had never been lucky in love. The first thing she had called me was a faggot and so, I got up off my seat and took my poem and crumpled it. I had never wanted to speak since then and as I got up off my seat, I slumped while the other boys trashed my bag.
Mother who was very sick was fascinated by me. Every birthday on the hour she would give me a book in which I would be delighted and read all day long till I finished it. Every time there was a finished book, another one would reappear and my mother would leave me a note:
My Dearest Angelo,
You are not like other boys. You have a kind heart and a smart mind. You will grow up to meet someone who loves you all the same. Don’t ever doubt yourself and keep reading. Maybe one day you will find someone who truly loves you for who you are.
Love, Your Mother
I was always immediately entranced by books. I had loved to read and my only passion was to read and keep on reading. I was already in middle school when I was getting built. My father Richard once stormed into the room and hit my mother across the face and pushed her down so I got up immediately and pushed him out of the room and punched him smack dab across his own face. He got mad every day because we did not have enough money to pay for rent and I had found out after that my mother had bought me books with the money we needed, so I studied hard and on the side during my middle school years I was a local filling station attendant who washed cars and pumped gas. For a while, nearing my high school years, I became a singer for a nearby club and we began to become prosperous. My mother was surprised at all the money I got just by singing and was very proud. So proud, that we finally left Richard and set out to Staten Island, New York and made our new house a home.
As I got home one day, I happened by coincidence to be reading a circus book when imagine! A real circus came along! I had no reason to think my mother as being sickly that day but as I went up to her bedside, and told her of the wonderful news. She had smiled and patted my head. In between coughs she said, “Angelo, be a good boy and be proud of yourself.” With what little money she had, she sent me five quarters for the show and a half dollar for popcorn. I will never forget this as this would have been my last day seeing her.
For as stupid as Richard was, I had decided to invite him to mother’s funeral. After, I said goodbye to our home in Staten Island and moved over with my father to Manhattan. It had been a long while since I had last embraced my father. Go figure.
In high school, I had a lot of offers for marriage despite my damaged past. Easily I could refuse because I did not want to share myself with the rest of the world yet. I needed to belong. I could easily weave my way in and out of the library without being seen and keep reading. I took to books so much that I had time for school, body building and a quiet place to read.
If I was being cocky, I would have said that even in college I had women gushing over how tall, built and yet how slim I was. My cocoa brown skin also made them blush. I hope I didn’t sound as cocky, but there comes a time in every child’s life where the world lies solemnly still and the world they begin to realize, is full of starlight and their future full of unfulfilled dreams. There comes a time in a young man’s life where the feeling of euphoria and the way of being that becomes a way of life subsides with his thoughts. It’s a transcendental way of daydreaming where a man feels subliminal and doesn’t want to think but not to the point where he becomes experimental. It is to the point where he becomes to an extent, decently, deceptively mad. It is subliminal whether he chooses to stay that way becoming more philosophical and more emotionally inclined to love. There is no feeling but the sound of the chirping of birds, and the way of life in the way that he chooses. There comes a time in every man’s life where ambition becomes replaced with melancholic fear, but little does he know that that is when life happens.
Here I was being a little philosopher quoting on life when I had not even been given the chance to collaborate with being. Was I so selfish to become who I had wanted? Of course not! It was by choice!
***
Nikolas was only my half brother by my father who had sexual intercourse with another woman. He was five years younger than I but still an asshole. I had to endure him during my high school years as a young adult. As much as I would have liked to, I could never change my past. Not even for my mother. My father was a cheat and a hitter. He would hit my mother until she cried and dropped to the floor. My father was not one to hit his other wife and what I could not understand was how he could just hit my mother.
