Leros   By Melissa Tawn   An expensive yacht glided into the harbor of Platanos on the Aegean island of Leros. On the deck of the yacht, two exquisite beauties were sunbathing in matching bikinis. One of them was Italian film and television superstar Gina Rossi, at the age of 40 still a stunner, and the other was … her son.

CHAPTER 1. TWO BEAUTIES ON A YACHT

Leros, home of the Olympian goddess Artemis (identified with the Roman Diana), is a small beautiful island in the Dodecanese chain of islands in the Aegean Sea. It has clean and inviting beaches, green hills, and a fine harbor. One fine July day, an expensive yacht, chartered by the Italian film and television superstar Gina Rossi, glided into the harbor of Platanos, the capital of the Island. On the deck of the yacht, two exquisite beauties were sunbathing, clad only in matching expensive bikinis, obviously the work of a top Milan designer. One of them was Gina Rossi herself — at the age of 40 still stunningly gorgeous — and the other, aged 17, was … her son Claudio, who, for reasons which will become obvious, preferred being called Claudia.

The Island of Leros has less than 10,000 inhabitants, and it is safe to say that the eyes of almost every male above the age of 12 were glued on Gina and Claudia Rossi as their ship glided into port and tied up at quayside. Each pair of eyes carefully registered every delicate move as Gina and Claudia rose from their deckchairs, shook their identical long black hair, wrapped each other in a towel, gave each other a peck on the cheek, and then headed below decks to shower and dress. The brain behind each pair of eyes immediately conjured up the most delicious fantasies of the two of them washing off their suntan lotion, and doing … what … before dressing.

Of course, nobody imagined that Claudia was really male. Very few people knew the secret. He had been born when Gina was just beginning her career. His father, a professional racing driver, was killed in a fiery crash at Le Mans one year later. Gina never remarried but was determined to bring up her child by herself, despite the difficulties. By the time the child was 3, it was clear that he bore an extraordinary resemblance to his mother, and was “way too pretty to be a boy”. The habit of calling him “Claudia” started not with Gina but with her friends and acquaintances. Claudia loved it. When he was asked (as grownups are wont to ask little children) what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would always answer “I want to be a beautiful actress, just like my mommy”. On his fourth birthday, when Gina took him shopping for a present, he saw a yellow girl’s dress in the store window and said he wanted that. Gina tried to object, but — since she thought that he would look very pretty in it — not for long, and bought him the dress, with matching panties and shoes. He did look stunning, and so Gina and her friends bought him more clothes, and pretty soon his entire wardrobe was very feminine, just like his mommy’s.

Claudia never went to a formal school. Since Gina was constantly travelling for modeling assignments or for film shooting on location, and since she insisted on taking Claudia with her wherever she went, it was much simpler to engage a succession of private tutors. At first, Claudia’s “situation” was carefully explained to them, but after a while nobody even bothered. Her tutors just assumed she was a girl, and nobody corrected them. What her tutors did notice, though, was that besides being very beautiful, Claudia was also very intelligent, and extremely quick in understanding things she read. By the time she was 16, she was already studying material which is usually met only in college. She also picked up languages quickly and, as a consequence of all of the travelling she did with Gina, she was fluent not only in Italian but also in English, French, German, and Spanish. She planned to learn Japanese, as soon as an appropriate tutor could be found.

As Claudia grew older, she became more and more a miniature copy of her mother. When she reached the age of 11, Gina decided it was time for a “long hard talk”. Together with a psychologist, she explained to Claudia what was going on and what her options were. The psychologist examined Claudia thoroughly, as did a doctor who checked her physical development. As a result, it was decided unanimously (with Claudia vehemently insisting) that she continue as a girl and that she be given hormone replacement therapy to make sure that her male hormones never kick in and that her body develop like that of any other teenage girl. The results were spectacular, though not unexpected. Claudia developed into a perfect-but-younger copy of her mother, and in fact was so much like her that she appeared in several films in which her mother starred, playing in flashbacks where the character portrayed by her mother is seen as a teenager.

While the law did not allow Claudia to have SRS surgery until she was 18 (despite her pleas that forcing her to refrain from sex with boys was cruel and unusual punishment — both to her and to them), it was clearly the direction in which she was headed.

