Greatest Lie

The Greatest Lie, Chapter 17 You Can't Go Home Again By Alexandra Rios Virtual_xx@hotmail.com

This chapter of my novel is the conclusion of my novel, which I have posted here serially over the past six years. It uses strong language and depicts explicit sex, including forcible rape. This is a work of imagination and research. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

If you are underage or offended by this content, please do not read on. If you read and enjoyed, hated, or otherwise reacted my story, please post a comment or email me at the address above. I have another work in progress, Secondary Education, under the pen name Tyla Flowers, and your comments here will make me better able to tell Tyla's story.

Synopsis: Alexandra returns to Los Angeles to live and love in stealth, and incognito. But she must reveal her transsexual identity to pursue legal custody of her daughter. She sacrifices her privacy and her freedom, and confronts the most horrific demons of her past, to forge future as Alyssa's mother.

They say that prostitution is the oldest profession. I disagree. Some guy must have been a professional hunter to have gotten together the spare change to pay for that first commercial fuck. It's like that chicken and egg conundrum. Eggs definitely came first. Just as mutation precedes evolution, there had to be money before there could be whores. But like the mutated ape's sperm cell that fathered the first humans, whores were essential to the birth of the market, as the counter-parties on the first commercial trades. The tricks were the fathers, and we whores were the mothers of commerce.

I'm not exactly proud of my whoring, but I do count it a necessary part of my education. I was born and brought up as a boy, so my Mom and my peers didn't train me in the art of smiling, seduction or sex. As the girl within me emerged from her chrysalis, she took an accelerated course of independent study that covered everything from streetwalking and backseat blowjobs to Internet advertising and doing business from luxury hotel rooms. It took hormones and surgery to conform my body to my gender, but it took whoring to teach me the power of my new sexuality.

A couple of years of hooking should be considered a rite of passage for T-Girls, like that mission year that those Mormon boys go on, or the Peace Corps. It's a growing experience. The T-Girl prostitute learns self-confidence and how to spot trouble, and leaves the world a happier, better and more tolerant place.

I learned to make snap distinctions on the slimmest evidence to discern between the violent, self-loathing pervert, the fun-loving hobbyist, the timid experimenter whose wife isn't gratifying him, the tormented closet case who's looking for--or perhaps hiding from--a secret part of himself, and using me as his mirror, and LE, law enforcement, looking to ruin my life. I have sucked or gotten fucked by God-knows-how-many different shapes, colors and sizes of cocks, and gotten paid in a half-dozen currencies.

But timing is everything. I was lucky to come out at the right time. A few years earlier, and neither the surgical techniques nor the social milieu would have achieved the requisite level of sophistication. Now, trannies are a booming market, a stunning demonstration of the laws of elasticity of supply and demand.

As new and prettier young T-girls come out, they inspire a new cohort of trannie-chasers, and more trannie-chasers create more demand for even younger and prettier T-Girls to get hormones and implants and pose for porn and post Websites to peddle their sexuality and meet, and increase that demand. The dynamic virtual pharmacy and brothel created on the Internet enables the young T-Girl to get advice and hormones. Trannie porn opens the minds of erstwhile straights to covertly pursue T-girls on a host of sites like eros.com, theeroticreview.com, europets.com and even craigslist, and so the cycle builds on itself. TS's are becoming big business, the fastest growing segments of porn and prostitution.

In my time, I made the most of the growing popularity of the transsexuals. Italians have a special affinity for trannie whores, and the Romans have elected one of us, Vladimir Luxuria, as their representative in Parliament. My Italian cell phone rang incessantly, and my lips, boobs and pussy were constantly sore from sexual over-exertion.

My first Italian client, Silvio, hired me a dozen times during my sojourn in Milan. He wanted to monopolize my time, to keep the others away. In time, it was him that I wanted to keep away. To preempt him, and distract me, I booked more dates than I could handle.

When he begged me to quit, and save myself for him, I rejected Silvio's offer to become his mistress, and a dozen others that followed. It's not that I had no feelings of loss when I left him. I felt so torn that I cried real tears of regret as I rejected Silvio. I sobbed even more when he renounced and rebuked me in turn. But my heart was too restless, and my ambition to great, to be satisfied as one man's mistress.

I thought that the relationship of sugar daddy and paid mistress is even more soul-destroying than operating in the open market of youth, beauty and sexuality, where the whore and her clients trade freely in cash and flesh. And besides, I had plans that didn't fit with the life of a bourgeois Italian's sugar baby.

I reveled in being the most coveted flower in this garden of earthly delights. Just as I aspired to perfect myself, and so spent about half of my whore's fortune to achieve greater femininity and more a more sensuous beauty, I also sought after, and combed Europe to get fucked by the best looking, sexiest, or richest guys.

I was at the forefront, and rose to the very apex of the transsexual ziggurat. I was one of the most sought after and highly compensated post-ops on Europets.com. Even the expatriate Brazilian super-travestis like Juliana Nogueria and Laisa Lins couldn't compete with me for the hearts and cocks of the trannie chasers of Italy.

But from the top, there is no way but down. New T-girls flooded in from Thailand, Brazil, and Eastern Europe, and as a post-op I was, in a sense, at a competitive disadvantage to these versatile young beauties. I decided to retire at my apex, so I quit T-Girl escorting, and disappeared from the TG landscape. How the message boards mourned my demise! Rumors abounded of my death by disease or at the hands a vengeful ex lover or competitor. I ignored the chatter, and maintained strict radio silence.

During my sabbatical, I invested in new silicone boobs, a nose job and secondary labial surgery. I perfected my Italian so that my accent was indistinguishable from a native Roman. In Brussels, Dr. Seghers re-sculpted my labia into a pair of clam-shell perfect curves, indistinguishable from the vulva of a GG, a genetic girl, to anyone but a gynecologist. Rhinoplasty refashioned my aquiline nose, my sole inheritance from my detested father, Dr. Eduardo Rios, into a slender Nordic ski slope. My narrower nose made my eyes appear more wide-set and my cheekbones higher. My new face possesses delicate, doll-like mien that contrasts with my audacity in the bedroom.

For the first time since high school I started working out, a half hour of Pilates and the Elliptical machine, at least three times a week. My stomach flattened, my butt rose, and my arms became more willowy. With my Aryan face, bigger boobs, platinum hair and blue eyes, I came to resemble more the girl whom my father married than the boy that he begat.

To prove my perfection, I toured my laser-denuded pussy across Europe as a GG whore and regained my investment fourfold. In Bolonga, I seduced a kindly but corrupt Italian magistrate who arranged for the issuance of my Italian Identity card, the Carta D'Identite Electronica, in my new name, Alessandra Fiumi. The notorious transsexual Alexandra Rios, like Alex before her, had disappeared from the face of the earth. I had been reborn a woman, and a citizen of Europe.

When first encountered Ronaldo's photo image on a newsstand in Milan, I had all but forgotten about him. I stared at his image smirking smugly from a glossy magazine cover for ten minutes until I connected him with my past. Our paths crossed when his football team toured Thailand. My Thai-Am T-friend Tran and I were about to get our new plastic pussies installed in Phuket when she arranged a bed-soccer match that pitted the two of us against Ronaldo and the Italian national team.

When the sun rose the next morning, it was agreed by unanimous consent that Tran and I had won the Phuket Cup. It was just another crazy night, one of many for these soccer stars, and for me and Tran. In the intervening years Ronaldo had become a big star in Italian football. He and his soap opera actress wife Rafaela were all over the celebrity rags. Paparazzi and breathless gossip columnists recorded their every shopping trip, party, argument, separation, and reunification. I envied his fame and lifestyle, but their tumultuous romance made it obvious that Ronaldo remained a sexual adventurer. I surmised that was still just as available, and vulnerable to my charms, as he had been in Phuket. I scheduled one of my own escorting tours of London to coincide with his team's tour of England.

I picked him up at the bar at the Restaurant Gordon Ramsey and let him take me to his room. We made love for an hour. He didn't even recognize me until we were languishing in bed after a bout of athletic sex, when we started speaking in English. Then, he recognized my voice. He was so turned on by the concept of having fucked me before and after my sex change that he got hard and fucked me again. I even let him finish in my booty to make the comparison more exact.

When we both returned to Italy, he became my most loyal regular. He hired me for a short session after a bitter loss and overnight after a crucial win. His team won their league championship, and he took me to the post-game party. I met a lot of hot soccer players, and made a bunch of lucrative connections. Later on, as my homage to his victory, I comp-ed him a weekend, a treat which, at my rates, was worth five thousand Euros.

He took me to the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como. The crystalline sapphire sky, snow-capped Alps, aqua waters of the lago and the earthy but celestial Barolo made me forget my professionalism. I felt like I was falling in love. I knew, of course, that in reality, I was only a weekend away from his wife and kid. When the dreaded Rafaela called him at the hotel, he shushed me and ordered me to sit alone in the bedroom. I listened in miserable solitude and silence as he baby-talked to his darling son and lied expansively to Rafaela about how much he missed her.

I swaddled miserably in the damp sheets and clutched the pillows, hiding my sorrow and pain as I remembered how my father had goo-goo talked to me over crackling long distance connections from adulterous bedrooms around the globe. I cringed as I imagined my own abandoned, and half-forgotten child, Alyssa, crying in a dirty diaper, drinking sugary juice alone on tortilla chip-littered carpet, her grandparents too stoned or drunk to care, or oblivious to her. Wasn't I lingering too long in profitable and pleasurable exile, becoming, in the process, an even worse parent than my own had been to me?

Memories of frigid streetwalking in Minneapolis, and of the months in poverty or on the run in the dangerous squalor of Thailand and Burma, made me cautious. I had become accustomed to comfort, money and privilege. I was habituated to the thin mountain air, the deep tissue massages, the mountain herbal facials and body wraps, and the state of the art elliptical machines, the thick towels and soft, warm robes at the fitness center. Our weekend turned into a fortnight, and culminated in a Cristal-soaked celebration the night that AC Milan sold Ronaldo's contract to the Los Angeles Galaxy.

The blowjobs on the stern of the Lake Cuomo tour boat, and the fucks on the veranda of our lake front room must have addicted him to me as much as I was addicted to his life style. The next morning, Ronaldo called his agent and declared that he would not report to the Galaxy unless the team also hired his personal assistant, Alessandra. With millions of Euros in agent fees hanging on my fate, it was no surprise that I got a Bordeaux-red biometric Passaporto and H-2B visa. My international criminal career was safely behind me. As the Italian Alessandra, I could safely return home and plot my strategy regain my reputation, and my child.

But I was not his mistress. I was an employee, and he was my boss. He could, of course, make love to me whenever he wanted. But since he had Rafaela, I too could have whomever I chose, as along as it didn't exclude him. And indeed, some of my athletic trysts included not only Ronaldo, but his teammates. But, he insisted, I must take a hiatus from commercial sex while I worked for him. Although the meager salary that the Galaxy offered was hardly compensatory, I agreed.

I needed a career change. I had been working so hard that I had gotten to the point of regarding men as ATM machines with penises attached. With Ronaldo, the pay and the perks came with regularity. And I had an agenda to accomplish in America that was incompatible with whoring. I wanted to become a mother.

The older Thomas Wolfe wrote a brilliantly titled but overrated novel called You Can't Go Home Again. Wolfe was wrong. You can always come back to LA, where the orange grove becomes a parking lot becomes a strip mall becomes a luxury condo hotel in a movie montage of demolition and construction. LA becomes a different town with every passing season, if there actually were seasons in LA. I could come home because, like LA, I had been reborn.

Alessandra Fiumi's doppelgänger, Alexandra Rios, was on a watch list for terrorists because of her suspected role in the assassination of a Thai military intelligence officer on the Burmese border. The Department of Homeland Security had searched her home, intercepted her email and phone calls, confiscated her computer and interrogated and spied on her friends and family. Alexandra is a girl without a country. But as Alessandra, she can come home. She will be a visiting alien, and, but for her employer, the Los Angeles Galaxy Soccer team, all alone in a foreign land. But Alessandra is a girl who knows well how to find a sponsor.

I jolted awake from my Ambien-induced reverie and took off my Chanel shades. I grappled the depths of my Chanel bag and found my mirror. I glossed my lips and moisturized my cheeks. My high-altitude pallor softened. I admired Alessandra's resculpted nose, narrower and straighter than Alexandra's Hispanic hook. I fluffed back my platinum, shoulder-length hair and refreshed my eyeliner. My eyes shimmered like a tropical sea through my colored contacts. Alexandra's 375 cc saline implants had become Alessandra's Maxtor 400 cc high-profile round-textured silicone boobs, gravity-defying, cantilevered teardrops, but soft as gummy bears.

I love my new boobs. The larger, more contoured implants necessitated nipple realignment procedure. The aftermath had hurt like hell, but when healed, my areoles were more even intensely sensitive. They are large and malleable, so they can encircle even the biggest cocks in a perfect boobfuck tunnel. And I love cock play on my breasts. The flicking of a cockhead over my well lubricated nipples is enough to bring me to my own orgasm, especially when a guy shoots cum over my breasts. At the moment, my boobs hadn't been fondled for hours, and they were itchy from inattention.

"We're on weather hold for Los Angeles. Our on time arrival has been revised to 8:20 p.m. Sorry, folks; there are fires all around the LA basin and no one is getting in right now."

I feel that warm glow of an attentive male gaze. I looked over at my neighbor.

"Ah, she awakens at last. Do you want your cookie? I saved it for you."

"I am still sleeping off the last cookie I ate." I yawned in what I hoped was a provocative way.

"A hash brownie?"

"No, only an Ambien. Better living through chemistry, I always say."

He laughs and nods. "Mine wore off over Pennsylvania, but four hours is not long enough for a second dose." He pulls from his seatback a chocolate chip cookie ensconced in a Styrofoam cup.

