IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN

Sarah Goodwin

I was the lone biological female and the only Caucasian among a group of Asian transsexuals living in an apartment building in Queens, appropriately. They treated me like a pet: they dressed me up like a doll and asked to feel my breasts. Some of them didn't even know what caused a woman to bleed once a month. I sat them down and explained a reproductive system that fascinated them. Eventually they could tell by the size of my breasts and belly when I was getting my period. They bought me drinks, fed me drugs, and walked me through the velvet ropes in night clubs.

My twenty third birthday party: The transsexuals arrived at 1 a.m. Gorgeous Otik took me in her scrawny arms. Her verse was plush-lipped and Filipino. "Miss Boom, for your birthday we got you five valium, but Gretchen ate one. " She gave me four pills and Gretchen giggled.

After I'd taken two valiums and quite a bit of cocaine, I was snuck into a nightclub for trannies and their admirers. In the bathrooms, an intimidatingly large queen exclaimed, "Hey, that's a real girl," to which Gretchen replied, "No she isn't." I started to laugh. The world had flipflopped and now I was the freak.

Later I watched Gretchen and Coco taking turns on a buff young man in the bathroom of a nightclub. I was comfortably lounging in a plush chair with a cocktail in my hand. The boy's eyes met mine in a mirror. "I want to touch her," he said, gesturing toward me.

"You can't. She's a real girl," said Coco.

"I know. Can't I please touch her?" lie made a move toward me, but was restrained by strong hands.

"No. You are not allowed to touch her."

I smiled at him from the safety of my pillows.

Otik and Bianca never paid for taxicabs. They knew which ones to choose; the ones that sit outside certain clubs at certain hours of the morning. One of them would sit in the front and give the driver a quick, quiet handjob. It took me weeks to figure out why they always pushed me out of the cab before I could take money out of my purse.

Men make the most beautiful women-they are tall and long-legged. They buy their boobs in choice condition and don't gain weight no matter how much they eat. They have strong arms and stately shoulders, and they were not taught to be docile like little girls. They do not understand my fear of being raped, which was instilled in me since before my breasts began to grow.

My queens enjoyed being larger than life, in spiked heels and go-go boots, in leather and glitter and rubber, with masses of make-up, wigs and plumes. We would walk into the back room of a small club and watch the room grew silent. Once a black woman exclaimed loudly, "Well I'll be damned." Alone, we laughed and repeated "Well I'll be damned," for weeks to come.

Imagine, now, a C Chord, strummed softly:

"One night I made love to a Persian boy, a musician; he was beautiful in the heat while a warm rain fell. The Hell's Angels lived right below his apartment. I woke to engines revving."

Listening to Caterina talking was like listening to a cat purr. This high-priced call girl you'd never guess used to be a boy. Whereas if you sat in the dark with candles lit, free-basing in the living room, the computer off?, everything of?, you might think somehow she maintained an innocence that a junky tranny whore shouldn't have; one bed for sleeping and one bed for sex. The world is cruel it doesn't deserve pink canopies.

Mama Ling was the oldest transsexual I'd ever seen. She was somewhere between 40 and 80. The others treated her to the reverence of a matriarch, even when she was falling-down drunk shouting obscenities. She spent time in a Malaysian prison for prostitution. She was put in the men's division, in a private cell. The guards let certain prisoners into her cell so she should could do them sexual favors for cigarettes. She told me this quietly, as if she didn't want the others to hear.

I got engaged to a drag queen. I didn't tell my parents. Daisy was dying her body carried that famous virus.

We must remember his name used to be Chin. He knew the hustle on the streets of Malaysia where seven children shared one room. He'd been selling himself to men since he was fifteen. Now, no food, no money, family faraway; he ran when he saw cops because that's what boys do in Malaysia. Here they chase you, he realized. An older man took Chin home from Penn Station. Chin didn't know what he was eating or how to use a fork. This man was the first to put Chin in a dress. With a wig, some make-up, he was beautiful.

Daisy gave me a tiny diamond in a box of sweettarts.

"My parents will be so happy I married a girl. I will mail them photos in tux and gown," Daisy said bouncing off in a dress shorter and slimmer than mine.

Things get dirty or lost, things get left in other peopleÕs bedrooms; things fall out of sight; they disappear then show up inexplicably things get left at parties.

I have not gone back on my promise, nor do I know where the ring is.

Kasha's mother called her "Little Princess," though she already had two biological girls. On Kasha's 21st birthday party, her mother sent Kasha a pearl necklace,just as she had when her biological daughters reached that age. "You're family is so beautiful," China Girl she told Kasha. "Mine won't even speak to me."

China Girl started to cry. She wouldn't stop, and had to be taken away. Later she disappeared forever, though we hung her picture all over Manhattan. We imagine she met a violent end at the hands of some guy who took her home then realized she had a penis.

A geisha called Emerald demanded my eyes, drinking Mai Tai's. I was transfixed, she was transsexual. She called me "biiitchy," asked how's my "puuusssy", and touched it like a spot on my jeans so I blushed a little. I am powerless in the face of artifice, dangerous physical beauty, which seems a bestest female friend, but best avoid her when you can. What if she woke before dawn and turned my way with stricken expression and colors splayed?

Later, I let a broad-shouldered "lesbian caught in a man's body", a white cross-dresser named Alice, seduce me over a bottle of Jagermeister I thought being with her would be like making love to a tree, a wholly spiritual being without gender. Actually, I felt like I was being fucked by a man in a dress.

Lately I think of gender as a set of clothes you can toss off at any time, a list of guidelines to be followed or ignored at will. TransÑtransientÑcrossed over. Most of the time I just throw on a pair of sneakers, put my hair in a ponytail and head on into the world.

c.2000