I didn’t know if I was hallucinating, but every street sign seemed to be Revolução this or Revolução that, differentiated only by an appended date. I figured Brazil must have had many revolutions, not the least of which had to do with sex. How did Brazilian society ever get to be such an idyll, a place where women who would have been considered unattainable in other countries freely sold their bodies to a marketplace of men who qualified for their affections only in their willingness to pay? It was truly a wonderful form of commerce, and an example of how free market capitalism can spur the growth of individual initiative.
Suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks, having spotted one of the most beautiful Tiffanys I had ever seen. She was tall and muscular, almost a parody of feminine beauty in the perfection of her features. Her lips were painted bright red and her cleavage was almost bucolic, soothing the eyes with a vision of rolling splendor. I was about to call out to her when I noticed a protruding Adam’s apple and realized that the “she” I was about to proposition was really a “he.” Besides my earlier encounter with a girl who turned out to be a man, I’d never actually been with a transvestite — though I had heard they could be rather exquisite when you accepted the notion that a vagina wasn’t the be-all and end-all.
“Tiffany.” I heard the words come out of my mouth breathlessly and involuntarily, as if someone else were actually saying them. She was tall with kinky hair and she seemed to get the idea that I was a foreigner, despite my newly Latinized appearance. “Going out?” she said, in a basso profundo that mocked her otherwise feminine features. I knew the lingo, the shorthand by which hookers communicated their availability to strangers. It was like the universal grammar that Noam Chomsky talks about; it was something that belied the actual words. “Looking for a date?” “Going out?” How many times had I heard the magic words?
Tiffany was light-skinned, a male Naomi Campbell. If there were fashion magazines that used transsexuals as models, I would have recommended that she apply, but I could see how such a career would have been severely compromised by the male genitalia, which would have been difficult to hide in a tight-fitting skirt.
“My name is Ken and I’m an accountant from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I have a peculiar request and maybe you can help me. You are very beautiful and I would very much like to sleep with you, but I have other plans this evening. However, I would be very happy if you would let me see your breasts so I could take off my pants and liberate my erection. It’s a long story, too boring to go into. Just tell me yes with your eyes and I will come forth with the necessary reality.”
She actually looked like one of the Tahitian women in a Gauguin painting, strong and impassive with a stony expression. She beckoned me to follow her, and as I walked behind her on yet another street named after an uprising, I noticed that she had long, sinewy legs like Kobe Bryant. Still, she walked with a distinctly feminine carriage, moving her hips provocatively, and I had to keep reminding myself that she was a he, and that in all likelihood more surprises lay in store. While I never would have solicited such a creature if I weren’t looking to discharge sexual tensions in extraordinary circumstances, I have to confess to a certain curiosity about the strange buffet of organs I was about to see. Trannies are a little like centaurs — some of them have great tits while still being hung like horses.
She stopped in front of a narrow building that looked like a squat or a crack house back in Manhattan. I watched her as she made her way up a narrow, winding staircase that ascended into total darkness. For a moment I asked myself why I was doing this. Was this seemingly reckless behavior just another symptom following on the heels of my recent vertigo? During flu season, a high temperature and fatigue are usually followed by diarrhea. Was my flirtation with danger just another way of acting out against the guilt I felt about wearing forbidden attire?
We ascended two flights in darkness and then Tiffany scampered up to a landing that was lit by a dim bulb hanging from a frayed wire. My curiosity about why she had run so quickly ahead of me despite her high heels was quickly answered when I arrived at the top of the stairs. Tiffany had picked up her skirt and lowered her gaffe, which is the jockstrap-like device that transvestites use to hold their penises between their legs. She had also pulled off her top, and the prominent exemplars of both male and female genitalia made me think I might be dreaming. Tiffany had an exceptionally large penis for someone who wanted to be girl.
I felt a little like Paul Bunyan. Someday that big old penis was going to be chopped down, and I was filled with the irrational fear that I might be the one designated to do it. In my feverish state, my mind was making brilliant but outsized associations. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. “My doctor, whose first name happens to be China, could help you with your vaginal reconstructive surgery,” I blurted out.
I noticed that one of Tiffany’s hands was behind her back. As she pulled out a knife I realized with terror that it was she who might be playing the part of Paul Bunyan. I’d read about cases of men who had been castrated by angry transvestites. I was hanging out with the wrong person in the wrong place. What was I doing in this squalid atmosphere when I was supposed to be experiencing the exquisite pleasures of The Gringo?
“You see, my friend, this is my trusty shiv,” Tiffany growled, dropping all pretense of seduction.
“Oh it’s very nice, congratulations,” I said nervously. “Shiv, huh, that’s such a nice word.”
“Yes, it’s a term that’s very popular among pre-op transsexuals the world over.”
“You have a very good vocabulary.”
“You mean for someone who is on the lowest rung of the social order?” Tiffany barked back. “I bet you’d be surprised if I told you I have a PhD in anthropology from Stanford.”
“Yes, I would. I mean, no, I’m not surprised at all. You seem to have great control of your faculties, and many faculties to control, which would make you a wonderful faculty member anywhere.”
Suddenly I remembered the case of a transgender academic at a university in the Midwest who had gone completely crazy right before the final stages of her sex change, just as her penis was to be converted into a vagina. In fact, she had never gone through with her vaginoplasty. Instead, she used a twelve-gauge shotgun to murder her male lover, who had waited years for her to complete the final passage into womanhood. To top it off, she also blew away two army officers who had been recruiting female students to join the Army National Reserve. The whole incident made the front pages of tabloids like The National Inquirer, and the murder of the boyfriend was declared a crime of passion, the perpetrator suffering from temporary insanity and receiving consecutive acquittals for the murder of the two recruiters. Still, as I recalled, the murders had caused her to lose her tenure, and what better place for a defrocked pre-op transsexual anthropology professor to find gainful employment than as a hooker on the streets of Rio?
I realized that the shiv was probably not an offer for some new form of S&M sex play involving cutting and piercing. My little adventure in priming the pump might end up initiating a new spree of killings in which I would be the first victim. As if to confirm my worst fears, I suddenly remembered that the killer had gone AWOL from the court-mandated anger management program she had attended in the wake of the attacks.
“Oh China!” I exclaimed, invoking the image of my therapist in a last ditch attempt to regain my composure. China was the wrong word to mention to a transsexual filled with ambivalence about not having either a set of china or a vagina to go along with it, and I stepped backward in horror as she pointed the knife at my throat.