"Thanks, I am starving." I took a bite, and put the rest aside. He has a chiseled jaw, cleft chin, and a sharp nose. His jaunty manner, crisp white shirt, jeweled cufflinks and Zegna tie proclaimed wealth and power. His face was so perfect that I imagined he too may have had a cosmetic nip or tuck.

The flight attendants offered champagne as compensation for our delay, and we took a couple of glasses.

"To homecomings." He clinks my plastic cup. I detect a little extra emphasis on "comings" but I ignore it.

"I love my home, but this is travel for me."

"Really? You sound American."

Alexandra had re-emerged in conversation with her new American friend. It's easier to inhabit a false identity in a foreign land. But Alexandra faced danger, especially as she approached U.S. Customs. I re-oriented frantically to Alessandra, and started lying.

"I went to part of high school and started college in the States. My Dad is American, but my parents are divorced, and I live with my mom in Italy. I'm not even a citizen. I'm here on a work visa." His eyes told me that my deceptions are plausible. He studied me closely, though.

"You look so familiar. Is it possible that I recognize you from the internet?"

I fight off a blush. "Maybe you do. The internet is big. What's your favorite site?"

"If I'm not mistaken, I've seen you on a quite a few, and even read some of your reviews. You have quite a following."

"I am lucky to have many friends."

"And I was lucky to have had your company on this long plane flight. I would love to see more of you."

"I am happy to have such a perceptive and loyal fan. But I am a little embarrassed of my notoriety, to be spotted on a plane."

"Don't worry. Remember, I had about twelve hours to think about it. I didn't make the connection until we were over Denver. Will you give me your number?"

I looked down at the circle of white skin left by his wedding ring. "Are you sure your wife won't mind?"

"She and the kids are at the villa in Tuscany for two more weeks. I had to fly back for some meetings this week. So I own my evenings for now. Could I own one of yours?"

Ronaldo hadn't yet joined the team, and he and Rafaela were vacationing in Turkey. I bit my lip demurely.

"I'm really busy. I've got to find cars, a condo, and furniture for my boss and for me. I have a regular job, and am not here to escort. My boss won't allow it, and your American laws are too strict for me to risk my visa."

"I'm sorry. That was very improper on my part. I was just coining a phrase."

"Yes, but the phrases we choose matter, don't they? Your First Amendment doesn't protect solicitation, does it?"

"You're right, of course, and I apologize. But if you give me another, chance, I can help you. I know everybody who's anybody in the LA real estate business. And anything else I give you, you can think of it as a welcome home gift, not payment."

He was good looking, and incredibly charming and persuasive. I hesitated, and he took it as affirmation.

"As a guideline, let's use your European rates with Euros converted to dollars at the exchange rate quoted in tomorrow's 'Wall Street Journal."

"OK, but with the understanding that everything is on a voluntary and philanthropic basis."

"Spoken like a lawyer."

"I want to be a lawyer some day."

He smiled and whispered in my ear. "Whores and lawyers have much in common. Our hourly rates, our loyalties, and our moral codes have more similarities than either of us would probably like to admit."

"I studied and worked with some lawyers where I went to school, in Minneapolis. They weren't greedy or sleazy." Professor Edelman and Brad Whitman had cared for me as a human, and had defended transsexuals' rights based on their principles.

"You are talking about some professors in Podunk. This is LA, show time, baby. If a case doesn't reward the lawyer in money, power or fame, then only the most incompetent or desperate lawyer will take it."

I was going to need lawyers to help me get custody of Alyssa, and to fight back against the slanders that the Thai police were smearing me with. "Not all lawyers are the same."

"Nor are all whores. Some bring something special to the bedroom. That's what all the reviews say about you."

"I don't know. I never read them."

"And some day, my dear, you will be as great in the courtroom as you are in the bedroom."

"Thank you." I put my hand on his forearm. "I may need a lawyer. Could you help me?"

"I can't afford myself. I doubt you can even if you plastered yourself all over Eros, which I don't advise. Immigration Detention facilities are pretty ugly places."

"I've retired from that life. What do you suppose I should do?"

"Maybe I can get my firm's my firm's pro bono department to take you on. We'll get a bright young associate to salve his social guilt in his copious spare time after he's billed his 2400 hours per year. I'll supervise."

"You've proved my point. Not all lawyers are driven purely by ambition and greed."

"Point taken. And it will be a good story for me to tell St. Peter, in case there really is a God and Heaven."

I leaned across the seat to gently kiss him, just barely grazing his cheek, but making sure my boob brushed against his forearm. He turned, and tried to return my kiss, but I shushed him.

His countenance had transformed from that of a predatory wolf to a timid Pekinese. From that moment, I possessed his desire. When our eyes met, I knew that he was mine. And, I knew, that after I had him for a night, I would possess him for as long as I needed him.

The plane jolted through turbulence as it approached LAX. As the plane swooped its final turn toward the runway, I clasped my new friend's hand and peered through the plane's window. LA's lights sparkled like a carpet of fallen stars. I, too, would be on the ground soon. I felt gravity spiraling me downward, like the last sparkle of a star sucked back into a black hole. It felt like a homecoming.

He pointed his finger at the limo driver with the sign reading "Jason Crockett."

"Now you know my name. Call me JC, though."

We followed the limo driver to a white stretch Hummer. The driver silently loaded our luggage, closed the door behind us and, without a word, rolled up the privacy screen. As he eased the car onto Sepulveda, a bottle of champagne lolled in an ice bucket. JC poured and toasted.

"To Serendipity."

I clinked his glass with mine. "Or is it karma?"

"That's a more satisfying explanation." He leaned toward me, stroked his hands through my hair and pulled me toward him. Our torsos touched. His firm chest grazed my breasts. I threw my head back, and he lunged toward me, kissing my neck and cheeks, seeking out my lips. I turned toward him, parted my lips and let them yield and tremble beneath the press of ravenous mouth.

His breath billowed into my chest. When his tongue sought mine, I curled mine to the back of my mouth, to tease him. When he found it, I unfurled it twirled it around his. His groped for my breast and fondled me through my cashmere sweater. I rolled my shoulders back, offering them to him. He broke off his kiss and looked at me.

"You know, this is like a dream come true. A long flight beside a beautiful woman, ending in a spectacularly satisfying fashion."

"But I'm not satisfied, yet. Are you?"

"I'm never satisfied."

"I could tell we have a lot in common."

I swallowed my champagne and put my glass in a cup holder. The alcohol made me warm and relaxed. I turned and let my lips meet his again, parted them, and invited his tongue to become a ravenous aggressor. I put my hand on his thigh, and explored upward, an inch at time, until I found his cock, which had slipped free from his boxers and was trapped along the inseam of his trousers.

He was embarrassed. "You made me have sexy dreams. It's been like that all night."

"That must have been uncomfortable. Let me help you with that." I loosened his belt and unzipped him. He adjusted his position, and it sprang forth through the fly. I massaged his circumcised cock head, and bowed my head toward him. To my surprise, he restrained me.

"Wait until I shower."

"I can't wait. I have to suck you now." I drizzled a few drops of champagne into my hand and rubbed it over his member. I looked up and smiled playfully.

"There, now it will taste like Dom Perignon."

"You mean Cristal."

"Even better."

I leaned across his lap and steadied his penis in one hand and cupped his balls in the other. I trilled my tongue across the tip, and slipped my lips over the beveled rim of his cockhead. I puckered my lips over the helmet-like tip, and teased him with gentle tugs. He stroked my hair away from my cheek, and watched my labors intently.

"God, that's good."

"Yummy," I said, taking a breath and another swig of the Cristal. The effervescence tickled my throat. I took off my seat belt and knelt on the floor between his legs and gazed up worshipfully. The floor of the limo was plushly carpeted. The seating compartment of this behemoth gas guzzler was ideally suited to motorized sex: it seated four, in facing seats, providing plenty of legroom. I had plenty of space to work with.

I looked up at the tinted windows. "Is it OK to make love here?"

"You're violating the seat belt law, at a minimum, but in this traffic, we're barely moving. And this limo's big enough to crush anything that gets in our way."

JC face had the happily idiotic smile that I have so often elicited with my oral ministrations. His hands clasped my head above my ears and he guided his cock into my mouth, like a smart bomb to its target. I curled my lips over my teeth and puckered my cheeks, tongue and palate snugly around his penis, to form a tight, wet, and smooth cavern. I bent down, gazed up, slave to master, and began pulsing my head up and down. He slid in and out, bumping the cushioned barrier formed by my tonsils and pharynx, and then pulling back.

"Oh, baby, that's so good. Keep going, baby." His body felt relaxed and his voice was mellow.

After he was accustomed to this level of stimulation, and my own mouth and throat had become warmed up and supple, I decided to take it to a higher level. I tilted my head back, opened my epiglottis, and forced my throat down over his shaft. Instead of bumping to a halt at the back of my mouth, his cockhead popped over the narrow passage formed by my tonsils, glided through my pharynx and slid through my esophageal cervix another three inches, and plumbed deep into my esophagus.

I blinked and breathed away the gag reflex and pressed him deep into my thorax, until tickling of his pubic hairs in my nostrils made me recoil. Then I gently reversed my peristalsis, and his cock retracted. His cockhead snapped back through the narrow, but flexible cervical inlet that joins the mouth and throat.

His body jolted as though hit by lightning. I gave him five exquisitely slow, careful deep repetitions of my special form of deep throating. Exhale, pop, slide, snap, breathe, exhale, pop, slide, snap, breathe, exhale, pop, slide, snap breathe, exhale, pop, slide, snap breathe, exhale, pop, slide, snap breathe. When I had completed this homage, a little tear had formed in my eye. I wiped it away as I looked up and made a weary, but winsome smile.

"Is that OK?"

"God, no, don't stop. That's the most amazing sensation of my life. More, please." His voice sounded as though he were half-strangled.

I took hold of his hips, caught my breath, slithered my tongue from his balls to his glans, and teased his urethral orifice. Then I let my throat engulf him again, and again, and again, a hundred slow, steady swallows and releases. The insistent tickling of the pubes in my nostrils made my nose stuffy, but I fought back the waves of fatigue, nausea and fear of strangulation, and relentlessly worked his cock.

As his groans of pleasure coarsened into insistent demands for gratification, I gradually increased the pace. He gripped my head by two improvised pigtails and jammed my head down on him as he thrust his hips upward with ever-growing urgency. I squinted through eyes dewy with exertion and saw his face contort with flickering waves of sensation and emotion. As he spasmed toward a climax, I made my throat loose and soft. Hot spurts of semen spewed deep in my abdomen. I gulped, squeezing him deep inside me down my gullet, I clamped my hands on his testes, squeezing them like ripe lemons. A molten torrent gushed and spattered into my belly. I let it sink deep inside me, and milked it with leisurely gulps before letting him pull out, inch by inch. He was soft and drained by the time I kissed the tip of his cock goodbye.

He spiraled collapsed and nearly unconscious, on the leather seats. I carefully pulled on his boxers, hitched his pants, zipped his fly and buckled his belt, and then took a long draught of Cristal.

"That was great, the best oral sex of my life."

"You were great too. You lasted really long, and your cock is the perfect size for me. It really fills a girl up."

"I wanted to save it for later. I couldn't help myself."

"Don't worry. We'll have plenty of time for more fun."

Through heavy-lidded eyes he watched me refresh my lip gloss and brush out my tousled hair.

"You are the most beautiful girl I have ever been with, and the most naturally sexy. I could watch you primp all day."

"Thank you. I try not to get obsessed with appearances, but I do like to maintain them."

JC and I had not even driven the distance from LAX to his home, and he was obsessed by my appearance and addicted to my sexual performance. He was rich, and a lawyer, and he fit perfectly with my plans. And he had no idea that I was a "change." I relaxed a bit. He had only seen my GG ads. Alexandra could remain in exile. Alessandra could accomplish her mission.

The traffic eased, and the limo accelerated. I watched as JC's head lolled from side to side as we sped up Mulholland, the ridge line road that separates the sparking basins that make up Los Angeles. We turned right and went through the gates of Beverly Park, the sanctuary of mega mansions carved from the Santa Monica Mountains to house the newest and richest of the nouveau riche. I had found a powerful sponsor, and I had started near the top.

The driver carried our bags up the sixteen granite steps into the grand foyer. We staggered behind him, swigging the dregs of the Cristal from the bottle. JC flipped the switch to illuminate the Murano chandelier that dangled from the vaulted ceiling of the entry. He handed a hundred to the driver and waved him away.

"Let's relax in the guest bedroom. We can shower later. I'll get some refreshments." He waved me to a room with a sixty inch plasma and king size bed covered in a flowered quilt. He flicked on the remote.

Tony Soprano was watching strippers at the Badabing Club. I found a bathroom, peed and brushed my hair and teeth, and took a shower. I found a blow drier and blew out my hair, and moisturized carefully. I put on some eyeliner and lip gloss. When I finished, I was yawning. The tube was muted, and the scotch in JC's cocktail glass was diluted. The bottle of 18-year-old MacCallan was half-drunk. I sipped from the glass of fragrant, amber liquor that he had left for me and took a house tour.

His wife had spent a small part of his fortune decorating this McMansion. There was bric-a-brac everywhere, and along with some very serious looking abstract impressionism. She was a vivacious but fading USC Song Girl with blonde hair going ashen, and her fresh face wrinkling from too much leisure in the Southern California sun. JC Junior had innumerable soccer trophies and, seemingly, every video console and game ever made. Mommy's little girl's room was entirely pink, themed to Hello Kitty. It was no doubt redecorated to match every tweener fad.

In a Subzero the size of my last apartment I found an unexpired tub of Trader Joe's Hummus and some whole wheat crackers. I wearily found my way back to the guest room and lay down next to the snoring JC. I sipped my Scotch and watched a silent soccer match on Telemundo. I still don't really get the game, although I had gotten one of the stars.

The MacCallan dissolved the haze of jet lag, and brought a moment of lucidity before the new fog of intoxication replaced it. I had effectuated my illegal entry to my homeland, had a job, and some well-connected patrons. But Ronaldo and JC were only means to my end. Alyssa was hidden in the haze that blanketed the basin below. How would I find her from these heights?

