INSIDE THE TRANNY MYSTIQUE: Sociopolitical Implications of the Gender Blur

Pseudo intellectual Bottom-of-the Barrel Bill rears his ugly head once again this month to discuss the she male subculture’s sociological significance in 21st century society (yawn). Fortunately, he doesn’t take himself any more seriously than we do as reading Dollar's ramblings go perfectly with a good morning sit down.

Several years ago, I was riding down Interstate 95 to a family reunion -stuck in the car for hours with my mother and female cousin. As you can imagine, the conversation was not what I’m used to. Tea sets, the opera, golf, sales at Bloomingdale’s, and the stock market are rarely subjects for discussion in a whore house - or my house, either. And frankly, I was getting more than a little bored listening to a whole bunch of crap I mostly don’t give a fuck about. Somehow, at least momentarily, the girls ran into a lull in the conversation whereupon my mother derisively dared query “So Billy...what’s up with your ladies?”

This is always a touchy moment. My mother has had a morbid fascination with the weird shit I’ve done for a living ever since I started working. And whether it’s cab-driving stories, musician on-the-road stories, or hooker stories, she can go from wildly entertained - to nauseated by too much information - in an instant. So let’s see...”Hey ma! I got some free pussy from a hoochie with a phat ass the other day.” Nah! I don’t think so. “One of my she male customers had two guys on the corner at the same time. So she invited them both over and they ended up blowing each other - and they still paid her.” Nope! That one won’t work either.

Now I know how to approach my mother, cousin, and other intellectual squares with my escort biz anecdotes: I have to couch the salacious stories with some sort of sociological observation to legitimize myself and offer some sort of redemptive undertone to what I do all day. This time I led with an observation about trannies.

“Ma. I got a new tranny client who is unbelievably feminine. She’s actually becoming a famous model! She did a spread for Cosmo and they didn’t even know she was a he down there.” And then I hit a home run: “You know it used to be that there were two sexes. Now the line between the two genders is getting blurred to the point that it’s almost one continuum.”

Homer, babe! My super intelligent, super square corporate lawyer cousin jumped in enthusiastically “You know...that’s a very good thing!” and then went on a rant about women’s rights and feminism and how just maybe transsexualism will open the gate to true equality between the genders. Well, I rarely view my she male friends in any kind of intellectual context. Mostly, they talk about clients, and other girls, and sex and sex parts. Our repartee is rarely cerebral. But that doesn’t mean that the transsexual movement can’t contribute to the betterment of society. Which is to say...just ‘cause these Blow Job Annies aren’t aware of their contribution doesn’t mean that they aren’t contributing in some oblique way.

And then I got to think of a case in point: There’s a dumpsite called www.eros.com - an escort directory on the web for who I am literally forced to sell ads. I have a joke about them. I tell my colleagues “I wish eros would send me an encyclopedia of rules and regulations” with which they’re constantly breaking our balls! It’s one thing to have a bunch of rules...and it’s another to have one that is in violation of the constitution! And via their strict regimen, eros had unwittinlgy broken a law. One of the rules actually violated the civil rights of one of my she male clients.

A sex change (post-op ts) who I’ll call Bertha (I pick that name so there won’t be any cases of mistaken identity - there are no she male escorts named Bertha) had recently ordered a female eros ad. So I e-mailed the materials as I had done many times before and got a message back: “This looks like a transsexual.” I wrote back what I thought was the right answer: “Yes, she’s a post-op transsexual with a female ID.” She goes in the female category.

Nope! Eros wasn’t having it. “We don’t put she males with the females. It’s one of our rules.” Well, I let the whole thing go and caught a lecture from Bertha for divulging the truth about her gender. She knew eros to be unenlightened; I - at least for a moment - had forgotten. And suddenly, as I was riding with the girls, I realized that eros could - and should - be sued for a civil rights violation. In theory, eros rejecting Bertha’s female ad was tantamount to a country club excluding Jews - or a restaurant not serving Negroes. Maybe it’s a stretch - but then again.

