All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to the Author c/o Oberon Books Ltd. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author’s prior written consent.
The Big Deal opened on the 10 August 2011 at Kilkenny Arts Festival, with a preview on 9 August. It was later performed at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, from 31 October–5 November 2011.
CATHY – Una Kavanagh
DEBORAH – Shania Williams
Directed by Una McKevitt
Lighting Design by Sinead Wallace
Production Manager: Conor Mullan
It received a work-in-progress performance on 8 and 9 December as part of Queer Notions, a festival of theatre and other performances, produced by thisispopbaby. On this occasion, the role of Deborah was performed by Niamh Shaw.
Scripted from original material provided by the contributors – including journals, poems, songs and interviews.
A long wide wooden bench is placed upstage centre right. At a short distance to the right of the bench is a mic stand. An actor on the bench can move to this mic easily in two short steps. Downstage left is another mic stand. Both mics frame the stage picture and the actors do not move beyond the circumference they mark. Above the bench is a vertical aluminium strip light and another perpendicular to this stage left. CATHY wears navy leggings, a long black lycra vest and over it a loose-fitting navy top with mid-length sleeves. DEBORAH wears khaki skinny jeans, a belt and a ladies vest top. Both are bare foot.
CATHY: I was at a wedding recently, and a woman asked me did I know where the happy couple were going on their honeymoon. I told her they were heading to the Caribbean and that the bride had a massage booked for every one of the ten days. This woman said, ‘Ugh, that’s horrible.’ ‘Horrible?’ The woman said, ‘Ugh, the thought of someone touching me like that every day. Horrible.’ And I said, ‘Like what? It’s a massage.’ And the woman said, ‘It’s unnatural. Ha! But look who I’m talking to.’
The Runaways: ‘Cherry Bomb’.
DEBORAH: 1994.
The Evening Herald.
‘Men In Dresses’.
By Noreen Hegarty.
The atmosphere is a heady mix of subdued lighting, french perfume and cigarette smoke.
Deborah adjusts her short black lamé jacket and steps from one heeled foot to another. Her car, parked near the city centre club where she’s socialising with her friends, has just been broken into and she’s clearly upset.
It’s only when Deborah turns and speaks that you would really know – the voice is unmistakably that of a man.
CATHY: It is the night before my operation.
Shouldn’t I be doing something with my penis on his last night on earth?
He never did me any harm. In fact he worked rather well.
Shouldn’t I be having second thoughts, doubts – I was born a boy after all.
Of course that’s the whole point isn’t it? Was I?
DEBORAH: Ever since I was twelve, my dad and I have discussed everything. He always said I was to come to him with any problems I had and if I was to smoke, drink, do drugs or ‘go with girls’, I was to do it at home – in front of him and my mum. At seventeen I decided to talk to him about something that was bothering me for quite some time. I believed I was a girl but none of this made sense. How could I believe this, I was born a boy after all, wasn’t I?
So, I sat him down and told him, ‘I think I am a girl, Dad.’ He looked at me very calmly and said, ‘It’s just a phase you are going through, don’t worry about it. Go get a new girlfriend and on Sunday go out and kick someone around the football field. You’ll feel better and you’ll be fine.’ So on Sunday I did go out and kick some poor fool around the football field and a couple of weeks later got myself a new girlfriend. I tried to forget it, but it never went away.
Years later, when I told my Mum and Dad, my Dad was very quiet. He didn’t say anything, he just agreed with my Mum: they would get me cured. I wondered if he remembered our conversation all those years previously. Who was I going to kick this time?
Dear Cathy,
These journals are yours; write whatever you are feeling, whatever you are thinking. They will have no effect on my own position, nor do I think you are rubbing my nose in it. Darling, I have tried to explain that I am OK
with where I am in my life right now and I have struggled to get to this position. Like I said before, nothing is going to shake me off my path except me.
I suggested the journal, so later you can reflect on your experiences. These journals are not for criticism or explanation; they are how you are feeling right now. And that’s what’s important.
Love Deborah
CATHY: I was woken up at 6 a.m. for ‘nurses check-up time’.
Blood pressure, pulse, temperature.
I had to finish eating by 7 a.m., fasting until surgery at 2.30 p.m., but the toast was cold and I got no enjoyment from my last meal on Earth as a Man. – God, doesn’t that sound great. Now what else happened that day before they came for me. I did some Sudoku – watched some TV.
