The Waitress, I   By Melissa Tawn   A disgraced television comedian ends up living the life of a female character he created. Where will this lead him?

He was the most successful young black comedian in the country. At the age of 26, he had his own hour-long show on prime-time television, which was consistently among the top five both in terms of size of viewing audience and viewer satisfaction. The network loved him and paid him accordingly. The fans adored him, and flocked all over him whenever he appeared in public.

On the show, he had several stock characters that he portrayed every week, but his definite favorite, and the favorite of the viewers, was Darleen, the sassy, saucy, street-smart waitress. Her putdowns and wisecracks quickly enriched the vocabulary of half of the country, so it seemed. Her famous line “Did you want hot or cold revenge with that?” became a national fad. He enjoyed portraying Darleen, and did it well. So well, in fact, that he was asked to model (as Darleen) a line of clothing for a well-known chain of women’s stores and a line of cosmetics aimed at the Afro-American market. One trade magazine even voted Darleen “television starlet of the year”.

And then it all came crashing down! A camera panning the stands at a Friday-afternoon Dodgers baseball game caught him vigorously fondling the breasts of a girl obviously under 16, seated on his lap. The tabloids splashed the photo on their front pages the next day, and by Tuesday were able to inform their readers that the girl was, in fact, just 15 years old and his “close friend”. By Wednesday, the network had yanked his show off the air and cancelled his contract, citing a paragraph about “moral integrity” in his contract, which he had never bothered to read.

At first, his agent was still able to find him jobs as a standup comic in clubs and bars. However, since he no longer had the stable of gag writers which the network had provided, the quality of his material rapidly deteriorated. Furthermore, he seemed to have lost the natural sense of timing, which had been an integral part of his act. By the time a year passed, his agent gave up and cut him loose. There was no more work.

When he was on top, he had earned millions, all of which he invested in a chain of franchised fast-food restaurants called Darleen’s Deli. Neither the food nor the ambiance there was particularly good, but as long as the restaurants were linked to a rising star, they made money. As soon as his career went bottom-up, the restaurants’ customer base evaporated and, by the end of the year, most of them had closed their doors. The entire chain soon went bankrupt, leaving a morass of debt. All of his savings were wiped out, except for a few minor secret “rainy day” accounts.

As his career spiraled down, he jettisoned almost all of his stock characters: Fancy Yancy, the black riverboat gambler, somehow no longer gripped him, nor did Rev. Haley Luja, the gospel-pounding preacher, nor Elvis McGurk, the singing middle-linebacker (who, in a parody on the old Gene Autry and Roy Rogers movies, was apt to break out in song -- complete with guitar -- after a particularly vicious tackle). Darleen, however, remained his favorite. Indeed, as his own situation deteriorated, her upbeat and irreverent outlook on life in the direst of circumstances became his mental lifesaver. He found himself looking at the world more and more through her eyes. Towards the end, when he could only find jobs in rather sleazy bars catering to gays and cross dressers, he would appear solely as Darleen, and then mingle with the crowd still in costume. Often he would serve drinks along with the other waitresses. (He actually needed the tips to augment the little money they paid him.) He could even do a little lap-dancing, if absolutely necessary.

When he finally hit bottom, and there were no more bookings, he was still hounded by creditors and reviled in the trade press and tabloids as a sex fiend. In order to escape all that, he fell back on Darleen and sought a job as a waitress, disguising his real identity. At first, he still tried to act like the character he had created so lovingly, but soon found out that in real life, away from the clubs, diners really didn’t want a waitress who talked back or injected wisecracks into their conversation. They just wanted service, quick, efficient, and silent. So, he gave that, and became what they desired, a smiling silent waitress at a small downtown restaurant: efficient, polite, and unrecognized. He earned good tips and appreciation from his boss. Darleen had matured, or in any case changed.

