Electrolysis better be the most painful part of changing sex

Reflections with a beautician on God, religion, life, sexuality and gender

“Non sei molto ‘lei’ oggi,” [you are not very ‘her’ today], she grimaced as I followed her into the salon as she opened for the day.  

“What, as opposed to ‘lui’?” [him].

“Si,” she said.  She’s rather blunt for a service provider, and rather insensitive.  I like her anyway.  “Usually you are so elegant, well turned out, heels, a pretty dress.  Today, you are all jeans and butch.”

“I just came from the movers,” I said, having spent the last two days moving the last of my wife’s stuff out of my house.  And can you believe it, my wife is actually pissed off at me for doing so.  She expected me to just leave her stuff all over the family home as if it was still hers, using it to blackmail me emotionally.  Now that it is gone, I have a fellow witch coming in to clear her energy from the house.  Can’t wait.

I mused on her comments as she tortured my genitals.  I was being judged for what I wore.  How I looked.  I know that women complain about this.  How what they wear, how they look, how they present themselves can become a topic of conversation, a form of judgement.  As a man, in man’s clothes, I don’t think that ever happened unless the mismatch was so enormous.  And even though I didn’t really enjoy her comment, this “take the good with the bad” commitment I made in my soul when I was reborn female through Ayahuasca, and stepped seamlessly out of my male self and into the mother of the little boy I once was, in another way, I was really happy that she had said this, as it felt like a part of the female experience, and it was an honour to be given this feeling.

Today was all business and matter-of-fact.  I got to be in the nicest, largest room.  She stepped out briefly to give me time to change.

“Can I have a blanket or cover?” I asked.

“For cold or modesty?”

“Both.”

“I’m hot,” she said, “always hot,” she said before bringing me back a blanket some minutes later.  I was lying under a beach towel, but had left my bra on.  I was wearing one.  With the dresses I wear, I usually don’t, because the style that suits my body best are silky clinging things that just have a straight drop.

She covered me, my top, really, and then turned up the towel covering my modesty, had me spread my legs, and for the next 90 minutes, with an electrified gold needle, shocked my hairs down there, one by one, and then pulled them out with tweezers.  She complained that I was so blonde down there that it was hard to see, so put an extra light to help.

In the trans world, this is the longest part of preparation for surgery.  Thai surgeons usually offer to scrape the hair follicles from the tissue they will be using during the operation, but sometimes they miss one…and what happens is that you can end up with hairs growing inside your vagina.  Do you know how you deal with that?  Nair.  Can you imagine?  Putting such a nasty, strong chemical into such a sensitive and personal space.

The US surgeons will scrape a few stragglers if they see any but are like religious zealots in terms of insisting on having electrolysis done, and do note that laser is not permanent…the beautician marvels at how quickly my body is losing its hair under her bi-weekly treatments, yes, the torture happens that often.  

What is it with hairdressers and beauticians that make them such entertaining conversationalists?  This one barely let’s me talk.  She just starts going, and as she works, to avoid the needle straying or her losing her place on me, I generally shut up.  But today, there was too much rich stuff.

“Berlusconi died,” she said, “what do you think?”  She didn’t give me time to answer.  Just as well.  “I rather liked him,” she continued.  “There were some that didn’t, and he got too old, but he said things that needed saying.  One of my clients was completely out of her head over it.  She was so sad.  Just the other day she was in here in tears over his death?”

“Will he have a state funeral?”

“Of course.  He was the premiere.”

“What about Andreotti?”

“He’s dead.”

“I know, but did he have a state funeral?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What about Craxi?”

“No.  He was a crook.  He finished in exile in Tunisia.”

“I know, but he was a premiere.”

“No, not after what he did.”  Amongst his political sins, he actually stole a roman statue, a fountain, for his garden in Tunisia which is where he lived out his exiled final years.

“But they’re all crooks,” I said, “Andreotti was part of the mafia.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“And Berlusconi was his protégé.  He was the one who delivered Sicily to Andreotti, and this what what got him in later.”

“Yes, the mafia is everywhere.”

“Yes.”

After politics, we talked about God.  That other ‘should never’ topic.  But we were both in a mood.  Star Child, my current spiritual guide, a Buddhist, said, “Buddhism is a practice, not a religion.”  This is what we discussed.

“One of my clients think Buddhism is devil worship.”

“So much that is bad in the world is done in the name of religion.  War, oppression, murder.”

“Yes, but humans need structure, rules.”

“We don’t need to legislate morality.  We have an innate understanding of right and wrong.”

“What about that man who just clubbed his pregnant wife to death before killing himself?”

“You don’t think he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong?  Of course he did.  That’s probably why he killed himself.”

“What about pedophiles.  They groom children and think it is good for them.”

