Friday is International Day against Homophobia & Transphobia, and my thoughts since this morning have been with Brigida.
When I first met her she was a 60-something trans woman — or rather, as she proudly liked to call herself, a “femmenella” because she had never wanted to undergo operations. One of the first things she told me, in her very colorful way, was that yes, she was a woman, but one "with padded breasts and an aroused penis.”
As a teenager she began to dress as a female, and her parents sought to gain from it by having her work as a prostitute, which she went on doing for the next 40 years.
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She used to tell me that when she was younger, her dream was to become a maid in a Grand Hôtel, because "her man", Giggino, after he paid for the lovemaking, would always tell her stories about things that happened in the grand hotel where he said he was a night porter. She would then go down to the Excelsior and dream of another life, since hers was in squalid boarding houses rented by the hour.
When we first met, I thought she was very beautiful.
And it may have been Giggino who, in a way, gave her a way out for another existence.
Brigida contracted AIDS and since she "did not want to hurt anyone," she stopped working and began her life as a sick person.
When she came to me, she didn’t have much time left to live and was also depressed because of all the medicines she was taking, which had rotted her teeth and made her hair fall out, and she saw herself as ugly.
But when we first met, I thought she was very beautiful.
With her big smile, big voice and contagious laughter alternating with tears of genuine despairn as she told me all the anecdotes of her profession.
And one of her stories stuck with me.
She was a very clean person, and could not bear to go to the men's toilets because she said "that men are dirty and stinky," so she used the women's toilets.
I am more woman than you!
But one time a lady who saw her in a restaurant bathroom, when she realized she was a man, began to scream.
Then Brigida, without flinching, said to her: "Signò, what are you screaming for? Do I scare you? I only have one little detail extra, but I am more woman than you! And if you don't believe me, ask your husband and see what he says."
And so I asked her, “Did you know her husband? And what happened when the lady came back to the table?"
"No, Dottorè, of course I didn't know the husband. But the lady immediately shut up and she left without saying a word. Clearly, she instead knew her husband very well..."
Today, Brigida is gone. Or, as I like to imagine, she now works permanently in a five-star hotel. When they hired her, they did not use the name “Bruno” that was on her ID card because they realized there had been a mistake. And they did not make her clean the rooms — instead she works in the restaurant. That way, everyone can see her looking beautiful, waiting tables, proudly swaying her padded breasts.
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Learn more about Worldcrunch's exclusive Dottoré! series here.