TheGirlWithTheTupperwareTits.

I used to get a lot of e-mails from the Transgendered crowd. A lot of these mainly consists of invites to events, parties, clubs and the like. There are those who would wish to get to know me with a view to striking up a friendship of sorts. Only a small fraction of them tended to be pervy or a little suggestive in the physical department.

 

Looking back, I can pin-point the exact moment when I got involved with the scene. I had mistakenly believed that I was part of it.

 

Truth be told, my battles with intersexuality and trying to fit in started from an earlier age. I had a childhood unlike any other and had crossed the gender divide more than one occasion, constantly trying to feel my way through life and where I fit in.

 

I had simply assumed that I was unique. Well, unique in the sense that I wasn't like my brother, who had his own gender defects, and whose own abnormalities where sorted out much, much earlier on as it was more dangerous for him as a child. I simply carried on through childhood discovering its joys and pains, its promises and hopes.

 

I would like to think that had a happy childhood. Though reality was much worse, I still managed to form an impenetrable wall of fantasy in which I thrived. I became my own company, relying solely on my own ingenuity to endure all hardships that came upon me.

 

There was of course, the expectation to excel, the hopes that I would be an example to my siblings and perhaps be the person my parents could not be. It was a hard task. My dad was a prodigy of sorts in the medical field and my mom was the one blessed with classical beauty as well as intelligence and had come from a long line of Indian aristocrats.

 

But by being constantly ill, I always fell short of their expectations.

 

The final straw came when just over a decade ago, a violent argument led me to pack my bags and come to England. I had gone tired of trying to match unreachable expectations and when I got here, the years of battling breathing problems, cancer scares, hormonal intervention, steroids and the sheer exhaustion of trying to compete, left me a weak and rather unappealing person.

 

Testosterone infusions to develop my failed masulinity gave me the edge in the legal field but left me severely overweight, unhealthy, bald and very, very aggressive.

 

Truth be told, I was aggressive towards women. I felt insanely jealous that my childhood as a girl did not develop me into these beautiful creatures who really dominated half the planet.

 

The hormones suppressed all the inborn feminine feelings I had inside. I suppressed my caring side, my desire to kiss boys, to love and to marry. I felt robbed. I felt that everything I did had to be measured. felt that the only way I could prove myself was to activate that abberated Y-Chromosone as all my XXs had deserted me. I had decided to forget about my life in the convent, the constant gender switching at home and my social life and the unreasonable fear that my two halves collided with each other everytime I had to attend a social gathering there the parties knew me as a girl or a boy.

 

I wanted to fix my position. Having unable to live as a girl because of my physical limitations and in a culture where child-bearing and marrying the right connection is important, I became a guy.

 

Actually, I became a lot worse. I became a lawyer.

 

And a darn good one at that. I graduated very young and became a lecturer in Criminal Law and Jurisprudential theory before I even had my first beer. A strong career in a powerful family-run firm beckoned. But that fateful argument with my family changed all that.

 

I gave everything up. I ran away. 11050kms to be exact.

 

Those early days when I was in London were hard. I was studying for the English Bar with my 'inheritance' share and had no money for anything else. Including medical treatment. There were even times when I resorted to stealing food to keep me from passing out.

 

I also noted that people had more or less forgotten me when I left home. I had truly burnt the proverbial bridge.

 

Then I met my Ex.

 

It was at a dinner at Lincoln's Inn in London. She and I just connected. She knew what I was but accepted me nonetheless. She was separated, bringing up five kids and reading Law. A truly formidable woman. I was so touched that she took the time to care for me. Her kids were simply marvelous and treated me as if I were part of the family. Through them, I experienced the joys of bringing up children. I experienced the hurt when they yelled at me, their nervousness when I was called to PTA meetings and their joy when they did well in their exams. I bandaged their wounds, fixed their bicycles and built them a pool. I tried to be their dad in a way. Or a different sort of 'mom'.

 

Still doing odd retail jobs, money was still very tight for me. But I still managed. I still could not afford treatment and whatever I had left at the end of the day were spent on family necessities. I still got sick. I still felt the pangs of pain. I walked with a walking stick and danced in my chair.

 

The something happened. My body changed again. I was brought face on with my intersexuality again. The woman in my screamed out, enraged by years of hormonal abuse. Of testosterone infusion. Of masulinity. On the grand scheme of things, I had only been a guy for a little over a decade going from a slim Indian girl with delicate features who played the piano and danced the Bharatanatyam to a fat, bald, unshaven disgruntled lawyer.

 

I looked into the mirror that day and saw the young girl in the 14 stone frame.

 

I decided to do something about it.

 

I started seeing doctors again. Lots of doctors. Doctors with funny expertises like endocrinology and gynacology. Our kids had grown up and we had some money to get my physicality sorted.

 

It was the general medical consensus that I should have never changed to a boy. I still had a vaginal canal inside me, although such things like ovaries either atrophied or became unusable.

 

I stopped the testosterone. That was the first step. I was given gradual doses of estrogen. The change was dramatic. It was as if, in the space of a year, another person was emerging outwards from my body.

 

That brought upon its own set of problems. As I was changing again, I was also living in a state of limbo. Sitting on the gender fence so to speak. I was going through the exact opposite to what I went through almost a decade ago. I was changing back into a girl.

 

I couldn't afford the surgical intervention then. Truth be told I didn't really need it. But I wanted a functional vagina and as the cost were astronomical then, I had saved up to seek help abroad.

 

And as you know, fate had one last card to play. You all know how Nefertiti turned out. It was the most painful experience I have had to endure.

 

And to cut a long story short, a month after surgery, I decided to seek others like me. And the closest people that I knew were the Transgendered folk. I had mistakenly 'joined' them in the hope of finding intersexed folk. There were organisations however for intersex people, but I wanted to meet people I can see and talk to and not merely be a name in some research journal or worse, a statistic.

 

It was Halloween 2005 when I met TheTrannys. They were such good friends. I had to keep my past from them however as I felt that it would be something they could not relate to.

 

And by association, I was regarded as a Tranny too. Something, to this day, I am trying to shake off to no success. I am not even a transexual really as it presupposes that I was a fixed gender from birth.

 

But I had made my bed and laid on it.

 

And thats why I feel indifferent towards them. I know from personal experience the effects of testosterone on the body and why if you have it in manly proportions, you cannot be a 'woman' let alone be called 'she'. Merely by putting on a dress, one cannot automatically call themselves Jane or Stephanie or DeeVine Leggs. The transformation has to be physical. You have to live and feel as a woman. Not go back to your suit on tie first thing Monday morning.

 

Which brings me back to the e-mails I was talking about. I have been corresponding with a guy who wishes to become a girl. A run-of-the-mill transexual. He is actually looking to me for advice and is reluctant to seek it elsewhere as he feels that I have a lot to offer in terms of achieving his ambition. He is married, with kids and they don't know.

 

I don't know what to tell him. I would like to tell him not to do it as he will lose everything as I did and at the end of the day, his family is far more important than anything else he can think of. Including his life. He has a wife who has given her life to him and kids who depend on him. He chose to be a man. He got married and had a family.

 

But the kindred spirit in me longs to tell him the joy of being a woman. I certainly hope that I make a good one albeit the inability to have children and the constant gouchiness that emanates from my pores.

 

But I can't tell him that.

 

I am meeting him on Tuesday at the local cafe. I hope I feel better afterwards.

Done