Doll Parts

by Amanda Lepore

  I had to wear baggy shirts to hide my breasts, and I’d wear sneaky makeup—a little cover-up and liner that I’d borrow from Mom. We had the same coloring. My hair was long and I’d wear it parted in the middle, but a lot of guys were wearing long hair, so that didn’t matter so much.

  The hardest thing to deal with was gym class, so I stopped attending it altogether. Most of my school days were spent hiding in the library so no one would notice how my body was changing, or sitting in Mrs. Penny’s office, trying not to gag on her rose musk perfume.

  I was really getting sick of having to hide. It was so stupid that I was getting made fun of for the way I dressed, when I wasn’t dressing the way I wanted to anyway. If I was going to be mocked, I might as well like the way I looked.

  “Fuck them,” Dylan said. “Why should you change the way you are for anyone?”

  Yeah, fuck it, I thought, and decided to go to school dressed as a girl.

  Louise Jr. offered to bleach my hair for the occasion. It was a little more painful than I expected, but Louise promised, “The pain passes, but beauty remains.” It came out incredibly. I really did look like Jean Harlow.

  Louise also helped me pick out a sensible outfit: a cinched top with a push-up bra, a stonewashed jean skirt, and slingback sandals with three-inch heels. I plucked out what remained of my eyebrows and drew them on, and wore my Cherries in the Snow lipstick with a matching nail polish.

  Before I walked out the door for school that day, I asked Mom how I looked. “Stunning,” she said. “But take off some of that lipstick, unless you’re hanging out on the corner.”

  I walked to school as usual, and passed all the same neighbors I always did, but that day they all smiled politely and said hello instead of ignoring me. The same group of girls walked by me that I saw every day, but they didn’t call me Leper Lepore. One of them told me I looked pretty, which I was grateful to hear. I didn’t know why everyone was being so nice to me. Maybe seeing me as a girl was something they could finally wrap their heads around.

  Shortly after I got to school, I was sent to Mrs. Penny.

  There was another girl waiting as well. I’d never talked to her before but the rumor was that she was a lesbian. She was wearing gym shorts and a tank top, and had obviously been crying.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She told me the girls in her gym class were making fun of her because she didn’t shave her legs or armpits and she had smacked one of them.

  “Why don’t you shave them? You’d look so much better.”

  I thought she was going to hit me too. “I don’t want to shave them. I’m proud of my hair. Mind your own business,” she said. I felt bad. I didn’t mean to judge her. I didn’t get it.

  Mrs. Penny called me in and I stood up. “I’m sorry,” I said to the girl. “I think you look nice.” She didn’t say anything.

  I sat down at Mrs. Penny’s desk, nervously clutching my handbag. “Armand,” Mrs. Penny said, “you can’t wear makeup to school.”

  “All right. I’ll take it off.”

  “And you can’t have bleached hair either. You have to dye it back.”

  “Why in the world would I do that? I’ll ruin it. I’ll never get the color right, and besides, everyone already saw me, so what difference does it make now?” My voice was trembling as I spoke. I’d never stood up for myself before.

  “Do you want to quit school?” she asked.

  “No, I want to graduate! I want to have an education.”

  That’s when Mrs. Penny looked down and noticed I had breasts. The top I was wearing was cut low enough that you could really see them.

  “How in the world did that happen?” She turned as red as my lipstick and jumped out of her chair.

  “Well, I prayed to Jesus to send me breasts, and he answered my prayers.”

  Her eyes bulged. “How did this happen, Armand?” She was yelling now. My mind could only focus on how happy that hairy lesbian probably was to hear me getting chewed out.

  “I’ve been taking hormones,” I told her. It wasn’t any of her business but I just wanted this to be over. “I bought them. On the street.”

  “I can’t allow you to stay in school in your condition. If you’d like a diploma, you’ll need to go into a private tutor program.”

  I was sick of talking about it. No one else had an issue with what I was doing, what gave Mrs. Penny the right to give me such a hard time?