I played my iPod. Around 1 p.m. they gave me a sedative to make me drowsy. And then I was back in my bed – in pain –
very sleepy –
pain –
nurses check-up time –
pain –
and then it was Sunday Morning.
The Runaways: ‘Blackmail (Intro)’.
DEBORAH: Cathy has been there for me quite a lot.
She knows what I’m talking about and I won’t go into that detail, it’s personal between me and her.
She’s helped me through a couple of rough patches with that.
CATHY: Dear Deborah,
– today is Day 2 after the operation and I’m a lot better but still very sore.
Being out here alone is not to be understated.
By and large I’m good. I walked around for the first time today and can now get out of bed. Everything I do is in slow motion. I can’t use my Cathy voice because my chest is so congested and this is really annoying me. I’m also wearing Patrick’s face, as I haven’t the energy yet for makeup.
Maybe tomorrow.
There is the problem of stitches where my adam’s apple was shaved. Also very disappointed with my hair – see no difference to the way I was wearing it as Patrick last week – I did get the breasts done.
Now I’m a 38C.
I get a warm feeling at the thought that I now have a vagina – albeit a painful one for the time being. I am a bit petrified at its unveiling on Thursday. I don’t have a good stomach for this sort of thing.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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
• 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.
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?’
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.) …
50 things to do before I’m 50 (alternating Deborah – Cathy)
Song: ‘Lisdoonvarna’.
CATHY: I first tried to transition in 1984 when I was twenty-three years old. I told my mother in the kitchen and she said, ‘Oh, Jesus!’ or something like that. Then she went into my Dad in the living room and turned off the TV. Now I broke it to them gently. I gave them a physical reason; I think I told them I had a womb. That was the cowardly thing to do, not to stand up and say, ‘These are my feelings. I’ve no evidence of it.’ I pretended there was a physical manifestation. Of course there was a physical manifestation as far as I was concerned. I had the wrong fucking body. It was 1984. My parents were very supportive, although it was covered up. I went and lived as Cathy for four months in London and I tried to be what was in my mind the ideal woman, what a woman should be. That involved not talking too much. That wasn’t me. Now, you cannot be someone you’re not, and so I wasn’t any happier. I knew my family would be happy if I went back to being Patrick and as I wasn’t happy anyway… Very simple. I went back. I fell in love. I got married.
DEBORAH: Cathy,
It’s 10.30 p.m. on Tuesday night. I have just finished your recent e-mail. All nineteen pages.
You are now on the way to recovery.
You are here now as you should have been and will be from now until the day you die.
So whilst I struggle slowly onward and upward, you are already there,
Love Deborah.
CATHY: I woke up this morning with a very determined view that this was the first day of the rest of my life. I got up and had my weekly shave – the first since I arrived – I do hate that.
I shaved very gingerly as my face is sore from the face lift.
I went down for breakfast which was the best meal I’ve had since I got here.
Coffee, Cornflakes, orange juice, toast, rashers cooked in the crispy way I love them.
I returned upstairs ready to dilate the first time myself.
I find it very difficult to come to terms with touching my vagina and surrounding areas.
After my bath I open my card and presents from the kids.
The card read ‘To the best Dad: in the world.’
And I’m crying again.
Each child had signed their own name.
Nothing from Ellen. No present. No card.
This is the scariest, loneliest, most rotten time of my life.
While I was waiting for the plane to Thailand, Deborah gave me an iPod Nano – not just an iPod Nano because that’s just buying someone a present – she did something I wouldn’t be able to do, she uploaded 441 songs and, I have to say, about 80% of them I liked, which is an amazing achievement. When she puts her mind to helping someone, she really knows how to do it.
I had a very bad brush with myself one time. I went to Deborah’s house the next day. She got me through one of the darkest periods of my life, and then she helped me produce a CD of about eighteen/nineteen songs that were basically appealing to Ellen – don’t leave me. She has an amazing music library and an amazing music mind and she helped produce for me an album that I love and still listen to and call Without You. One of the songs in particular has a lot of meaning for me.
I will learn to live before I die
Will learn to love and learn to try
Not to give it all away
She may be the one that’s meant for me
Or for the man that I used to be
Till I gave it all away
Today was probably one of the most boring days so far – thank God.
