Ghosts of T'Girls Past
by Barbi Satin
New York City 1998
Follow up to
High Rent Tranny Whore
It was all falling apart at the end. After a year of great adventures and mind numbing boredom we had parted ways. There had been some good times there and a few friends I will always miss. So many had come and gone in that year and now I was gone as well. The place had gone from a new and promising start of being the best to scratching out simple survival. I looked back then and remembered just the good. The cover of Adam as Eve, Penthouse calling me the most in demand T girl dominatrix in NYC but now the show was over and the curtain had fallen. You should never hang around a darkened theater after the last show.
I guess I just wasn't ready to let go. I had to go back and try once more and it had fallen from the sky. One phone call from Richard at Pandora's. He told me Bianca was opening a new place and needed T girl dominatrix.
It was just one block over but it wasn't the same. On 30th street the view was cleaner and brighter and the buildings more modern. At night you could see the reflection in the glass across the street of the Empire State Building and you felt like this was New York at her brightest and best.
On 31st it was bleak and grungy. The winds felt colder and it was New York at her darkest. The building itself was so very old and had that smell of a place better forgotten. I came up and began work just after the 1st of January.
I found the building depressing and the old elevator creaked on the way to the top floor. It was one of those buildings from the last century and you could feel the ghosts as soon as you entered.
On my first day there a short man greeted me at the door. He introduced himself not as himself as he was today but by the name he was know as in the past. He had been a TV domina at her old place. He was there to just get me settled in but he just kept talking about his past glories lost. I didn't have the heart to ask him to stop.
The little front room had a charm to it. It looked like a room a grandmother would live in. Lace curtains on the one window and an antique desk. There was a glass case filled with old wigs.
There was only one session room and it was painted a depressing orange. No equipment at all and just a couch. There was a small office in the back that was cluttered with the new owners things and remnants of the past owner. There were three other rooms and one was in the firm grasp of the past owner even as she lay dieing of old age and cancer. It looked like it had been used for transformations. It had an old lady smell and when she handed it over to become a dungeon she stipulated that her last client be allowed to keep it as his. His room to become a woman a few last times and remember her, keeping her ghost alive. A little old man who in time would adore me as young and gorgeous and as one who lived his dream of so long ago. When she was transformed I would always tell her how wonderful she looked and it meant so much to her.
The other big room was packed with 40 years of fabrics, corsets, patterns and a collection of wigs that were all fit for little old ladies. In the time they had been there they became like little rat nests in boxes. You could tell it was a real business sometime long in the past. All that was left was clutter, dry rot and dust.
As I settled in I went to look for the shower. There was a sink with a one-gallon hot water tank and a toilet that was broken. I should have left then and never looked back. I don't know why I stayed there. Maybe it has a lot in common with being a drunk. You have to hit bottom before you can let go.
There was one other office in the back. It was full of forty years of records and photos. You could tell that she had stopped trying sometime in the 80's Her name was Muriel and the space was once a business known as Fem Fashions. It was a TV transformation salon and shop for those who were closeted.
I would stay at the Stanton some nights and hope for a room. It was unusual for anyone to rent a room there for more than an hour. Peeling wallpaper and always cold but at least there was shower in the morning. Most days I had to wash in the sink after a night on the couch.
The city had changed in those few weeks and clients were so very scarce. There was nothing but a small TV that would receive one channel in the front room with one dim bulb and the ghost of Muriel.
I came down with the Flu and almost died that February. I was so worn down and hungry at times. I went home to my mountains and recovered but was never the same again.
Some days there would be a few calls but they almost never showed. Had time passed me by so fast? One day I was the hot girl in town and now there was nothing at all. I spent my time digging in the past. There were books there from the 60's and 70's. Newspapers from Tania Volen like the old Transvestian.
I found the old photos stored in shoeboxes and recognized some of the faces. Those first tranny magazines I had seen as a teen had those same faces. The ceiling was a glass transom and the light in the day filtered through the filth mocking me. At night the heat would rise up through the glass and out into the cold night.
Even the deli had changed somehow. It was another place when you had to make a right on 5th to get there. The hit song that winter always on the radio was "In The Arms of the Angels". It fit that place so well, so sad and depressing.
Jasmine stopped by just once but I think it broke her heart seeing me there. Other than that it seemed like that one block might as well have been 1,000 miles. A few of my old clients found me and stayed with me but even they felt it. Like visiting a tomb at night.
When it was almost the end another Mistress came in. We sat and talked and I liked her a lot. She had been famous once in the S&M scene of the 1980's. We never once said it aloud but we said it with our eyes. This was a house for the relics of old. We drank cans of Fosters and just wanted some peace.
Someone had called in those final days and asked what the name of the place was. I realized then that the place had no name. I told him it was just a small corner in the twilight zone.
Twice a week the little old man would arrive. He would change in his room and compliment me each time. He was almost 80 and would talk of the sex change surgery he hoped for one day. When she was transformed she would try to figure out what I did there in those slutty outfits. I didn't have the heart to tell her or to shatter her dream world. She would shop at Macy's and then come back and become him again.
January faded into March. There were a few moments where past glory seemed to bloom. An interview shown all over Europe and a few clients who were interesting. On March 21st the landlord shut off the heat. It was still in the 20's at night and I would be chilled to the bone. I couldn't see clients and told the owner. She said they would be warm enough one I warmed them up.
I left that night and took the N and R to South Ferry. Even the ferry felt like a funeral barge that night. I picked up my car on Staten Island and came back for my things. I left by the Holland Tunnel and took just one look back and said Good Bye to New York. I was no longer a High Rent Tranny Whore but at least I left before I became a Low Rent Tranny Whore. Both of those rental properties are in a place called hell but at least the high rent district was gilded in fools' gold.
The End
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