Lynn (my cousin) was fascinated and agreed with me when I presented the case that indeed, the girl did have grounds for a lawsuit and that in fact, the entire case could be very cutting edge. And so there it was, courtesy of my transsexual clients and an off-the-cuff comment, I had engaged my brainstorm family in a heated discussion about women’s rights, genderism, discrimination, civil rights and several other issues which we discussed for quite a while.

Upon returning to the city, I queried Doug Simmons, the managing editor of The Village Voice. He thought the topic was fascinating. The only problem was I couldn’t write it because I was the ad rep involved. (Journalists! What a pain in the ass.) Then I called an old she male client who had passed the bar several months before and had become a lawyer. She knew another lawyer who had represented she males in two separate cases, one involving two girls who were fired from their dancing jobs at The Sound Factory because they were she males...and the other an incident during which two trannies got thrown out of a Toys ‘R’ Us in Brooklyn. In both cases, the she males won their cases. And she felt that Bertha’s case would be a winner as well.

Believe it or not, I actually set up an appointment with the two lawyers to stick it up eros’ ass - and represent for my client who as I mentioned, was angry with me for divulging the truth in the first place.

Alas! Then came the attack of the stupid ass tranny. Apparently, Bertha was on welfare and was deathly afraid she would lose her handout if she pursued the case. Wait a minute! You’re making thousands a week “escorting,” and you collect welfare, too! Talk about a drain on the system!

So that was it for that case. I was only mildly disgusted. The Voice wasn’t hiring me to write the story - and I had no financial stake in convincing the scofflaw tranny to pursue her case. So fuck it! I of course reported all this to Lynn and my mother and we all came to more or less the same conclusion: While the movement may have meaning and significance, we couldn’t reasonably expect that one she male hooker on welfare was enlightened enough to risk her freebee.

WHEN SHE MALES AND FEMALES WORK TOGETHER

It doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes transsexual madams integrate into employing and advertising for females. And when this happens, they often hang and work in the same apartment. The most mind-boggling moment I’ve ever experienced courtesy of this particular phenomenon happened in a ghetto spot on 34th Street. We were sitting around “conversatin’” (I love that word) when one of the girls began gossiping about a she male in the house having a crush on one of the females. Square that I am (or was at the time), I asked the obvious question: “What’s the point of turning yourself into a woman if you’re just gonna go hit on born females? Haven’t you gone a long way around to come back to the same place?”

To which one of the girls explained with disdain for my ignorance “There’s such a thing as a transsexual lesbian!” Oh no! A she male dyke! What next?!?! And of course to add an ironic twist to the insanity, you had to know that the tranny was way cuter than the bitch she had a crush on. So is this hell in a hand basket - or sociological evolution? Is it the end of the world - or cultural enlightenment? Rednecks would tell you the former; intellectual liberals the latter.

Another interesting observation I have on she males working with females is that it seems clients have also gotten lost in the blur and confusion. Once exclusively heterosexual, many men have been enticed into the tranny world by the ads they see, and end up sucking dicks when they never would have if there were no trannies in the first place. You could argue that tranny chasers would find their way to fellating somebody at some point anyway. But I’m not so sure.

Regardless, when she males and females working together bond (and this works with females and females as well), they often try to convince the client to include the friend for an extra fifty or hundred dollars. So more often than you think, a guy goes to see a female and once erect gets approached to include a she male in the session. Caught with his pants down and his dick up, he’s lost in “the blur,” and takes the bait. When he walked in the joint he wasn’t planning on fucking around with a tranny. But when he left, he realized he already had! Hey, he fucked somebody with big tits and a phat ass. And it felt good. No sociological observation for the guy. He busted. That’s all that mattered.

And for me? I’ll tell you what matters right now. I’ve completed yet another feature for “She Male,” (hooray!) and I can now order some Chinese food with a guiltless conscience. Procrastination over; I’ve done my job. Break out the beer and spare ribs!