Six months of dilation to look forward to.
Still.
The pain will wear off.
Life is pretty good actually – Sore, but good! – And you helped get me here – Thanks.
DEBORAH: I only met Patrick once. I was passing by Cathy’s office and she said call in. I said, ‘okay, but I won’t be me, I’ll be Sean,’ and she said, ‘call in anyway, I’ll be Patrick.’ She thought it might be important for us to see that side of each other.
I felt weird in myself being there as Sean. I felt weird meeting Patrick. I would have preferred, if we were going to be friends, that we be friends the way we should always have been friends: just Cathy and Deborah.
At that time, I was trying to transition and I was doing it. OK, maybe in a haphazard way, but I was doing it. Cathy, on the other hand, was trying not to transition. She was trying to stay a happily married male, keep her family safe.
CATHY: Yes.
DEBORAH: At the time it meant a hell of a lot more to me to present myself as I saw myself. As Deborah.
CATHY: That’s true.
DEBORAH: We are very different. Once Cathy decided to transition and live full-time as herself, she did it literally overnight; whereas, my transition from Sean to Deborah has been more like the tide coming in.
CATHY: I got my hair washed today and was able to put on my make-up, all of which made me feel more human again. Not just some banged up transsexual.
Your gift of an iPod Nano with 441 songs has proved invaluable. I carry it with me as I go. I also carry a white plastic bag which contains my urine bag and the bottle draining the blood from my vaginal area.
In the operation, Dr. Deeptha took my penis and literally sliced it down the shaft. He took away all the blood vessels inside that swell up and cause an erection. He also removed the testes.
My sons and I were joking, the day before I came here, that they should be mounted and perhaps be used as bookends or something. At least Shane was involved in that kind of slagging – as I remember, Peter thought it was gross and he’s right.
The proudest moment of my life was handing my son to my father. I was totally chuffed. So was he. It was nice: to be a normal male at something. You know. I didn’t know I’d feel the sense of pride I did, handing my son to my Dad. It was my Dad I was always trying to impress, not my Mum. I’m cut out of him, cut out of my father.
I haven’t seen myself down there yet – I need to be sure I have, finally, been put right.
My days are filled with dozing.
Watching DVDs.
Listening to music.
Doing Sudoku –
thinking.
Missing my family.
The other thing is the rain. I haven’t seen a blue sky yet. Bangkok is a lot bigger and more modern than I expected. The Skyscrapers are more impressive than New York. I can count ten of them from my 6th floor bedroom. I keep my curtains open all the time.
The view is great.
DEBORAH: 1993. It was a Thursday morning about 11am. Jean rang me on my mobile asking me to come home early to talk. When I arrived, the kids were gone, that’s the first thing I noticed. We needed to talk, so that was OK. ‘Who is Deborah?’ she asked. Fuck! Fuck, that came out of the blue. Minutes, Hours, Days, Seconds, A Lifetime seemed to pass. Do I tell the truth? Do I Lie? Do I say I am having an affair? How does she know? Be truthful, I thought. ‘It’s me.’
SCENE 3
The Supremes: ‘Come See About Me’.
CATHY: OK, I know this to be the worst day of my life so far. I think a good deal of the pain and horror occurred in my mind, rather than in the physical world, but, of course, the mind is where we actually live, isn’t it?
The day starts off normally enough with a wake-up call at 6 a.m. and breakfast at 7 a.m., but all the time I am dreading getting the pack off, dreading the inevitable pain; dreading the cleaning of the vaginal area I know to be there but haven’t seen yet, but which, as far as I am concerned, is nothing more than an open wound.
At lunchtime my sister visits me.
She is in Bangkok on her holidays. A total coincidence.
We talk about the traffic and the weather.
After lunch, Dr. Deeptha arrives to take the pack off. He and the nurse start. They remove the adhesive plaster that surrounds the groin.
They pull it from my skin – skin that had been operated on five days earlier and which was already sore.
Ouch! Oohhhhhhh! Painnnnnn! I don’t know how to describe what I actually saw between my legs, but I’ll try: I saw badly bruised, mounds of unrecognisable flesh. I felt pain and lots of it. I didn’t want anyone touching me there – not from some sense of moral indignation, but rather, ‘that’s fucking sore – what do you think you are doing?’
They begin cleaning the area.
– that means touch me
there
– where I am so sore. I have waited my whole life to have my own vagina and knew that if I ever did get one, that this would be the type of introduction we would have. But OH GOD – what an introduction. I want to look down and see a healthy vagina where my healthy penis had been. That’s all I want. Not this torn and battered flesh.
DEBORAH: Dear Cathy, first, let me say, Congratulations.
This is a major step in our lives to take.
You are so brave taking this step now.
