In the West we pay specialists to keep death out of sight, except when a close relative dies. I had often reflected in a vague way how infantile Western culture can be when faced with some of the more challenging facts of life, especially death. She had decided to have the operation partly because her lover wanted it but mostly because she expected to be much more marketable to Western men as a woman.Īt the same time I thought more and more about Buddhism. It had not occurred to her to think she was a man trapped in a woman's body. My new friend readily admitted that she did not fit the profile of a transsexual. It struck me with some force how radical Western consumerism can be in its effect on the Third World, even to the point of changing men into women. Her farang lover had lost interest, however, and now she was trying to raise money for the final step which was surgery. Her sponsor, a Western man, had paid for the course of medication, most of which consisted of estrogen in one form or another, so that she had grown breasts and developed an impressive luster in her long black hair. She/he was stuck in the middle of the transition from male to female. One evening I was sitting at a bar in Pat Pong, probably the most famous red-light district in the world, when an attractive young woman started talking to me, then a few minutes into the conversation admitted she was a man.
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