The years passed. Darleen (as we shall now call him, for that is what everyone knew him as) was 35. He lived totally as a woman, and even spent some of his precious savings getting silicon breast implants so that he would be even more natural. He stayed in a rented one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a nondescript building in a rundown area of the city, commuted to work by bus, and did not have much of a social life. He did not consider himself as a transsexual, or even as a cross dresser. He was just “in hiding”, that is all. Still, no cracks could be allowed to appear in Darleen’s public identity. There were creditors and tabloids out there. But in fact, the creditors had written him off as a lost cause years ago, and the tabloids had moved on to fresher scandals and had forgotten him completely. Darleen didn’t notice, or didn’t want to take the chance, and so remained.

One of the apartments on the floor below Darleen’s was occupied by a Mr. Edward Hammond, a quiet and gentle black man in his early 40’s, who had lost his wife to leukemia ten years earlier and had never remarried. They had no children. He worked as a school-bus driver, sang in his church choir, and spent his evenings at a small bar down the block playing dominoes with his friends and slowly sipping a beer or two (he never drank enough to really get drunk). He would make his way back to his apartment just about the time Darleen returned home from work, and they would often meet in the entrance hall or on the stairs. At first they just exchanged polite greetings, but after a while they would stop and talk about this and that. Slowly but surely, Darleen began looking forward to these meetings, and felt bad if Mr. Hammond wasn’t there when she arrived.

To tell the truth, Mr. Hammond also looked forward to these meetings — he had no lady friends since his wife passed away. One day, he decided to take a big step: the church to which he belonged was sponsoring a picnic on Sunday afternoon, and he asked Darleen if she would care to go with him to the event. He half expected that she would turn him down, but, surprisingly, she smiled and accepted.

Darleen did not know why he accepted Mr. Hammond’s invitation. He was not gay, after all, and certainly was not a woman. But it would be so nice to go out after all of these years, and Mr. Hammond was such a nice person and a real gentleman. It was worth buying a new dress for the occasion, and some new shoes to go along with it. Even if he was not gay, he should still look pretty, and even if he was on the wrong side of 35, he knew he was capable of doing so. Dieting and long hard hours of work on his feet had preserved his figure and he had shapely legs, if he said so himself. Maybe he should get his hair done too, just to complement the dress.

Ed Hammond was also disquieted. He hadn’t gone out with a woman since the days when the prolonged radiation therapy and chemotherapy began to kill his wife’s spirit long before the disease finally killed her body. Well, he couldn’t live alone forever. His polite and pretty neighbor seemed like a real lady, and perhaps, it was time to think in that direction again. He wasn’t that old, after all. Before Sunday, he had better send his suit to the cleaners and perhaps even buy a new tie.

As it turned out, it rained heavily on Sunday, and the picnic was moved indoors, to the church basement. Still, it was a great success. Darleen found many of the church women quite charming, and delighted in talking to them. Ed was clearly proud to show her off to his friends, and acted like a perfect gentleman all afternoon. In the entertainment part of the program, the choir performed several songs, and Darleen was surprised at the richness of Ed’s singing voice. There were also several amateur comics, including one who performed one of Darleen’s old routines, to his amazement. Of course, Darleen didn’t say anything, but clapped hysterically at the end.

As they walked home in the rain, sharing Ed’s umbrella, Darleen thanked him again and again for the wonderful time. As they finally arrived at Darleen's door, Ed took her hand and squeezed it and Darleen, on total impulse, gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Then he quickly went inside. What had come over him? He was not gay, he repeated to himself. He was not gay! But Ed was such a gentleman, and so kind too. He deserved that kiss. Besides, Darleen had to act his part fully, and he only did what any woman would be expected to do in similar circumstances. Yes, that was it, he was just playing his role. He was just “in hiding”, that is all, and needed to maintain his cover.

Ed Hammond, in his apartment, decided that he was in love. It had been so long since a woman kissed him. Darleen was beautiful, and, most importantly, she was a real lady. She was very modest and it was clear that the other ladies of the church were impressed by her. Some of them even told him so. He definitely intended to woo her, though he would do it slowly. Certainly he was not going to let her get the impression that he was a potential rapist.