Before taking this step, I want to be completely at one in who I am. I want to be happy within myself and like who I am.
I understand that you must be in so much pain and I can only hope and pray that you can cope. Remember that each day should bring you that much nearer to the day when there will be no pain.
Cathy, I know on the surface I may appear to be ready to go ahead with the operation now, but I feel I am not, not ready for both the mental and physical endurance test that you are going through. You Cathy, you are a lot stronger than me.
CATHY: After dinner I rang for the nurse. I still hadn’t been shown how to clean my vagina and had to learn. So I rang for the nurse. She brought me into the bathroom and sat me on the toilet.
She filled the yellow pan with water and antiseptic solution and got some cotton wool.
She showed me what to do.
I remember using the cotton wool ball, soaked in the solution. The area was so sore and numb at the same time.
At first, I didn’t realise what was happening,
but I was fainting –
my first time ever.
The nurse helped me from the toilet and somehow we made it to my bed.
That’s where she left me –
naked –
dripping in antiseptic solution.
It was 4.45 p.m.
I was always like this, but the pain was in my heart.
The older I became, the more I thought of my mortality.
Not so much that I was afraid of death, but that the chance to have my life was slipping away.
So I was getting worse, the pain of the situation was getting worse.
I knew since I was about two or three, but I don’t consider my life before as belonging to someone different.
I lived my life as a man because I had to.
When I was a man, I was called Patrick.
Now I live my life, thank god, as I was always meant to, as a woman and I’m called Cathy. But I’m the same person.
SCENE 4
The Velvet underground and Nice: ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror. Final Chorus’.
DEBORAH: When I was in my late thirties, I was still playing football, not the perfect example of femininity I could have been. I had played football for over twenty years and had even played at League of Ireland level. I was quite good. I could play. I was fast and I was afraid of nothing. I think I was trying too hard, though, trying to be a man. But I did enjoy my football.
There came a time, though, when I needed to give it up. One Sunday I arrived, a little worse for wear, to play a match having been out the night before. The manager decided to play
me as centre back. The team we were playing were not very good, so I wouldn’t have much to do. Late in the game, we were winning 4-nil. The ball got kicked in my direction and a 6’ 6”, 20-stone farmer came rushing up the field at me with the ball. As he got closer, I started questioning what I was doing there. The night before, I had been wandering around Dublin in a short skirt and high heels, it just seemed mad to be involved in this macho pastime. So I stood to one side and let him through to score a goal. My team-mates were really pissed off. The next week, I played in the Cup Final, scored two goals and retired.
CATHY: It was 4.45 p.m. I remember that and I remember asking the nurse to come back in a few minutes.
I just needed a few minutes.
I managed to fit my sanitary towel by myself –
As Patrick I never felt vulnerable –
not really.
Now I just feel vulnerable.
I need Ellen.
I need my wife.
She wouldn’t turn me away –
not tonight.
She’s a saint –
a fucking saint –
we’ve agreed that so many times.
I love her. I love Ellen.
This is the single most important statement of my life.
I needed her that night.
I hope I will never need another human being as much again.
DEBORAH: Cathy, in your letter you say you don’t feel any more of a woman now than before, why would you?
You haven’t changed your brain. You only had your penis removed. These changes over the next number of months will help you feel more like a woman. Firstly, you won’t have to hide that penis and you will no longer be producing testosterone.
You are improving your lot, but, in doing so, you are losing someone important. Only you can decide if you can bring those around you with you and, more importantly, if you can live without them if they don’t.
CATHY: Dr. Deeptha called in to see me. I am also due to get a full face lift, upper and lower eyelids done, and a nice set of feminine lips. I really want my lips. It is the one area of facial feminisation that I believe will be the most effective.
I haven’t really had lips before –
none that you could see at any rate.
More pain. My head now ached also.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
– yea, yea, yea.
DEBORAH: Things I Hate
• People who don’t return
calls when they say they will
• My forehead
• Feeling lonely
• Cats
• People who constantly complain about money
• Pretending to be cool
• Birthday parties
• We’ll get you sorted. We’ll get you cured. We’ll help you beat this thing.
• Psoriasis
• Broccoli
• Christmas
• Jack Daniels
• Never having enough money
• Conversations with strangers that end in a newspaper
I spent thirty-seven years apologising for my condition. Over those thirty-seven years, I always felt I was answering to someone else. I put other people’s needs before my own. Now I’m shaking.
Moving out of my home, being told when and where I could see my children, accepting I will never have the same freedom with them as before. No one can ever understand what I experienced and, even if it is explained, no one can understand what it did to me. And maybe I don’t want anyone to understand it; maybe I want to keep it with me.
That brings me to my children. I have caused them so much pain in their short lives; I would never wish to cause them any further pain than is necessary. Before I have the operation, I want those loved ones around me to accept me for who I am, and eventually they will.
