Black Looks

Stephanie Adaralegbe, a transgendered Nigerian has given me permission to publish her story below. The story speaks for itself. It is special because it expresses a strength and defiance against a society that not only excludes difference but in many cases is determined to destroy it.

“Preparing for the AIDS 2006 Conference in Toronto Canada I certainly still have my passport issue at heart. The onslaught of HIV/AIDS is indeed direful and abjectly poignant. However, what has been more painful and poignant to me in particular has been the black Man’s nefarious propensity of inhumanity to Man. And for this particular reason I have made up my mind to start packing my bags for the Toronto Canada Conference coming up in August this year. I am undoubtedly prepared to leave finally this shores of this heinous land as I have come to the conclusion that a third World Country will always be a third World Country where ever you keep yourself. For about three weeks ago now as you already know, I was engulfed in an infernal attack when some hoodlums and `transgenderphobic’ people had besieged me in wanton banditry and barbarism that had almost cost my life. Good gracious ! you would have been signing my condolence register now or probably preparing for my funeral arrangements if not for the kind heavens. My assailants were not less than fifty in number and they had gruesomely attacked me with planks, iron bars, broken bottles, sticks and stones.

The onslaught culminated in the gathering of tyre tubes and the desperate search for fire apparatus that was to result in the conflagration of my soul or rather to say the infernal termination of my existence. But divinity intervened on my behalf and my face was rescued from the inferno of the nefarious demons. And like a mirage, I could hear the voice of lord saying: “Heh you black Men with black hearts stop there ! What has this Man or Woman done to you that you want to burn her up ? Let me see just one of you that has no sin in him and has a heart as white as snow. If there is just one then I will let the snow white heart Man burn the controversial Woman. Immediately, the uproarious crowd dispersed and took to their heels as gun shots of the mobile police men who were protecting a nearby bank did the divine intervention. Instantaneously, I was rescued and kept in the custody of the police who served as emissaries of the high heavens. However, that very night I was released and allowed to go even though under protective surveillance.

But I lost my bag, my clothes badly torn to shreds and my hair awfully damaged, with countless wounds and bloody injuries sustained all over my body. Incidentally, in my bag that night were two important things that meant a lot to me. A newly bought pack of hormonal medication and an invaluable Epistle which I had written to whom it may concern, and that was the first Epistle. With some kind of clairvoyance I could perceive the voices of some heavenly angels arguing about my case in the heavenly skies. I knew there must have been dissention in heaven as a thunderous cats and dogs rain descended on the earth in Abuja that night. The angels must have been unhappy about the horrid incident, I figured. However, the contents of my bag which I suppose the bandits would have invariably abandoned was the spectacle of some earthly spirits and heavenly angels. In my own mystical extra sensory perception, I could see so many earthly spirits from different nooks and crannies, and so many heavenly angels desperately feasting on the contents of the first Epistle. The first Epistle itself was an embroidery of mysticism, and I could visualize in my own philosophism the desperation of a thousand and one spirits trying to demystify the underlying factors in the first Epistle.

In the first Epistle, I had begun with my obsessive hormonal therapy and I had enunciated how habituated I was on estrogens. Vividly, I had said, I take estrogens as religiously as the Pope takes the communion and my life today is primarily centered on oestrogen therapy. As a result of the therapy, my eyes are getting brighter everyday, my body configuration is changing rapidly as my hip bones are coming out, redeposition of fats at strategic parts of my body, muscles replaced with softer tissues, and even facial tissues are tending softer and more succulent. Also, there has been noticeable changes in my complexion as I seem to be getting lighter in reaction to the hormones. Hair growth is meteorically facilitated, and there has been an appreciable much softer voice. In the first Epistle, I went further to say different folks with different strokes, but could you conjecture that I am actually working on a Soap opera entitled “Different folks in the World ” which I intend to sell to an American broadcasting Company and which I hope to feature in the Soap opera as Transgendered Stephanie. In ‘ Different folks in the World ‘ Transgendered Stephanie tries to take up the personality of Venessa in Bill Cosby and it is so hilarious and so scintillating with so many other astounding personalities in the soap that it becomes a hit in the American movie industry. Some intuition ! Some precognition ! But my mind construction is pregnant with all sorts of delectations. In the first Epistle, I had went further to say. Man is chemical, man is testosterone, but more significantly Man is nothing but a chemical substance. In the words of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first sex changed Transsexual, the difference between a Man and a Woman is a slight difference in chemical composition. As a result, estrogens basically make a Woman while androgens basically make up a Man. With this knowledge, I have been propelled to write a book titled ‘ The beautiful hearts are the beautiful ones ‘, which is indeed a literary explosive, very revealing and simply unputdownable.