  “If I get a tutor,” I said, “will I ever have to come to your office again?”

  That was my last day of high school.

  Now that everyone knew my big secret, I was assigned a psychiatrist—an older gentleman named Dr. Robertson.

  He had never worked with a transgender patient before, but he did his best to remain open-minded. I told him I would not stop taking my hormones, which he seemed okay with, but he said he would rather I got prescriptions from him. That sounded much better than going to Newark once a month and dealing with Bambi’s shitty attitude, so I acquiesced.

  There was one catch: I needed written permission from both my parents.

  HE OFFERED ME A DEAL: HE WOULD GIVE HIS CONSENT FOR THE HORMONES IF I STARTED ATTENDING BEAUTY SCHOOL.

  Mom was easy. I told her Jesus said I needed the hormones, and she signed.

  Dad would need a little more finessing. I asked him to meet me at the diner by my house.

  When I got there, I saw his Cadillac parked out front and my heart beat a little faster. This would be the first time Dad saw me dressed as a girl. I walked in, past the spinning display of cakes and pies, and stood in front of Dad, who was sipping his coffee. He looked confused for a second when he noticed me. Then he started laughing. Was he laughing with me, or at me? I wasn’t sure, but it could have been worse, I guess.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said, and sat down.

  “Hello . . .”

  “Amanda. My name’s Amanda.”

  He stopped laughing.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, which made me smile, and I thanked him. “You have . . . breasts.”

  I filled him in on the whole story—Bambi, the hormones, Mrs. Penny, the private tutor, and Dr. Robertson.

  “You’re seeing a psychiatrist? Are you schizophrenic too?”

  “No, I’m not like Mom,” I told him. “I have what they call gender dysphoria.”

  Dad said he wasn’t surprised completely, but he always thought I’d become a homosexual hairdresser, and maybe dress as a woman on the weekends.

  “Maybe I will, Dad, but I don’t think so.”

  “What does Mom say?”

  “She’s fine with it.”

  He offered me a deal: he would give his consent for the hormones if I started attending beauty school.

  “You’ve got a deal,” I said, and shook his hand.

  He laughed. “You shake like a girl.”

  Dr. Robertson gave me my prescription and I continued to see him once a week. We talked about the first surgeries in Sweden and Germany, and places where I could have the operation done. Christine Jorgensen was the most famous case and we talked about her a lot, though I didn’t relate to her so much. She wasn’t that pretty.

  My school tutor, Jill, had a much clearer sense of transsexualism than Dr. Robertson or my parents. When we met, she asked me my name and whether I identified as male or female. Very strange start, I thought, especially since she was suspiciously tall, with what looked like an obvious wig.

  Jill set up her books in my dining room, while Mom spied on her from behind the refrigerator. Women never came to our house. Maybe five total that I can think of, if the twins count as two. This was a big deal.

  Things went smoothly until Jill asked me for a glass of water. Mom yelled out “No!” from her hiding place. Jill jumped up, but I laughed and tried to make a joke out of it. Getting upset would only make it worse.

  I went for the water and pulled Mom into the bathroom. “Mom,” I said, “I promise you I will not let that woman steal anything
from us. But if she sees you watching, she’ll know we’re on to her!”

  She kissed me on the forehead and went to her bedroom. Usually she would end up lurking around while I studied with Jill, but Mom never interrupted us again, and Jill never said anything about it during the whole two years she tutored me. Without the distractions at school, I earned all As. Jill was a real saint. Not a tranny, though. I asked.

  “As an icon, Amanda is one of a kind because of her unique and singular look in the art of fashion. She has established herself as the most original and glamorous image in the world of transgender.”

