Love on the Road 2015 (6 page)

Two days before you were due to be transformed, we took the Eurostar to Ghent. A short taxi ride from the station brought us to a haven called ‘Garden in the City’. A married gay couple who welcomed people in your situation owned the place. Beyond the hustle and bustle of the street was a garden with pots of vibrant flowers. Vines cascaded down the side of the flat at the end of the garden. It would be our home for a few days. Mr Tom and Diego, the two resident cats, wandered aimlessly in and out of the apartment.

That evening we walked on the riverside and made our way to the historical quarter. Buildings with crenulated façades flanked the river. Some had their construction dates displayed on plaques. Multi-storey seventeenth-century edifices teetered like sandcastles. They used to build tall and narrow, apparently because of the prohibitive building taxes on the waterfront. We walked nervously past brick walls with visible bulges. Coming from a region so recently devastated by earthquakes, we were a little cautious. But nothing moved.

The next day, we visited Gravensteen, the eleventh-century castle in Ghent built by Philip of Alsace. Inside was a museum displaying torture devices. The local judiciary had been located in the castle in the past, and the various spikes, shackles and straitjackets had been used not only to control criminals, but also to restrain people with ‘mental illnesses’, including epilepsy. I wondered what would have happened to people with gender dysphoria in the thirteenth century. The dank basement with its beaten-earth floors had a residual stink of terror. Pools of water from the river seeped in through the walls. I thought it prudent to get out of there before the haunting image of a circular, halo-shaped device
encrusted with sharp spikes reminded you too powerfully of what was about to happen to you.

We sat by the river sharing Belgian chocolates.

‘Are you scared about the surgery?’ I ventured.

‘A little.’

‘What worries you most?’

‘Nerve paralysis.’

I pulled a face, mimicking someone who’d lost control of their facial muscles. A line of chocolaty drool dripped onto my knee.

‘Not supportive.’

I snapped my lips back into position.

‘And what do you fear most after that?’

‘That it won’t do what it says on the tin, that I’ll come out of it still not looking feminine.’

‘And you can’t realistically assess the results for nearly a year?’

‘No. At least that long for the swelling to settle and for everything to fall back into place.’

Swarms of beautiful young things passed us. Ghent is a ‘young’ city, with several universities and colleges. We wondered what had happened to all the ugly ones. Perhaps they’d all been to visit Dr Bart, and had had their ugliness ironed out of them. Yellow-helmeted workers were erecting a pontoon across the river for the Ghent Festival, which would take place in a few days.

‘Do you care if you don’t turn out beautiful?’

‘I’m fifty in ten days.’

‘So it doesn’t matter?’

‘That’s the sad thing, you see. It does.’

‘You’ll always be beautiful to me.’ I squeezed your knee.

‘Then you’re not a very objective judge.’

‘No, I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘You see, I think
you’re
gorgeous, but when I think about it objectively … well you’re a bit of a dog.’

‘Fuck off! Here, wanna share the last chocolate?’

I wanted you to enjoy the sensation of taste. To savour the creamy delights we’d spent fifteen minutes selecting at the chocolatier’s. You’d be eating baby food for the next week.

After you left for Dr Bart’s clinic on the Thursday, I let Diego curl up on my lap and have a sleep. I pummelled and kneaded his sleek fur, and tried not to think about what was happening to you. It didn’t work. How much do we fall in love with the image a person’s face projects? I thought about articles I’d read about burns victims who’d had plastic surgery and then didn’t recognise themselves, even when surgeons had performed technical miracles. Would you still feel like you? How much does the way you look matter? How much would you change because of what was happening to you?

I visited the museum of fine art to distract myself. That didn’t work either. I moved our belongings to the next apartment we’d be staying at, one more suited to post-operative needs. I was like an expectant father, pacing, waiting for the moment I could stop worrying and light that cigar. I shopped, and filled the fridge with puréed mush and ready-made smooth soups for when you came out. Eventually it was time to catch the bus to Kortrijksesteenweg, where Dr Bart had his clinic. I arrived at 7.30
PM
as instructed, but wasn’t allowed to see you straight away. I tried to fight off the hollow feeling that had been churning inside me all day. I knew it would only disappear when I was able to see you, intact and alive.

