My Sex Change in Brussels (1991)

 

I lived in Europe for a time when I was a child, and I visited with a lover in the early 1980’s, but this time my travel was for a very specific and exciting purpose: I was having sex reassignment surgery in Belgium.

No doubt by now I have your attention.

I’m in my early forties. I was born and lived the first 39 years of my life as a male, but I’ve been functioning in society as a woman for nearly two years now. Electrolysis and female hormones have given me a viable feminine appearance. At work, in line at the post office and grocery store, in my recreational activities, and even on dates, no one ever suspected I was not always a woman. My little badge of maleness was not even particularly embarrassing, as no one ever saw it, but it was there, and it bothered me when I stood naked in front of the mirror. It was a thing that obviously didn’t belong. Everything else was womanly. And having it was interfering with my love life. “John, dear, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…” Yes, it was time for it to go.

In checking out sex reassignment surgery, I found quality and price varies widely. It was available right here in the good old U.S.A., and maybe even in my home town, but at a high cost—and some of the best surgery of the world was being done in Belgium for only $4000, which seemed a ridiculously low fee. I checked on the qualifications of the surgeon, and, when the returns were positive, I wrote him and made an appointment.

And so there I was, flying to the Continent, in the company of an extremely tall woman named Alison, with the same problem of anatomy as me. Each of us had the surgeon’s fee in our purse. Each was excited, for we had worked and saved for a long time in order to get to this place. We were the elite, for most transsexual people, for one reason or another—fear, finances, health, procrastination—don’t have surgery. You’d be surprised how many women there are out there, walking around with male equipment, and how many men with female equipment.

Brussels was having a rare hot spell when we arrived on Friday evening. It was much worse than Atlanta. We found our hotel, and spent the next 36 hours trying to get over the jet lag and familiarizing ourselves with the city.

We saw the surgeon on Sunday morning. He gave us a rudimentary inspection, in order to determine what he had to work with (the scrotal and penile skin is used to line the vagina). Then he sent us on our way, with instructions to check into the clinic at 2:30 P.M. the next afternoon.

Things happened quickly on Monday. We checked out of the hotel, had lunch, and dragged our suitcases, their wheels protesting, along the cobblestone sidewalks to the clinic. Once there, we met the anesthesiologist, had EKG and chest X-rays, had blood drawn, and were given an enema. Then we were handed a razor and told to shave our pubic areas. I’d never done that (although Alison, who is notoriously kinky, had). It’s hard to see down there. A nurse was good enough to finish up for me.

After supper we were given a sleeping pill. It was plenty potent. The next thing I knew it was morning and Alison was being wheeled out of the room. I rolled over and went back to sleep, waking only when my own bed was on the way down the hall. I spoke groggily to the anesthesiologist and watched her start to push the plunger to inject sodium pentothal into the IV she had started.

That was the last thing I remembered. I awoke in the recovery room, some hours later, with an oxygen tube in my nose. I was thirsty, and asked (in French; the clinic’s nurses knew little English) for water.

I kept waking and dozing for the rest of the day. It was harder to sleep on the second day. It felt as if a pony were standing, and maybe even dancing, on my groin. I was able to move about on the bed in a limited way, and even get involved in Stephen King’s The Stand, which my boyfriend had given me for Christmas, and which I had been saving for just this purpose.

My recovery was rapid. I was uncomfortable, but never in what I would call unbearable pain. It was a different story with Alison, who shared a room with me. She screamed, and cried, and cursed, at one point throwing her coffee pot against the wall to get the attention of the nurses, who weren’t bringing her pain reliever fast enough to suit her. On the fourth day I toddled down the hall with her so she could call her Mommie at 3:00 A.M. U.S. time, to cry and ask to come home. Alison made it difficult to rest. I finally had enough, and, as she was whimpering and crying after a nightmare (I’m not a Freudian, but it seemed to have castration symbolism), I asked her to please suffer in peace so the rest of us could get some sleep.

The surgeon had recently switched hospitals, so the nurses weren’t really familiar with transgendered people. My French is poor, but it was enough for simple conversations, and I showed them my notorious “before” photos (I used to wear a beard), and a scatological letter, in French, sent to me by a Quebecois friend (they shared it with all of the doctors). I even joked with the young Moroccan ladies who cleaned the room, who asked me what kind of surgery I had had. “Changement du sexe,” I told them in what was probably atrocious and incorrect French; they didn’t bat an eye.

Alison and I were discharged on the sixth day after surgery. The continuing presence of a balloon in my bladder kept me in the vicinity of the hotel for most of the next two days, but when the doctor removed the catheter, I hit the ground running, spending most of the remaining four days trying to see all of Brussels. I walked and walked, avoiding the usual tourist attractions, concentrating instead on the areas where the natives go. Forsaking my ongoing diet, I ate as much as possible of the rich Belgian food. I flirted with men, wondering what they would say if I told them, in my broken French, about the swollen and strange sex toy the good doctor had given me. At one point I found myself riding around Brussels in a 4X4 with a transsexual Belgian prostitute, seeing the seamy side of the city. I visited others who had come to the clinic for sex reassignment surgery. I stopped only to return to the motel room to dilate.

Dilation. It’s a new fact of life. My custom equipment is indistinguishable from factory-installed, but it does require some extra maintenance. Four times a day for six months, and daily for the rest of my life, I must insert a metal or plastic device into the depths of my new anatomy. Otherwise, the vagina will lose depth and diameter. As dilation is necessary, then perhaps it shouldn’t be called masturbation, but as I find it pleasurable, then perhaps it should.

Alison spent the same four days in the motel room, emerging only when driven forth by hunger. And not dilating enough. Alison, with her gang rape fantasies, is going to be disappointed when things close up and she no longer has the equipment usually considered necessary for such activities.

All too soon, we were sitting on our tender patooties, jetting SwissAir back to Atlanta. At customs at Hartsfield Airport, Alison decided she was unable to walk, and we had to find a wheelchair for her. I was light on my feet, trying to look as if I hadn’t had surgery, too. The Customs lady said to her, “I won’t even ask what kind of surgery you had.”

“You’d be surprised,” I told her.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she replied, looking at the black fuzz which covered Alison’s unshaven chin. I guess they see a lot of strange things in Customs.

It’s been two-and-a-half weeks since the operation. I’ve been back at work for three days, and my gynecologist took the rest of my stitches out today. Life is back to Atlanta normal, hot and humid, with traffic backed up on I-285. But I now have female genitalia—and, having once been married to a woman, I assure you it’s the real thing. In another month, I can, if I so desire, start to have sex.

And I just might, for sex counts as a dilation.