Destiny and Transgender.

Words in London do not come with the same ease as when I’m at home on the island. I cannot describe how much I have suffered this day being alone in London.

Anyone meeting me this night would call me heartless. Away from home with no one to trust, a man whimpering self-pity on the streets or in the London bars.

Everything feels pointless.

All the money I have worked so hard for feels useless, I told the woman sat next to me at a bar in Mayfair. She interrupted my story, Mister, she said, take a long hard look at me. She appeared to be close to fifty, wearing heavy makeup.

We’ve all got our issues, luv, she said, and I am not inclined to want to hear yours, the woman said loudly.

A strange atmosphere come over the bar area. Eyeing me suspiciously, a different woman asked, who is this guy? Her eyes boring into mine. I answered for myself.

I’m nobody. Do me a favor, I need some time alone to think about my life. If there’s anything you want to discuss we can do it later, say, tomorrow morning. Okay? Can you come back tomorrow morning? I asked, cheekily.

Evidently, the woman wanted to keep our conversation going.

Do you know where you are? She said in threatening tone.

I was in no mood for a conversation leading to a scrap. I’m drinking less.

All right. I’ll be the one to come back tomorrow, I said. The first woman’s eyes were piercing with aggression. After making a low bow, I walked out through the door, my legs shaking. She followed me out and said, in a lowered man’s voice, This is a transgender bar. Don’t return here. It will be messy. Do you understand me?

Feeling I fully understood him/her I decided to keep to that agreement. Call it a moment when sobriety probably saved my life. I walked away thinking I won’t return to Mr. Foggy’s bar anytime soon.

Steve, called an hour later. Where the hell are you, it’s late. In reply to his volley of questions, I said nothing except that I would be in touch with him tomorrow. Steve cannot shut up, ever.

What happened? Come on, tell me. It hasn’t worked out, has it? Otherwise, they wouldn’t have just sent you away. What did they ask you? Don’t tell me they have seen through your tricks. Each question from Steve a reminder I should have been having dinner with someone else this evening.

I let out a deep sigh, as if I had emerged from a long tunnel of darkness from which I had been trapped some many hours, or forty years.

I headed back to the hotel. I could not sleep. Tomorrow would come sooner if I fell asleep, but for the life of me I just couldn’t. It was driving me crazy. My wife wasn’t lying next to me, fast asleep, with the sound of her breathing. I had to suppress the urge to immediately call and tell her what had happened.

While I lay awake in the dark, trying in vain to become unconscious, a panorama of my miserable life from my orphanage years up to the present flashed before my eyes, half-fantasy, half-reality. I feared that I was actually going crazy.

I told myself this was not a play but for real. I was not reassured. I mean, how could something like the incident described above happen for real? And to me of all people.

Then I must have dropped off.

In a dream, I was back in the orphanage about sixty-five years ago. It was in the middle of the school play. The princess who was supposed to kiss me was being played by that man/woman in the bar. I was nervous and frightened that the play wouldn’t end before the man/woman would kiss me.

I woke up with a start to the sound of my cell phone ringing loudly in the dark. Overwhelmed by that sound and a feeling of foreboding, I could not bring myself to pick up the phone. I checked the time. It was two in the morning.

I know they say life and death are in God’s hands, but when I had failed to pick up my phone, it was Steve calling from his hotel room in Covent Garden. (It’s a long story as to why we don’t stay at the same hotel.)

It was a few minutes past seven am, Steve called again. I told him he was lying. He wasn’t impressed.

What are you talking about? Why would I call you up in the middle of night just to tell a lie? If you don’t believe me, come to the damn hospital and see for yourself, he said.

My wife woke up startled. Honey, what’s wrong? What happened?

I explained that Steve was in hospital with a broken leg. I found no words to explain everything to her. That it was my fault. Had I pickup up his call he would not have got into the car to come to my hotel. The truck would not have t-boned him.

Like a madman, I had sprung to my feet and rushed to the hospital. I was half hoping I’d find find him already in the morgue. That his last sentence, even in passing, that I was a great writer.

