Black Rose Girls

Ten Years Ago...

Early Sunday, evening in San Francisco's Tenderloin. Attention focuses on the door of the bar, and in comes a tall, rangy black man carrying a white plastic garbage bag. He makes the rounds of the bar, hesitating when he sees us and moving on quickly. He is offering 'lingerie for sale, only slightly used'. There are no takers amongst the women in the bar, and he eventually makes his way back out onto the stinking street, weaving slightly.

This little dance bar advertises itself as having 'the friendliest girls in town'. The interior is dimly lit with red plastic lamps, but it is only a short time before the observer realizes that, given where he is, it is strange to see so many women out on the town, dressed to kill. Very tall women, some of them, rather broad of shoulder...and aren't their voices a little too deep?

In the heart of wino country likes San Francisco's favorite transvestite/transsexual hangout, The Black Rose. There are men here in every stage of becoming women. Some of them will remain in the middle forever, existing in a strange twilight world of androgyny where they aren't men any longer but lack the funds, willpower or desire to become women in every sense of the word. But whatever their physical attributes, they all consider themselves to be women, and after talking to them and hearing their stories, that's how I think of them, too. Most of the 'friendliest girls in town' take the maxim seriously -- The Black Rose is the place to go if you're looking for a transvestite or transsexual hooker. What else is a girl to do when she's not quite a girl, and no longer a man? It becomes difficult to hold down a straight job, though many are waitresses in the Castro or Polk area, pulling in a few tricks on the side. There was a mixed reaction to Nancy and me as we entered the bar Sunday evening. The bartender, Susan, was definitely hostile and didn't want us in there, but seemed afraid to throw us out in case we mentioned her in a derogatory fashion. A few of the girls were openly hostile as well, but most quite friendly and willing to talk. The first we met was Mona, a transsexual who looked to be in her late 30's. We didn't interview her until the following Wednesday, but that evening she introduced us to Jamie.

Jamie is a transsexual from New Orleans. Approximately 30, Jamie has improbable, enormous breasts that sit high on her chest, as if they have been stuck in place with Crazy Glue. She made her way to San Francisco nine years ago, but it was long before, in the fifth grade, that she began to realize there was difference between her and her peers. "They called me names, but it wasn't until I was in the seventh grade that I realized I really was different. My parents thought I had a learning disability because I got bad grades. I was getting so much harassment in school, I couldn't learn anything. Eventually, that was why I dropped out. I felt like a girl, but at the time I thought I was the only person who had ever felt this way.

"When I was fifteen I started going to a bar where the men dressed in drag. I began dressing like a girl and wearing makeup, and everything hit the fan. My parents gave me an ultimatum -- either stop dressing like that, or move out of their house. So, I did...move, I mean. In the course of running around dressed like a girl, I had a lot of offers from men. Eventually I took one of them up on it, and discovered my new occupation. "When I was seventeen, I started dancing in a nightclub on Bourbon Street. I was underage, but the people who owned the club were very good to me, and they gave me a helping hand when nobody else would. I had started taking female hormones when I was sixteen, and when I was seventeen I started having plastic surgery done on my face.

"Most trans-sexuals want to blend into society. As a boy, I was too pretty, and people would call me a fag. For me, this was the only way I could fit in comfortably. For a trans-sexual, the only way to be content with yourself is to get more done, to progress. My nose job cost $1500, my boobs were $3,000. I've been castrated, and that was $2,000." Jamie only has sex anally or orally. She doesn't worry about AIDS, and says that in the fifteen years since began work as a streetwalker she has never had a venereal disease.

"I put sex into perspective. Being a streetwalker is my job, and I have a personal life, too. I've been in a steady relationship for six years. My boyfriend is very understanding. If I could find another job where it didn't matter what I am, where I didn't have to get to know anyone, or have any contact with the public...people are so narrow-minded. Even more so in San Francisco, where trans-sexuality blends into homosexuality. Whether you're a drag queen or a cross-dresser or whatever...here you're just a fag. "Nobody could ever understand how I feel, including other trans-sexuals, because most of them don't feel like I do. I've never been happy with my life, but after my final surgery I feel as if I have a possible chance to be happy. The more I do, the more comfortable I am with myself. My best friend is me, and nobody loves that person in the mirror more than I do, and no one ever will."