Although you were disorientated and claustrophobic behind your water-filled face-cooling mask, you still managed to grunt a few words. Your face looked visibly shorter, in spite of the inflammation. I didn’t stay long, figuring you needed to rest. Lost in my thoughts on the bus back to the apartment, I managed to miss my stop. A combination of inattention, and my rudimentary French meant I ended up in the next city. My usual sense of adventure had abandoned me. I wanted to be back in our temporary home. I got a train and taxi back.

I returned to Kortrijksesteenweg late on Friday morning to accompany you back to the apartment. You seemed to have recovered massively overnight, though it may have been an illusion, as you were wearing your own clothes instead of the blood-soaked gown I’d seen you in the day before. Your forehead was stretched tight with inflammation, and you didn’t recognise yourself in the mirror. In the apartment, I was kept busy reapplying cold packs to your face every forty minutes, trying to coax you to take teaspoons of fluid, making sure you had your medication on time, helping you to the bathroom, and keeping you from getting bored when you weren’t sleeping. It wasn’t a romantic holiday, but I was glad we were together and pleased I could do something of practical use.

That night, Etienne and Gina, who owned the complex we were staying in, were entertaining in the courtyard outside our apartment. I poked my nose through the curtains and saw people sharing bottles of wine, laughing and enjoying elaborate courses of food that were brought out of the kitchen. I looked at the half finished, liquidised gruel in your bowl. It was streaked with blood.

You woke in the middle of the night, eyes swollen with sleep and surgical intervention, hair curving in random directions. The disorientation that accompanies dreams cloaked your words. There was desperation in your voice as you described your dream to me. You seemed delirious, though your skin was cold to touch. You spoke of a dog the size of your little finger. You followed it into a dream garden and found finger-sized apes lolloping in the grass. You couldn’t form hard consonants like ‘p’ and ‘t’. They came out as sibilant whimpers. I asked you to repeat several phrases. It took a long time, and you needed to write some of it down. But it seemed important to get it out.

That is when I realised the value of having someone who cares about you when you are recovering from surgery. If I hadn’t been there, you could have paid to have a nurse visit you daily. It may have even been possible to find someone to take a night shift, to ensure you weren’t alone if anything untoward happened. You wouldn’t have had someone to laugh with you, however, and share the simple joy of an absurd dream. That can only come from someone who knows you, someone who wants to know about the phantasmagoria that haunts you at night.

There was a cemetery next to the apartment. I walked there mainly for exercise, but I was also curious about what people chose to mark the resting places of their loved ones. It was a huge graveyard, inundated with little, round worm casts that made me think of subterranean creatures having a party in that nutrient-rich environment. By Sunday, you were ready for a small walk. I took your arm, led you to my favourite spots. You cried when you saw little graves marked with plastic windmills and rain-choked teddy
bears. I showed you the graves with what appeared to be just-in-case breathing holes, small chimney-like vents by the sides of the plots. I assumed they were there for people who were afraid of being buried alive, but I didn’t know for sure. There were a lot of them.

You slept a lot for the next week and discovered that ice cream was quite soothing. It was a useful addition to the soups and liquidised mush I’d been feeding you. I was keen to find nutrient-dense foods to help build you up again.

Whilst you slept, I explored the canals and watched water rush in through the sluice gates. I went running through an industrial zone, following a sign that said
CUPRO CHIMIQUE
, assuming it would be a copper smelter. A mountain of metal distracted me: a collection of discarded parts for recycling. Curls, spikes and tangles, some rusted, some not, formed a mound two to three stories high. It seemed like millions of unidentifiable items were competing to poke through the surface. Distant plumes of smoke curled up into a clear sky.

Unused train tracks ran parallel to the road. A little further on, I saw an abandoned train with little trees growing on the carriages. I got back to the apartment to find you’d just woken from another vivid dream.