“There’s nothing more evil.”

“They don’t know right from wrong.”

“I’ll bet they do, but they don’t care.  And who is the biggest pedophile of them all?  The church.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged.  

The conversation strayed into how most religions are designed to reinforce the patriarchy.

“I don’t understand why you don’t like men.  Here we are preparing you for a vagina, and you don’t want a man.”

“I hate men.  And anyway, when I am looking at the face of someone inside me, and feeling the unique ecstasy that this will represent, I want it to be a woman who is looking back at me.”

“I have lot’s of lesbian friends.”

“I know,” she has previously shared that she is a lesbian.  “I don’t like men, so why would I want a man inside me?”

“I don’t like men either.  I think they are pigs.”

“There is something about male lust which infuses so much of life, and comes at the most random times, and I find it disgusting.”

“Yes, me too.”

“It was always sad for me when I was younger, that the way I was a boy, the way I was a teenager, a young adult, didn’t appeal to almost every woman I was attracted to.  They wanted guys who were more typically male, aggressive even, assholes even.  Some women like to be mistreated.  It was very sad for me.”

“Yes.”

“I think the world is changing.  Women are waking up to their own power, to their own rights, but the social conditioning of the Church, of society, is so heavy.  It takes a lot to break free.  I hope this changes with it.”

“Yes.”

“You’re very different,” she said.

“Philosophical,” she said, “not dirty.”

“Thank you.”

“But why bother having a vagina?  All this pain, and I see how you suffer.  And next time, please use some lidocaine or other topical spray.  Just spray it on a half hour before we start, cover it with plastic wrap, and hustle over.”

“I can’t do this without a vagina.  It is the most important part.  I think about other things, changing my voice, having facial surgery, even breast, other operations, but that one is the one that matters most.  I can’t imagine not having that part of this process.  And besides, I love my body now, and I want to be able to wear a bikini on the beach and just be a celebration of how good it feels to be trans.

“But God gave you this body, and it is a beautiful body, why change it?  Isn’t that against God.”

“Perhaps yours.”

“But He is divine, doesn’t make mistakes.”

“God is not a He.  By definition, your God must be non-binary.  It is the only possibility.”

“You think?”

“Of course.  My God is not a thinking, conscious energy that pays attention to our trivial lives.  For one, we are not alone, the universe is teaming with life.  But second, God is energy.  That’s it.  We are all energy.  Matter is energy.  And because of this, everything is God.”

“Some people are atheists.”

“To be an atheist is to be an idiot.”  Pascal’s contribution to the thinking on this is perhaps the most valuable philosophical contribution to this discourse of the past 500 years.  For those who don’t know it, Pascal’s proof essentially stated that being a believer cost nothing, whereas being an atheist potentially carried the ultimate cost, so only a fool would choose atheism.  Faith as pragmatism.  I grossly over-simplify.  But there you have it.

“Well, Dottoressa X [can’t remember the name], the famous physicist, was a very smart woman and she was an atheist.”

“In this regard, she was not smart.  Many physicists are atheists.  I think it is egotism which leads to atheism.  Smart, dumb, whatever, it is an ultimately egotistical act to not believe.”

“Interesting.”

“And anyway, many atheists aren’t rejecting God, they are rejecting religion.  And given how religion is essentially a tool of repression, a way for one group to assert authority over another, a way to legitimise patriarchal power, and this is certainly true of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism…just look at how they proscribe women’s behaviour.”

“And for you?  Are you not Christian?”

“Yes, in theory, I am.  I was raised as one, I was baptised and confirmed, I married in the Catholic Church, I went to Sunday school, in my grade school and high school years I attended service every day.  But I also had a religious scholar-teacher who introduced us all to philosophy, and that is what I studied at University.  Actually, gender, from a philosophical standpoint.”

“Hmm.”

“God, for me, is what connects us all, makes us all one.  As humans, our job is to listen.  To feel.  Many choose not to.  But this is our obligation.  Part of what I am doing to my body, this sex change I am in the midst of, is to help me listen better, to listen in ways that I need to hear.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a witch.”

“I know many witches.  I used to do many witchy things.  Readings, spirit cleansing.  It has been a long time.  Do you believe in those things.”

“Very much.  I practice them.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know good witches.  There are so many charlatans.”

“There are not that many.  And so many are unclean, but scattered around Europe and the US, I know several very gifted witches.”

“I need to get in touch with one.  I have so much guilt.”

“About what?”

“About my mother.  That I listened to my brothers.  But I could have done it.  I could have brought her home to die in her own bed, and I didn’t do it.”

“How are you guilty for that?”

“Because I knew I could heal her.”

“How can you carry that?”