CHAPTER 2. STAVROS

The teenage boys and young men who lived on Leros were used to beautiful women coming ashore looking for a summer adventure, and were quite willing to oblige. If one adds to them the college students and other outsiders who beef up the service staff of the various hotels, restaurants, and tavernas during the summer, one ends up with a large number of males whose main objective is to get into the panties of as many vacationing young females as possible in as short a time as possible — and brag about it to their friends afterwards. And all of them were setting their sights on Claudia, as she reemerged on deck dressed in a halter and very short shorts. She would star in many wet dreams on the island that night.

There were a few exceptions, of course, and one of them was Stavros Karamenaios, a first-year mathematics student at the National Technical University in Athens. Stavros was an archetypical nerd who was more at home reading a calculus textbook than looking at Playboy. He would have been content to be doing that during the summer, but he needed extra money and his parents insisted that he “get out of the library and enjoy himself” so he signed on as a waiter at the Hotel Angelou on Leros. If nothing else, it would be a good way of improving his English, which is the de facto international language of tourists.

The Hotel Angelou, near Alinda beach, is a converted mansion, secluded in its own large estate, and intended for very discriminating (and rich) guests. Stavros figured that he would be not be too busy there, and would have plenty of free time to spend reading linear algebra and differential equations, in preparation for next year. He had no plans to go after girls. (In fact, should the truth be told, Stavros had never had a romantic relationship with a girl, and was — needless to say — a virgin.) That does not imply, of course, that Stavros was not good looking. On the contrary, he had a very handsome “Greek god” look, with curly black hair just begging to run one’s fingers through, an olive complexion, and deep dark eyes.

As fate would have it, Gina and Claudia decided to stay at the Hotel Angelou, because of the seclusion and privacy it afforded. As fate would further have it, Stavros Karamenaios was assigned to wait on their table. The other waiters offered to trade tables with him, and were even willing to give him two-week’s worth of tips for the privilege, but Stavros felt that would anger the maitre d’, who handled the table assignments, and so declined. He, quite frankly, didn’t care whom he was serving, and barely noticed them. His mind was usually on mathematics.

Claudia, on the other hand, did notice Stavros. He was cute and shy, and didn’t try to start with her, as every other male on the island seemed to. On her first day on the island, she had gone into Platanos to buy some sunscreen and — as she put it later to Gina — had so many eyes following her that she felt like a chicken being plucked. The way some of the boys strutted in front of her was so comical; it was all she could do to keep from breaking out laughing. She was happy that Stavros didn’t try to force himself on her while she and Gina were eating, but was also a bit taken back. Perhaps he was gay? Perhaps he had a girl friend that was even more beautiful than she was? By the third day of their stay, she decided to try flirting with him. But, while he was polite and attentive to all her requests, he didn’t go beyond good and efficient service.

Now she was determined. She almost wanted to shout out to him: “Hey, in case you haven’t noticed, my mom is a famous film star, and I am as beautiful as she is!” But of course, she didn’t. Yet.

That afternoon, though, when she went out on the hotel grass to lie in the sun, she saw Stavros sitting in a corner and reading a book. This, she thought, was an opening. She walked over to him and asked him what he was reading. “Oh, something that probably won’t interest you,” he replied, and went back to his book. “Try me,” she said. “It is a book called Linear Algebra and its Applications by David Lay,” he said, “I am a math student at the university.” “You are right that the book is not very interesting,” she replied. “You should really try something more serious, such as Sheldon Axler’s book Linear Algebra Done Right.” Now THAT caught Stavros’ attention. “What? You know linear algebra? Are you a math student too?” “No,” Claudia replied, “I am going to be an actress like my mom. But I got interested in algebra for a while, and my tutor recommended Axler’s book to me, so I read through it.”

