You Could Almost Imagine Her Saying: “Just Get Me Out And I’ll Never Do This Again”

I feel. The movers fill your body with empty boxes.

The girl on my block, the Volunteer with the Christian organization, that works at the orphanage, also on my block, she’s dead

Yesterday that kitten that keeps getting stuck in places got stuck near the transmission of a running car. I was on my stomach, after seeing the horrible, awful pictures all over the newspapers, I was on my stomach on the hot pavement yelling, “Turn off engine, it’s stuck. The kitten’s stuck.”

“Can see? Can see?” the grandmothers slapped with baby powder kept asking, more and more grandmothers coming out of different houses in their flowered sarongs and rolling skin.

It was afternoon. I was late. I was supposed to be evacuating my site. Meeting people at a big hotel five hours away. It was pretend. The evacuation. A test.

“I don’t care,” my friend who is getting a divorce tells me in that cement box with red plastic chairs. The back of her dingy restaurant. Now that she doesn’t have a house anymore we eat there, she sleeps there on a mat. We eat rice with an egg. On a card table. One hole in the ground to clean the dishes and a black cauldron to slow boil the pigs for the market.

I don’t care.

“Can’t see. Can’t see,” I kept telling the grandmothers. I thought: You cannot cry now. You can’t have them see you cry. And that kitten I couldn’t see, but could hear the awful cries, the same kitten who got stuck under my laundry washing bin, the bin was against the wall and the kitten must have bumped into it in the middle of the night, getting trapped under, I found her the next afternoon and screamed because she startled me so. The same kitten now stuck under that hot big car just crying and crying and crying. You could almost imagine her saying, “Just get me out and I’ll never do this again. I swear, I swear.”

And I kept saying, “I can’t see. I can’t see.”

Anna’s dead. They were the ones who gave me all my clothes. The clothes that I wear are their old clothes. What can I do? Do I get rid of them? What do I do?

It was a boating accident in Phuket. Details are sketchy. On the broadcast news they said a Peace Corps Volunteer from Phang Nga died. So everyone was so worried, that it was me, who died. But I didn’t die. I told my friends that, when they called. Dressed in their clothes.

In their clothes, I said, “I didn’t die. That wasn’t me. It was a mistake.”

They worked at the orphanage on my block. A little one with six kids. Including Gobert, he has fetal alcohol poisoning and he’s six. His mother made him dance like a monkey on the streets and the tourists would laugh and give him money. And then one day his mother just left him there. He will still dance like that if you ask. It’s a horrible, ugly sight. Long bone arms flailing. Toothless, stupid grin. Giant head bobbing back and forth.

Anna was twenty. The other volunteer was also twenty. They were young. And that’s how I saw them. The other volunteer sitting at her house, I’d be walking up the hill, I’d pass her every day coming home from work, we’d smile. I’d think, What are you doing here?

Caitlyn said grimly, calling from the north, a twenty-four hour bus ride from here. She said, “It’s in the newspapers.” Then she said, “I’m sorry.”

And I knew what she meant—why she told me she was sorry.

And I grabbed my umbrella. And I left my door open and walked briskly through spits of rain. I was supposed to have left, I was supposed to be evacuating.

I didn’t care.

There she was. Anna. Why Caitlyn was sorry. I knew why she was sorry. The photographs, on the front page, everywhere. On every paper. Loud heavy bold Thai script and those pictures.

“Can’t see. Can’t see,” I kept saying. Squinting up at the bottom of that hot truck. That’s when the kitten stopped meowing. And it was silent.

Ten minutes before I had been standing at the newsstand. With that newspaper in my hand just staring at it. Her bangs matted against her face. The blood coming out of her mouth, a small stream, her mouth open in a dumb way, like she had just fallen asleep and the line of blood was drool. Her white bloated big thighs wide open. All crooked. Giant, grainy close up photos of her dead white face. Her dark t-shirt wet and hugging her round belly, her dead, full breasts. And those white, white grey bloated thighs. Anna.