“We weren’t close.  She was a horrible person.  But she was my mother.  When she became a vegetable, she didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t shit or piss, she was so light and small.”

“How did this make you guilty?”

“I could have brought her home.  Brought her home to die and I didn’t.  My brothers said that if I didn’t cure her, they would accuse me of killing her.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yes, but I didn’t fight.”

“It’s time let go,” I said.

“I’m a slave,” I said to her.

“I know,” she said.  I was surprised.  And then asking myself, what on earth would have told her that?  There has been nothing in our conversation that touched on this.  Nothing at all.  “But what I don’t understand, is how you can be a slave and not be a masochist.”

“I don’t like pain.”

“It’s very strange to me.”

“Well, you mentioned to me that one of your clients has a domina.  I do too.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I have been whipped.”

“I don’t think I would like that.”

“I don’t either, and yet part of me asks for it, even though I don’t like it.”

“Why then.”

“A domina I used to see would whip me or hit me often.  I said to her, can’t we skip that part and just go straight to the cuddling?  And she said ‘no’, this is an important part of the process.  And she was a magician with my body.  She could hit me and I would feel fine, but then she would place a hand somewhere, and then I would just starting sobbing.  It was very mystical and special.  Such an incredible release.  It was a kind of therapy.”

“I’m a bit of a sadist,” she said.

“You think I don’t know that,” we both laughed.

“Yes, I think I rather enjoy this.”  I lived through the next few minutes of hell in quiet contemplation.  “I think it hurts you more here, than here,” she said, first electrocuting a hair in my leg crease before tackling one on my sac.”

“Yes, much more.”  She focussed on what hurt for a while.

“Today, we are going to do laser again, but at a much higher power.”

“Oh no.  They said laser wasn’t supposed to hurt so much, but it is much more painful.”

“Your hairs are so small, and light in colour, that high-potency is the only way.”

The kind of pains that comes with laser is deep, feeling like pin pricks.  I did a good job of not wriggling this time.  But the smell of burning is real and was reaching my nose as I experienced an alternative form of cock and ball torture.  I have accepted that she will remove absolutely all hair from my genital area.  The demands of surgery require less, but she believes that the hairs which remain talk to each other, reseed each other, and so she wants them off.  And aesthetically, since she has known me for full body boxing, including down there, for two years, she knows that I like to be hair free.

“You are lucky to have waxed for so long.  You have very little hair.  We will have you ready for your surgeon this fall.”  My big date with the first-choice surgeon is on Halloween.  I really like the symbolism of that.  If they give me an early date instead of making me wait for another year and a bit, I will go with them.  If they don’t, I will go with my second choice, who has better availability and is perhaps just as good.

Both of my chosen surgeons are women.  Pioneers in the field.  I don’t want a man to create my vagina.  People speak reverently about the beautiful vaginas that Thai doctors in particular create.  Some describe them with breathless affection.  But I don’t want a man’s spirit involved in the creation of my yoni.  I want that moment, that sacred part of my anatomy to be born at the hands of a woman, with no male gaze involved.

After she had finished on my genitals, she went to my face.

“Not today,” I said, “I still haven’t fully healed from two times ago.”

“Every month,” she said, “otherwise we do the work and then it comes back.  There are dark hairs coming in again.”  She touched my face, “it’s ugly.  You don’t want to shave do you?  Do you like shaving?”

“No.”

“Good.  I will turn up the power, tell me if you can take it, but the face needs a stronger laser.”

“Okay.”  Fifteen minutes later, we were done, and she was applying soothing cream to my skin.

Later that evening, as I laughed with a girlfriend about the absurdities of my day, especially the matter-of-fact ‘I know’ that the beautician gave to my announcement that I am a slave, we both speculated on how that could have come about.

“Well, you do put off a kind of submissive energy.  Certainly one that I pick up on as a woman, one that encourages me to speak, one that I feel comfortable around, comfortable enough to exercise my own power.”

“Really?  That’s my dream.”

“Yes.  But slave?  I don’t pick that up.  I mean, now I know you, yes.  But I don’t know how she would have picked that up.”

“I do have a belly button piercing that says ‘Bitch’.  And it is encrusted with pink diamonds.”  We both started laughing.  And then kept laughing.  

“I didn’t know you had a belly button piercing.”

“I wore my wedding ring there.”

“Beautiful,” she said.

“When this divorce happened, I took it out and put the ‘bitch’ one in.”

“So, it is a political-emotional gesture.”

“Yes.  I admit that I bought it back when I was playing with a dominatrix and it felt appropriate, but never wore it.”

“She [the beautician] won’t have known that.”

“I wonder if wearing the bitch pendant is what has driven all these weird conversations with her?”

My friend deadpanned me, raised her eyebrows, “you wonder?”

“I guess not.”