Displacement

While Alex--or Alexis, or whoever he is--sits in the waiting room at Mt. San Rafael hospital, world renowned for its innovative surgeons and their breakthroughs in gender reassignment surgery, he can’t help but wonder what he is doing there. As he stares blankly at the glass double doors with a decal emblem of the caduceus situated in the center, he remembers the last time he walked through those doors, splitting the caduceus in half as he made his exit. At that point he hadn’t received the gender reassignment surgery he so longed for, but he did leave as a woman.

As a prerequisite to the surgery, he had to assume the role of a female, his target gender, for a year. For a full year, he endured the agony of high heels, the constriction of an over-stuffed bra, and the gawks from both sexes who collectively decided there was a latent masculinity belying his feminine façade. He suffered through the year so he could undergo the true transformation he was certain would alleviate his uncertainties regarding gender and self. He thought that by inverting himself, creating a void to fill his emptiness, he might restore balance to the body which he perceived to be perfectly alien to him.  

                Sitting in the waiting room of the world-renowned hospital, his year has passed. He is moments away from the big surgery, and he is suddenly struck with an epiphany. Examining himself as if from outside himself, like an apparition separate from his body, he sees someone more alien to him than his previously masculine visage. He looks at the plum-red lipstick, the eye shadow, the cover-up’s futile attempt to mask the wiry black hairs sprouting like spider legs on his face, and he begins to detest the image. At the sudden loss of uncertainty, he resolves to leave through the double doors, stripping the femininity from himself as he again splits the caduceus in half.    

                Alex is overcome with a sense of calm as he drives away from the hospital. He finally sees himself. He laughs as he catches a glimpse of his blue eyes in the rearview mirror of his Toyota Camry. They are heavily laden with green eye shadow, and the more he looks at them, the more they appear as the eyes on the feathers of a peacock. As if coming down with a case of Stendhal syndrome, he fixes his eyes on his eyes. Still driving, however, he slams into the back of a truck stopped at a red light in front of him.

                Upon impact, his airbag deploys, but a malfunction in the deployment of the airbag causes it to eject at nearly twice the normal speed. With eyes wide open, the impact causes both of his eyes to rupture, resulting in immediate blindness. Blood pours out from his vacant eye sockets, mingling with his green eye shadow. He appears as Oedipus after he gouged out his eyes with his mother’s brooch. And like Oedipus, he finally sees the truth.