EPISODE 9 - THE anaesthetist

I had never felt at home in my own skin. 

I had no mirrors in my house—apart from the one in the bathroom to shave. Dysmorphia was sneaky that way, all she needed was a mirror so I purposefully limited her access. Outside in the world, I knew to avoid my reflections in shop windows, in car rear-view mirrors and in anything that may cast my own misery back at me. If someone took a picture of me, I wouldn't ask to see it. Looking at it sent me into a spiral of self-flagellation. No matter how great a day I had had. A single photo of me annihilated all self-esteem. I instantly became ashamed of my own existence, of the mere presence of me somewhere. I lied and escaped. In bed, far from everyone, the humiliation lessened. My body didn’t belong to me. It was simply a mass I carried. A mass I didn’t understand. A mass I rejected. How could this be me? How come the world sees this? I’m not that 1.95 mountain of flesh and fat that I am made to carry. I recalled young girls being startled by my presence in the metro late at night; women tensing up when I stood behind them on the escalator. I was Quasimodo. I was the Beast. I am.  

I wanted to be Lumière, a candelabra that sang and danced. I wanted to be Fraulein Maria in the Sound of Music, Sister Mary Clarence in Sister Act or Winnifred Anderson in Hocus Pocus. Not this, never this. 

It took me years to distance myself from what I saw. Years to understand that I could not trust my eyes. That what was there, or I thought was there, wasn’t real, that it was distorted. Years of internalised fatphobia. Years to come to term with the fact that I was not a man. That I may have been assigned male at birth, but I wasn’t a man. Years. 

There was a long queue to access the machines. It must have been the hospital’s rush hour or something. I stood in line, patiently waiting to retrieve my ticket. The whole of Madrid had been digitalised and all you had to do was slide your Seguridad Social card into a machine and retrieve a ticket with a number in bold black letters. The number would then appear onto a screen and that was your cue to enter your doctor’s office. So before having a turn, you had to get a ticket. You queued for a number to queue for your turn. The 21st century. 

That anaesthetist’s appointment brought the surgery into reality. They were actually going to cut me open and start rummaging through my head. My number was called quickly and I made my way to a set of double doors that seemed hidden from sight. I followed the signs and headed toward a cubicle before I was hailed by a nurse. 

“¿Qué haces?” 

“I have an appointment. My number was called. Room 3.” She stared at me, like I didn’t understand. I fucking understood.  

“¿Cómo se llama?” I gave her my name. 

“¡Pues, si tiene la razón!” I know, bitch!

I sat in room 3 and waited for the anaesthetist to join me. A stylish young woman walked in and frowned. 

“¿Señor?” she said with a tone. She had a little Spanish flag bracelet tied to her wrist. We belonged to opposite side of the political spectrum. I wanted rights. She wanted me converted. I knew I passed as an average cis white guy. I was glad I had decided against the skirt, against the nails and against overly accessorising. I rapidly tucked the headscarf I had tied to my beltloop under my ass before she noticed. I stood straighter, uncrossed my legs, uncrossed my arms, coughed and stopped smiling. Code-shifting didn’t come naturally to me anymore but I had played the part long enough that I knew what to do, I just hoped she wouldn’t smell the faggotry on me. 

“Tengo una cita.” I said, butching my voice up. 

“¿Sí? Su nombre?” I answered as manly as I could. Without smiling. Without adding a bit of a wink-wink nudge-nudge. That woman was the one deciding how many drugs to put in my system so that I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the operation. Fascist or not, I needed her on my side. 

“Es que no lo tengo.” She left. 

I sat and waited until I was told to go into another cubicle. Manspreading my legs, I tried to take as much space as possible. 

“You’re in the wrong room. Go to room 2.”

“The screen said Room 3.”

“Go to room 2.” 

So to Room 2 I went. 

I signed a waiver before reading it. I guessed it would allow them to put me to sleep and that it said something along the lines of: “the hospital cannot be held liable if the patient does not regain consciousness.” 

“¿Cuánto pesas?” 

“I don’t know.” A side effect to Miss Dysmorphia is that a simple shift of digit in my weight burdened an entire day. If I woke up two hundred grams heavier than the previous day, I refused to eat anything until my next weigh-in the following morning. I had miraculously broken the vicious circle a few years ago and so for the first time in my life, I didn’t know how much I weighed. I couldn’t even possibly guess it either. I made my own clothes. Tailored to measure. There were no sizes. No 36, 44 or 52 in my world.

“¡Pues, más o menos tio!” ‘Tio’ alongside ‘hombre’ were words that triggered me. Breathe in. Breathe out. Long breath in, short breath in. Long breath out. 

“¡Pues, no sé tio!” I said a little too snarkily.

“¡Invéntatelo!” What the fuck was going on here on that day? I had a medical professional whose whole job was to decide how many drugs would be needed to crash me out based on my weight and he wanted me to estimate? Couldn’t he weigh me? Shouldn’t he be weighing me? Isn’t that sort of important? 

I made up a number, hoping it would cover it. 

He rushed through a series of questions and sent me out the door in less than three minutes. 

On the way out, one of the nurses at the reception called my name. 

“No food for at least 6 hours before the surgery and no liquids for 2. Not even water. Got that?”  

“I’m a little frightened. This is a really big deal for me.” I said to her, taken aback by how very casual everyone else was. 

“We know. It’s a big deal to everyone who comes here. You’ll be alright.” She gave me a pre-soaked sponge and a packet of mouth wash. 

“When you get ready that morning, you use these and only these. You can brush your teeth normally. No funny perfume and what not. Got that?” 

“OK.”

“You also need someone to come with you.”

“I know.” I just didn’t know who yet.  

Chaos had a whole book tour planned, she was leaving in a week. I didn’t want to ask my mum. I didn’t want to tell my mum. I picked up the phone and called Cutiepie. 

“Hey baby, how are you?” His voice had a melodic rhythm to it. Cutiepie was a warm ray of spring sunshine. He made me feel seen.

“I’m good. I’m good.” He didn’t know yet and I knew I was overselling it. 

“You sure baby?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Listen, what are you doing today? There is something important I’d like to talk to you about and I’d rather do it in person.”

“Today is a little tricky. Let me think…” I could hear the cogs in his brain heating up, they were spinning too fast. Smoke was coming out of his ears. 

“Can we do tonight? I’ll come by. Late I guess. Would that work?” 

“That’s perfect. I’ll make dinner.”

I hung up the phone. I was standing in front of a wall of glass, staring at my own reflection. Head to toe. The whole of me. Fuck! 

Anyone else would have seen a large man looking back at them. Bald, late forties, hunched and seemingly tired. His face round in a squarish kind of way. Not ugly. Ageing was starting to take hold with the sagging of the skin below the jawline. Jowls don’t lie. His face hadn’t yet been carved with crevices and that helped him look a little younger. He wore wide baggy trousers and a cropped shirt under a large vintage trench, a flamboyant headscarf tied to a beltloop peeking from the coat. The clothes were not those of a man nearing his fifties. He pulled it off somehow. Some people might even have thought him attractive. 

All I saw was a whale about to be beached.