***
My mother was a sweet woman. Always cleaning, cooking and doing housewife duties. She had never wanted nothing more than a family. The way she thought very much resembled Maria’s way of living which was probably why I was so drawn to her. I could not resist but feel sorry for her for those times Nikki had cheated on her. I just wanted every woman to be happy with their lives but as for Maria, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I was not in love with her although I knew she was infatuated by me. She loved me but I just couldn’t love her back. I felt that I was not being true to myself however the situation that it was, was for. I could never be true to myself because I kept having sex with her. Who am I to toy with a young girl’s mind? Especially like that. As for Verona, she could give a shit less about life and what it had to offer. I felt drawn to Maria because she was in fact like my mother. A faithful housewife whose heart crumbled under Nikolas.
***
I had no choice but to save her. I’ve always been fascinated by how quickly she regenerated a picture of my mother. Was I obsessed? I was confounded that in some ways I had to save her. She is gorgeous; no doubt, but she forgets I have had to save her three times. From my stupid fucking father Richard, and my grandfather. Now I am prepared for consequences that may ruin our lives. Maria is too in love with me to even speak. I never thought that being a muscular transsexual would be so tiring. After all, men were my bread and butter. Just the type I’d want. Maria was a younger version of my mother but I could never partake in her life. So many things were going on that I could not partake in joy with her as a young man, but as a woman. I am not accustomed to taking my body parts off in surgery, but perhaps it would fare well if I wasn’t so frightened of bleeding to death on the table.
***
I was so afraid of meeting Maria at breakfast because I would never have wanted to get too close to her. But, as we talked, I could feel her pity and her sorrow. She hadn’t had much to say but as we conversed, I could feel myself doubting if I had ever been in love with men and or in love specifically before. But what is love anyway? It shall take me a long time to figure it out.
***
I never had much respect for Verona Delisle. She was never there for me and I was never there for her. She could not even respect me for what I was. She was in love with my goddamn muscles. Verona and Maria just weren’t my type. Maria had known for years what I was and had respected me for that. It was after college that I had changed my appearance. I would never wish for anything more but only for someone who could respect me like that and still be in love with me.
***
For one thing, I could never bring myself to blame who I was on either Nikolas, my father or my grandfather. It was because I believed that I am who I am today because of myself. To place blame on them for anything would be disembowelment of the truth. Because the truth is, I felt comfortable being a woman. To blame them for my comfort would be to praise them immediately and don my identity over to them. I couldn’t blame them for this version of myself and neither could I blame them for my wondrous revelation. That I was a woman! As for Maria, I celebrate her because she like my mother is so strong and she endures the most pain given to her from fucking Nikolas and I doubt he has any appreciation for the woman she truly is. I mustn’t always fuss about not having her breasts and her body but I don’t because Maria accepts me for who I am.
It all started when my mother had died that I wanted to truly become who I am today. I was starting to look at my mother’s things and I found a makeup bag. I kept it to preserve her essence along with some of her other things, much like berets and ribbons made of silk. I also kept her vintage clothing and tried to re-use what had been given me by making her dresses twice as big for my body to fit in. As for her wedding dress, I burned it. I burned it in the hopes that those ashes might bring her spirit back to life. At the same time, I met Maria.
***
Maria and Nikki had been dating since forever since high school and Maria was insanely gorgeous. Was it the ashes of my mother’s wedding dress that gave her that resemblance? No, I’d think to myself. But I couldn’t help wondering if Nikolas knew that she was the only person in my life to give enough of my respect to.
***
Nikki was always the favorite. I despised Nikolas because he described Maria as his toy. Something he could blandly sexualize. The sad thing about my half-brother was that he could never read between the lines. I hated the fact that he could just use someone like that and leave her for another woman. He constantly wrote me letters on how she couldn’t fit his demands and although she was gorgeous, he could never keep her in line. It was like he wanted to entrap her into his cock! What a moron! The Maria who was never disobedient only to find out that at one of our family gatherings Richard and Ricardo who was my grandfather had tried to rape her! I knew one day Maria was going to be gang-raped and re-raped by one of them. Oh, the audacity! To make that poor woman become small. Wasn’t she already in shambles!? In shame!? I felt badly and wanted to help her again until the time came.