And so it began. It was slow at first. Darleen worked most Saturdays and Ed sang in the church choir on Sunday mornings, so all they had was Sunday afternoon. Each week they would pick an interesting place to visit — a street fair, the farmer’s market, a new exhibit at the museum, sometimes just a walk in the park to see the flowerbeds. After a while, they took to holding hands. When they parted, they would look into each other’s eyes and kiss each other on the lips. Each of them was reluctant to make a move beyond that. Each was afraid to invite the other into their apartment, since each was ashamed of how frayed and dingy it looked. Neither of them had very much money, but they managed to buy small gifts for each other from time to time.

The situation was hardest on Darleen. He kept on repeating to himself that he was not gay, just hiding out. But, little by little, he also recognized that he was in love with Ed, and looked forward not only to every minute they were together, but also to the touch of Ed’s arm around his shoulders and Ed’s lips on his. He was not a woman, he kept on telling himself, but what exactly was he. He was certainly presenting himself to the world as a woman, and in fact had been doing so for over a third of his life. He realized that he could probably never go back to living as a male, even if he felt secure enough to try it.

Among Darleen’s regular customers at the restaurant was a doctor, Dr. Jayne Mautner, who was rumored, among the other waitresses, to be a specialist in sex-change operations. Dr. Mautner often dined together with one of her colleagues, Dr. Gold, and indeed the two ladies were sitting at their usual table one day, when Darleen decided, on an impulse, that his situation had reached the point where a decision had to be made. When he came to take their order he also, shyly (how different from the “old” television Darleen, he though later), asked Dr. Mautner if he could speak to her about a private matter. “Of course, Darleen,” said Dr. Mautner, “what is the problem?” “This is not the place to talk,” Darleen replied, “can I come to see you at your office?” Dr. Mautner agreed, of course, and gave Darleen her card. They arranged to see each other the following Thursday afternoon, and Darleen duly notified his manager that on that day he would have to take a few hours’ leave because of a medical appointment.

When Thursday afternoon came around, Darleen appeared in the office of Dr. Mautner’s clinic. He was wearing his best outfit, but still felt very nervous and unsure of himself; more than once, he considered turning around and walking away. The receptionist, a bright young lady who introduced herself as Linda O’Day, escorted him into an “interview room”, a comfortable room furnished with a coffee table and several comfortable chairs. (Unknown to Darleen, it also had two hidden video cameras, which recorded everything that happened in it, and microphones which recorded what was said. Later, these videos would be used by the clinic’s psychologists to study his body language. The microphones relieved the doctors of the necessity of taking notes.)

A few moments later, Dr. Mautner and Dr. Gold came in, accompanied by a handsome black man whom Dr. Mautner introduced as Dr. George Mthembu of Durban, South Africa, who was visiting the clinic as part of his sabbatical year. Linda O’Day brought in coffee, tea, and donuts, and then Dr. Mautner turned to Darleen and asked her what she wanted to talk about.

“I am not what I seem to be,” began Darleen, and then the whole story spilled out, beginning with his terrible childhood in the ghettos of Philadelphia, through his meteoric rise as a television star and equally meteoric fall, and ending with his ongoing relationship with Ed. By the end of it, Darleen was in tears, and had to avail himself several times of tissues from the box conveniently located on the table.

None of the doctors had interrupted the story in any way, but when it was clear that Darleen was done, Dr. Mautner took Darleen’s hand in hers, and gave him a warm squeeze. Dr. Gold asked the first question: “In your eyes, are you now a woman?” Darleen looked at her, still wiping tears from her eyes. “If you had asked me that question six months ago, I would have told you definitely no. I was in hiding, that is all. But now, frankly, I am not sure. I have been doing a lot of introspection of late. I considered coming to this appointment dressed in men’s clothes, and even went to some stores to shop for them, but I looked so odd in them, and felt even odder, that I quickly gave up the idea. Whatever I am, it is clear to me now that I will be living the life of a woman for the rest of my days. Moreover, ever since I met Ed, I must admit that I am less sure of whatever male identity I have. I am very confused at the moment, which is why I wanted to see you. It is a very hard thing, and very hard to explain. I hope you can understand.”

