Sex Change

Transubstantiation: Arthur Becker is born with a vagina. He (she) is named Marta. The “Arthur” comes by way of his implacable, relentless insistences. His (or her) instincts and interests are male, watch him toss a perfect football spiral-and other things: What can follow from such conflict but confusion and pain, and at an early age, when his body can tolerate nothing great in alleviation, only palliatives. He is raped. Years pass before he is able to absorb without great danger the major infusion of hormones (“Sorry but we can’t but be fucking with your frontal cortex”-his endocrinologist trying to be reassuringly lite-hip), and then the bigtime sine qua non, an actual (but of course jerry-rigged) penis-which, in low uncertain voice, the surgeon and the endocrinologists vouch, just might work-although then again “Medicine isn’t perfect, m’boy, some estrogen’s gonna be hangin’in there, son.” Experiments follow-meaning dates, with girls. Meaning right-fit careers for a “guy” like Arthur: Acting? Miming? Social work? As with all the best of life’s fixes, successes are dogged by (and twisted into) failures. Thus Arthur’s adventures and misadventures, some comic, some miserably tragic humiliations-hopes wrestling with despair-again again again. . . Again. Suicide “ideations” (one step above fantasies) tossed-about and intricately pictured. . . But life is faults and imperfections, all of it is, nothing of it isn’t-he learns this, he convinces himself to learn it: the greater the fault the greater the possible leap to understanding-well, eventually-and the greater the excitement of taking-in greater dimensions, those “the normals” could not possibly have absorbed-we’re talking here about Sex from the heart-mind’s many angles (“Some estrogen’s gonna be hangin’in there, son.”) . . . And Love?-halleluyah, a real woman, and one who suits this young man who was once an unreal woman. Seems like the “wisdom” he has found himself picking-up may actually be wise. Could be.