I needed to rediscover the squalid underbelly of Los Angeles.

I nervously parked my leased Prius at the corner of 113th Street and Compton Avenue and approached the bedraggled park where Alyssa was playing. A drunken gaggle of baggy-clothed Latino teenagers screamed Spanish obscenities from the nearby baseball field. Police sirens whooped on the next block. Helicopters buzzed tight circles over nearby felonies. Uniformed school kids hurried homeward in the dusk. Soon, some of these classmates would change into colors take up arms against one another in a deadly game of gangland chess. I wondered which gang claimed the pocket park upon which I was trespassing.

JC's private detectives had ferreted her out for me. Alyssa pranced across the littered, scruffy little park as if it were her own private paradise. White ribbons flounced in her curly blond hair as she galloped over the threadbare grass. Her scuffed Mary Janes kicked up little clouds of dust, but her white frock was spotless. A squat, dark-skinned woman sat on a bench nearby, barely noticing her, squawking Spanish into her cell phone. She looked up at the darkening sky nervously, and cast a baleful glance in my direction. She looked up when I took a seat at the opposite end of her bench but she paid no heed to me until I addressed her in my perfect Spanish.

"What a beautiful child." Alyssa looked like the toddler I would have been if I had been born a girl. Her skin, eyes, hair, chin, and mouth were all mine. She even had my old nose.

The woman studied me. Her eyes were tired but wise, trained by a hard life to expect little and observe much. "Who are you to say such a thing?"

"I knew her mother."

"Her mother is dead."

"I know. The little girl has her smile."

"It is all that we have left of the mother. She left this neighborhood and tried to become a gringo, but the gringos threw her back, and then the beasts that live here devoured her"

"How did she die?"

"The one they called El Lobo. When he was still a human being, they called him Miguel. He claimed her as his chica, but he was never good enough for her. So he killed her."

"Is he in jail?"

"If Mexico is a prison, then he is in jail. He is running his gang from Tijuana, and is richer and more powerful than ever. He sends us money for the little one."

"And you take blood money from your daughter's killer? "

"How else will I feed this one? We have five others, and my husband spends all his money on whores."

"I'll help you."

"Why should I take money from you?"

"Do you know who I am?"

She looked back and forth between me and Alyssa, as though she were cataloging our similarities.

"I have an idea. You are the travesiti, the one who seduced her first as a boy, and then as a woman. You are the father of this child, and of our misfortunes. You took Marta and the child away to live in luxury, and then, when you had tired of them, returned them, to be slaughtered."

I cursed my stupid, selfish mother, whose obsession with her possessions had wrought Marta's demise.

"I am so sorry. I had to leave on a long voyage, from which I have only now returned, and left Marta and Alyssa in the care of my own mother. She failed them just as she always failed me. I have come home, to make things right for this beautiful child."

"What good are your good intentions make now, when it is too late.?"

"I want to help you, to make up for your loss. I loved Marta too, you know. And of course, I love the child, for she is as much mine as Marta's."

"When I look at this little one and you, it is obvious that were the one. Only the nose is different. That's why Miguel killed her, over the shame of being cuckolded by a maricone."

"You know what a beast he is. And he knows that she is mine, and not his. When Alyssa is older, he'll rape and perhaps kill her too. You must let me take her away, to safety."

Alyssa had stopped frolicking and is standing at my feet, staring up into my face. She smiled at me and clasped her chubby little arm around my calves. She studied me, and I looked into her eyes and stroked her hair. She smiled and called me "Mama."

My heart thumped and my brow beaded with perspiration. Being called "Mama" somehow validated all of the trials and sins of my life as a transsexual. I was thrilled with the sensation of being called a mommy, and overwhelmed at the duties that went with the status. Maternity was something that, without realizing it, I had craved. I glanced over at grandma, hoping that she had not overheard Alyssa or detected my response. She staggered to her feet and gathered Alyssa in her arms.

"A travesti cannot be a mother to this child. God will not allow it."

"I am not a travesti. I had the surgery. I am a woman now."

"Only God can make a woman, or a mother. You were made by devils. Go away from us." She yelled something in a dialect I didn't understand. The baseball playing gang bangers glared ominously in our direction. Two of them broke away from their game and ambled toward me.

"Alyssa belongs to this neighborhood, and to this family, and not to you. If you come here again, you come as our enemy. And my family has allies here."

She stalked off, dragging the crying Alyssa behind her. I backed away toward my car, eyes on my pursuers, who had climbed the fence separating the baseball field from the park.

"I'll send money for her."

"If you do, I'll give it to my husband for his whores. Perhaps he can spend some of it on you. He loves to fuck the travestis."

I ducked into my car and drove away in the dusk, squinting through my teary eyes and searching for answers in the lengthening shadows.

I rode a crowded elevator to the 50th floor of the gleaming, downtown skyscraper, accompanied by a sweat-shirted bicycle messenger whose eyes shifted from the elevator news to me. My white cashmere V-neck sweater clung to me and offered a tiny peak at my breasts. My skinny jeans fit like they were painted to my slim legs and tight, round butt, offering his vivid imagination copious intimations of the taut flesh which lay beneath. I avoided his inquisitive eyes and concentrated on the flat screen in the elevator, which announced another 58 dead in Baghdad, and then flashed word of Lindsey's latest DUI.

He had hard eyes, shaved head, stubbled chin, dragon tattoos circling his thick, muscular arms, and an insouciant, bad-boy manner. He was exactly the type to whom, a couple of months ago, I would have given my phone number and met later for an anonymous afternoon tryst. But today, I haughtily ignored him, meeting his eyes only once, and rolling my eyes dismissively. He looked away, defeated and abashed, but he murmured "Nice boots" before he exited at the 48th floor. I looked down at my burned ochre knee-high boots, fresh from the Fred Segal sale, and said "Thanks, sweetie," as left the elevator. I enjoyed watching him stop short, turn around and take a last glimpse of me. But the doors had closed. It was too late for him to claim me.

The reception area of JC's law firm is a glass eagle's aerie overlooking the LA basin. Mount Baldy glistened with icy grandeur on one side, the Griffith Park Observatory peered down from the Hollywood Hills, and the cool Pacific shimmered to the West. I told the receptionist that I was to see "Marcia Richardson," the associate to whom JC had assigned my new pro-bono matter. I waited alone in the reception area and watched topical fish cavort amid brightly colored coral in a giant aquarium placed by the law firm to calm nervous clients as they waited to learn their fates. I guessed that most of this mega firm's clients weren't civilians like me.

Marcia was a heavy set African-American. She greeted me with a smile and a refreshing lack of attitude.

"Let's go to a conference room, so none of the other partners can find and distract me. JC tells me that you are an immigrant on a work visa. I must tell you that I don't know much about immigration but I am a quick study."

"There's more to it than that. Now, before we get started, everything I tell you is privileged, right?"

"Yes, but this is technically an intake interview, so our representation is subject to your clearing our firm's check for conflicts of interest. Of course, there are exceptions for ongoing crimes, frauds, threats to public safety. Our retainer letter will explain all of that."

We took seats across the table in one of the dozen glass walled conference rooms that girded the reception area, each looking out on its own quadrant of Los Angeles. Ours looked over toward LAX, and planes streamed toward us from its runways in ominous reenactments of 9-11.

"I'll never get used to that." Marcia cocked her finger at 767 banking away from us, seemingly moments away from a fiery collision.

"I have a child and the grandparents took custody while I was out of the country. I want to reclaim custody of her."

"Why did the grandparents get custody?"

"Her mother was murdered."

Marcia paused, and looked down at her notes thoughtfully. She looked up at me, and then back down.

"You did say the mother was the one murdered."

She made some more notes, looked up again and said "You're going to have to help me out on that. I'm guessing we are not talking about Immaculate Conception here."

"Far from it. I was a boy at the time. I'm transsexual."

"Wow, I would never have guessed. You're so perfect, I guess I should have known."

"Marcia, I'm far from perfect."

"Don't worry, no one is. It makes for a really interesting case, though. Does JC know what the firm's getting into here?"

"Does he need to know?"

"I won't tell him, because it's privileged. But in a case like this, everything's going to come out eventually."

"I know, but I have to do this."

"And I'll help you. But tell me who's on the other side. I have to clear the conflicts first."

I wrote down the names, the grandparents, Gonzalez-Lopez, and my worst enemy, Miguel Carranza. This firm didn't look likely to have many clients with Spanish surnames.

"Are you OK with representing me on such controversial issues?"

"Girl, I am black and a woman and I think that as woman I get worse discrimination than as a black. I salute the courage of anyone who would choose to become one of my sisters."

She scanned the names of the adverse parties and told me she would run searches in the firm's data base and get back to me. She validated my parking, shook my hand, and said "I hope to be speaking with you real soon."

The bicycle messenger was loitering outside when I exited the building and walked to the parking structure. I didn't even respond to his whistle as I strode by.

My cell phone vibrated on my bedside table. I groped for it in the dark. It was Ronaldo.

"Hi baby. Are you still up?"

"Ronaldo, it's 1:00 in the morning. What are you doing? Don't you have practice tomorrow?"

"Yeah, that's right, it's only practice. That's what I told the bitch when we wanted to have a party. She threw us out anyhow."

He slurred exuberantly, as though proclaiming a triumph over Rafaela, the wife upon whom he alternately doted, and cheated. When the tequila subsided, this episode would become yet another domestic crisis to be resolved with yet another bauble.

I heard laughter in background. "Who are you with?"

"Marco, from AC Milan. They were playing an exhibition in San Diego. I'm showing him a good time. We need to come over."

"Where are you?"

"Brentwood." He mentioned the name of a bar less than a mile from my rented condo.

"OK. But no more drinking."

"I just want to show Marco a good time. And the bitch kicked us out."

"Just be quiet when you get to the garage so you don't awaken the neighbors."

I douched and jumped in the shower to freshen myself. JC had already come and gone, and while I hadn't offered any promises of monogamy to Ronaldo, I didn't want to offend his sensibilities with the obvious aroma of another man on my flesh.

Ronaldo had returned to LA two weeks ago. I had rented him a beautiful town house on the fashionable north side of San Vicente Boulevard. For me, JC arranged a tiny one bedroom condo a few blocks north of Wilshire on the congested, but still costly south side of the Boulevard. I lived walking distance from my choice of Starbucks or the Coffee Bean, the take out counter at the Whole Foods or the sushi bar at Katsuya.

I could have spent my annual salary in one afternoon at the eateries and boutiques on the block of San Vicente from Barrington to Montana. I didn't know how the yoga mat toting idlers I live among made their livings. But I was all to aware that the crappy salary I got from the Galaxy and the allowance I got from JC weren't enough. The cost of living large in Brentwood was depleting my finances.

I toweled off, spritzed on some Chanel and glossed my lips as the door rang. I was a little embarrassed to be seen without makeup, but I decided they couldn't possibly have expected a fashion show in the middle of the night. I buzzed them through the front gate, pulled on some panties under my bathrobe, and hurriedly opened the door before their boisterous banter aroused my inquisitive and intolerant neighbors.

They staggered across my threshold and into my kitchen. Ronaldo opened the refrigerator and stared blankly.

"There's no food in here."

"There's some edamame, hummus, chevre, apples and soy milk. And I have some cashews and almonds."

"I meant human food, not bird food. We're hungry."

"That's all I have. You should tell the team to give me a raise."

"You need to try harder to please the boss. Maybe I should just have one of these." He moved with an athlete's grace behind me and wrapped his arm around me, gently cupping each of my boobs in his hands. "How perfect, one for each of me and Marco." He pressed his muscular frame against my back. His hard cock nestled between my buttocks.

"What's that?" I pushed it away teasingly.

He rubbed it against my behind. "An old and very close friend."

I recognized Marco from the Italian celebrity magazines. Ten years ago he had been a star for Brazil's national team, but now he was playing for money rather than glory. The Brazilians had sold his contract to the Italians, just as the Italians had sold Ronaldo to the Americans. Even as a faded star, Marco had been favorite of the Italian soccer groupies and paparazzi.

"Marco, meet Alessandra."

I smiled and pursed my lips and said, "Agradável," enchanted in Portuguese. Ronaldo released me from his playful grip and gently pushed me toward Marco, who bowed and kissed my hand as I approached. I pulled him to his feet and kissed his full, African lips. He embraced me, and then lifted me gently off my feet, and then slowly lowered me to my tiptoes. My breasts raked the length of his muscle girded torso. My nipples sizzled with sensation, and then Ronaldo sandwiched me from behind. We formed a triptych of sensual delight. My exhausted body and sated libido reawakened in anticipation of an imminent erotic combat. I knew what they had come for, and I welcomed it. I wanted both of them inside me.

Ever since my hockey playing classmates Rick and Randy ravaged me in my freshman year at the University of Minnesota, I have always been a complete slut for jocks. But I would never marry or even be a long term GF to a jock. The chaos and discipline of sport are great in bed, and terrible in the home. The incessant training, drill, and competition of sport harden their bodies and spirits, rendering them immature and unreliable as lovers, but both demanding, and satisfying, as sexual partners. I am, in my own way, a sexual athlete, so in a way, the jocks and I are ideally suited for one another.

But every sporting event must begin with a bit of sparring. So when Ronaldo sat on my couch and pulled me toward him, I deftly escaped and scampered away.

"Not on my living-room furniture. It's all leased with security deposits, so I don't want lube or cum stains on it. Let's go to the bedroom."

They followed me there. I let my bathrobe flutter open and fall. I yanked back the rumpled covers as Marco and Ronaldo wordlessly stripped. I sat on the side of my bed, opened my bedside table to display a bright array of condoms and lubricants. I dabbed a few drops of lubricant onto my fingers and moistened my pussy and ass. Even as a girl I still subscribe to the Boy Scout motto: "Be Prepared."

With fingers shiny with KY, I beckoned them to draw near. "Now, I just have to suck both of those big cocks."