CATHY: My head is completely bandaged all around my face. All that peaks out are my eyes, nose and mouth – even my chin is bandaged. Dr. Deeptha’s assistant arrived to remove the bandages. Quick summary – pain. You see the bandages get glued to the head with dried blood.
After they left, I got up to get dressed and then I saw my face.
Really.
For the first time since surgery.
I look female.
It’s still my face.
I really don’t know what he did exactly.
I supposed he pulled the skin this way and that, but no bone restructuring work was done.
Still, I look more,
much more,
like a woman.
I hope it’s not my imagination.
If I stand out, I will know.
I don’t know why it matters to me that I pass in public –
it just does.
It always has.
It will make things easier on the kids when they are with me. Of course, if they are going to keep calling me Dad
(and I kinda hope they do),
people are going to look at us strangely anyway.
So here I am, staring at myself in the mirror and a woman looking back.
One that looks like she’s gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson: but a woman nonetheless. So I smile at myself –
still my smile and really my face.
SCENE 5
Belfast FM: ‘Killing in the Name Of’.
DEBORAH: 2004. It was a conversation that I knew I needed to have, but just never expected it to be now. I wasn’t ready for it, but it had to be had. Michelle and I are eight years apart in age. I am the eldest. When I was eight, she was a baby, when she was eight, I was a teenager, when she was sixteen, I was getting married. We were close but not that close. I didn’t really know her as a person; she was just my little sister. I sat on the bed and she sat across the room from me. I told her my big secret. I told her Mum and Dad had known for a few years now and that it had been the reason for the break-up of my marriage. I told her that I had to tell my kids. There was silence. Again, another point in my life when time stood still. I thought I had blown it. This was not going well. Eventually she spoke. She said: ‘You mean after all these years, I have a big sister?’
SCENE 5.5
Belfast FM: ‘Killing in the Name Of’.
CATHY: Today I was brought up to Dr. Deeptha’s office so he could look me over and show me how to dilate before I was to be checked out.
By now, I just want to crawl inside myself and be left alone.
I sit up into these stirrups –
he begins checking out my face.
Then he moves down –
He produces some sort of metal instrument as he approaches my vagina and tells me he’s going to insert it. But the odd thing is – that’s okay with me.
If Dr. Deeptha says that’s what he has to do, then that’s what he has to do.
So he puts the metal device inside and pushes until he meets resistance – this feels like pressure inside me. Then he shows me how to cleanse myself and use the douche.
That’s a red rubber ball with a point coming out one end. I have to fill the ball with antiseptic fluid mixed with water and squirt it up inside the vaginal cavity and repeat this four times immediately after I’ve spent fifteen minutes dilating.
I wasn’t given the metal gadget, I was given two wax dilators, one slightly smaller than the other and both resembling a –
well –
I have to put a condom –
they gave me six free –
onto the dilator – cover it with KY Jelly and stick it up inside myself for fifteen minutes every morning.
Then I have to cleanse and douche, and after that I have to take a bath.
DEBORAH: My marriage was not happy. I submerged myself in work from at least one year after the marriage. I traveled extensively on business, not always coming home when I should have. I left Jean to bring up three young children. In 1989, with my condition getting stronger, I hid my self in alcohol and, for three years, I was a total alcoholic. Financially, I have never been dependable. After 1993 and my admittance to
both Jean and my parents, I lost control and spent more and more time out as Deborah, despite having agreed to curtail it. No psychiatrist or psychologist. This is a very difficult life and I subjected both Jean and the children to it. This is how I caused my children so much pain.
This is the not the first time I have admitted any of this to myself, but it is the first time I have admitted it to someone else. As Sean, as a husband, and as a father, I was a total Bastard…a failure. I was always hiding the real me. I hope in the last six years I have improved as a person. (Beat.) …
SCENE 6
50 things to do before I’m 50 (alternating Deborah – Cathy)
1.
Gender reassignment surgery
1
Start Each Day by reviewing my 50 Targets and how I will get closer to achieving them today
2.
Learn to play piano
2
Meditate for five minutes at the start of every day so that I can calm down
3.
Buy a new acoustic guitar
3
Rejoin Weight Watchers
4.
Inform my kids about the upcoming surgery
4
At work set particular times three days per week for careful managment of the Admistration of business.
5.
The Frames tour of Ireland
5
Stand & Sit Straight
6.
Open a record /coffee shop
6
Have a Health Check
7.
Attempt to stop mum periodically calling me Sean
7
Weekend with J in her new House in Killarney
8.
Talk to Jean and try to ease the tension
8
Organise Summer Holiday with the Kids
9.
…
9
…
The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays Page 18