Transgender Christmas: A Big Woman in the Red Light District

December 24, 2019

By Alma Fernández

Every year, at Christmas, we trans women wander alone in the red-light district. We're looking for I don't know what, maybe something to help us forget those family days when we celebrated in northern Argentina. At Christmas, we have nothing to celebrate, no one left to hug. Every year at Christmas, AIDS will take one of us.
Every year at Christmas, we trans women have to pay the price: it's been a week since we buried Jenny, and I still feel bad. I love Christmas. Because today, like every year, my mother gives me a kiss. On this day, my mother forgets that I dress as a woman and, according to her, forgives all my craziness.

From birth, I was branded with the symbol of a spiral on my forehead. My assigned spiral was that of misery (I didn't choose it). The cruelest of fates turned on me and my family name. It punished me by cursing me, anchoring my body to a misguided society. Because I was deceived. I gambled my luck by choosing a man's body, to know and learn what it feels like to be a woman-man. To know in my own skin what it feels like to be a real woman (transvestite-horse-donkey). Those who don't know me think I have a fantastic life, to which I reply: I have a life of fantasy. Because in fantasy, I discovered that I can escape my reality.

Some impatience and prejudice prevented my parents from giving me the acceptance I so desperately wanted. I had to kill the boy inside me. Me, who was always a girl. As if that would have stopped me from ending up wandering around the red-light district. Gambling with clients or being chased away by vultures, crammed into a hotel room. A hotel that, depending on the country's economy and how much the customers like it, I'll be able to afford.

Today I was kicked out of the family hotel where I live again. It's always the same scene. Me, quiet, silently listening to the radio news in the dark in my room. Knowing that at any moment they're going to knock on my door and the magic words will be: “Your paycheck is due. Are you staying or leaving?”

Perhaps some of those who know me think I make a big deal out of poverty. Perhaps those who like my posts on social media do it to laugh at me. Maybe they think my life is a mess. All they say about me is that I'm crazy or some kind of freak. To which I'll say, yes, sometimes I am that too.
Many times those who don't understand me have taken advantage of me. Although, if I think about it more, many times the world has taken advantage of me.

I suffer and punish myself for not having a pair of size 43 shoes to wear every day. Also for never having known love. Although I do harbor the hope that one day I will be loved. I know every corner and street of the city (I don't know why). I feel the disgusted looks of those who go to work in the morning and see me standing there. I could get to any point in any place I am. As long as it's nighttime. Even today I can't understand how people can live during the day. And how I can't learn to do it too.

Many times I've been offered a sad, eternal love. I call those early loves. Because when daylight arrives or the motel's shift ends, the charm is gone. I swallow, I suck, I spit. I enjoy it and I give myself over. But nothing works. Even size 443 shoes aren't enough.

I spend my time searching for something to live for, or something to die for. Something to help ease the pain. If I'm not happy, what's the point of living? How can you live hungry, burdened by debt? Like I'm searching for a justification, I run and gamble with my luck every time I get in a car. Many times, without thinking too much, I haven't used a condom with strangers; I just let myself go. One day, while I was working, a client told me that we women live until we're thirty-five.

From that day on, I think of nothing but turning 35 and the pain ending. How will I know when I'm 35 if I can't read or write? How will I die? And what will it be like to die in transvestite form? I'll be happy just to cross-dress for death.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a heartless, transvestite woman. A woman who never got to play with dolls as a child. Only two things have always been clear to me: poverty and despair. But that doesn't hurt anymore, it doesn't hurt anymore because I know I'm going to die young and alone. And on that day, nothing will weigh on me anymore. Because I won't have a body to carry anymore. I will become wind, I will become night, I will become fury. But not this Christmas.

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