Her friend, the other volunteer, the one I thought seemed so young. There she was, on the giant main picture, Anna on her back on the sand all bloated and wet and dead and crooked with that one line of blood, and the other volunteer, standing there, breaking, breaking, breaking. Like she just got it, she just understood, what had happened, right that second.

“What does it say? I can’t read Thai, what does it say?” The newsstand guy stuttered, I had just shoved the paper at him, I didn’t even smile.

“Girl, name Anna, 20, American, Volunteer, Phuket, boat, dead.”

“Okay, okay,” I said and left. I never bought the paper.

The kitten popped out suddenly and sprinted up the street, made a quick turn, and jumped over my gate and into my front yard. The grandmothers all smiled relieved. We all care for the dumpster cats, the grandmothers and I. It’s a thing we share. I followed the kitten. I don’t know why she went there. When I got to my house she was pawing at my front window meowing. Then she saw me. And ran away—back to the street, then up towards the mountain.

The day before any of this happened. I was washing my laundry. A bird fell from the sky suddenly. The bird gripped onto my gate, but spun upside down, and fell there. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what had just happened. A bird falling from the sky like that. It was light and flying and then it became heavy and fell. Just like that. Suddenly.

The volunteer who I thought looked so young, who I passed by everyday, who’s clothes I wear, she was photographed breaking, breaking over her newly dead friend on the front page of every newspaper in Thailand yesterday.

Long time making it home today, from the evacuation. I was dropped off from one bus on the side of the road, they said the next bus will come. It never came. I walked miles and miles in that rain forest. Across bridges stilted over the thick brown rivers. Getting rides in the back of pick up trucks, getting dropped off, and walking again.

I didn’t care.

Up the hill, to my house, walking towards that mountain I live next to. It’s dark now. There is a dim square of light on the rock face of the mountain from the moon. I am dirty and I am tired. I pass their house. All the lights are on, sharp fluorescent lights shooting out of every window. A Thai person I don’t know is packing all of their things into boxes.

The Ladyboys Know How To Get Down

 

“Mary,” a Thai woman I was working with the other day goes, “what you call it when woman trapped in man body?”

“Transvestite,” someone in the car says.

 “Right, right,” she goes. I wasn’t satisfied with that.

“Transgendered, I think transgendered.” I was surprised by how confused I was getting, not able to peg it down. After all I have a pretty solid gay history. Going to those Bigayla meetings with Baker freshmen year. Celebrating Gaypril for the entire month of April, I always brag about that in
Ithaca, how huge and loud our gay community was. 

“Because, is transvestite just dressing up like a woman? Can’t you be a transvestite one night and then go to work as a man the next? Or can’t you? If you dress in drag once are you a transvestite forever?” (If that’s the case lets take a little look at those 9^th grade pictures taken in Caroline Moore’s bedroom. Where dressing in woman’s clothes, was the thing to do on Friday afternoons for my entire group of friends, should I not have mentioned that?)

“Yeah, maybe, I don’t know, but everyone calls them transvestites,” the other Volunteer says.

“I think they are transgendered, but I don’t know,” I confess. And feel stupid that I don’t know.

The Thai women who is asking me this is driving Christy and I to a high school to work with her students who are working on a presentation for a group of officials who will be visiting the school in the month. The only reason we agreed to it, since it isn’t at either of our schools, is because “Bob,” will be there. Bob is 17. We worked with Bob at our English Camp in April. Bob is the make believe English name we gave him. I can never remember his real name. Bob’s the best. Everyone loved Bob because he was so damn funny and good-natured. Bob, like most of the boys at our camp, is a lady boy. Walks and talks and dresses (minus a skirt) like a girl. All the Thais are indifferent to this, it’s completely normal. Some boys are boys, some are lady boys and that’s that.

“As long as they have good heart it doesn’t matter,” my supervisor, a forty year old man, told me.