“Wow!” said Stavros. “Look, maybe you can help me with a proof I am having trouble understanding.” “Sure,” Claudia replied, “let me see …” And so the two of them spent the next hour talking about generating sets and bases and dimensions, while Claudia managed to inch herself closer and closer to Stavros, until their legs were touching. He, almost unconsciously, put his arm around her shoulder and she leaned on his. “You are really smart,” he said, “did anybody ever tell you that?” “And you are really cute,” she replied, “did anybody ever tell you THAT?” Claudia then did something that she had never done before in her life — she initiated a kiss on the mouth to a man who had not shown any interest in kissing her. Fortunately for Claudia, male instincts take over even when experience is lacking, and Stavros responded to the kiss with all of the fervor one would expect in a young man. Pretty soon, they were locked in an embrace, exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues, while Lay’s book slid, unnoticed, to the grass.

CHAPTER 3. LOVE

Claudia lay in her bed, dressed only in panties, and examined her body. She was very aware that by any standards, including those of the most exacting film and model-agency directors, she was an exquisite and rare beauty, totally feminine. Totally, that is, except for the part they never saw, the part now covered by her panties so that she, too, would not have to look at it. What was hidden there — underdeveloped and dysfunctional as it was — ruined everything. When she would be 18 — on the very day after her birthday, if she had her wish -- she would have that horrid part of her removed. Until then, only she and Gina knew about her blemish (and a few doctors, of course). One more year, one more year! Until then, her body was betraying her soul, keeping her from being, totally, the woman she knew she was.

Claudia thought about love. Like all teenage girls, she had her crushes on boys but she has intelligent enough to understand that because she was built differently, she had to rein her desires in. While she enjoyed partying and being with guys, she never allowed herself to fall in love with any of them, and preserved a certain emotional distance. “One more year,” she kept on thinking to herself, “one more year and I will be able to have my operation and then … boys beware!”

But now Eros had clearly aimed one of his mightiest shafts right at her, for she was totally stricken by Stavros. Claudia wanted to be his, totally, and wanted it now. She could not wait one more week, let alone one more year. What was she to do? The last thing she could do was talk to Gina about Stavros.

In her head, Claudia played back every word of her conversations with Stavros, and reexamined every gesture. Was he in love with her?

Yes he was. At the same time Claudia was fantasizing about love, so was Stavros. For the first time in his life, he was totally smitten by a girl. He was in love, and was not sure he could handle it. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. He felt very inadequate. How could he, a poor mathematics student, even consider a long-time relationship with the glamorous daughter of a famous movie star, who was clearly destined for stardom in her own right? There was no way she would have him. When she and her mother left Leros, he was sure to be forgotten, or written off as a trivial summer adventure. But what could he do? His body ached for her.

CHAPTER 4. BEING CAREFUL

The next day, Gina’s agent called her. A featured guest scheduled to appear on one of the most popular Italian television talk shows had been hospitalized with appendicitis. A replacement was urgently needed. Could Gina fly back to Rome immediately? A private plane would be dispatched to pick her up. This was very important to her career. Gina agreed. Since the hotel suite had been ordered for an entire month, and had been paid for in advance, she and Claudia decided that Claudia would remain on Leros while her mother was away — probably for three or four days but possibly as long as a week.

This, of course, afforded Claudia the opportunity of being with Stavros as much as possible, during the hours he didn’t work and on his days off. They biked to Partheni to see the archeological excavations, and walked along the seashore. They held hands a lot, and kissed and hugged every few minutes. When they were on a secluded (or sometimes not-so-secluded) beach, Claudia would remove her bikini top and let Stavros fondle or suckle her breasts. She loved to feel his hands and the warmth of his body.

Needless to say, Stavros was — after a while — also quite eager to proceed “below the belt”, but here Claudia stopped him. She explained to him, gently but firmly, that while she loved him dearly, she was not yet ready to allow anyone to get into her pants. She had promised Gina, she said, that she would remain a virgin at least until her 18th birthday, and intended to honor that promise. She asked Stavros to respect it. With an obvious reluctance, he did. But Claudia’s refusal to do what every other girl visiting the island did sooner or later (or at least that is what the other waiters all told Stavros, in graphic detail) bothered him.

Meanwhile, Gina came back and she and Claudia prepared to return to Italy. Claudia and Stavros exchanged cell-phone numbers and Instant Messenger addresses, and vowed to stay in touch daily. On the final day together, Stavros whispered in her ear, “This is a dream, and I know that it is going to end. You will soon be with your friends from the movie world and will forget me utterly.” “No,” Claudia promised, “that will never happen. I love you Stavros, and always will love you. I promise you that you will be the star of my thoughts and my dreams forever.”