With the help of a piece of paper and sign language, you explained how you’d been coaching three-year-old Russian basketball players in your sleep. The children in your dream referred to you as The Duchess. It seemed really important to you that you get all the details correct, despite your difficulty forming words with your torn, swollen mouth. Even with the inflammation, you had the wide-eyed look of a child who had woken from a vivid dream. You gripped my
hand as you described leading the children down nauseatingly steep steps with a sheer drop on one side. In the dream, you were alternating man-woman-man-woman-man-woman-man. The scene shifted to your workplace. People were treating you as female, referring to you as ‘she’, but using your old, male name. I guessed there would be a lot of dreams like that over the next months.

You’d made arrangements with the HR department to return to work as your female persona. Despite our anxieties about how a large organisation would deal with your situation, their conduct had been exemplary. An appropriate email had been composed and sent to all the relevant people. Name badges and uniforms had been prepared, so you’d be able to return to work after the recovery break as ‘she’.

On Tuesday, you had your post-op check with Dr Bart. In the waiting room, we met someone who was about three days ahead of you in the procedure. She’d come from Austria and spoke clear English, so she was able to give us an idea of how things would progress over the following few days. The fact that she was able to speak clearly was more exciting than the fact that she could speak English. That night, we shared a beer to celebrate the fact that your recovery was progressing as it should. I sipped a dark Kasteel Donker, my first beer in a week. I’d been keeping you company in abstaining from alcohol. We were both a little dizzy after one small glass of the malty brew. I squinted at the small print on the label and discovered it contained 11 percent alcohol. We didn’t open a second bottle.

It was your birthday on Friday. I gave you a card and a massage. There was no present, as I planned to get you something when you were feeling a bit better. We left Ghent
that day. We planned to go back to the UK so you could recover with family. We were due to take the Eurostar from Brussels. It was a skin-fryingly hot day.

We took the opportunity to visit the Atomium in Heysel. The iconic building opened in 1958 for Expo 58, that year’s World’s Fair. It consists of nine aluminium-coated spheres joined by struts, in a formation that is supposed to represent an atom of iron. There were exhibits of ‘modern’ 1950s paraphernalia, including souvenirs from the time. The Atomium was originally created to promote the use of atomic energy, in an era when we were even less aware of its long-term problems and uncertainties than we are now. (Half of Belgium’s power comes from nuclear power stations.) We took the stairs up to the restaurant, where we had a drink and looked out over the city. A
son et lumiere
show in one of the spheres delighted us, lights projected onto a multi-faceted sculpture in the centre of a dark room. Another sphere housed sleeping pods for children on overnight school trips.

Saturday didn’t bring you the rest and recovery you needed. My sister hosted a family reunion. It was the first time you’d got together with your brother and sister for more than eleven years. All families have skeletons in proverbial cupboards, and ours was taken out and given a good kicking that day. It was time for forgive and forget – and, by the way, your brother is now your sister, be nice and say hello. It is always the people who are closest that are affected the most by major change, so we were prepared for some raw emotions about your transition.

My sister glued together all the factions with the best adhesive of all: food. Her dining table groaned under the
weight of twenty curries. I’d made a cake. Your siblings were reserved to start with. My brother-in-law made tentative moves between watching football with the guys, and sitting between both his sisters in the garden. A sweltering sun beat down onto reddened shoulders. Your sister took a small cloth bag out of her purse and gave it to you. Inside was a tiny wristwatch. It had been your mother’s. Two toddlers, one from your family the other from mine, skirted around each other, avoiding one another with careful precision. The adults, however, had reconnected. We were pleased but exhausted at the end of the day.

That was nearly a year ago. Not long after the reunion, we returned to New Zealand. Your wounds slowly healed, people became accustomed to using your new name. We launder your work uniforms, and there are skirts and blouses rather than trousers and shirts. I carry a drawing in my handbag of a specific type of vibrator recommended by the psychologist. I haven’t ventured into a sex shop to purchase one. I can’t see that it would offer any benefits over the one we already own. We are not perfect, we fight and bicker like any other couple. We laugh a lot too.