I finished the Alias series –
It was OK.
I then opened my DVD box set of The West Wing –
I did get out of the hospital for a short time today – I got lunch at McDonald’s. I also purchased my first pack of sanitary towels. That is probably the weirdest part of all of this. Having to get used to needing those things and wearing them.
Later on, I settled down for probably the best film since I got here.
Enemy of the State.
I finally got my journal off to Deborah.
It was eighteen pages long – poor Deborah.
Dr Deeptha told me I could now wear make-up. I can’t tell you how much this cheered me up. It allows me cover up all the bruising on my face and look normal. I couldn’t believe the results.
It gave me some pep in my step and I decided to go shopping.
I took the sky train.
And there I was,
moving around the shopping centre,
nothing special about me anymore,
just another woman.
Every time I passed a man,
especially one in a tie,
I smiled to myself.
I will never again have to pretend to be something I’m not.
The horror is over.
DEBORAH: Dear Cathy, can you let me know if I am collecting you on Monday from the airport and if so what time…? Just so you know, I would be honoured to… Lots of love,
Deborah.
CATHY: I always feel better about myself when my hair is washed and I have my make-up on. So I made a huge effort this morning to do just that. I had my breakfast and then went up to my room and forced myself to sort things out and tidy. For the past half-hour, I have been working on legal contracts. They are complex, but if they are drawn up correctly, I can save my client a few tens of thousands of euro. Even though I am thousands of miles away, having surgery – surgery that many people think is weird
– the client (God bless him!) doesn’t trust anyone else to get the job done right. So he’s paying me, to make sure everything is done properly.
Life can be sweet.
Today seems very like yesterday.
Breakfast, clean-up, writing, skipped lunch altogether, clean-up, didn’t feel like dinner.
After clean-up, I started writing – to Ellen. I never stopped. Except to cry.
I don’t think I will ever recover from losing Ellen.
I am mortified at the thought of meeting her tomorrow.
Mortified that my wife is going to see me as I am now.
How I have let her down.
My feelings of disgust are almost drowning me.
I am in love with a woman who is not gay and must hate me for killing her husband.
I don’t expect to find anyone else.
For God’s sake, I’m not even looking.
And if I were, who or what would have me.
DEBORAH: 2011. The Westbury Hotel, Dublin.
I ask Jean to meet me so I can tell her of my impending surgery. When she sits down, she asks what this meeting is all about. I thought maybe one of the kids might have mentioned it to her. Obviously not.
I tell her that I am going for surgery. I tell her that I’ve asked for this meeting out of respect for her, that I didn’t want her hearing about it from someone else.
‘You should have shown me some respect by not marrying me or having children. Then you wouldn’t have the need to tell me anything.’
Janis and I arrived in London, early Sunday, at 9.30 a.m. After having a late breakfast and a leisurely glass of wine in Covent Garden, we went for lunch. This was my last meal before I checked in to Charing Cross Hospital at 4 p.m. It felt like a last meal. 4 p.m. came around quickly and we headed for the hospital. A girl I knew from Dublin, Edel, was also in the ward, she was due to have surgery the same day as me.
I was awoken at 6 a.m. by a Philippino nurse called Amour Resurrection. She gave me an enema and told me to put lovely white surgical stockings on, which I was to wear the entire time I was in hospital. Amour came and Edel left for her surgery. I wished her good luck.
At 12 a.m., the doctor arrived. Dr Bellringer. I’m not making these names up. He was dressed in a football shirt, shorts and sneakers. He looked like he was going for a kick around in the park. He asked if I would donate my scrotal skin for research. Sure. I don’t need it anymore, knock yourself out. He told me he would see me later. He did but I didn’t see him.
At 1.30 p.m., Amour came to bring me to theatre, a long walk to the fourteenth floor. We caught the lift to the fifteenth floor. Amour told me that Edel, on her way to surgery that morning, had admired the view of London.
I came to in the recovery room. Holding my hand was a nice man. I asked his name. He said it was Raj. I told him he had a really nice face. I looked at the clock, it said 4 o’clock. This was all very real. I was awake, I wasn’t dreaming, I was ALIVE. Raj informed me that he was bringing me back to the ward…
Fade up so DEBORAH can be heard talking over the song. David Bowie: ‘Space Oddity’.
