My life as an actor, part one

Yesterday I had the feeling I was a woman trapped inside a man’s body so I went for a sex change. When I came out after, it was as if I’d been a woman all along, and it felt like I’d lived this life as a woman before and it all felt right. When I came out of the surgery, the doctor said I looked great and they took videos and set up a big circular neon light on a stand whilst the camera moved around me taking in my new shape as a woman because they were going to use me as an model.

I can’t work out why it was all so sudden. Last week I was a man, I was ok, and I can’t remember feeling that anything was off with anything, I certainly can’t remember having a sense that I should be a woman, but then yesterday came, not that I’d have been able to predict it or anything, because nothing particular happened yesterday or the day before, it was just this idea kept tumbling round in my mind, like a loose nut in a washing machine, and I don’t really know where the idea came from, it wasn’t a mental thing either which I had to debate one way or the other, and even though I realised it was very fucking scary to get your sex changed, really drastic, I had this absolute conviction it was the right thing to do.

And I booked myself in, and went the very next day.

So I didn’t really feel the need to talk about it with anyone. I just sent Robin a message saying: ‘I’m having a sex change tomorrow’, and I doubt that he believed me because I’d never talked about having a sex change, I’ve never had surgery, I just don’t do things like this, I’m really not the type. It wasn’t a making fanfare sort of thing, if anything it was just to confirm to myself that I was really going to do it; the fact that I was able to send that text message so easily, the fact that I felt so relaxed and at peace when I sent it just drove home to me that it wasn’t even a decision. It felt like it had already been done.

And basically the same sense of low-key mutedness came up when I went round to my mother. I admit there was a small part of me that wanted some reaction, but then once that was over, not that it was that big a reaction at all, my mother just said ‘Oh’, nothing had changed, absolutely nothing and my mother’s friend was there who tends to be rather direct and I quite like that and she just asked me why I’d decided to become a woman, and it felt normal and nice to just answer because I felt like it. That was that, nothing had changed. No more questions asked.

And now I’m typing this as a woman, there’s no difference, there’s really no difference at all, except as I’m typing there’s something inside that has just clicked very slightly, I feel lighter, calmer, clearer as if I’m not pushing up against something all the time. But the major thing is, and I don’t know how to not sound all airy fairy about this, but it’s almost as if I’ve already been a woman, I felt I knew what it was like to have been a woman, I felt I must have known, because what could have made it so easy for me to undergo something so major and drastic without toing and froing, just booking myself in on the day and having it done in three hours, I mean the thing that made it so easy I’m realising now, is that I am a woman, I mean I have been a woman, not in the sense of past lives, but bear with me, but if you’ll imagine that all and every possibility is available now in this very moment, then I see now that I am a woman and not just a man and that then something wanted to experience the woman in the physical plane, something wanted to emerge. I’m really not one for new-age bullshit so forgive me, but I just wanted you to know what it was like and why and understand what led me to do it, and well, has anyone else felt similar I guess?

Then as I’m sitting here writing this, nothing is different, I mean everything is different in this tiny nuanced internal way, but on the outside, unless I actually go up and look in the mirror, look at my little tits and the way my lips seemed to have taken on a feminine bent and just the way my hips are protruding, even as I see all these things, I still see the same Martin, something in the eyes, so all in all, it’s as if nothing physical has changed.

Which proves my point I hope. All these things that people do to their bodies, the ear gouging, and countless tattoos and hair colouring, I really get it now. It’s not so you can go around with a mirror checking yourself out every second, it’s to bring yourself into sync with your intuition and that’s, dare I say it, in sync with the moon and the stars, with something eternal and cosmic in this very moment and suddenly those stars said THOU MUST BE A WOMAN, so who am I to argue and you may now call me Martina.