I was all too familiar with Ronaldo's circumcised, eight-inch cock, but I had not seen much else that compared with Marco's jet black penis. It was long, uncut and under the foreskin, his glans bulged ominously. It swayed and bounced off his muscular thighs as he approached me, swaying like a cobra poising for a strike. I cupped their scrotums, one in each hand, and pulled them to my face. I turned side to side, letting their cocks bounce off my cheeks, as I looked up and sang "Eeny, meeny, miny mo, catch a penis in my mouth."

I chose Marco's and popped his cockhead between my lips and gave it ten quick pumps as I circled my slippery fingers around Ronaldo and stroked him. Marco's foreskin pulled back and released an overwhelming umami flavor. My mouth watered, and I tried to deep-throat him, but his cock banged against my tonsils and glottis, too thick to penetrate into my inner throat.

I was on the verge of gagging. I switched my mouth's attention to Ronaldo's penis, and circled the fingers of my other hand around Marco for ten pumps.

When I switched back to Marco, the lube's cinnamon flavor had replaced his natural flavors. Now they both tasted like my favorite Starbucks latte.

I alternated between them, suck to the left, suck to the right, and then I took them into my mouth together, and rolled them like two logs against one another. I looked up, and from one to the other. They had wrapped their arms over one another's shoulders, and the rapture in their eyes suggested how much they were enjoying this camaraderie.

"Do Marco and I make a good team, Alessandra my love?"

I pushed their cocks out of my mouth. "You're champions in every way. But I have sucked enough for now. It's time for us to make a sandwich."

Marco looked confused as I got up. But they both complied as guided them to either side of my bed. But by the time that I grabbed two condoms, more lube and hopped over Ronaldo to take the spot between them, Marco had figured out what kind of sandwich I had in mind, and had joined Ronaldo in masturbating himself to maintain his erection. I slipped the condoms between my lips and rolled them down first Marco's, and then Ronaldo's cocks, and then slathered them with lubricant.

Marco's cock was too thick and long for my Thai-made pussy, but I had had cocks of his length and girth in my ass many times before, although not recently. I knelt astride, facing outward, and wiped more lube onto my ass.

"Are you sure your booty big enough for my thing?"

"There's only one way to find out. If you know, me, you know I'll try anything once."

I opened my ass as best I could and pointed cock at the tiny opening. I slid the bulbous tip, which was throbbing with blood and energy, around the rim of my butt. He thrust upward impatiently. I felt like a tropical fish about to be attacked by a hammerhead shark. I settled his hands in my iliac crest.

I love anal sex and have a lot of experience with it. I part company with the purported experts who emphasize slow, careful penetration. You know it's always going to hurt at first, no matter what. Doesn't it make sense that delay only prolongs the pain?

Better to get it over quickly, and get on to the fun. I recommend a quick, two step penetration Force it in as far as you can, until you can't take the pain, then take it out, relax, and start over. A brief respite, followed by a second pop, usually accomplishes the objective, and I get the whole thing inside me in less than thirty seconds. But usually I need one escape from that initial blaze of pain. So I like to make that deal before the fun starts.

I looked back at Marco. "Hold me there, but let me be in control, for the first few strokes, OK?"

Marco nodded. Ronaldo nuzzled and licked my breasts. I channeled the pleasure from my breasts to my butt. I took a few deep, calming breaths, and then I dipped my ass down onto him. His cockhead bounced against my rim like an acrobat on a trampoline. I steadied him, aimed carefully, opened my muscles with all my energy, and it slipped with a pop through my butt's outer ring. I felt myself stretched, but OK, until he slid through my inner sphincter and into my colon.

None of my sex toys could prepare me for intrusion of Marco's mushroom-like cock. It felt as though razor sharp teeth were devouring me. I kept him inside for ten excruciating breaths, but I couldn't get the shark-like monster more than half-way in. It devoured me from inside, as though a demonic animal had been let loose, and was running amok, tearing at my organs. I couldn't take it, and had to take it out. As the massive snake exited, my ass popped shut and sent scorching radiations of pain through me. I breathed heavily, like prey that had miraculously escaped its predator.

"You're too big, you beast. It hurts."

"Come back. It felt like paradise in there, all squeezy and wet."

I put some more lube on his cock and my butt. I settled back on him, determined to climb Mount Marco on my second attempt. My ass was burning, my breath was short, I was moist with sweat. I concentrated on Ronaldo, whose lips were nibbling my breasts and nuzzling my neck, waiting patiently to complete our amorous tableau.

I forced myself down on Marco's giant plug once more. I channeled the pleasure of Ronaldo's delicate nipple pleasuring, and the memories of a thousand pleasurable anal trysts, to my newly rent-open anus. The spherical glans abraded my internal walls as it traversed my inner spaces. It straightened the delicate curve of the sigmoid, ascended the sinuous cascade of the descending colon, millimeter by agonizing millimeter, until it banged into soft ceiling of my transverse colon. I reached back and touched the taut rim of my butt. His cock was fully imbedded in me.

I wriggled my buttocks, and looked back at Marco, whose eyes were shuttered with bliss, and rose off the massive black pedestal. The flesh which had grudgingly admitted this intruder now loudly protested its departure. I pulled until the beast was half expelled, and then descended again, then up, and down, five more times until the friction brought forth a feeling of warm and moistness inside me, and his cock felt like the bow wave of a barge lapping the shores of a warm, dark canal.

Now Marco's eyes bulged with lust. "Oh, that's good, baby. That's so good."

I leaned back onto his chest. My bowels twinged again as they adjusted to our horizontal position, but his upward thrusts now aimed directly toward my shrunken, but still sensate prostate. His toned muscles kneaded the soft tissues of my slender back. I placed his hands on my boobs, and rocked over him. His thick, up-thrust member visibly distended the outer wall of my flat belly.

Ronaldo was now between my legs, playing his cock over my labia.

"I'm ready for you baby. You two look, and sound, so hot."

I looked up at Ronaldo and pouted. "Fuck me, baby."

He straddled Marco's prone legs and spread my thighs. He diddled his cock over my labia, found the warm, damp opening, and slipped his cock into me. It compressed the thin wall of flesh that separates my pussy from my ass. I gasped as the two members squeezed together, but grabbed his buttocks and pulled him inward until the pressure spread upward, to where my vestigial boy parts, the prostate and vas deferens, remained. My pussy had self-lubricated from Marco's intense entry, so Ronaldo's cock penetrated me easily. His eyes were shuttered with bliss until his pubic bone collided with my vulva, and I let out a moan.

He looked at me. "Oh, baby, that feels good. Your pussy's even tighter when you got Marco's big dick in your booty. How does it feel."

"I feel like I have got two giant cocks in me, and I'm getting squeezed, and fucked, to within an inch of my life."

Marco's baritone answered. "We'll leave you a millimeter, and take you for the rest."

I slowed my body's dance atop Marco to let Ronaldo get in rhythm. I accustomed myself to the pressure of their two cocks inside me, and being compressed between two strong, masculine bodies. It was the fantasy that I most often relied on when I masturbated, and when you have the right guys, it's an erotic feast that cannot be matched.

Ronaldo mashed downward from above, smothering my lips and neck with kisses, crushing my breasts with his chest and my vulva with his pubic bone, and filling my pussy with lunges synchronized with Marco's cock plumbing the depths of my tummy. Marco supported me from below, holding my buttocks with firm hands, plowing into me with powerful, trained muscles, while Ronaldo raked me from above.

They batted me back and forth effortlessly, like a football in practice. The wall of flesh between my vagina and my anus compressed to a delicate membrane, and their colliding cock heads pummeled my prostate from above and below. Together, they squeezed juice from that forgotten fruit which the surgeons had abandoned inside me. Their thick, probing cocks were the rescuers I required to release it from its captivity. I felt my insides go warm and gooey from the pressure of their bodies below, above, and inside me.

To speed me to my orgasm, I summoned my every erotic memory of my thousand and one nights of whoring. I thought back on the thousands of guys who had lusted after, paid for and used me. I had willingly served them all, and in every encounter I wanted them to use, fuck and dominate me. I had craved them all, even the cruel, fat and ugly ones, for they had made me what I am.

I dreamed back to my Prom Night, when Miguel and the others had gang raped me. It had my most dreaded memory, one of the ones that made me cautious in my commerce. But until that night I had been a boy. On that night, I transformed into a girl. Just as I had conceived the child Alyssa in Marta's womb, Miguel, in his cruel way, had conceived the girl Alexandra from in the ravaged flesh of Alex Rios.

The rape had changed me forever, and set me on my path to my sex change, to my life as a privileged courtesan. I had feared and resented Miguel, but I was wrong. I should have been grateful.

It was that night of rape and degradation, and path of prostitution that led from it, that had refashioned me from geeky, arrogant boy whom no one liked, to a beautiful woman whom everyone desired. I remembered the disdainful, arrogant Miguel, fucking my ass and coming inside me, and I knew that I wanted him again, forcing me to suck him and fucking me in the ass and the pussy, and cuming on my tits.

As Ronaldo and Marco surged inside me, pounding their ways to their own climaxes. But in my mind it was Miguel fucking the virginal me, and the two cocks on my shrunken prostate were his and one of his tattooed posse. I begged, and cried for more, more, more, fuck me harder, deeper, longer, and then the image of the helpless, ravaged virgin exploded into a million molten droplets that exploded inside me and suffused every cell of my body with hot, transformative fulfillment. I had to choke myself to keep from screaming out Miguel's name as my senses pulsed with release.

I returned from my reverie to the throbbing flesh which enveloped me. Ronaldo and Marco were in a race now, competing to see which one could fuck me harder and longer. I let myself melt between them, a soft vessel for them to fill with their sacred offerings.

They sprinted to the finish, first Marco, who came with a fierce shriek, "goddamn fucking whore," and then Ronaldo, who uttered "Mama, mama, mama." I suppose, in a way, that we all had meant the same thing, that in fucking we had tried to reclaim lost parts of our souls.

When they had stopped throbbing, I disentangled myself from their sweaty bodies, pulled the condoms from their softening phalluses, and washed up as they fell into their post coital slumbers and dreams. As I showered and douched, I worried about Alyssa, and wondered about my psyche. Why was I still obsessed with Miguel? I hadn't even seen him for years, he had no idea where I was, and he was a fugitive from a dozen warrants. Why did I even care?

The next morning, after they had gone, I fired up my laptop to pay some bills and check the news. I scrolled down past the war news, the politics, and the business news. Normally, I skipped the sports, but I saw a thumbnail of Marco, so I clicked the link. I led me to a story on TMZ, entitled "Soccer Star's Hot Night With Sexy Nanny." There was a fuzzy shot of me taking Ronaldo's kid to his preschool juxtaposed with a fuzzy, long distance shot of the three of us posed, nestled like spoons, in my bed. I stared in disbelief for a second, and then picked up my cell phone and dialed Ronaldo. I got his voicemail.

"Hi Ronaldo, it's me. Give me a call. I think we have a big PR problem."

The Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles is a ramshackle factory-like structure cowering on the corner opposite the gleaming titanium spires of Disney Hall. The sheriff at the metal detector made me empty my purse. I was thankful that I was carrying only two condoms, and returned his flirtatious smile with a haughty "not in your lifetime" glare. I was relieved it was only two; yesterday, I'd had four assorted Trojans in my Coach bag.

The court's corridors have the same echoing clamor of an overcrowded and dangerous high school. The accused, their lawyers and the jurors dodged and scurried around one another as they hurried over the same worn tiles, and up and down the same rickety escalators.

But virtually all of the gang bangers in their shackles looked up from their feet, and all of the lawyers chained to their Blackberries glanced up from their tiny keypads, as I passed by. In my black Chanel suit, white silk blouse, Prada pumps and borrowed pearls, I blew like a fresh breeze through the musty halls of justice.

The scuffed wooden bench seats in Courtroom 55A looked like they could have been recycled from a defunct Greyhound bus terminal. Marcia handed her card to the clerk, an obese, graying Latina with a large mole or her forehead that I could not stop looking at. It was 9:00 am, and the courtroom was jammed. When we chose a place near the back, the lawyer who had been sitting there graciously offered us his seat and took another in the crowded row behind us. I could practically hear him inhaling my perfume. I enjoyed the attention of furtive eyes checking me out.

I looked around and cupped my hand at Marcia's ear. "This is plush. I never knew what bad conditions you lawyers endured."

"Budget cuts to fund the tax loopholes JC enjoys. This is justice for the poor. When JC's clients want a trial, they go to Federal Court, or they rent a judge."

"Why don't we rent a judge?"

"That's only when both parties are rich corporations. Who's going to pay for you, or the Gonzalez-Lopez's? You're pro bono, and they're just poor. God knows how they managed to hire the suit who's representing them today."

"Oh yeah."

I felt a little guilty that I had forced Alyssa's grandparents to spend their hard earned money on a lawyer, whereas I was getting free representation thanks to JC.

"Don't feel bad, I can't afford me, and I doubt that JC could afford his own hourly rate."

"In the day, I couldn't afford mine either."

Marcia laughed and shushed me.

A buzzer sounded, we all stood and the lawyers chanted "Good Morning, Your Honor."

The Judge sat down and said "Be seated. And please shut off all cell phones and pagers."

She called a few cases and the lawyers rose, spoke, sat, and she ruled. She stared at her computer and typed as they spoke, about what, who could tell? She impatiently cut off the argument of the last case before mine and ordered a fine against the loser for violating some arcane rule or code.

The clerk called my case, Matter of Alyssa G, Rios vs. Gonzalez-Lopez, and Marcia patted my hand and walked to the lectern. An Armani-clad lawyer sprang to his feet and reached the lectern first. Arturo Pajon, for the respondent."

The judge flashed an irritated frown. "In my court, counsel, petitioners make the first appearance."

"Very well, Your Honor." Pajon smiled obsequiously, and took a seat next to the lectern. Marcia approached and announced her name and that her client, Alexandra Rios, was with her in Court. Pajon pecked surreptitiously at his Blackberry, looking around nervously to see if his actions were noticed. They were.