CHAPTER 5. A YEAR OF ANTICIPATION

Every day, faithfully, Claudia and Stavros contacted each other — sometimes on the internet and sometimes by telephone. When the summer ended and Stavros returned to school, Claudia got a list of all of the textbooks he had to read and read them herself, so she could discuss the material with him and try to help him. During the semester break, Claudia flew to Athens and met Stavros’ family, whom she liked very much. They seemed to like her too. She and Stavros spent several very passionate days together, talking about the future. He respected her request that he not go “below the belt” until after her birthday, but they managed to get very intense with each other within the limits of this prohibition.

As the date of her 18th birthday approached, Claudia counted the days, the hours, the minutes until she could have her operation and be the total woman Stavros expected of her. And, sure enough, on the morning of her birthday Gina handed her the present she had always dreamt of — round-trip tickets to a clinic near Geneva where her operation was scheduled to take place the following week.

No girl ever entered the operating room for SRS surgery with as much anticipation and hope as did Claudia Rossi, and none came out of it with as great a feeling of satisfaction and sheer joy. She was now ready to fulfill her dream.

During the course of the year and during their meeting in Athens, Claudia and Stavros had made plans. Claudia had informed Gina that, much as she liked acting, she wanted to go to university before she began a career, and Gina reluctantly agreed. However, since they both realized that Claudia’s celebrity status would make it hard for her to blend in as a normal student on any campus in Italy, it was decided that she should go abroad to study. The obvious place, the most beautiful place, the most romantic place that mother and daughter could think of, was Paris. Gina applied to, and was accepted at, Université Paris Denis-Diderot (Paris VII), on Place Jussieu in Paris’ historical Latin Quarter. Among all of the campuses of the University of Paris, this one had an especially-good mathematics department. Because of the programs of the European Union which encourage students from one member country to spend part of their studies at an institution in another member country. Stavros too had no difficulty transferring there to complete his degree.

Claudia rented a luxurious apartment near the Cluny museum (Musée National du Moyen Age) on Place Paul Painlevé (named after a 19th-century French mathematician who also served as Prime Minister of France), and refurnished it lavishly to her taste. Stavros, for his part, decided to share a much plainer apartment on Rue Gaspard Monge (named after another famous mathematician who was a close friend of Napoleon) with two other Greek students, with whom he drove in a rented van across Europe from Athens to Paris. As soon as he arrived in Paris, he contacted Claudia, and within the hour was headed for her waiting arms.

The reunion of the two lovers was, as one would expect, extremely passionate. As they kissed and fondled each other, Claudia whispered in Savros’ ear: “I am over 18 now, and all doors are open to you.”

“Do you mean that you have had your operation?” Stavros asked.

Claudia backed off and gave him a shocked look … “What did you say?”

“Relax darling,” said Stavros, “I have known for a long time, and it didn’t make a bit of difference.”

“But how ….?” Claudia stammered.

“Well,” Stavros explained, “last year you said that you wanted to wait until you were 18 years old, but didn’t tell me when your birthday was. So I decided to find out. Most people don’t realize that birth and death records are considered public information under EU law. For a very modest fee, I was able to search all of the birth records in Italy for 17 years ago. Your name was not among them. So I searched by the name of the mother, and found that Gina Rossi had only one child, a son named Claudio. At first, I couldn’t believe it; then I thought that you were playing a big joke on me. But that didn’t fit — you are way too feminine to be able to fake that. You had to be a girl, no matter what the birth records said. But I also did some research on the internet and in the university library, and read about women who were unlucky enough to be born with male genitals. My love for you only increased, since I could just imagine how hard it was for you to be what you are, what you must be. When you visited me in Athens, if you remember, I took you to meet my grandmother, who is blind. What I did not tell you is that she has a considerable local reputation as a Wise Woman and Seer, one who cannot see the physical world but who can see the future. After you left, I asked her for her opinion of you. She said that you are a perfect soul mate for me and would make a wonderful wife, though you will not be able to bring me children. She blessed our union, and told me that it was arranged by the saints — whom I suspect she identifies with the Olympian gods.”