At English Camp we were going over personal autobiographies one afternoon. They would have to present them to the entire camp on stage with a microphone. Everyone was nervous.

“Why are you unique?” Christy asked the class while they were writing their speeches. No one understood. Their Thai English teacher, who was there, said, “Christy, don’t understand unique, what unique?”

“Something special about you,” she said, “something that makes you different.”

He didn’t get it. Didn’t like the sound of it. The old generation is collective, the young kids now, being bombarded with everything western, are beginning to appreciate the individual. Buying the individual through clothes and jewelry, at least. Because that’s what Western consumerism is teaching them, like it has taught us. That day Bob was wearing a front ponytail with a pink elastic that matched his pink shirt that matched his furry pink pencil case.

“See Bob,” Christy goes, walking towards him, “is unique because he has a front ponytail.”

Bob giggled. And that is what he used for his presentation. “My name is Bob. I am unique because I have a front ponytail.”

Lady boys, as they are called here, are everywhere. They are fully accepted in the society. They work at government offices, stores, restaurants, anywhere, dressed as women. Their hair grown out long and brushed straight. Giggling and laughing and often acting outlandish and eccentric which everyone likes, is amused by.

Oddly enough, though lady boys are publicly accepted, gays aren’t. Neither are lesbians.

“She’s lesbian, no good,” a friend told me pointing to a girl who was friends with her daughter. “Do you know lesbian?”

“Yeah,” I go and decide not to get into it.

 It’s cheap to change your sex here. I mean it’s startling cheap. Go to
Bangkok and you can have a sex change for 10,000 baht. That’s like less than 300 U.S. dollars. People from all around the world come to do it.

"Becoming a woman in Thailand is easier and cheaper than almost anywhere in the world.”

Yet as accepted as lady boys are they do not have any legal rights in
Thailand. “Sex change is not legally recognized, so women like Ball (the lady boy profiled) are still legally men. That means she and her husband have no legal relationship, even if they held a religious ceremony with their families. Neither does Thai law have a provision for prosecuting men who rape men. That leaves a keyhole with no legal recourse if they become a target of a sexual attack.”  Lady boys are everywhere.

“Thailand is believed to have one of the largest transsexual populations in the world. Academics estimate at least 10,000 live in Thailand, though many think it is more than ten times higher.” It is for sure higher than 10,000, in my opinion.

So it’s all interesting, you know. Thailand, for reasons I have never been able to nail down, totally accepts this one other gender. Girl, boy, ladyboy. Pick one. And with this third option many Thais squeeze into it. That’s the niche closest to who they are. But if they are gay they are out of luck. If they’re a lesbian they’re out of luck. If they are anything else that doesn’t have a name yet, they’re out of luck. Still hiding and acting and hiding.If the lady boy wasn’t accepted Bob would just be another guy trapped in his body that he doesn’t fully identify with. Trying to hold back the natural parts of himself that show so beautifully today. His laugh and his little run when he is skipping quickly up to Christy and I, as we get out of the car at his school. “Christy! Mary! Christy! Mary,” he squeals running up to us clapping. “You’re here!”

We never told him the only reason we came. Woke up early and spent the afternoon with his class was because we wanted to see him. Because his presence is so refreshing.

“Bob,” I go smiling, pointing at his school uniform. He was dressed all boys in
Thailand, brown shorts and white shirt. “What are you wearing?” He scrunches up his face as if he just smelled something bad. “I know,” he goes quietly, “I don’t like.”

I was at an AIDS conference a few months ago in the north. A group of HIV patients performed for us. The traditional Thai dance with long gold fingernails and high gold hats like the Buddha, which symbolizes reaching enlightenment. The dance moves slowly. It is a turn of the wrist and ankle. Slight moves of the body. They were all lady boys, dressed as the traditional Thai woman. “They like doing this,” the doctor whispered to me, “performing for you like this. Just as they are.”

Source:
Griffin Shear, “Life and Love As A Ladyboy”