In my book, ‘ The beautiful hearts are the beautiful ones ‘ though I was somewhat vague on the issue of sex reassignment Surgery, I had however elucidated that my journey into Transsexualism was an endless voyage. This I surmise, could be a paradox in the events of recent happenings. However, in my book the `The beautiful hearts are the beautiful ones’ I had stated in a particular chapter, while trying to make an endocrinal reference to Man as a hormonal body, and while also trying to keep a foresight of my evolutionism in Transsexualism, I had said : ” And I will create so many enigmas, mystics and puzzles such that I will keep so many professors, intellectuals, religious leaders and great Men from all walks of life busy for centuries wondering if actually I was once truly a Male, and in that way I will preserve my immortality in their hearts.

In that same chapter of the book I had stated ” And for those that knew at birth like old friends, family and relatives, I will confound their thoughts and imaginations and make them subject to my own World of fantastical mysticism. But in all, I will dazzle their reasoning with the most natural effects. In another chapter of the book, I had stated ” And for those that take pleasure in castigation, intimidation and molestation, I will make them foolish in their own imaginations and fatuous in their own cogitations and I will make them aghast and utterly stupid in their own confrontations thereby rubbishing them into nothing but fools, liars, ` errorist ‘ and ` fallacist ‘. Note uses of newly coined words in my book. An erroristor a fallacist is a person who holds on to a belief that has been proved wrong or fallacious. Incidentally, uses of newly coined words and big words is part of Stephanie’s enigmatic nature. Yet, in another chapter of the book I had said, ” And I will create colourful portraits and iridescent images of that of another planet of myself, and I will redefine beauty in the eyes of the beholder “. This particular statement in this chapter is an extrapolation of the title of the book. However, in the last chapter of the book, I had stated philosophically, ” The life itself is the World’s strangest thing why then should people bother themselves trying to fathom other strange things. For instance, trying to fathom how a Woman could be trapped in the body of a Man. Finally, in the last paragraph of the book, I went absolutely paradoxical and I stated, “And I will do all these and glorify God, and I will make people realize that there is truly a God who is the greatest of all enigmas and mystics. The beautiful hearts are the beautiful ones is indeed a bombshell, and even Professor Wole Soyinka, likewise William Shakespeare will give kudos to the literary erudition in it.

In another book which I had written as contained in the first Epistle, The Perfect bride, is another hit story which I intend to act both in real life and in a film once I get to the United States of America. The book or film so to say, is about my inexorable love life and the major participants in that love scenario. The Perfect bride is laced with romance, melodrama and a high level of emotional sentimentalism. Yet, in another book which I had also written, ` The crying Roses ‘ simply depicts the taunting, tempestuous and traumatic life I have been subjected to in black Africa as a Transgender. In this regard, The crying Roses, is basically a lurid picture of myself in abject melancholy and despondency. By and large, this I suppose puts a halt on my brainwaves in self -Literature so far. However, writing and literature in itself is undoubtedly my unfettered and unflinching predilection. In this light, I hope I did not take too much of your time ensnarling you in my profound proclivity. Once again, I wish you and your immediate family a very blissful time, and may all the splendour, and magnificence, and epicurean delight that follows the path of colossal success in all endeavours be yours in Jesus name.
…….Amen.”

Stephanie Adaralegbe – Nigeria