CHAPTER 6. PUBLICITY

When Stavros told Claudia that he had known her secret and that it didn’t matter to him, a weight was lifted off Claudia's heart, and she was able to turn her attention to her studies. Indeed, Claudia was resolved to live the life of an ordinary student, going to classes and enjoying Paris and the love of her boyfriend. While Stavros was, formally, ahead of her by two years, she had studied sufficient material on her own to automatically pass over various introductory courses and even found herself together with him in a few classes. The mathematics was taught at a very high level, but their major problem turned out not to be the material itself but rather the fact that it was being presented in French. Knowing a language fairly well is one thing; knowing it enough to be able to take notes from a lecturer mumbling at top speed and writing on the blackboard in an undecypherable handwriting -- is quite something else.

Another problem is that, despite all of her efforts to preserve her anonymity, various screen-gossip magazines found out about Claudia, and before she knew what was happening a photograph of her embracing Stavros appeared in the Italian version of Teen Screen, under the headline ‘CLAUDIA ROSSI STUDYING GREEK IN PARIS’. Pretty soon, she and Stavros found paparazzi trailing them, trying to take photographs — the more compromising the better. Claudia was sufficiently used to this sort of thing and took it in her stride, but Stavros was not, and it upset him tremendously. One day, when he was surprised by a photographer who started shooting pictures of him while he was in the library trying to study for an exam, he lost his calm and seized the camera, smashing it against the floor. This, of course, just made things worse, and nearly got him in serious trouble with the university authorities. In fact, Stavros was very worried that all the attention would lead others to discover Claudia’s birth secret, but she reassured him. After she had her operation, she successfully petitioned to have her birth certificate altered retroactively (which was possible under Italian law) so that if anyone did an internet search now, the result would be that she was born female. Stavros checked this out, and found it to be true, but was still worried. One day, he walked past a kiosk and saw a tabloid with the headline ‘CLAUDIA ROSSI IN PARIS BARES HER MOST INTIMATE SECRET’. Worried, he bought a copy, only to find out that it was a false alarm — the “most intimate secret” referred to the fact that she bought her jeans off the rack at shops in the Latin Quarter which catered to students, and not from the boutiques of exclusive Parisian designers.

In reality, Stavros did have good reason to worry. The photographer whose camera he smashed, a Swiss citizen by the name of Klaus Wedemeier, was at that moment getting drunk with his boyhood friend Hans Kimmel in a bar in Geneva. Hans asked him who was the girl who was causing all of the excitement, and when Klaus showed him a picture of Claudia, he said that he recognized her. Hans worked in information technology and he explained that several months earlier he had seen the girl while he was repairing the internet connection of a private clinic not far from town. This caught Klaus’ attention. He asked for more details about the clinic. Hans didn’t know too many, but said that, from what he understood, it was used by children of the rich for “discreet” abortions. There were rumors that the doctor in charge, Herr Prof. Doktor Grau, also performed sex-change operations there. Klaus was definitely interested. He offered Hans 10,000 euro if he could hack into the clinic’s computers and get a copy of Claudia Rossi’s medical file.

CHAPTER 7. THREAT AND RESPONSE

Two days later, Herr Prof. Doktor Grau personally called Gina Rossi to tell her that an attempt had been made to obtain her daughter’s medical file from the clinic’s computer. He assured her that the attempt failed (“Our firewalls are impregnable,” he boasted). At the same time, he also mentioned that a Paris-based photographer named Wedemeier was caught trying to surreptitiously photograph the clinic, after illegally climbing over the fence that surrounded it. His camera had been confiscated by the guards. Herr Prof. Doktor Grau was not sure that there was a connection between the two incidents, but felt it his duty to pass on the information.

Gina knew that the matter was serious, and called Claudia and Stavros to Rome for an urgent consultation. The three of them decided that something had to be done to make sure that no suspecion of Gina's birth sex ever arose, and worked out a plan. A year or so earlier, Gina had shot a film which was never released, for various financial reasons. In that movie, she played a pregnant woman. To show her pregnancy as realistically as possible, the studio had five very realistic prosthetic bellies — one for each of the last five months of pregnancy — made up for her. These were made from latex and silicon and were held in place by very thin yet very strong skin-colored Velcro straps wrapping around the body, as well as an adhesive. Once the straps and the seams were covered with body makeup, the belly would look very real, even in a close-up photograph. She now fetched them from the studio prop storage building. Since Claudia’s skin tone was the same as Gina’s. she was sure that they would fit Claudia with no difficulty.