"The Court takes note of counsel's improper use of communications equipment during proceedings. Bailiff, please impound that device." The judge's black face seemed to take on a deeper hue, as though her rage at this arrogance was showing through. My case seemed to be going very well.

"Ms. Henderson, you may proceed."

"Your Honor, we have submitted herewith the affidavits of Mary Arrow, a certified genetics technician at Gene ID, Inc. and of Dr, Louis Levitz, a professor of genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Together, these affidavits and related exhibits demonstrate that my client is the genetic parent of Alyssa, who is the subject of her request for parental rights and custody. If you have any further questions, I would be happy to answer them." She sat down.

Mr. Pajon, now stripped of his Blackberry, rose, looked at me, and back at the judge.

"Your Honor, if one reads the lab reports carefully, and I refer you to page 3, item 1 a. of Ms. Arrow's report, you will notice something unusual about this test result."

"Why don't you tell me what you are talking instead of making me do your work for you?"

"The report indicates that the test subject has XY Chromosomes, and yet the petitioner purports to be a woman."

"So it would appear. Ms. Henderson, would you like to enlighten Mr. Pajon."

"Certainly. My client, Ms. Rios, is a post operative male to female transsexual. She has had sex reassignment surgery, as is confirmed by the Declaration of Dr. Lawrence Weinberg, whose declaration we also submitted."

I felt every eye in the courtroom was fixated on me. I struggled to find a place inside myself of calm and peace, but blood throbbed in my head. I had been living in stealth for a year now, and had gotten accustomed to being accepted, and lusted after, as genetic girl. Now, in order to assert my parental rights, I had to crack open the door to my transsexual past.

Thanks to this arrogant lawyer, my stealth balloon had been burst, even though Marcia had assured me that my transsexual status was irrelevant to the custody decision. I was angry and humiliated. But Marcia had warned me that I had to keep my cool. I visualized a meadow where I Alyssa and I romped together as pretend ponies.

"Dr. Weinberg's affidavit doesn't state that he performed the procedure or attach any surgical records. We would like to have our own physician perform a physical exam of Mr., I mean, Miss Rios."

My dream faded to a nightmare, where I was spread eagled in stirrups, and everyone in this courtroom was critiquing my vaginal architecture. If this was a test, I failed it. I sobbed out loud.

"Ms. Henderson, perhaps we can take a recess and move on to some other matters and come back to this when your client has had a chance to calm down."

"We wouldn't need to do that if Mr. Pajon hadn't raised an irrelevant matter to publicly humiliate my client."

"Your Honor, Mr., I mean, Miss Rios's ability to handle her status is directly relevant to her suitability as a custodial parent."

"I object, Your Honor. Move to strike. California law prohibits discrimination based on gender identification, and counsel is violating that law on the very record of this Court. His argument is contemptuous."

The judge banged her gavel. "Mr., Pajon, if you make legal arguments for the purpose of humiliating parties in my Court, and your last statement comes close to an admission of that, you are not only in contempt of that party, but of this Court."

"My clients intend to argue for custody on precisely that basis, that Mr., I mean Miss Rios in addition lacking the maturity and stability needed to be a mother, lacks the basic attributes of motherhood. She is not a genetic woman."

Marcia seethed, and pounded the podium. "That's outrageous and directly contradicted by California law."

"We think the Court is obligated to consider all aspects of the proposed custodial parent, including their genetics."

The judge peered down at Pajon over the rims of her reading glasses. "So let me see, counsel, would that mean I couldn't be the parent of a white, or a Latino child?"

"Your Honor, this case is far more complicated than meets the eye. I'd like to file papers arguing the relevance of my inquiry."

"That's a good idea, counsel. I am adjourning this hearing, and setting an Order to Show Cause on the Transfer of Parental Rights and Custody, and on why Mr. Pajon should not be sanctioned for his use of his pager, and his last remarks, for three weeks from today. Your papers are due next week.

Pajon turned on his heels and wordlessly stalked out of the courtroom. Marcia said "Thank you, Your Honor," collected her things and led me out. I couldn't bear looking at the inquisitive eyes that pried so deep that it felt like they were scrutinizing my every chromosome, looking for the dirty "Y's" that made me a freak in their eyes.

Why was I so distraught? In six months of living as the Euro-girl Allessandra Fiumi, I had gotten used to living in stealth. I had felt light and free, living unencumbered by my TS antecedents.

I'd done my best to forget the truth: life's so much simpler when you don't have to deal with the perverse obsessions, cognitive dissonance or expressions of disgust that darken the every day experience of the publicly known transsexual.

The small circle of cognoscenti who remembered me or to whom I had disclosed my history were as much invested as preserving my secret as I was. At the moment, the circle was limited to two souls--Marcia, by professional obligation, and Ronaldo, by mutual interest in maintaining secrecy of my past, now that our trysting had become celebrity news.

I had taken the risk of exposure when I went to court for Alyssa, and I had been cruelly, and, I thought, unnecessarily outed.

"Why did that lawyer publicly humiliate me?"

"I don't know. It shouldn't have been relevant, and it really pissed the judge off at him. Is there anything else you haven't told me?"

There was plenty, but nothing public. I had made the porno, but under stage names, with a radically different physical appearance and a thick layer of theatrical make up. I had escorted, but under pseudonyms, and I had never been arrested. I hadn't even been in the country for the last two years. I decided not to burden Marcia with the sordid details.

I was so deep in thought that I didn't notice the two beefy men in blue blazers and grey slacks who approached me a few steps from the courthouse door.

"Are you Alexandra Rios?"

"Yes."

One of them slipped plastic cuffs over my wrists. "You are under arrest for terrorist activity in Thailand. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."

Marcia was livid. "What are you doing with my client?"

They shuffled me to the car and pushed my head down to duck it under the sedan's roof.

"This is a national security issue, ma'am."

I looked at Marcia with pleading, apologetic eyes from the back seat of the federal marshal's nondescript sedan. Marcia wagged her fingers and snarled, "I'm her lawyer."

"Good, she's going to need one. She can call you as soon as we're through booking her."

She met my eyes, and must have sensed my terror. "Don't explain anything to me now, and don't tell them anything. We can talk later."

"Lady, until she identifies you as her lawyer for this matter, I suggest you just shut up and get out of our way."

"This is such bullshit. What a setup. That little prick Pajon committed contempt of court so he could stall long enough for you thugs to respond to his Blackberry message. Wait until the judge hears about this."

Marcia was right in the face of one of the marshals.

"Back off, lady. We got plenty more of these."

The marshal dangled a pair of handcuffs ominously. Marcia backed away, but her eyes were blazing with rage.

"You may need those for yourselves before I'm done."

The blue-jacketed marshal jumped into the seat next to me and fastened my seatbelt. I slumped in my seat, and closed my eyes as the car screeched off.

The booked me as Alex Rios and handed me an orange jump suit and slip-on boots. I changed in a tiny curtained alcove and relinquished my clothes, shoes and purse, and became Inmate 265743.

The booking clerk ignored my pleading eyes, so I begged.

"You can't put me into a male population. Isn't it obvious that I am female?"

I giggled my bra-less boobs. He looked away from me.

"We just go by what the booking information says, and it says you're male. If the medical staff decides otherwise, they can order you moved to the female detention. Or you run into problems with the male inmates, the warden could send you to the Special Attention section. My impression is that most trannies adapt, and even make some new friends."

My captor laughed cynically. He knew what I would endure in the interval before the jail's medical staff examined, processed and reassigned me to the women's detention center.

Most American prisons inflict a special form of cruel and unusual punishment on their transgendered inmates: the custodial authorities force T-Girls to live amongst violent men, in the rampantly brutal sexual culture that pervades our jails and penitentiaries.

The guards use transsexuals to bait and reward the dominant male inmates, with the result that almost all transgendered prisoners suffer repeated sexual assaults. Needless to say, the psychological and physical wounds thus inflicted on a population that already suffers from high levels of mental and physical health disabilities are devastating--but that simply reflects what America routinely does to its weakest and most vulnerable citizens in the world "outside."

In my case, the overworked medical staff would eventually ascertain my post operative status and transfer me. My persecution would be brief. In most states and throughout the federal systems, pre op transsexuals are kept in the male population for the duration of their sentences, and endure years of coerced sex, rape and degradation with the acquiescence, and in many cases, the active participation of disdainful, hostile guards. Even consensual sex relationships between a trannie and her cellmate may be dangerous in the context of a prison, where there is no escape from a quarrel, or a broken relationship.

If a transsexual complains about her cell mates' unwanted sexual attentions, they are transferred to psychiatric facilities, where they are housed with the real crazies who may be even more dangerous than a sexually abusive cellmate. As I absorbed the guard's cold, disdainful gaze, I felt sure he was enjoying my predicament, and only wished that he could somehow prolong my suffering.

A graffiti-scarred elevator lurched us upward to the Federal lock-up, where I would await arraignment. The door opened to a rank reception area bounded by blank walls and metal doors. The marshal muttered into a phone, a buzzer sounded, and the door opened. An owlish prison guard appeared, wordlessly ushered me in, and escorted me to my cell. My arrival was greeted by catcalls and whistles celebrating the delivery of a fresh fish. I wished I had not splashed on quite so much of my Chanel perfume, because the inmates sensed all to clearly my femininity.

"Give her to me." "I've got room in my bed." "I smell shemale, I smell shemale, I smell shemale." "Come suck this, ho." "Cut the freak's throat." "Not until I'm done fucking her, punk." Taunts, come-ons and threats came from every cell.

"You can't leave me with them. Give me my own cell or put me in isolation. They'll tear me apart."

"We're overcrowded, and I can't put you in isolation. I've done my best to protect you." We stopped, and the guard opened the cell door. The cell was occupied by a lone man, a thick-bodied Latino whose arms were covered with gang tattoos. I drew back, but the guard pushed me in and slammed the door. The man looked up and I gasped.

It was El Lobo, also known as Miguel. He gave me a cruel smile.

"Make yourself comfortable, maricone."

He pointed to the bunk opposite him. I sat on the thin mattress and slipped the pony tail holder out of my hair, trying to affect self-confidence.

"With a welcome like that, who wouldn't be comfortable? Plus, it's good to see an old friend in a strange, new place."

He stood before me and circled his hands around my neck and squeezed it. He was much larger than I remembered him, and his face had taken on a brooding, bitter mien. I looked up and smiled.

"Before you kill me, perhaps you should sample the new me."

"Why should I kill you? The sin that you and Marta committed against me has already been avenged." He put his hands on either side of my head and tilted it back.

"Sins are forgiven, not avenged. Do you forgive me?"

"Suck me off, and let me fuck you again. Then, I'll decide."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Don't mess with me. I am just as powerful inside as out. How else would you find yourself in my cell so soon? I own the street, and I own this pen."

His arrogant smile had turned aggressive. Like most bullies, Miguel was a coward who substituted threats for courage, and cunning for understanding. But his words aroused my interest. How had he known that I was about to be jailed? It had come as a complete surprise to me.

"How could you be so sure..." His faced had turned defensive, as though he recognized his blunder. I decided not to confront him directly. "That I don't want to have sex with you?"

His face relaxed. "You liked the way I did you before?"

I nodded. "You were a little bit too rough the first time, but now, I think about you every time I cum. And that's a lot."

I stood up, and did a little strip tease. The too-big prison overalls slipped off my slender frame with a few pops of buttons and a couple of wriggles of my hips. I turn around and let him see my butt as I dropped ludicrous boxers, which were too big for my waist and legs, and too tight for my hips. I turned around to show myself in full frontal nudity. He let a low whistle.

"That's a fine looking pussy you got there. Nice tits, too."

"Made by the finest surgeons in Phuket, Thailand, and Brussels, Belgium."

"If you say fuck it, I will."

I pulled his cock out of the prison issue boxers. Like everything, else in this dungeon, it smelled dank and mildewed. It had shrunken since our last encounter, so I easily deep throated it. But Miguel wasn't satisfied with my submissive pose. To demonstrate his dominance, he stopped me, slapped my cheek, and seized my head and forced it down his shaft.

"That's how I like to be sucked."

The real Miguel paled beside the fantasy rapist from Prom night whom I had so often conjured. It was the moment, and not the man, that had made cherish that memory. Now, his body had weirdly huge, bulging muscles, his brows and head grotesquely enlarged, and his cock shrunken. He had totally juiced himself on steroids or whatever else the jailbirds inject to get their fake muscles.

I closed my eyes, and tried to recreate Prom night. I threw all of my whore-honed artifices into Miguel's blow job. I relaxed my throat to a pillowy tunnel as he plunged in, and constricted my muscles and tugged back as he exited, imparting gentle friction of my lips and cheeks on his momentarily departing penis, as though expressing longing for him.

I let my eyes drift into dreamy langor, and then meet his, focus, and express adulation. I sighed with every breath. I licked him, tip to taint, when his cock slipped out of me. I wanted him to come in my mouth, so I could swallow his evil seeds and excrete them as pee or poop, rather than have him pollute my pussy or ass with his poisonous semen.

But like my own body, Miguel's cock had been changed by the relentless flood of hormones. The steroids that he had taken to harden his muscles, had enervated his penis. It was all that I could do to keep it rigid.

He pushed my head away, "No more sucking. I have to fuck to cum, and I want to try your new cunt."

I got onto the narrow little bunk, folded and shoved the skinny pillow under my pelvis and presented my pussy.

He stroked the outlines of my external labia, and the probed with his finger. It snagged on my inner labia.

"It looks the same as a real one. What happened to your bush."

"I had it removed. Don't you like it that way?"

"Yeah, it's like a little girl's pussy. I love to fuck the young ones." He probed me with two fingers, but I was dry, and they entered only to his first knuckle.