***
I had a blurry distortion of how it had happened. I thrust my strength onto Richard and started punching his face. I pushed him down, got up, kicked his stomach in and started punching his face. “Old man! Old man!” I yelled. After I punched his face, I had gotten up and pulled his collar near my chin and spat, “Don’t touch my mother!” I collapsed and almost had a mental breakdown when Maria was raped. I could never bring myself to know why I said that but I did. I had cried myself to sleep just knowing that I could never have her. She resembled my mother and boy, as I went upstairs, I knew Maria had smiled looking delirious. I heard her footsteps up the stairs and I think she heard me sobbing quietly; because she went downstairs again and left me alone.
***
Outside, the rain was pouring. As I can recall, I pulled the makeup bag out of the secret drawer I had in the room and started wiping my face when I had decided to put on my mother’s makeup. All in the middle of the night.
***
I started experimenting with my mother’s lipstick, her rouge and her eyeliner. Carefully, very slightly I dabbed on the lipstick onto my lips and there I was. I made a beautiful woman going to makeup salons to do my makeup. I studied how to apply makeup through beauty school. I had quit becoming an English major with a minor in psychology. I dropped out and went strictly to beauty school. My colleagues thought I was perverted and preferred to stay away from me as I lied and told them I wanted to become a beautician when it came to my surprise that they knew already what I was there for. No doubt, it was for my own benefit.
***
I thought of going into sewing school and I did. I learned also how to sew although it was a woman’s job. I was born on June 1st 1951 and I knew a lot to know about how to survive the streets without them knowing; without them seeing who I really was and why. I loved the fact that it was my dirty little secret and although I walked like a man, I could feel empowerment with just that secret. Soon there were clubs that represented transsexuals secretly and I went to every pageant until I got into some on my own. I even stripped half naked for a magazine called “Fit-Guys.” Although I was never a stripper, I knew that Maria would see me somewhere on fitness magazines. After all, I was a secretly gay body-builder. I wondered what my mother would think and often thought of Maria who was soon to be Nikolas’s wife. I hadn’t been jealous but when I had received a letter of recommendation to be best man, I simply refused to go because I knew Nikki was playing a trick on me and how much Maria would mean to me in her bridal dress happily smiling next to that stupid idiot Nikolas.
Some may think I was doing all this to play a trick on Maria, but in fact, it was for my mother. To preserve her essence. I wanted to be a woman. So, I decided to go upstate to find black platform shoes. Something that might back up my newly sequined black dress that I had sewn myself. It was a halter top dress without straps or sleeves and it was my most girly creation yet. So, I stayed uptown with my friends Stacey Kent and Verona Delisle. After I came out, I went clubbing almost every night. My father and I were not getting any closer. He kept ignoring me and praising Nikolas instead of me. I had my mother’s eyes he’d say and then he’d disappear with his new family. Barbara and Nikolas. Barbara and Nikolas.
Barbara was nothing like my mother. She wore too much makeup and heavy eyeliner. Barbara was only twenty-nine and I couldn’t stand her. I guess it was because she kept all my mother’s things except her clothes and the makeup bag my mother owned. I was never expectant of her to do anything or to find time for me but Nikolas liked torturing me and defending his mother every time she hit on me. The bitch was twice below my mother’s age and my father’s. I guess he had a fetish for young foreign women.
The bitch was beautiful. Without her makeup.
***
Barbara was sadly the first woman I’ve ever fucked. I found her one day coaxing my father to have sex with her. I guess it was on special occasion that she had been asking what she was going to get. After that, the next thing you know, my father found me fucking her in bed as she was moaning. I had never before had this experience and I sadly had given in. I wasn’t highly sexually active and I soon found myself waiting in the night with my things over in duffel bags over my shoulders. My mother’s things, and her picture. All the other shit didn’t matter at all. I had wanted to kill Barbara and as it turns out, I had decided to do it while my father and Nikolas weren’t home.