On one occasion, Jamie nearly died due to her sexual deception. This didn't make Jamie leave the streets, but she is very careful now that each of her clients knows she isn't really a woman. "I make certain they know. When I was nineteen, I was shot by a man who didn't know. I assumed he did know, and he didn't. We got into a verbal argument, then a physical confrontation. He pulled a pistol and shot me. Many of the girls don't tell their clients because they might kill them; they would never understand. They just don't allow them to do certain things. "To me, my male genitals are nothing but a birth defect. There are multitudes of physical handicaps, and I have one. I've never had a desire to climax; I don't like to be touched there, I don't like to touch myself and I don't like anyone to look at me there. I'm not just some pervert running around in a dress; I'm serious about what I'm doing. I want to be a complete, whole woman.

"Most homosexuals disgust me. And the people who go to streetwalkers, the clients...they're the lowest form of pervert on earth. I knew my boyfriend for a year-and-a-half before we became lovers. We were friends first; he was a pot connection. I had a lover then who was predominantly homosexual, and the thought of him with other men disgusted me. When I couldn't take it anymore, Greg told me that if I needed a place to live, I could go to him. We very seldom have sex, because he knows I'm not comfortable with sex in my present state. If you were a woman with a birth defect between your legs, would you want your boyfriend to see it? Sex is an animalistic act. This is one of the most disgusting lives that anyone could choose to live."

***

Wednesday night, happy hour in the bar. The place is filled with clients for the 'girls' -- most them would pass unnoticed on a street in the financial district during business hours. Star and Amy arrive, causing a sensation simply by walking through the middle of the bar. Star is the most impressive at six feet tall, with broad shoulders and muscular arms and legs, a melting look in her chocolate-brown eyes. She would have been a stunning man...

Star and Amy consider themselves to be Jamie's 'children' -- they refer to her as their 'mama'. Says Star -- "She helped us a lot when we first arrived, first got into this thing. She was managing an apartment house and helped us out financially. We were the youngsters, and she became our mama." Unlike Jamie, however, Star and Amy don't consider themselves to be women, born into the wrong bodies through some fluke of nature. At 22, Amy became a drag queen only two years ago; before that she was a homosexual hooker on Polk Street. Until the age of 20, no thought of ever dressing like a woman or becoming one had ever entered her head. Star discovered her preference for men in the third grade, and considers her homosexual tendencies to have been engendered by the fact that she never knew her father and was raised by her mother until the age of nine, and then by her aunt.

"I did a lot of sports, and played in the school band. I wasn't a feminine child, and a lot of girls hung around me. I never had a problem as a child, and I always had what I wanted. I was a very good student in school. But as far as having a father, I never knew who he was. "Here I am, in this big city. I take female hormones for my breasts, but I've never had any operations. And I don't think I would...being a homosexual is what I am, and a female impersonator. But I still desire the feeling of a man's orgasm."

"You'll gag at my childhood," Amy put in at that point. "Until the age of 18 I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. Then I moved out of my mother's house and into my father's, so I could be gay. I had a girlfriend named Tracey, who was a trans-sexual. She moved me here with her, and I started turning tricks. "I'm a married woman. I've been married for a year-and-a-half. We have great sex together. I don't have sex with my tricks -- when I say that, I mean there's never no sex involved! Well, sometimes I might have to give 'em a blow job, but only if I have to. Most of the time I get the money and tell 'em to get outta my house. Give me my hundred and get out before you get hurt. If it's robbery, they never complain -- most of 'em are into it. They have wives and kids, a station wagon and a dog, that routine.

"I'm married to a man...I'm a woman! My husband is straight. I've never had an operation, but I have hormone titties. I want implants." It was while we were interviewing Star and Amy that Mona arrived, to listen to the conversation. She looked more like a woman than she had on Sunday, probably because she was wearing less makeup, jeans and a tank-top, her reddish-brown hair fluffed out around her head. Mona could easily pass as a real woman, and has filled a number of 'straight' jobs as one. She is a great deal more low-key than either Star or Amy, or even Jamie. Born in Oakland, Mona has spent her entire life in the bay area. "I ran away to San Francisco when I was 13 and returned home when I was 14. From then on, I was back and forth during my teenage years. The reason I left to begin with was because my father wouldn't let me live the way I wanted to. I knew at eleven. My brother told me he knew I was different when I was seven. I was born sixteen years after what my mother thought was her last child. Therefore, I was born with a large amount of female hormones -- that's what a doctor told me.

