A Different Life
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Three Weeks After

Doctor Gillies steepled his fingers. It was not a gesture he did often – not anymore. He had done his stint in general surgery, but now that he had found his niche he understood that he needed to be more empathetic. He was, in the main. But now was the time for plain talking. This patient, Alex, needed to be told.

“Clearly you have been through a major trauma. Testicular cancer is serious and the loss of your testicles and the corpus cavernosa must be devastating, but what you are proposing to do from here is more than ill-advised, it is impossible.”

“Why”, Alex asked in apparent surprise.

“You concede that you are not transgendered. SRS is available only to transgendered people. I cannot be part of a treatment that is not appropriate. SRS regret is a real thing. People who are not transgender and even a few who are, regret what they have done. They decide that the wanted to father children, or have a penis to use in sex. We need to be very clear that only those people who are genuinely transgender get this kind of surgery.

“I understand that you are the best, Doc,” said Alex. “I will sign a release.”

“This is not just about liability. It is contrary to the Hippocratic oath. Heal and do no harm.”

“The harm has been done, Doc. I am no longer a man. I never will be. But the good news is that looking back on my life, I don’t want to be a man. I want another life. A different life.”

“Your oncologist will have explained to you the options for remedial surgery. We can do something to retore limited sexual function. We can certainly building you a penis to urinate with – something that will look very close to the real thing.”

“You are not listening, Dr. Gillies. That is not what I want. It is not just that I cannot be a father, and probably not much of a husband either, it is that I don’t want to be either of those. Not now. My life has taken a turn. I am not going backwards. I want to go forwards.”

“I am not sure what you expect of yourself. Do you think that you can just put on a dress and pretend to be what you are not? Some genuine transwomen find that difficult. Or perhaps you think that you can just walk around with a vagina in your pants – I can’t think why.”

“No. I want to leave my life as a man completely behind me?”

“I don’t understand why you would want to, but the point is that is not easy to adapt, as others have discovered.”

“You don’t understand because you are a man,” Alex said.

“So are you.” It was short and flat. It would hurt somebody who was truly transgendered. Dr. Gillies watched for a reaction, but none came.

“Not without intervention as I see it. You say that I should go this way, but I want to go the other way. This is not me being impetuous. I have given this a lot of thought.”

“Explain then. Because I will not be performing this surgery on you. Not with what I know about you.”

“As I said, I am at a crossroads. It has allowed me to look back at who I was, and what I have done. I find that there is little that I am proud of. I pursued my career with no thought for anybody else. I pushed people away who wanted to show me a better way. I competed with no regard for the losses of others. I was only interested in personal victories. And my relationships were the same. Just conquests, without the complications of relationships. So what does that sound like to you?”

“I assume that you are going to tell me.” It was more or less a sneer.

“It is called being a man,” said Alex. “Everything I did, I did because I am a man. How do I put things right?”

“People can change without changing their sex.”

“I have not taken the male hormones. I flushed them. I don’t want them. Without them, and without the balls that produced them before they were cut away, I have found peace.”

“You are free to live as a eunuch. This is no longer a binary world. Treat yourself as inter-sexed. You can be who you are without pretending to be a woman.”

“But I don’t want to be different. I want to live a normal life, not as some crusader for gender neutrality. I want to live as a woman. I want to wear women’s clothes and present myself as a woman. Because women do things the right way as far as I am concerned.”

“How so?” asked Doctor Gillies. “I am a man, as you have said. But I am not like the person you describe that you were.”

“I want to succeed in the right way. I want to work in a team as women do. I want to take pleasure in being attractive, and not just successful. I want relationships”.

“With women, I assume?”

“Why would that matter? Do you care what goes into the vaginas that you build?”

“No. I just care that those vaginas belong where I put them.”

“I see,” said Alex. “You seem to have made up your mind about me.”

“I am afraid that even if you came back to me next week with psychologists certificates that you were a legitimate transsexual I would probably not believe them. Such people have always had gender dysphoria. You concede that you had none before your recent surgery. You have put your position forcefully, but it has no merit. You will need to look elsewhere.”

Three Years After

The plane was filling up. The aisle seat next to Dr. Gillies was empty, and as people boarded he hoped it might stay that way. That is, until she stepped on. She was tall wearing a tailored suit of a skirt above the knee and a shaped jacket to display her curves, and under it a blouse that showed her cleavage. Her long legs were shaped by heels of quality. Her hair was up in a big loose bun, her makeup perfect … he found himself hoping that she would place her bag above him.

Then she did.

“It’s Dr. Gillies, Isn’t it?” she smiled. His heart leapt.

“I am sorry, have we met?”

“Several years ago,” she said. Her round bottom eased itself into the seat beside him as if tempting him to fondle it. “Clearly you don’t remember.”

“Were you a patient of mine?” he asked.

“No,” she said. He was relieved.

“Of course not. If you were I am sure I would have realized it? Perhaps you know that I have an area of specialization. You would have no need to call upon me. Perhaps we have met socially?”

“No.” She fastened her seatbelt. Her breasts jiggled. The doctor’s loins became momentarily discomforted.

“So please remind me,” he said. He was not up for twenty questions.

“I was Alex. You may remember that you turned me down as a patient. I had to go elsewhere. I actually went to Korea for my procedures. It all turned out very well, so no harm done.”

“I remember,” he said. He felt deflated. He would endlessly assure his patients that after a full recovery from surgery they should consider themselves as true women, although with a sterility that needed to be explained to prospective partners. But he himself had never been able to shake the thought that these people were just surgically modified me. He had hoped that she was not one. When she said that she was not a patient, he could not restrain his desire rising. Now it had crashed to the ground.

“You will pleased to hear that I have adapted fully,” she said. “I love being a woman. I have a job where nobody knows that I was not always one. I enjoy the clothes, having my hair done, being admired. I have had wonderful relationships, all with men – perhaps that surprises you?”

“I am surprised,” he said, glumly.

“I have friendships too, as I never could when I was Alex. I am nothing like him. He was awful. I am so glad that he is lost to the world. I think that I am a better addition.”

There was no denying that. The doctor found himself nodding. The world needed beauty, and she was that. She was prattling on just as women do. She was delightful.

“That man was a brute,” she continued. “He was so selfish. Only a woman can truly understand. He was good at what he did, but what he did was not good.”

“I am glad that you have found happiness,” he said. The sparkle in her eyes was captivating.

“I know that you have helped a lot of women so I don’t want to be overly critical, but can I just say this: You are a man, and like most men you think that you know what is best for women, when you don’t. All those years ago you tried to tell me what I should be thinking without ever trying to understand me.”

She was clearly annoyed. But more than that, she was beautiful.

“Are you seeing anyone at the moment?” The words seemed so out of place.

“Typical man,” she snarled. “Trying to disarm me in the middle of a battle.”

“I thought it was a discussion?”

“No,” she said. No what? “No, I’m not in a relationship at the moment.”

“I never meet socially with patients, as a rule, but as you pointed out, you were never a patient of mine. I would like to take you out to dinner.”

“Would that be by way of apology for refusing my request all those years ago?”

“No,” he said. “I have suddenly discovered that I really don’t know enough about my subject. I always thought that I could recognize the woman inside, but now I understand that I have failed, in at least one instant.”

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2021