© 2006 by Lauren Renée Hotchkiss

It was some years ago, in the early stages of my transition journey, when I finally decided to start electrolysis. More than a bit anxious about the prospect, I began by talking to people that I knew that had had it. Some had experienced good results and didn't think it was too painful, while others had evidently been to the electrologist from Hell, for they looked like they were up for the lead in the remake of The Bride of Frankenstein.

Not getting any good referrals in my area, I started checking the yellow pages and making a list of the electrologists, and then began to make some calls. Some I screened out right away, either because they charged too much, or they were just too weird, ...even for me. From my original list of ten or twelve electrologists, I eventually selected five that I was actually going to make appointments with, figuring I'd choose the one that seemed like I could work with the best.

I still marvel at the fact that after seeing the first one on the list, whose name was Manoosh, that I ever wanted to try electrolysis again. She had insisted that our first appointment be on Halloween night, which should have been the first red flag.

The sky had been growing steadily darker as I followed the directions that Manoosh had given me; directions that led me beyond the edge of town and into the hills above. After turning off on a road that wound through the foothills that overlooked Berkeley, I eventually came to the address she had given me. I was amazed to find, as I looked through the gate of the estate at which I'd found myself, that it was a castle. The sky was black by now and it was just starting to rain, as the gatekeeper, who looked like a refugee from a 1930s Universal horror film, let me through and I began to make my way toward the castle which loomed ahead, darker than the night.

It had seemed to me that there had been a pleading look in his eyes, as if he'd wished to tell me something. But he could not, for as I learned later, his tongue had been cut out.

Thunder began to roll across the sky, so loud that it shook the ground. Startled, I looked up just as a flash of lightning lit the sky as bright as day and beheld strange kites being flown from the roof of the castle. I didn't have more than a moment to wonder what they were, however, for just then the front door opened.

Standing framed in that dark aperture was a very peculiar individual, who I took to be the butler or manservant. He was dressed all in black and spoke not a word as he led me through cavernous chambers, up winding stairways and along labyrinthine passages till eventually we arrived on a landing before a massive steel door. It was only later that I recalled that even though he had kept his face averted, I had seen the scars upon his throat where his vocal chords had evidently been removed.

He pounded upon the portal with the huge iron knocker which hung upon its embossed surface, the sound echoing through the entire castle.

“Enter” said a voice that chilled me to the soul.

As I entered the room and the door was shut, and I thought locked, behind me, I found myself in the presence of a late middle-aged woman of imposing and somewhat intimidating presence.

After introducing myself, I had just started to ask her some questions about electrolysis when she commanded me to lie upon the table that stood in the very center of the room. Too shocked to do otherwise, I complied, only realizing my mistake when it was too late to escape, for before I could react she had quickly thrown straps across my body and buckled them firmly into place. I was helpless, trapped, bound firmly in five point restraint that would have baffled Houdini.

Terrified, I began to look around me.

I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before, but I began to get an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu. I'd seen this room somewhere before, and then it hit me. It was an exact replica of Dr. Frankenstein's lab. The table upon which I laid, the banks of electrical equipment, the bubbling chemical solutions, even, I now realized, the kites flying from the turrets far above. All were perfect. The only thing missing was a hunchbacked assistant named Igor.

But then I heard her call.

“Igor, put down that brain and bring me...the machine.”

I heard the sound of a heavy piece of equipment being wheeled toward me, and glancing over I saw a complicated looking apparatus with an elaborate array of knobs and dials. A blood-red wire led from it to an intimidating needle-like instrument.

She shoved a wet, clammy grounding contact into my hand and then donned strong magnifying glasses that she said she needed to help guide her in the insertion of the wire-like “probe”. They distorted her eyes so much that she looked like some kind of Psychotic Martian Doctor from Hell. Igor then placed eye shields over my eyes, supposedly to protect my pupils from the glare of the bright light Manoosh had turned on to use during the treatment, but I realize now that it was really so that I would remain unaware of her look of sheer delight as she committed her heinous indignities.

She then turned on the juice.

As much as it might sound like the opening of a new Stephen King novel, I swear that as I lay there on the table, being jolted with electricity as the needle jabbed into my face I kept hearing the echo of the immortal words of the illustrious Dr. F. as his monster first opened his eyes, perhaps while lying on the very slab upon which I now reclined. “It's alive...alive”

After a few of the longest seconds the world has ever known, the hair root was destroyed, but then how could it have lived, considering that there was smoke coming from my face. With a chuckle Manoosh ripped the dead hair out of my face with a pair of dull tweezers.

I'd read all the official propaganda, that to be licensed in California an electrologist must complete 500 hours of instruction in skin and hair structure and growth, neurology, angiology, bacteriology, disinfection, dermatology, and blah blah blah... and that at the end of their training they are then required to pass a written, oral, and practical test administered by the state's cosmetology board before they are issued a license, but personally I think that this one was just given the chance to take a few swings at a dead pig with a cattle prod and then sent out to prey upon an unsuspecting public.

But I'm getting away from my story.

“Stop, I've changed my mind”, I began to scream. But she did not answer.

It was then that the eye shields had slipped a little from my eyes and I saw upon her wall the framed diploma from Marquis De Sade University, in Transylvania, and a commendation letter from Jose Torquemada. Looking back toward Manoosh, I could see her nostrils flaring with delight at the acrid smell of my frying flesh. She began to move faster, plunging the needle into my face, and ripping the hairs, sometimes several at a time, from my face.

Just when I thought that I couldn't take anymore, and I was ready to scream, it was over.

After arising from the treatment table, my legs shaky, but glad to still be alive, she spun me around to face her with one stevedore like arm, and gave me the following orders:

She told me to go home and apply ice to the treated area to cut the swelling -- in other words she wanted to eliminate all evidence of her abuse.

She stopped talking and began to look meaningfully from the ancient walnut grandfather’s clock against the wall to the door. A subtle hint.

“You mean that's it, I can go home now.” I began to give a sigh of relief, grateful to have survived the ordeal when she added:

“It couldn’t have been so bad. I only had the machine on 10.”

“How high does it go up to?”

“10. And just think, you should be done in another fifty treatments or so.

Ahhhh!!!!, I screamed as I hurriedly left the room

As I was passing through the waiting room, a man was coming in to read one of the interior electrical meters. “At night,” I wondered, but quickly dismissed the thought. As I was the only one in the room at that time, he asked me what kind of a business it was. When I replied that it was an electrology clinic he asked:

“What's that?”

Now I must admit that from time to time, especially when I'm in pain, I'm prone to fits of a particularly droll sense of humor. It was unfortunate for him that I had one of these attacks just as he was asking me a perfectly reasonable question.

“We transplant brains. (pause for dramatic effect) Oh, and by the way, we're looking for a few more volunteers. Doing anything after work?”

His face lost all color.

And speaking of faces he must have noticed the mutilated condition of mine just about then because he asked: “What happened to you.”

“It was . . . Manoosh the Impaler.”

He ran out without even checking the meter, and so did I.

I'm convinced to this day that the blood of the ancient Moorish torturers flowed undiluted in the veins of Manoosh the Impaler. As it had been an introductory session, she only worked on me for about 15 minutes, but each one seemed an eternity. Apparently she did not sterilize her instruments well, because I ended up with an infection which didn't go away completely for several weeks. Manoosh would have been thrilled.