I looked back at him. He kneeled behind, grunting me like a rutting pig. I covered my pussy with my hand. "Do you have any lube or condoms? They confiscated mine"

"They don't provide rubbers or lube in here, you dumb cunt. And I'm not worried, you look like you're clean. And as for me, I always say, it's better to give than receive."

I knelt, elbows and knees on the stiff sheets. The air conditioner clanked, billowing dank moldy zephyrs into the gloom. Miguel laughed, spit on my labia, dampened his cock with the spatter of saliva, and forced his cock into me.

Despite the theatrical blow job, I had not truly become aroused by blowing Miguel, and my bad day had left me tense and anxious. His cock wouldn't enter me.

I spit on my own fingers, drizzled on my labia and pulled them aside.

He rammed me to the hilt in three strokes. My pussy flesh rippled open, and although synapses protested the abrupt intrusion, my will overcame my body's outrage. My life depended on my performance, so I forced myself into full method acting mode.

I gazed back over my shoulder and let my face flicker with a montage of emotions. Fear, hopelessness, subjugation, hope, joy, anguish, adulation, abjection. I flung my body back against his thrust. My vagina yielded when he lunged inward, and clung to him as he withdrew. He fucked me like a barbarian. I fucked back like a porn star. But mine was a photo-shoot performance. Moans and groans are not part of prison sex.

Endurance is not valued either. He finished his act in less than a minute. A dozen hot squirts of semen suffused my inner spaces. I sighed and collapsed to the mattress, trying to fight my fear of infection and my growing paranoia.

"That's a nice tight cunt they installed in you. I'd fuck you again, but they are going to take you away, and by the time you get out you're going to be an ugly old lady."

I pondered his meaning as I put on my prison garb. What did Miguel know? And how did he know so much about my prison itinerary?

"What do you mean? I'm innocent. It's a case of mistaken identity."

"Who would think that the femmy little maricone would turn stone cold killa after she got her cunt."

"I don't understand. What are you talking about?" Miguel was looking at me.

"C'mon, baby, getting your pussy installed wasn't all that went down in Thailand."

"You're right, I went to school there too."

"Yeah, and studied drugs and murder."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

The door knocked. "Inmate 265743, you are to report to the medical ward."

"Well, maricone, it was nice."

"Yes, Miguel, it was nice to see you again."

The medical staff confirmed the obvious and observed that I had had recent intercourse. They asked me I had been raped. I didn't want launch an inquiry concerning the circumstances and validity of my consent to Miguel's attentions, especially one that would be presided over by the very same prison officials whose actions made it possible, so I said that we were old friends, and I had consented.

The orderly noted the occurrence of a sexual contact and ordered me transferred to the women's facility immediately. I was shackled and taken to a transport van.

The barred interior was occupied by a young Mexican. His head was shaved, and his arms bulky and tattooed, like Miguel's. He didn't look up until the doors closed, and then he lunged at me. His shackles had been attached to the seat of the van. The chains lurched him to his knees. I shrank away, inches from his grasp

"You don't even know me, but you attack me? Why?"

"You are the he/she whore of that pig they call El Lobo."

"You mean the snitch they call El Lobo."

"You are the one who fucks him. Don't think we didn't hear you when you serviced him in his cell." He spit at me.

I flinched away and avoided his spittle. "It's true, I knew him from before. But back there in the cell, he forced me. The guards gave me to him like a trophy as a reward for all of his snitching. I think that he snitched me in there."

"I have suspected him. He lives too well. But how do you know ?"

"By his own careless boasts. He knew in advance that I was going to be arrested. He arranged to have me to be brought to him. He knows what I am accused of, even though it occurred halfway around the world. How would he know these things unless the Feds told him? And why would they tell him, unless he was informing for them?"

The Mexican kid looked at me with cold, merciless eyes. "If you are we, we will do what we must."

The van ground to a halt, and they led the young Mexican away. I wondered if I had planted the seeds of Miguel's destruction. Part of me hoped, for my sake and Alyssa's, that I had.

The phone booth had glass walls. I could see the other inmates going though stages of emotional breakdown as they talked to loved ones from behind prison walls. The black woman next to me seemed not to be talking at all. She only wept inarticulately, ceaselessly. I wondered what tragedy was unfolding over that phone line, and what trifling offense had put her here. One out of every hundred Americans is in jail. Horrible as it was, mine was a common plight.

"Hi Mom, it's me."

"Oh my God, I've been a wreck worry over you. You haven't been answering your email or phone. Where are you?"

"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?"

"Oh dear, just tell me."

"OK, I am in LA, but I am in the women's Federal Detention Center at the corner of Temple and San Pedro."

"Why are you in jail? Oh, darling, what have you done?"

"Ah, my lawyer wouldn't be very happy if I told you the details over the house phone. Why don't you come down and bail me out and we can talk about it over a Starbucks? You'll need $10,000 cash and to sign for another $90,000."

"I don't know, dear. It's a lot of money. I don't have much, you know. I mainly live on the kindness of strangers." She sighed for dramatic affect.

"You are going to let me rot in jail over a lousy 10k? I am not going to go fugitive. I came back voluntarily. I want to get custody of Alyssa before something terrible happens to her, as happened to her mother."

That was an indirect reference to my mother's wanton negligence when she made Marta move out of her home, thus forcing Marta into the circumstances in which she had been murdered.

The memory made her burst into tears. Implying fault to my mother was a risky tactic--with my Mom, guilty feelings can lead either to capitulation or obstinacy.

She sobbed for a few more minutes, as the guard looked at me balefully and tapped her watch.

"OK, tell me where to go, and what to do."

"Get a pen. I need to give you some phone numbers."

Marcia met me in her box- and file-cluttered office, instead of the conference center.

"The TMZ story got everyone here all agitated about you. I don't want people peering at us in those fishbowl conference rooms upstairs."

"I'd like to sue them for invasion of privacy. They must have climbed onto my balcony to get that."

"And get what, a judgment against some sleazy paparazzi?"

"I got fired. It's really terrible what happens to the bit players in these celebrity lives when the story gets out."

"Write a book. That's the best revenge."

"Maybe I will."

"You'll have fun writing this chapter."

"Living it has not been a great joy. Tell me what I missed."

"Well, after you got arrested, I filed an emergency motion requesting to examine Pajon's Blackberry. The bailiff still had it. The other side went crazy about that being a violation of attorney work-product confidentiality. But the judge was pissed off at him, especially after I told her that you had been arrested on the courthouse steps as a result of Pajon's email subterfuge. She decided that his sending the email in court waived work-product confidentiality for that email and every other email that related to you, all three hundred or so of them."

She handed me a thick binder of documents.

"Here's your copy. I haven't had time to read all of them, but it looks like there was a plot between the FBI, this gang kid named Miguel Carranza, and Spartan, LLC, the big condom manufacturer, to set you up for arrest and extradition to Thailand for some intellectual property piracy and an alleged terrorist act. And that, Alexandra, brings us to a bit of a problem. We can't represent you anymore."

"Why? It seems like we are doing great. I can prove that I was doing nothing wrong in Thailand, just a school research project."

"This Spartan LLC is one of our firm's clients. They are adverse to you, and we can't represent someone, like you, who is adverse to a client."

"Aren't I a client too? Or is it that Spartan pays your firm a lot of money, and I am pro bono?"

"I told you that our representation of you was conditioned on your disclosing adverse parties and clearing conflicts. You failed to disclose Spartan."

"I didn't think it was relevant."

"Spartan seems pretty relevant now. Give your new lawyer these emails and get an opinion. All I know is that I have been ordered to resign from your file, and with great regret, I am."

"Can I use your phone? I want to call JC."

"Oh, thanks for reminding me. He asked me to give you this."

I opened it. It was a typed memo to me, from him, regarding "Termination of Our Relationship". I read it and started crying.

Marcia handed me a tissue. "That so JC, to dump someone with a memo."

"He didn't care I was a whore. He is dumping me because I'm a sex-change. Listen to this crap.

I held the memo at arm's length, as though the venom on the page might otherwise poison me.

`I just can't go on knowing that I was the victim of a complete deception. This makes me question everything, and the answers that I hear from my conscience are no, no and no. You make keep all of the gifts, but I want the keys to the condo at the end of next month.'

I set it down on top of the binder of emails.

"What am I supposed to do now? I am broke, unemployed, dumped, homeless, in horrible legal troubles, and my lawyer just fired me."

"Girl, I feel terrible to be part of it, but from what I've seen, I've got every confidence in you. Consider it an opportunity. Pajon's emails are the kind of evidence that a good plaintiff's lawyer will salivate over. And don't quote me, but JC didn't deserve you. You're too young, too cute, too smart and too hot for a jerk like him."

I hugged her. "Thanks. You were a great lawyer. It's my fault. I didn't see that Alyssa, Miguel, and Spartan could all be connected. I guess everything is."

"That's right. Do one thing over here, and everything over there can come tumbling down."

"Maybe that's the key to how I can get out of this mess."

"I have faith that you will. Good luck."

I left Marcia's office staggering under a load of legal files.

My new lawyer, Dan Charleston, was a former student of one of my University of Minnesota professors, Martin Epstein. He flipped through his notes and made further notations as Federal District Judge Abner Carlson worked through his court calendar.

The Federal Court's marble-clad floor, dark-paneled walls, high ceilings, and altar-like judge's bench, surmounted by a gilded Great Seal, bespoke its higher prestige and greater power than the tawdry State Court where I would do battle over Alyssa's fate. The lawyers were better dressed, more eloquent, and more deferential to the power of this judge. He was well-prepared, asked sharp questions, and made decisive rulings.

He had saved my case for last. When the clerk called "In the Matter of the Extradition of Alex Rios," Dan patted my hand, stood, and from the podium, announced his appearance and that "Alex is now known as Alexandra," and that I was present in court. The judge gazed out at me, poker-faced.

A long procession of lawyers for the other counsel table introduced themselves: United States attorney, a lawyer for the Thai Consulate, and two lawyers for Spartan, LLC. Dan was seriously outnumbered.

The judge cleared his throat. "I've read the petition for extradition, the various declarations, and Mr., ah, Ms. Rios's opposition, and I must tell you, counsel, that I am more impressed with the weight of the papers," he lifted and dropped the file with an amplified thud, "than I am with the weight of the arguments. If Ms. Rios is such a threat to Thai national security, why do they want her back in their country so badly?"

The government lawyer looked shocked, and conferred with the Thai consulate lawyer.

"The Thai security police believe that she might be able to provide evidence or other information that they could use in pursuing further investigations, I hasten to add, your Honor, that the Thai government has been a loyal and valuable ally in our own war on terror, accounting for, among many others, the arrest of Hambali, who planned many terrorist outrages, such as the Bali resort bombings. So really, this is a matter of our own security as much as for the Thais."

The judge invited Dan to respond.

"Your Honor, I would be surprised by the government's suggestion that we subordinate due process to unsavory alliances of convenience, but for the consistency of that policy with the conspiracy against Ms. Rios which has brought us here today. The string of emails attached to our forensic declaration show that the FBI colluded with the Thai Judicial Police, representatives of Spartan LLC and an incarcerated gang member, Miguel Carranza, to arrange for Ms. Rios's arrest. The taint of that conspiracy taints the legitimacy of this proceeding, and is itself cause to deny the petition for extradition into the hands of one of the conspirators."

The prosecutor jumped to his feet. "That's outrageous. Counsel is accusing the government of illegal alliances."

The judge waved him down. "I believe it was you who raised the importance of our cooperation with the Thai Security Forces. So let Mr. Charleston finish."

"These emails show that money, as well as promises of leniency and other jailhouse advantages, changed hands between the government, Spartan and Mr. Carranza. And now, the government, having been exposed in its artifices, proposes to hand Ms. Rios over to the Thai police, whose recourse to torture as an expedient of interrogation is all-too well known. In effect, Ms Rios is the victim of an unconstitutional extraordinary rendition conducted on the streets, and in the Courts, of her own country. "

The judge nodded and tapped his pen. "What of that? The government, and the rest of the parties here, do not come here with entirely clean hands."

The prosecutor affected unconcern. "Your honor, when investigating criminals, we sometimes rely on confidential informants like Mr. Carranza, who may themselves be criminals. I would note that Mr. Carranza has never been convicted of a crime, nor will he be, since he was murdered while in custody last week."

The prosecutor shot me an accusatory look. My surprise must have shown, because his expression turned disappointed, and returned his gaze to the judge.

"Perhaps Ms. Rios has been targeted. But what's wrong with targeting her if she's a criminal? That's what we do. She stole confidential data from this Spartan. When Thai authorities attempted to apprehend her, she absconded, evading Thai immigration by fleeing to a lawless border region. There, she allied herself with a terrorist band. At the conclusion of an affray between her group and an elite Thai force, she executed a Thai military officer. Look, your Honor, at our Exhibit D."

It was a fuzzy cell phone picture of me and Tran, holding semi automatics over the prone bodies of the Wa Army commandants Rap and Gurp, whom we had just shot. The light was bad, and we were out of range of the cell's primitive lens.

The judge turned to Dan. "What do you have to say about Exhibit D."

"These could be pictures of anyone. I don't think the Court could make any finding on the strength of this alone, much less a finding such as one for extradition, that would put Ms. Rios in jeopardy, not to mention also outside this court's jurisdiction."

The judge held the pictures up, and put on his reading glasses, flipped them up, and looked at me. The remodeled and madeover Alexandra must not have resembled the ragamuffin in the photo.

"I agree, neither of these girls looks like this young lady."

The lawyer from the Thai consulate beckoned the hapless prosecutor over and whispered a consultation, and the prosecutor returned to the podium.

"The government refers you to the affidavit of Colonel Makaratad, of the Third Thai Army, who captured and interrogated several terrorists who witnessed the cruelties committed by this defendant."

The judge shuffled through his papers.

"What about that, Mr. Charleston."

"If these alleged terrorists were here in Court to testify, the Court could hear them in their own words, and not through the filter of Colonel Makaratad. And presumably, they would be speaking Karen, and not Thai, like the Colonel's declaration. So we object to the Makaratad Declaration as hearsay."