"In grammar school I didn't have much trouble, a little teasing. By junior high, I went to school with my nephews, so if the kids gave me trouble, they were always there. Out of about four of us there, I was the only one who was flamboyant. I didn't care what anyone thought -- I just went ahead and did what I wanted to. I got in trouble for wearing makeup. I only went to school through the tenth grade. I couldn't go to any high school in Oakland because of my lifestyle, so I had to go to Union City; a boy from a school I went to in Oakland was there, and he pointed me out. I started to have trouble, and as soon as I hit sixteen I quit. I'm planning to go back to school to get my G.E.D. and then do computer studies.

"I've always worked as a woman -- a masseuse, a maid, a keysmith, housekeeper, barmaid, cocktail waitress in a straight bar. None of them knew except two, and they didn't mind. For one of the ones who did know, I modelled for her advertisements in The Berkeley Barb for three years, and no one guessed I wasn't a woman. "It's very difficult for most trans-sexuals to get straight jobs, that's why so many of them are hookers. "I have quite a mixture of friends -- straight, gay, bisexual. I have all my life -- I've always gotten along with everyone. I never push myself on anyone. I get along with straight men easily, because i'm not pawing them or throwing myself at them. I just want them to treat me the way I treat them, with respect. "I almost had the operation. That's what I used to live for, and I met a man who was willing to pay for it. I had been to a psychiatrist who told me I was a perfect candidate. But I wanted a more than 50/50 chance of having sexual feeling. The doctor couldn't guarantee it, but now they say, although it takes six months or so I would get the feelings back. I don't know, though...I'm different. I call myself 'the third sex', and men like me for that. So many different kinds of men. Straight men, although I guess you can't really call them straight...married...judges, lawyers, doctors. I've met a lot in the bar.

"They have some kind of fantasy. They fantasize of a beautiful woman with breasts who has a penis -- they want the best of both. A lot of them won't go into the bar, but if they see you on the street they'll wave you over. They don't want to be seen, and they're very secretive about it. I have a lawyer friend I've been dating about four years now, and he'll only come so close to the bar to see if I'm around; he won't go in. He works up by California Street, and if I see him up there, he'll just walk past me. When his wife goes on vacation, he invites me over and cooks dinner for me. "I was married for four years, but it didn't work out. I had a drug problem, and so did he. Now we're both drug-free, and we're not together. He was a straight man, until he met me. He was married and had a child; they were killed in a car accident. Then I met him, and we were together four years. He met an older gentleman; a sugar-daddy, I guess you'd say, and that's when we started having problems. That totally threw me. I'd taken care of him for a long time, and when you've done that for someone, you don't want someone else coming in and taking over."

Both Mona and Jamie have a strong maternal side, that doesn't seem to be fabricated or falsely developed. Between the four people I interviewed and the others we observed in the bar, the group seems to be split between these older, less flamboyant, more believable trans-sexuals and the younger, wild, drag queens. The ones who are the most believable as women attempt to fit into society as best they can, and are striving for acceptance. The others are, by their own admission, homosexual men who love the drama and playacting of pretending to be women, but don't expect anyone to take them seriously. Nearly all the trans-sexuals and drag queens who frequent the bar work as hookers, according to the day bartender, Rennie (who had a completely different attitude to our being there from Susan, as did the owner's son, who was in the bar on Wednesday). Their attitude towards sex varies widely, but they all seem to agree on one thing -- their contempt for their 'dates' or 'clients'. The women I talked to believe the clients are the ones who are perverted, and from my observations I tend to agree. These people are sadly misplaced in life and society, and attempting to live as best they can with what they believe to be faulty equipment. But the supposedly 'normal' men who go to them for some strange thrills and probably view them as freaks...these are the exploiters, as the 'normal' have always exploited the weaker and the vulnerable.

To be laughed at, to be shunned...to have to drop out of school because your peers won't let you attend without harassment. To search all your life for a place in society that doesn't exist. A desperate existence, indeed. One that makes us realize we haven't reached the level of civilization we would ike to believe; that man is still too primitive and superstitious to accept what is different, what cannot be easily understood.

1999. All the 'girls' we interviewed are dead. AIDS, drug overdoses, a stabbing, a suicide...The Black Rose is gone as well. R.I.P., ladies.