***
I got scrubs for my feet just in case anyone would like to track my footprints and put them over my shoes. I wore gloves and carried a bottle of Clorox, got my wig in a purse with a new set of clothes and walked to the building. Barbara was sleeping so I took a pocket knife and slit her throat. The wound was deep so I wiped it up and covered her to make it look like she was sleeping. I then kissed her lips and left to the next apartment downstairs only to wake up to hear my father’s petrified screaming and Nikolas’s wailing.
In my court hearing, my father knew who did it. Me. She, Barbara was my first kill. My father pulled me to the side and told me distinctly that he knew. I looked at him as though he was drunk. And I understood. In some ways he loved me and my mother. But in a very distinctive manner.
After, I spent my days in the college dorms with the money my father took from Barbara. My father you can say didn’t just not love me. I’m sure the bastard loved me in some ways due to the fact that I got away with it. Although it had taken him about three weeks to figure it out, I was sure I got my shit together for I had been a very good actor.
***
My father praised me for all the money I made. I took up singing at nightclubs like I used to in high school. One time I dressed in drag and started singing or rather belting out the song “Mambo Italiano” and “Quando, Quando, Quando,” and my father had caught me and threw me to the ground. I could still hear him say “This is no place for dragsters! Be a man!”
The more he pursued me to dress like a man the more I wore makeup and my mother’s newly sewn large plus dresses. Then Stacey, coming back from Hollywood, California came back and gave me a pageant ticket in New York and asked me to model.
Refusal of that, was not an option.
I practiced my catwalks and got onstage in different suits until I started wearing my dresses on them. A new life, a new future. Happy to be obliged to be onstage.
Stacey Kent for as beautiful, funny and fruity as blonde as she was, was married to a war veteran named James. She was secretly a lesbian and soon died all because Verona Delisle told on her so James nearly beat her to death. Her last words as she died were “Don’t be like me Angelo. You are a child of God and deserve happiness. Be yourself.”
I took it to heart and I silently cried.
I could have killed James but we were never really close. The reason why I never blamed James was because she was caught poisoning him every night to have sex secretly with Verona. She invited me five times for a threesome and I solemnly, plainly looked into her eyes and said vigilantly, “No” may God go with her soul for the umpteenth time. I solemnly swore that I would try to be myself and as I looked into the mirror, I saw a woman. I looked at myself and there was no one left to console me but a phone call from Verona saying, “I want sex and I want it now.”
I rolled my eyes.
I hung up.
I did not want to break off to Verona that I didn’t want to ever see her again, but I needed a friend and some whiskey to keep me company until I awoke to find Verona moaning on top of me.
I hated that bitch.
For some reason she was always wanting sex and my body. If I could stop working out, I’d do it but I guess I kept my parts. I kept my body fit and dressed like a woman to show how true I was to my identity. I decided I will keep my parts and tidbits till the very end.
Finding an identity for myself was very hard for me. The pain to grasp the essence of a woman; to grasp the essence of my mother. I missed her dearly and I have never told Maria that. Neither Stacey Kent nor Verona Delisle. The mere truth I acted would shatter me. Especially knowing Maria was very much like my mother. It is an egg I cannot crack. A wave that cannot break a wall. What is done is done. I couldn’t fall in love with her.
It was my destiny to be a woman.
I always was one.
Although Maria was in love with me, I just could never reciprocate that love back except but feel a pain, a sort of sorrow for her as I had felt for my mother. I had tried my best to understand it but my end product was to become who I really was. A “WOMAN.” I never got hit on because I was one of those women who could hold her own. I was not one to fall to pieces. I was as tough as they come. I would never let down Maria I had decided. Call me evil what you will; I loved her like a sister and a mother. She was something, but not something I had wanted to explore. She was not the love of my life but like a child. She smelled of roses in Spring, she was a woman who was scared and loved me. I was a murderer who smelled of perfume and blood, alas! I could never love her back.
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