Between the first and second semester, Stavros and Gina vacationed at an exclusive hotel in Morocco. By pure coincidence, a paparazzo just happened to locate them and managed to take some photos of Claudia lying on the beach in her bikini. These were printed in a British tabloid, along with a rather catty remark that Claudia needed to study less and exercise more, for she seemed to be gaining weight. Two weeks later, the Italian gossip blog BAMBINA carried the big headline ‘IS CLAUDIA ROSSI STUDYING TO BE A MOMMY?’. It reprinted the picture from Morocco and added to it a photo of Claudia in Paris, wearing rather loose clothing and entering a building which housed, among other offices, the clinic of a well-known Parisian gynecologist. Similar stories (all, of course, planted by one of Gina’s spokespeople) began popping up in other European screen and gossip magazines, and attracted considerable attention from those people who have nothing better to do than follow the private lives of the stars.

Finally, Claudia called a press conference and, wearing her fifth-month “bump”, admitted that she was indeed pregnant. The father was her dear friend Stavros (who declined to be present), and that she looked forward to having the baby very much. This, of course, set off a feeding frenzy among the paparazzi and gossip columnists. A lot of inanities were written about her, and some of the columnists even learned a few mathematical expressions (there were various remarks about “subsets” and “implicit functions”, for example, by people who had no idea what the terms actually mean).

The months and the size of Claudia’s “bump” progressed, with pictures constantly appearing in the gossip press. Claudia made sure that the photographers did not get too close to her, and it was absolutely impossible to tell that the pregnancy was not real. The only person who was not impressed by it was Klaus Wedemeier, who was still convinced something was fishy here. He spent a lot of time digging into Claudia’s past, and managed to find Victoria, one of her former tutors, who told him that while Claudia was treated as a girl, it was “common knowledge” that he was really a boy. Unfortunately, Victoria also told him that it was “common knowledge” that the Pope was really an alien from the planet Uranus who, with the help of an army of Martian mercenaries disguised as Jesuit priests, was about to take over the world. Reluctantly, Klaus decided that Victoria would not make a credible source. But he kept digging.

At the beginning of her “ninth month”, Claudia left Paris to be — so she told the press — at her mother’s home in Rome, where she would give birth to her baby away from the public eye. In fact, she and Gina flew incognito by private plane to Buenos Aires a week later. Argentina is a country in which the Catholic Church still has a dominant influence and hence many women refuse to take anti-pregnancy precautions, even when they are in no position, financial or marital, to bring up a child. As a result, there are large numbers of babies available there for adoption, through legal or semi-legal channels. Gina had contracted with an Argentine lawyer to look for a woman who matched Claudia’s build and coloration, who would give birth around the time Claudia was "expecting", and who would be willing to give up her baby, sight unseen, for a suitable remuneration. Several candidates were identified and Claudia talked to all of them before making her decision. Palms were greased where necessary, and on the same day the baby was born, and checked to make sure it was healthy, it was legally adopted by Claudia Rossi. Three days later, accompanied by Claudia, Gina, and a nurse, it was flown back to Rome.

A week later, the first pictures of Claudia, Stavros, and their baby boy, whom they called Valentino, appeared in the press. Around the same time, Klaus Wedemeier decided that his time would be better spent following the antics of one of Britain's more alcoholic princes.

EPILOGUE: It would be nice to end this story with “and they lived happily ever after,” but in this case it didn’t quite happen. After Valentino was born, Claudia decided not to go back to school, but to concentrate on raising her son and restarting her acting career. Stavros finished his degree in mathematics, but found it difficult to continue being “Mr. Claudia Rossi” and felt more and more marginalized in her life. After graduation, he was offered a fellowship to work on his doctorate at Ohio State University and, when Claudia refused to leave Europe, the two of them parted sadly but amicably. Claudia had full custody of the baby, and took Valentino with her wherever she went on assignment. The child was immensely charming and pretty. Way too pretty, everyone said, to be a boy….