My Story

Body of Evidence

by Marcus de Maria Arana

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

Sometimes it is simply a "dick" thing. Oh, sure, I've often said that my gender is between my ears and not my legs: But, there are those times when I just want my dick to be big enough for me to wrap my fist around it.

"Of course I have a dick!" ... I got a whole drawer-full of dicks.

I am reveling in my new body, now. I'm so relieved to be hormonally male. I'm so relieved to have a flat chest, that I chide myself for missing my penis. C'mon, lighten up! A dick ain't that big of a deal ... well, to some it is a big deal, like Jeff Stryker. Can't I just be satisfied with what I've already got? Most of the time yeah. But, there are those moments ...

It was a Band Camp, up in Humboldt Country (yeah, that Humboldt county, land of marijuana) the last time the "dick" thing came up, so to speak. In 1995, at the previous Band Camp; I have been on hormones for eight months, but I still had a "D-cup" chest. People with whom I had gone to school with still called me Mary, even though I wore a name-tag proclaiming me as Marcus. Okay, I thought to myself, I'll cut them some slack this-year, but not the next one.

Even after my chest surgery in January 1996, I began to plan my next visit to Band Camp the following September. I had a moustache and beard, a flat chest and muscular arms. Surely they will see me as the man I truly am. Yeah, Right. And monkeys will fly out my butt. I had created the perfect fantasy of acceptance and inclusion. Perhaps "delusion" is more correct. I just wanna be loved, is that so wrong?

I looked different enough from the previous year that most people were amazed. But, there was this one guy, who was normally open-minded, but still had a great deal of confusion. He kept screaming at me to bring him beers. The first couple of times he bawled out, "Hey Marcus, bring me a beer." I humoured him. But after the third time, I was quite over it. I filled up an old bottle with beer from the keg and walked it over to him. "Here's your beer, Babe", I announced, as I shook it up and squirted it all over him in a shower of suds and foam. I was not in the mood to be treated like his "girl" or "secretary" like he was telling me to bring him a cup of coffee. He wasn't pestering any of the other men to wait on him.

He became insulted, pouting like a little boy. "Did I say something wrong? Did I say something to offend you?" he inquired. My beer-soaked reality check was completely lost on him. He got drunk and began to ramble on to me about his sister, who eventually came out as a dyke. I lost track of where he was going with his diatribe, when suddenly he looked at me and asked, "What I want to know is do you have a dick?" "Of course I have a dick!" I shot back at him. I lurched off to my own campsite, also feeling the effects of the beer. Yeah, I got a dick. I got a whole drawer-full of dicks. I got dicks in various shapes, sizes and colours. I got dicks that could whistle Dixie" if you insert batteries. I even got dicks that can answer my phone if I ask them to. But, none of these dicks can do what I would really like my own dick to do - they couldn't make a baby.

Not that I think that dicks are only good for pissing in the snow. And I know that dicks are not a golden ticket to fatherhood. There are a lot of men with dicks who have numerous children, but that doesn't make them good fathers. There are also many men who don't have dicks, or sperm-shooting ones at any rate, who are also fathers in the best sense - they participate fully in the rearing of their children regardless of the lack of genetic connection. I know that fathers generally get the easy part of parenting. Hell, at least the "makin' babies" part of it so, a dick doesn't confirm being a "father" either.

Like my sense of masculinity, the dick thing is something that comes from deep inside me. Men are made to feel inadequate regardless of the size of their penises. So, I feel like I need to defend my small, personal phallus " I do have a dick. It is simply smaller than most people expect. My dick brings me sexual pleasure. My dick looks good to me when I look at it in the mirror. I can see what I might have been born with.

A typical F.T.M. comment I've heard is "I want the eight-inch cock I should have been born with!" The statistical truth is that not all of us would have been born with an eight incher. Some would be hung like horses and others would not. Does that mean that anything less than Johnny Holmes makes us less-than-men? I think not.

I was a man before I started transition. I was a man before hormones and surgery. I was male the very moment I developed a sense of gender-identity; for me that was at five years of age. Hormones and surgery only augment my masculinity, they don't create it. Anyone who invests their manhood solely in their genitalia is always at risk of losing it. Yeah, I would love to be horse-hung. Will I let that ruin my enjoyment at being Marcus? Not likely. Will I continue to run into challenges based upon my genitalia? Quite likely.

When I went to Social Security to change my card, I didn't know that I would run up against such solid prejudice. "You need a note from your surgeon, detailing your genital reconstruction", a supervisor bawled out at the top of her lungs. All eyes become riveted on me as the other citizens in the office turned to view the sex-change freak. I wasn't embarrassed that people knew I had gone through gender transition. But, I was appalled that the status of my penis was broadcast to the general public. I thought that my new drivers license, complete with "M" under sex, would have been all the proof I needed to show that I was now Marcus. Apparently not!

At least it's much easier writing Marcus Arana in the snow, then it was signing Mary Weatherly. Damn near threw my back out every time, trying to cross that "T".

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.