I started singing. I don’t know why, but I did. I didn’t stop, couldn’t remember any more lyrics, so I kept repeating that bit. I kept on smiling at that beautiful face looking down on me. I sang out loud. They could hear me coming…
Fade up much louder. Fade out fast after ‘the stars look very different today’.
I texted a few friends to let them know it was over. The nurse told me how to manage the pain. There was no pain, some discomfort, but no pain. I was sitting up enjoying my fish pie and, more importantly, my orange marmalade pudding with custard. I had a morphine drip with a little button attached, should I need it. I didn’t need it. I felt great. ‘Just like riding a bike around Ireland for five hundred miles,’ I told Janis, ‘a sore ass, wobbly legs and a little bit woozy.’ Cathy had five surgical procedures in one day and was alone in Bangkok. I had one and was with my friends and family. Amour arrived and removed my bandages. I got to see down there. I got a warm feeling.
My mum rang me at 10 p.m.. Dad had gone to bed. We talked about the op, how I was in myself, coming home, dad, and how great it was for me to have Janis here. She asked would I like to go down to her house for a couple of weeks after I got home so she could look after me. She had stressed herself out watching Sex Change Hospital on the telly.
Later that day I got my energy back and did 10 laps of the corridor. 3200 steps of about 2ft each. So I walked 6400 ft. I was tired so I went back to bed.
I didn’t sleep too well that night. I started to feel a little down. I was missing the kids. I don’t know why. I had seen them last Saturday night, and normally go for weeks without seeing them. It was just tiredness. My daughter sent me a text to tell me she got herself a job for the summer. It lifted my spirits.
The next day we had a party in the ward. I played DJ and had all the nurses dancing. Even the nurses not on our bay came to join in, smiling and dancing – ‘You Sexy Thing’. It was fun. Everybody was singing.
At 8 a.m., I peed. I didn’t think I could be so overjoyed about peeing. This meant I could go home. I walked outside the hospital and thought:
‘Freedom, and fresh air. I’ve escaped.’ I was glad to be out. It had been a short week, but I was glad it was over.
I was always Deborah. This operation did not make me a woman; all it did was make me physically female.
But I will never be completely female.
I will never have a menstrual cycle.
I will never experience the joy of being able to bear children.
And I will never experience growing up as a girl.
On the Saturday before I went to England, my mum insisted that I take her rosary beads. I don’t subscribe to the church anymore and I certainly don’t pray. I tried to explain this, but she insisted I do it for her. On the morning after the surgery, I found myself saying a decade of the rosary. I didn’t use the beads, I counted with my toes. Why, I don’t even know now, I don’t believe in that sort of thing, but it continued all week. Every morning I would wake up and say one. I stopped as soon as I got out.
had dinner,
did my clean-up,
finished packing.
I had no time for a last cup of coffee when my driver arrived at 8:30 p.m. to bring me to the airport. The flight got in in good time and I arrived at the connecting gate an hour early.
I think I will always be annoyed with the man who didn’t help me as I struggled with my case on the carousel.
Patrick would have rushed to help.
Interestingly, I’m not prepared to ask a ‘gentleman’ for help.
Not yet anyway.
Deborah met me in the arrival’s lounge.
I got the thumbs up from her.
I can’t wait to see the kids.
I can’t wait to see the kids.
I just finish dilating and have my make-up in place when everyone arrives.
Charlotte, my youngest, hugs me first.
Then Ellen appears at the door.
We give each other a polite hug and a kiss on the cheek.
We both hold it together and everything is fine.
One time not too long after the operation, about three or four months in, I woke up with an erection and my hand around my penis and I thought, ‘oh my god, it grew back during the night.’
I was still dreaming, only I didn’t know I was dreaming. This felt so real and I could feel my penis throbbing and I was horrified thinking, ‘oh my god, I have to go through all that again,’ because there was no way I wanted it.
I was already trying to work out how would I hide it, who would I tell, and then I realized, ‘this is silly, penises don’t grow back, I must be dreaming,’ and as I began to wake up, I could literally feel the penis dissolve into thin air and my hand was where the penis might have been but wasn’t.
What word do you put on people like us? I prefer to solve the problem and ignore the working. Call me what you like. I’m a woman.
DEBORAH: Don’t call me what you like. I’m Deborah. That’s it…
(Loud.)