But my hope was crushed when the doctor confirmed he had not been pronounced dead before arriving at the hospital, and was unlikely to do so during my visit.

I broke down crying, lying flat on the cold floor next to Steve’s bed in the hospital room. However, once started, it was a simple matter to stop the tears.

It’s not that I don’t have a great love for Steve. I mean, we met forty-three years ago. I’m simply bitter about my destiny and sorry for his involvement in my failing life. Think about it. Can you imagine anything more incredible than the possibility I should fail?

He’s allowed to sleep peacefully while I’m tormented about a way to prove I am not a person who has issues about persons of transgender. I live half the year in California, for the good Lord’s sake.

I had left Mr. Foggy’s bar under the threat of physical violence, alone in the dark wearing that ugly and hideous toad’s skin of discrimination.

But it felt unfair that I should simply give up and accept my misunderstanding of transgender.

I could start by telling people that I am the son of a transgender. But what if their response is unsympathetic, or treat me as a liar, making up a ridiculous story to claim my acceptance of the condition.

I would be outraged.

I remember a number of people had appeared at the bar out of nowhere and flocked to her/his side. Every one of them struck me as a gangster or a con artist. Undaunted, I did everything I could to bring the truth to light.

Or maybe I just left, whimpering about my life.

It’s all so bloody confusing. You can be born a man, but this means nothing. It means only that a child was born having a penis. That’s a simplification, of course, but you get where I’m at.

I sat down and wrote a story. What if everyone refused to believe me, that everything about me was a child being born with a penis, and everything I felt was as if I had been born a child without a penis, as if everyone had agreed in advance I was a boy?

Or worse, they simply dismissed me as someone of little talent writing a story as a man.

Steve was in the bed. He has a penis but I think he was meant to, I don’t know, so not a great subject for my story. And anyway, the doctor might pronounce him dead anytime now.

That was the last thing I wanted to see happen, of course. Even if I’m his failure. Nor am I eager to claim any inheritance. But I do want him to wake up so I can tell him about my transgender episode.

It was simply that I couldn’t bear to let him sleep while all the story is unfolding in my head.

Steve, I said, in a moment of weakness, touching his shoulder. He stirred. How do I know if I should be a woman?

He mumbled something, perhaps about his mouth being dry.

Hey, what’s the matter with you? I said. Could you please stop already? I understand how you feel. But it’s all over. You broke your leg, remember?

The nurse then asked me to leave. She said, perhaps sensing I wanted him dead. I need to take his vital signs, please wait outside.

I wondered how close he was to death? I left the room. I hope he says I’m a great writer before he ascends.

It was nine am. That was not all. My wife started treating me as a lunatic.

Honey, please come to your senses. Why are you doing this? Don’t you care what other people think about you? It’s so humiliating. I can’t take this anymore. I think you’re sick, really sick.

At that point, I also began to ask myself if I had gone insane. What if, I wondered, whatever I saw and heard when I was alone in the bar with that woman/man last night was in my imagination?

Once that doubt crept in, I could no longer tell which part of what I believed was true and which part was false.

You can go back in now, your friend is quite awake.

I didn’t go back in. I started talking less and less to myself and eventually reached the point of staying holed up in my room all day staring into space like a caged animal.

Honey, what’s wrong? my wife asked, in a scared voice, evidently surprised by my tears. In fact, this was the first time in months that I had expressed any feelings.

Imagine a child being born with a penis when everything else about that person growing up identifies with being a woman?

Is this a story you are writing? She asked.

I may be dismissed as uneducated for saying this, but, honestly, how much in life is important to understand?

Is destiny really of people’s own making if God is responsible for creating the mysteries of birth and sexuality? God made a point for me. I was destined to be orphaned.

But I feel that something is still missing. If there is a God and He controls our destiny, how does He explain transgender?

I am pondering that question. What do you think about that?

I was heading home. What was ailing me, I have put it behind me.

Whether or not answers to questions will come to pass, a man like me is not in a position to tell.

Steve, if anyone is interested, lived.