  —PATRICIA FIELD

  Chapter 4

  HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE

  Forever Yours, 2011 Chromogenic Print © Elias Wessel

  Dad wanted to “spend more time” with me, so he offered to drive me to beauty school every night. I learned some interesting things about Dad on those car rides. Here are my three favorites:

  1. He was remarried, to a Southern Baptist woman who had three kids that called him “Daddy.”

  2. His former roommate, whom we all called German Chris, was gay. So he “understood what I was going through.”

  And my personal favorite . . .

  3. I hadn’t gone through puberty yet, and when I did, I’d “grow out of this dressing-like-a-girl phase.”

  Dad was born on April Fool’s Day. Maybe that explains it. I mean, Mom was no picnic but at least she didn’t start a new family without telling anyone. Eventually I just started getting rides from girls in my class. It was easier that way, and Dad seemed relieved.

  Beauty school was a real bore. The main problem was that I had no desire to do other people’s hair. I don’t know if that makes me a narcissist, or if it’s simply proof of my vanity. Even from a young age I was very vain about the way I looked.

  My hair was growing out nicely, and my main goal for going to school was to learn how to properly care for it. I learned how to color and roller-set my hair, and give a basic manicure, but I’d already learned a lot of those things from the Louises, so I never paid much attention in class.

  The upside to beauty school was that I made some new friends who loved to go out and have a good time. One of the girls in my class had fucked Dylan before, and when she found out I was dating him she just loved it. “Dylan’s an asshole. He’s controlled by his dick. It’s so big there’s no blood left for his brain to function,” she said.

  Sex with Dylan was wonderful, but she was right. I knew he was fucking around, and even though we had fun, I really wanted to get into something more serious. I didn’t want to work in a beauty salon. I wanted what Zsa Zsa Gabor had.

  The girls decided to help me find a real sugar daddy of a boyfriend, so they took me out dancing one night . . . to a gay bar. They thought they were doing me a favor. I did dance most of the night with this cute guy named Keni Valenti, who had worked with Betsey Johnson and just opened a boutique in the East Village. I told him I loved to sew and he gave me his number and said he was always looking for help. It was a fun night, but how was I going to meet a boyfriend in a gay bar?

  “I’m not gay,” I told my classmates at the diner afterward. “I’m a girl. Gay guys aren’t going to be interested in me. I need to meet straight guys.” Enlightenment came over them.

  None of the girls treated me any differently because I was transgender, except for one: Tina. The whole thing fascinated her. She loved that I was trans and wanted to know everything about it.

  Like Olivia Newton-John at the end of Grease, Tina was a good girl by day with a wild side that came out at night. Her hair was almost as big as she was; that girl kept Aqua Net in business. Sometimes her questions about my sex organs were a bit much, especially when she was smacking her gum in my face as she asked them, but I couldn’t hate her for being inquisitive, even if she was insensitive.

  Tina was a world-class tease. Her favorite thing to do was to lead guys on and then give them the boot. “Men are so gullible, they’ll believe anything you tell them. They believe you when you tell them you’re a girl, right?”

  “I am a girl.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  Tina had a great idea: we’d go out, find the most straitlaced guy in the bar, and trick him into thinking I was a regular girl. It was a new way for Tina to tease men. I willingly played along, since the prize for the game was a hot guy for me to make out with. When things started to get a little too hot and heavy, I’d tell my date I had my period to throw him off.

  Stephanie came back from college for a couple of weeks and I was so excited to tell her about how easily I’d transitioned into living as a woman. “Can you believe it?” I said. “You wouldn’t believe the hot guys I’m meeting.” I felt like I had something to prove—that I was just as much of a woman, and just as desirable, as she was.

  Stephanie wasn’t impressed. “So you’re lying to men now about your gender?” she asked.

  “Not lying, just keeping secrets.”

  “You didn’t have to trick men to be with you before. You’re enough, Amanda. I thought you knew that.”

  I was furious but did my best to conceal it. Who was Stephanie to judge me? She had no idea what it was like not to be born the correct gender. She had everything: she was perfect and beautiful and she had a pussy of her own. What did she know about what I went through? And who the fuck cared about these guys? Tricking them was like paying back all the people who had made fun of me for being so feminine.