The judge nodded toward Dan and waved dismissively as the prosecutor started to speak.

"I agree, the Makaratad affidavit is inadmissible. It's rank hearsay, and of the worst sort, since I, like Mr. Charleston, have no illusions about the interrogation methods used by the Thai Third Army. I also have some doubts about the neutrality of the Thai Third Army in this matter, since it seems to have some connections to Spartan. But that's neither here nor there in this proceeding."

Dan rose again, but the judge waved him to sit down.

"Quit while you're ahead, counsel. The government's petition to extradite Ms. Rios to the Kingdom of Thailand is denied."

He banged the gavel resoundingly, and left.

Dan and I lingered outs the courtroom while our adversaries packed up their boxes. The prosecutor grimaced at me and snarled at Dan.

"This isn't over, you know. We have charges of our own we can bring."

Dan smiled and handed the lawyers from the Thai Consulate and Spartan his business card.

"We didn't stay behind for chit chat. I just want to exchange contact information, and I didn't get these gentlemen's cards. May I?"

They took out their cards and Dan quickly examined them. He reached into his briefcase and handed a thick package to one of the Spartan lawyers.

"I see that you are in-house counsel. That being the case, Spartan is hereby served with Alexandra Rios's complaint for Civil Harassment, Invasion of Privacy, and Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights. We'll be asking the clerk to assign it back to this Court as a related matter, so, I look forward to seeing you back here real soon."

As we entered the elevator I looked back at them, huddled on bench outside the Courtroom, reading my complaint against them.

Dan shook my hand. I gripped it, but then I hugged him.

"You were brilliant."

He gently removed my arms from his waist.

"I wouldn't be very brilliant if I returned that hug. As long as we are attorney and client, we are strictly off-limits to one another."

"I know, but I just couldn't help myself."

"Alexandra, I have to tell you, I couldn't have done it without you. Your background work made my part so easy. You are every bit as brilliant as Martin boasted. And we are going to need it all, to vanquish Sparta and plunder its treasures."

As we left the courthouse, my heart throbbed with anxiety at the prospect of another legal ambush. None came. We were on the attack now. I felt a surge of energy and hope.

Dan Charleston's office overlooks the Third Street Promenade, a sunny slice of Santa Monica where shopping moms and the homeless mingle in a stream made for consumer commerce. I used to come here often, a skinny boy in tight jeans, looking for something, or someone, to make myself complete, and never finding it. The Barnes and Noble at the corner of Wilshire and Third didn't carry the books I needed to understand myself. I had needed to search, and travel the world to discover, and remake myself.

Dan wasn't classically handsome. His face was a little more gentle, and piscine, than the movie studios, or I, prefer in men. He was more a poet than a cowboy. But he was tall, fit, and he had big hazel eyes that exuded empathy and understanding.

"Alexandra, I would really like to handle all of your legal matters for you, but you have too many for a small shop like ours. We are going to have to figure out a referral for the custody matter."

"Why not? The case is in great shape. There's just one more hearing."

"The only time I have ever been in family court is for my own divorce, and if the result there is any indication, you don't want me as your custody lawyer. My ex's lawyer ate my lunch."

"I'm sorry. I mean, about your divorce."

"Don't be. I'm a happily divorced man. But there is something else. The District Attorney asked to interview you about the Carranza kid."

"Can I talk to you about that?"

"Yeah, that relates to the other matters. And what you tell me is privileged."

"I figured out that Miguel must have been cooperating with the prosecutors from what he told me about my own case. He knew everything, and delivered me to him as if I were a package from home. After he had assaulted me, when I was being transported to the women's detention, I told another inmate about my suspicions."

"That's it? No other communications?"

"The inmate had just accused me of being Miguel's whore and attacked me. I was trying to divert his anger. So I told him I though Miguel had snitched me in to jail. I thought they might rough him up, and I'd get some revenge. I didn't think they'd kill him on my say so. Trannies don't exactly rule the yard, you know."

I tried to look distraught. Dan wasn't buying it.

"Look, you may be glad he's out of the way, but it would have been good to have interviewed him before he got shanked. In litigation, it's good to have the witnesses stay alive. So while I'm on your team, no more extrajudicial remedies, OK? Let's leave the dirty tricks to the bad guys."

"I'm sorry. I was scared, and angry."

"That's why you didn't report it as a rape to the medical staff, I suppose?"

"I don't know. If you've never been raped, I suppose it's hard to understand the feelings afterwards."

My eyes were welling with tears. I had caused another death in my circle. Miguel had mistreated me, and I feared for Alyssa, but he was gone now, beyond redemption, just another dead body floating in my wake.

Dan must have noticed my emotional turmoil. "Just as well that you didn't complain, I suppose. It takes your motive out of their inquiry."

"Should I send flowers to his funeral?"

"It's too late. There's already been a revenge killing in his honor. Just stay out of it. Focus on nailing Spartan's coffin shut. Focus on Alyssa."

"I don't know what to do. Family law lawyers are expensive, and I'm so broke I moved in on my mom. How pathetic am I?"

"It's great. It makes you look like you have a stable, loving home."

"Ugh, if you knew what it was like, living with the Queen of Dysfunction."

"She won't pay for a lawyer?"

"I don't think she wants me to have a baby. She's so selfish."

"Here's a print of the home page of the William's Institute at UCLA. http://www.law.ucla.edu/WilliamsInstitute/home.html. It's mainly an academic program but they can put you in touch with legal aid lawyers who specialize in transgender rights. I think they can help you with a referral, that is, if you can convince them that you're actually transsexual.

I blushed. "Thanks, I guess that's meant as a compliment."

"I was only stating the obvious, Ms. Rios."

"Well, thank you for making yourself clear."

We exchanged a glance that was privileged in every sense of the word. I tingled all of the way home.

The daffodils rippled like a golden ocean in the afternoon marine breeze. The garden at my Mom and her boyfriend Cole's place overlooks a brushy canyon beyond their neatly trimmed boxwood hedge. Alyssa pranced down a gravel path, stopped, and sniffed one of the trumpet shaped blooms.

"Flora," she said.

"La flora es hermosa, Or you could say, `The flower is pretty.'" I said.

She pointed at me. "You are pretty, mama."

I swept her into my arms and hugged her.

"And you are beautiful, my little sweet."

The court-appointed family therapist took some notes as Alyssa ran to the hedge and peered over.

My mom's voice rang out from a distant window. "Don't let her go so close to the edge."

My mother had insisted that she needed to make dinner, but she was watching over this, my eleventh custodial evaluation visit, just as she had overseen all of the others. She never joined in my and Alyssa's games or play, but she offered plenty of advice.

The therapist took another note.

I am not sure who my Mom resented the most: me, Alyssa, or Elaine Marcus, the therapist charged with reporting to the Court on my suitability.

I had scraped together the therapist's retainer out of the remnants of the $9,999 that I had brought back to the US from Europe. This was the final evaluation session before she wrote her report. She had handed me a bill for $5,000 as the session began. I struggled to fight back my anxiety over how to pay her.

Alyssa threw daisy petals into the Koi pond. She squealed with delight when I produced breadcrumbs, and the large-lipped orange beasts surfaced and efficiently gulped them.

"Pescadoras, fish." She curled back her lips and made fish faces at me, which I returned, and then we collapsed in laughter in one another's arms. Her plump arms and tiny fists clung to me.

"I love you, mama."

I felt overwhelmed. I choked back the rush of emotion, which threatened leave me helplessly in tears. I had heard a score of smitten, post-orgasmic lovers declare their love for me. In some cases, I even believed them. All of their proclamations had the weight of a feather compared to these words from the lips of my child. And for the first time, I answered them.

"Yo amo, Alyssa."

The therapist scratched at her notepad. I tried not to let her distract me from the perfection of the moment.

"I am sorry to interrupt this beautiful moment, but your hour is up. Come Alyssa, it's time for us to go." She took her hand. "Kiss your mama adios now."

Alyssa kissed me, and I her, but as the therapist led her away, she looked at first confused, and then angry. She started screaming, and broke away toward me, bawling.

The therapist scooped her up and carried her away. I stood frozen, overcome with feelings as Alyssa's cries turned into hysteria, and then a fist pounding, shrieking tantrum.

"No, I want my mama, I want my mama."

The therapist looked back at me helplessly. "Please cooperate with me, and help me put her in the car. It's obvious that she has a bond with you, but you need to help me here if you are going to get my help. I have obligations to take her to her grandparents. If I don't bring her home on time, we both will have consequences to face."

I approached, and she quieted. I stroked Alyssa's hair. She gripped my finger in her tiny little fist.

"Don't worry, baby, you can come back soon. And next time, maybe you can stay a long time."

The therapist got her into the car seat as Alyssa clung to my finger. I gave her final kiss, and slipped my finger from her grasp.

"No, mama, I want my mama."

I endured her screams as the therapist's car wound down the canyon. They resounded in my head for the rest of the night.

Take Southwest from LAX to Las Vegas on any Friday evening and you will find a cabin packed with pretty young things. A larger proportion of them are going there to work the weekend as strippers, hookers, or both. You'll see the same girls returning on the early morning flights on Sunday. In the harsh morning light, they are pensive, tired, and trying to make the psychological transition from sex object to their desperate lives as students, single mother's slinging coffee at a donut shop, or underpaid office workers. This is the reality of the service economy for the poor, undereducated and underprivileged. And on this Friday afternoon, I was part of that migratory flock of gaudy birds.

I checked into a non-smoking hotel room with two queen beds. According to Eros.com, Audrey, may latest nom de boudoir, was visiting from Paris, France, for a short time only. Perhaps it was this international flavor of my promotion, or maybe it was the weak dollar, but my visitors bore powerful witness to the profound effects of globalization.

I had a Russian oligarch, a German banker, a French financier, a British lawyer, an Italian investor, and even a Thai real-estate tycoon. I had just said, "tsia tsia nii" to my third Chinese billionaire when my cell phone chirped again, with a 213 area code, which denotes Los Angeles.

"Hi, this is Audrey. How may I help you?" I affected a slight French accent.

"I saw your ad on Eros and I would like to get together with you. How much do charge? The ad didn't say."

"I don't talk money over the phone."

"Well, how am I going to know how much you cost before I come over?"

I was suspicious. This sounded like LE. But in Vegas? It's not legal to hook there, but the police usually wink at female prostitution if the whores conduct themselves discreetly. LVPD reserves most of its harassment for the openly transsexual trade. The hookers are part of the fun "that stays in Vegas". We're for attracting the high rollers and the convention business.

This creep didn't sound like a high roller, But I was about a thousand short, after expenses, of paying the fees for my custody battle. I decided to take a chance.

"OK, bring me a bouquet of three dozen red roses."

"I understand. Three hundred."

"Red roses. Call me from the lobby of TI and I'll give you my room number."

"That's where I am now. Can I come right up."

"Give me ten minutes, and then come up. I'll give you the room number now, but don't repeat it."

"OK, I'll call you from there. I like oral, followed by doggy style, OK?"

"I don't talk about anything we do together over the phone."

"OK, but should I still come up."

"I'll see you in ten minutes."

I straightened the sheets and jumped into the shower. The Chinese billionaire had cum on my boobs, and his tiny little cock had produced an extraordinary volume of semen. I felt too dirty even for this creep. I glossed my lips, put on my teddy and heels, and then the phone rang with the 213 area code again.

"It's me, I'm right outside. Sorry I'm late, but there was a line at the ATM."

"Please stop talking about money." My blood throbbed with paranoia, but it was too late to withdraw. The creep was outside my hotel room. If he was LE, I needed to get rid of him from inside, not through the door. I selected voice record on my cell phone, pushed start, and set it on the bedside table Then I let him in.

He was a non-descript, well-dressed Caucasian. Without a word of greeting, he handed me a fold of bills.

"Is that money? Don't give it to me."

"I am putting it on your table. I'll leave it there after we have intercourse."

Wise whores and legitimate tricks never talk explicitly about what either party expects from a transaction. They should agree, through mutual gestures and non verbal communication, what the soup du jour will be. His obtuseness made me suspect that he was a decoy, I was his prey, and that he was wired.

I shrugged my shoulders and affected innocence. "Oh, I didn't understand you. The noise from the lobby was too great. What do you think I am?"

"I know what you are. Let's do it."

"You are mistaken. Please leave, and take your filthy money with you, you cochon."

He pushed me toward the bed. I ducked away and reached for the room phone. "I am calling security to remove you, if you don't go voluntarily."

"Don't bother, you little bitch, I already got your number."

He slammed the door and left. I dialed the bell captain, dressed, and swiftly packed. I got the last night flight back to LA. I spent a sleepless night alone in my bedroom in Bel Air.

Now hear this, you Las Vegas players. Your happy endings may stay in Vegas. But for the those poor girls who work the street corners, the bars, the hotels, and the strip clubs, what happens in Vegas, comes home with them to haunt their dreams.

I was eating a bowl of oatmeal and sipping coffee when my Mom came into the kitchen.

"Oh dear, I didn't expect you so soon. Did you have a bad night at the slots?"

"Terrible, and the weather was awful. I hate Vegas,"

"Help me make breakfast for Cole. He wants bacon and eggs again. That man's appetite, and diet, are going to be the end of him."

I cracked three eggs in a bowl and started stirring them. "Mom, I need to ask you a favor."

"Yes darling, but you are getting to an age where you should look to your own resources. You're almost twenty one."

"Mom, I haven't asked you or my dad for much, but I really need you and Cole to back me in this custody hearing."

"Of course, we'll be there for you."

"I also need you to say that Alyssa and I can live here, for as long as we need a place, while I finish my degree at UCLA."

"I thought you got a scholarship."

"Yes, I got another scholarship, but I can't eat my tuition, and I can't sleep under my books."

"I can ask Cole, after all, it's his house."

"I already did. He said it's OK with him, and to check with you."

"But will that mean those people, you know, Alyssa's relatives, will be coming here to see her? I wouldn't want that."