“If I had to answer your question,” continued Darleen, “I would say that I am not now fully a woman, but I want to be, if I can be.”

Dr. Mautner gave Darleen’s hand another squeeze. “Don’t worry, we understand it very well; we have all been through it. That goes for me, for Dr. Gold, for my receptionist Linda, and even for Dr. Mthembu.” Darleen look up, amazed. “Don’t be so surprised,” Dr. Mthembu laughed. “I studied medicine in the United States, and Dr. Mautner and I were classmates. At the time, she was a male named Jay and I was a female named Gloria. We even dated a few times. One year the male medical students voted me as ‘the person whose anatomy they would most like to study’. Of all of those who took part in that poll, I think that only Jayne would still vote the same way today.” (He winked at Dr. Mautner; this was apparently an old joke between them.)

“Let me explain to you a bit of my own philosophy,” began Dr. Mautner. “Until 200 years ago, it was very rare for a person in Europe to have travelled more than 50 miles from his or her place of birth. The course and limitations of a person’s life were determined by where that person happened to be born. Similarly, a person’s occupation and status in life were, for the most part, predetermined: the son of an aristocrat was destined to be an aristocrat; the son of a farmer was destined to be a farmer; the son of a fisherman was destined to be a fisherman. Physical and social mobility have allowed us to overcome the shackles of location and lineage -- people immigrate to other places in the world, and are not bound by the profession or social status of their parents. In a similar way, we can now overcome the shackles imposed by the body. You can surgically repair birth defects that once would restrict if not totally determine the life you could live. You can take growth hormones to overcome dwarfism, or insulin to overcome diabetes. You can also alter your sexual organs to make them in greater harmony with your perceived gender identity. One no longer has to say that you must be such-and-such because you were born with a penis or a vagina any more than one says that you must be such-and-such because you were born in the slums of Philadelphia or because your father was a laborer.”

“Our object in this clinic,” continued Dr. Mautner, “is to allow you to construct a harmonious whole person according to your wishes and desires. I am not interested in theories or generalities about gender. I am interested in you, the person before me. We will do our best here to work with you to delineate what the person will be, and then make the changes in your body, if necessary, to bring that person into being. Would you like us to help you?”

“I would like it very much,” replied Darleen, “but I doubt if I can afford it.” “Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Dr. Mautner. This state requires your employer to carry medical insurance for you. Since being a woman is part of your job description, most of what we do should be covered by the insurance, at least in part. Trust me on this, my legal staff is used to handling insurance companies. As for the rest … well I guess I will just have to take it out of your future tips.”

Spontaneously, Darleen hugged her.

Once the decision to go ahead was reached, Darleen entered what would be a long and agonizing process. Since he had already been living as a woman for many years, and looked good, there was no pressing need for any cosmetic surgery, only sexual reassignment surgery. Darleen also did not need training in deportment, speech, or many of the other aspects of womanhood that transitioning transsexuals have problems with. The main problem was mental. In his own mind, Darleen had to make the switch from being a “he” to being a “she”. In this, Dr. Gold and her staff realized that she faced an unusual challenge. Usually, in dealing with transsexuals, the client already thinks of herself as a woman, and the problem is to match the body to the perceived gender. In Darleen’s case, it was a matter of solidifying the newly-perceived female identity to match the already-existing female image and lifestyle. Since the surgery would surely help in that direction, it was decided to proceed with that as quickly as possible, and then have a period of intensive counseling to help Darleen get over the psychological aftershock.