  “MEETING THAT DOCTOR MADE ME REALLY THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH I WANT A PUSSY.”

  Stephanie dropped me off at home and said she was going to be busy the rest of the week and probably wouldn’t be able to see me again. I told her that was fine by me.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. Stephanie calling me out like that had made me realize I was angrier about my situation than I knew.

  The next day I saw Tina and told her I needed to make a change. I couldn’t live a lie anymore. She said she understood and had just the solution: there was a tranny bar in Manhattan she’d heard about. We could maybe meet some other girls, and meet the men who wanted to fuck them.

  We entered the tranny bar through vinyl curtains, like in a butcher shop. Behind them was an enormous coat check with a bored-looking blond boy.

  “You’re new?” the kid asked. I nodded. “I’ll keep your coats close. Pretty girls like you will get a date real quick.”

  There were about thirty girls in the bar and roughly the same number of men. Disco music was beating in my eardrums, but no one was dancing. We walked to the bar and ordered sodas, avoiding eye contact with the girls who were staring daggers in our direction.

  All kinds of women were on display. Some looked like grown men who had simply put on a cheap wig and a pair of heels and called it a day. Others were stunningly gorgeous, completely and perfectly done. I was overwhelmed; I felt like a little girl going through her big sister’s closet.

  The most beautiful woman in the room was a tall, busty Puerto Rican with perfect facial features and long, silky black hair. Her dress was short and cut extremely low, revealing perfect tits that needed no bra. A short, heavyset man was talking her up and she seemed to be enjoying his company. He escorted her to coat check and paid for both their coats, and they left together.

  A middle-aged guy in glasses approached and offered to buy me a drink. He introduced himself as “Dr. Steve,” which sounded kind of silly.

  “What kind of doctor uses their first name?” I asked.

  “I’m a plastic surgeon.” My ears perked up. Now, this was interesting. I put my flirting skills to use, and he turned out to be a nice guy and was definitely into me. I asked him about his practice, and he said he worked on a lot of transsexuals, performing feminization procedures.

  “Like boob jobs?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, laughing, “and some other things.”

  I looked up and saw the Puerto Rican beauty enter the bar again, alone, and drop her coat off.
>
  “That’s weird,” I said. “That girl left here with a guy like fifteen minutes ago. Why is she back so soon?”

  Dr. Steve filled me in on what was going on. A good 99 percent of the girls in the room were prostitutes. They turned tricks in order to pay for their procedures.

  “A girl like her,” he said, “could turn four or five tricks a night at this place.” As he said it, another man walked up to the girl, and within five minutes of checking her coat, she had it back again and was out the door.

  “You’re lucky,” Dr. Steve said to me. “You don’t need to do anything to your face. Just trim your nose a little, and you’ll be perfect.” I’d never thought about my nose like that before.

  “What about breasts?” I asked. “My hormones got me a B cup, but I want to go bigger, like Jayne Mansfield.”

  “That’s for big mamas. Just take your hormones, get the sex change when you can, and let me fix your nose.”

  Tina tapped me on the shoulder; she was ready to leave. I gave Dr. Steve my number and promised to let him take me to dinner. On the way out, Miss Puerto Rico was heading back in. She smiled as we walked by and I smiled back. She seemed happy enough.

  We went back to Tina’s house and I called Dylan to pick me up. I told him all about the tranny hooker bar and the doctor and the poor coat check boy who was checking the same coats over and over again.

  “Where exactly is this place?” he asked, and laughed, but I knew he wasn’t kidding. We fucked for like an hour, but my heart wasn’t in it. He stopped pounding into me and lay down, playing with my hair and looking at me.

  “Meeting that doctor made me really think about how much I want a pussy,” I said. “Having sex is fun and all, but I wish I could give myself to you the way a girl is supposed to.”

  “What kind of pussy do you want?” he asked.