"Mom, it's whatever the Court orders, and we can't predict that now. But would you want them to be prevented from seeing their granddaughter? Whatever you think of them, she is much a part of them, and of their dead daughter, as she is of you and me."

Shame at her role in Marta's death again overwhelmed her persnickety sense of order. She nodded assent.

"You are going to have to put that in writing. My lawyer is putting an affidavit together for you and Cole."

She nodded again.

"And one more thing, Mom. Can you promise me that you will love her as if she were your own?"

"Darling, I'll try, but it's been so hard for me, to absorb all of the changes that you've been through. Sometimes, it's just too much for me."

"Alyssa is the only child I will ever have. She is the only grandchild that you will ever have. Can you learn to love her more than you have ever loved anything else? Because if something happens to me, she will need you "

"I know. And I will try."

I looked down at the coagulating eggs and felt sick. One who must try to love a child, or a grandchild, is probably incapable of unconditionally loving them. If I managed to win my battle for Alyssa, I realized that my stay in Bel Air would have to be temporary.

I needed to find someone to share my life with, to care for Alyssa in case something happened to me. I felt, for the first time, that I needed a permanent relationship to fill the empty place that my parents' loveless home had left in my heart. But for now, I still needed my Mom, if only as a prop for my court appearance.

"Thanks Mom, I love you too."

I finished Cole's eggs an put them in a covered dish. She put them on a tray with his bacon, waffles and orange juice and took them to their bedroom suite.

"Thanks for your help, honey."

"Don't mention it, Mom."

The only matter on calendar Courtroom 55A was the Matter of Alyssa G, Rios vs. Gonzalez-Lopez. Arturo Pajon and my new lawyer, Andrea Andrews, were arguing heatedly in the corridor. I was getting nervous watching them go at it through the slit window in the courtroom door. But it was much better than looking at the evil eye that Mrs. Gonzalez was giving me.

Andrea's a post-op like me, except she had her surgery in her forties. She had the voice modification surgery which makes her sound like she's got laryngitis. Other than that, she looks pretty good. She probably would have been pretty hot if she had transitioned earlier in life.

She told me that she envied me for enjoying my youth and beauty as a transsexual, whereas she had transitioned at an age when most GG women have trouble getting laid. But she had been intimidated by the specter of parental disapproval, and waited until they were gone, and she was middle aged.

Every transition is tough, mine included. A lifetime exposure to testosterone changes the body and mind in subtle, and irreversible ways. On the other hand, she had a lifetime, unlike some kids who try to transition early, like Gwen Araujo or Lawrence King. Sure, she was a lawyer, and I was an accused prostitute. We each paid our own price for acquiring our womanhood. I had lived an underground, criminal life, and she lived male, middle class pretenses into her middle years. It's a hard a bargain, transitioning in America.

But neither do I envy the lives of kids in places like Thailand who start hormones at ten or eleven, and get to experience adolescence in their natural gender. Thai transsexuals grow up to look, and sound, completely feminine, even prettier that the Thai GGs. Thai schoolboys don't barbarize or butcher their katoey classmates like American kids murder transgender students in the classroom. Instead, the Thai boys just fuck them bareback and then pimp them to fat Australian guys. Thai transsexuals are tolerated, but they are cultivated to become sex toys for the farang tourist trade. So you see, each in its own way, all cultures stigmatize, and ultimately victimize transsexuals.

The courtroom buzzer sounded and the bailiff asked me to summon the lawyers. I knocked on the window and beckoned them, and they came in, still hissing at one another. The bailiff called our case as the judge took her seat on the bench and the lawyers took theirs at the two tables facing her.

"Mr. Pajon, you left the courtroom last time promising to produce evidence that would show that Ms. Rios's status somehow rendered her unfit for custody despite the Court-appointed evaluator's emphatic opinion to the contrary, as set forth in her report which I have read and entirely agree with. So even though this is Ms. Rios's petition, I would like you to begin."

"Your Honor, we submitted the declaration of Eric Larson, our investigator, which reveals a lifetime of crime, pornography, and prostitution."

I heard my mother gasp, and Cole clear his throat. I was afraid to look at them.

Andrea jumped to her feet and nudged Pajon from the podium. "I object and move to strike. Mr. Larson dredged up some movie graphics and personal ads of women who may faintly resemble my client, but no evidence that connects Ms. Rios to the actresses in the films or the advertisers on the internet."

Pajon swung the microphone away from Andrea.

"I would be able to provide that testimony if Mr. Rios had answered my questions at the deposition. Ms. Andrews objected to my questions and Mr. Rios refused either refused to answer or was evasive. I'd like to put him on the stand right now, and ask about his role in "Transsexual Prostitutes."

The judge looked at me, and then back at Pajon.

"Why didn't you ask the producers, or the stars of these films."

"They had disappeared, or refused to identify their actors by anything other than their screen names. And her co-star in Transsexual Prostitutes, Mr. Carranza, is deceased."

The judge frowned. "Yes, I recall that. I denied your motion to admit his affidavit since he was unavailable for cross examination. Ms. Andrews, I am afraid I am going to have to give Mr. Pajon a little bit of leeway here. Ms. Rios, please take the stand. And Mr. Pajon, you will refer to the witness with feminine pronouns or I will immediately terminate your examination."

The clerk swore me in, and I took my seat in the witness box, an enclosed platform by the judge's side. I avoided my mom's teary eyes, and Cole cast his eyes to some distant corner of the courtroom.

Pajon gave me smirk, and produced voice recorder from his briefcase.

"Before I ask you about your filmography, I would like to play a voice recording and ask you to identify the voices."

The tinny speaker began replaying our phone conversation from last weekend. The background noise of casino gaiety contrasted starkly with the grim, tense mood in the courtroom.

"Hi, this is Audrey. How may I help you?"

Pajon clicked the pause button.

"Ms Rios, is that your voice?"

"Yes, it sounds like me."

He clicked play again, and the nightmarish conversation from the past weekend repeated.

"I saw your ad on Eros and I would like to get together with you. How much do charge? The ad didn't say."

Pajon's grin turned snarky. "Do you recognize that voice?"

"Yes, it's someone who called my hotel room in Las Vegas."

"Your Honor, I would like to play the rest of this conversation uninterrupted."

"You may proceed."

All eyes focused on me as the judge and the spectators strained to hear Eric Larson's cunning deceits and my cautious, but self-incriminating words.

"I don't talk about things like that over the phone."

"Well, how am I going to know how much before I come over?"

"OK, bring me a bouquet of three dozen red roses."

"I understand. Three hundred."

"Three dozen red roses. Call me from the lobby of TI and I'll give you my room number."

"That's where I am now. Can I come right up."

"Give me ten minutes, and then come up. I'll give you the room number now, but don't repeat it."

"OK, I'll call you from there. I like oral, followed by doggy style, OK?"

"I don't talk about anything we do together over the phone."

"OK, but should I still come up."

"I'll see you in ten minutes."

I was quivering with anxiety and rage. My mother held her face in her hands, and rose to leave. Cole put his arms around her, restraining her, but avoided looking at me. Andrea stormed to her feet.

"Your Honor, I object. This is a complete sandbagging. And I would also point out that we didn't hear any informed consent by Ms. Rios to be recorded, making this an illegal wiretap."

The judge had a pained look on her face as she turned to Pajon. "What about that?"

"I'll ask Ms. Rios a follow up question to establish why it's a legal wiretap." The judge nodded, and he turned to me.

"In what state were you and the caller both located during that call?"

"Nevada."

Pajon thanked me, and turned to the judge. "Unlike California, which requires the consent of both parties, Nevada only requires the consent of one party. Obviously, Mr. Larson, as the person who recorded the call, consented."

The judge sighed. "All right then, the voice recording is admitted."

Andrea settled in her seat, looking defeated.

Pajon gave me a scornful gaze, "Ms, Rios, do you deny that this conversation constitutes an agreement between you and Mr. Larson to have sexual intercourse in exchange for his payment of money to you?"

"Yes, I deny that." My mom and Cole were slumping in their seats.

"You realize that you are under oath, and that giving false testimony under oath is, like prostitution, crime?"

"Yes, I know that."

"If it's not an agreement for paid sex, what is that conversation?"

"A misunderstanding."

"I think everyone in this courtroom except you has a perfect and clear understanding of what you and Mr. Larson were talking about, so how do you explain this misunderstanding?"

"Because the recording is incomplete."

"It's sounds like it reached it's logical, if regrettable conclusion."

"There was more, Would you like to hear it?"

"I think we would all like to hear it."

I took my cell phone from my purse and asked the judge "Is it OK if I turn this on?"

"Any objection, Mr. Pajon?"

He shook his head. I selected voice recordings, and pressed play.

"Is that money? Don't give it to me."

"I am putting it on your table. I'll leave it there after we have intercourse."

"Oh, I didn't understand you. The noise from the lobby was too great. What do you think I am?"

"I know what you are. Let's do it."

"You are mistaken. Please leave, and take your filthy money with you, you cochon."

There was a pause, and a shuffling of feet.

"I am calling security to remove you, if you don't go voluntarily."

"Don't bother, you little bitch, I already got your number."

Pajon stood frozen, at a loss for words. I supplied the coda. I let loose the sob that had been forming in my chest.

"Now you see what troubles a girl like me has finding someone to love. And yet you want to prevent me from being a mother to the one person in the world who really loves me."

Pajon stammered, "I have nothing further for this witness."

Andrea flashed me a smile and addressed the judge. "I think the witness's testimony is complete. Nothing further."

The judge looked down at the pile of papers and composed herself.

"Mr. Pajon, notwithstanding your efforts at entrapment and character assassination of the petitioner, Ms. Rios, I find nothing in your evidence that gives me any hesitation in following the Court-appointed evaluator's recommendation and to award full custody of Alyssa to Ms. Rios. Ms. Rios and the Gonzalez's will meet and discuss their visitation rights, and if you can't work something out, I'll reserve jurisdiction."

She banged the gavel and left the courtroom. Pajon had a swift conversation with the Gonzalez's and departed without a word to me or Andrea. I approached Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez.

"I am so sorry that it had to come to this. I want you both to be part of Alyssa's life."

Mr. Gonzalez muttered "Maricone," and walked away. She shrugged her shoulders.

"He doesn't care. Now that El Lobo, and the company that hired the lawyer for us won't pay us any more, he is happy to be rid of her. But I will miss my little angel."

I was stunned, and angry. I wanted to tell Mrs. Gonzalez's what horrible people she and her husband were for keeping a parent and child apart, and in an unloving home, just to collect money. But I bit my tongue, as the implications of this information settled in.

"Would you mind putting that in writing?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"If it means that I can see her again, of course I will."

"Mrs. Gonzalez, I want nothing more than to make sure that we both remain part of Alyssa's lives, for as long as we live."

She looked at me, and down the hall. Her husband was nowhere in sight. She hugged me, and said "Gracias, El Domingo."

My mom and Cole gave me a ride home. We barely exchanged a word. My victory over the Gonzalez's had come at a terrible cost, for my mother and Cole had now seen a part of my life which they could never have imagined.

A pair of seagulls larked above a swaying palm outside the window of Dan Charleston's conference room. I was on my third cup of bad office coffee and getting more nervous with each passing moment. What was taking them so long?

Dan burst in bearing a sheaf of documents and looking weary and disheveled.

"It took all night, but we have a signed settlement document. Here's the final deal. Three million for you, five hundred thousand for Nancee and Tran, and two million to establish a foundation for the care and compensation of the families and the girls infected in the N-9 study. On that last piece, I am going to get my partners to waive our contingency fee. You, Nancee and Tran, and Spartan execute mutual releases, and Spartan agrees to never pursue any civil or criminal charges against you or them. You agree not to publish the study."

"No, I can't do that. It's important that the world know the harms, and the risks of N-9."

"I got that covered. Spartan will commission an independent research institute to complete your N-9 study at its expense, and when it's published, to credit you, Nancee and Tran as the original researchers. You get to nominate the researcher."

"Will Spartan agree to offer the role to my dad's institute in Lucerne?"

He tapped an email on his Blackberry. Seconds later, it buzzed as the response arrived.

"That's acceptable to Spartan, but they were surprised by your choice. They were under the impression that you and Dr. Rios were estranged from one another."

"We are. I am hoping that if my father sees the legitimacy of my study and the good faith and high standards with which I conducted it, he may come to see it, and me, as valid."

"So if Dr. Rios accepts, he will be validating not only the research, but the researcher. Brilliant."

"Yes. Tran, Nancee and I nearly killed ourselves on that study. I am willing to stake my reputation on it."

"One more thing. As soon as you sign, and the wires clear, I'm not your lawyer anymore."

"Are you so eager to get rid of me? I thought we made a great team."

"Not at all. But if I am not your lawyer, I can invite you and Alyssa to come on a celebratory vacation with me to Fiji."

"In that case, may I borrow your pen?"

As I signed the settlement agreement, he walked around the table, pulled me to my feet, and we kissed. We rocked back and forth, letting our bodies mold to one another's and our breaths conjoin into a single flow.

I tried to prevent myself from imagining a life together with Dan and Alyssa, from building another dream to be crushed and destroyed by my past and my own self destructive impulses, but I could not. I let my soul float into that dream, and decided to devote my life to making it a reality.

When Alyssa, Dan and I returned from Fiji, we discovered a large box had been delivered to his condo. It was a large, Swiss-made doll house. When Dan had finished assembling it, Alyssa squealed with delight. She and I spent a long, jet-lagged night playing with the filigreed screens, lacy curtains, and the hand painted wooden dolls, whose blond hair and fair faces resembled our own.

Alyssa refused to go to her own bed. She fell asleep next to the dollhouse, clasping the mommy and baby dolls in her little hands. I curled up next to her, holding in my hand the gift card. I repeated to myself the words inscribed on the card as I drifted off to sleep:

"To my daughter and granddaughter, with love, from Eduardo Rios, PhD."

The End