In Vivian Blaxell’s Worthy Of The Event, out Tuesday, a trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence. The book includes philosophical investigations of the nature of transcendence and beauty, historical disquisitions on violence and domination, and searching appraisals of the events of her own life. This excerpt considers an episode from the early days of Blaxell's own transition in 1970s Australia.
Miss Sybil Fontaine, whom we called Old Sybil only when there was one hundred percent no possibility of Miss Sybil Fontaine hearing us call her Old Sybil, was in her late-forties then and famous among us for truculence with fists, if required, even if not required, dedication to the fashion principles of a society matron in the eastern suburbs of Sydney in 1972, high-end blowjobs, and to premonitions. Miss Sybil Fontaine never appeared anywhere, at any time, without a suit that could have been Chanel, but was not; she never appeared in winter unwarmed by an overcoat that might have been Aquascutum but was not. As far as we knew, Miss Sybil Fontaine never left the house without a hat that could have been a hat from Manhattan milliners but was not. She never showed up without her blunt but beautifully kept hands clad in black or charcoal kid gloves in winter and white cotton gloves in summer and she was never there without her also blunt feet shod in real Ferragamo pumps, and Miss Sybil Fontaine never went anywhere without perfect Dior Trans-Siberian Express red lips (real) in a full upper bow, also real. She had beautiful lips and a Delphic approach to the future.
Miss Sybil Fontaine charged high prices for her services. We wondered if Miss Sybil Fontaine gave those expensive blowjobs with her Manhattan-but-not-Manhattan hat in place and her not-quite-Chanel suit crisp and prim around her knees, which might be why Old Sybil’s blowjobs commanded such high fees, we said, who knows, kink. Miss Sybil Fontaine’s Delphic abilities seemed self-fulfilling to me, but terrifying, nonetheless. She once said to me, “Get the fuck off this corner. It’s mine, it’s always been mine. It’s mine until I say it's not mine. Get off now or I’ll flatten you,” and when I fled up the nighttime hill in my pink and red paisley pants and white halter top, Miss Sybil Fontaine shouted to my back, "You'll be fine. You’ve got survivor oozing out of your pores.”
News went around that the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital was starting a sex change program. Some of the girls who wanted vaginas got all excited. Most of the rest anticipated liberation, maybe, from the moody authority of Pharmacist-Blake-near-the-fountain for under-the-counter diethylstilbestrol tablets, which he sometimes withheld just because and always charged five times what the stilboestrol would cost if you had a prescription, fat chance. Even Trixie Lamont was said to have made an appointment to be assessed for the two-year assessment preceding the final assessment for neovagina.
Not true.
Miss Sybil Fontaine saw only big trouble in it. Hat and suit and Italian pumps and gloves and Trans-Siberian Express perfect, Miss Sybil Fontaine came into that coffee shop near the fire station at the usual time of nine-thirty-five p.m. and cleared girls off her usual table with her usual just one look. She seated herself as usual, and, as ever, she tugged each fingertip of each charcoal kid glove, arching her hands back like a Balinese dancer until the gloves came off. As usual, she drank an extra hot cappuccino, nibbled at a slice of raisin toast, and smoked two of those gold foil tipped Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes she was never ever without.
Now: the iron rule was that girls never sat at Miss Sybil Fontaine’s table when Miss Sybil Fontaine was seated at it. The law was that girls never spoke to Miss Sybil Fontaine at the coffee shop unless previously addressed by Miss Sybil Fontaine, but Big Denise was high on something that night, diet pills, trying to be smaller, red pills, a whole box of NoDoz, I don’t know, and impromptu, she asked Miss Sybil Fontaine if Miss Sybil Fontaine would be applying to the new sex change program. The impertinence of speaking before spoken-to struck the whole coffee shop dumb, silent, except for Dusty doing “Son of a Preacher Man” on the jukebox and Mr. Doddy fluffing cappuccino foam at the Gaggia. Miss Sybil Fontaine lit up a third gold-tipped Black Russian and smoked it very thoughtful right on to the gold foil tip. Unspeaking, unmoving, she was, except for the arc of her right hand with Black Russian to Trans-Siberian Express lips and back to table. Three and a half minutes and agonizing it took, the wait for what was certain to come, some curse, some prediction, a scythe of mockery, string of oaths, depending on what, we knew not, so we tried not breathing. Eventually, Miss Sybil Fontaine said, “What I see here is you fucking queens turning into lab rats, jumping through square people’s hoops to get a box put in, and no good can come from that. Disaster. Not all disasters are earthquakes, or plane crashes, or going broke, getting the wrong end of Hilda Handcuffs. Some disasters look good until they hit you and then the consequences. You will be vulnerable."
Big Denise’s whatever-pills had made her so buzzed she’d forgotten about consequences and how to stop and she said, “Anything’s better than being a freak, don’t you think, Miss Sybil Fontaine,” at which Miss Sybil Fontaine pursed her Trans-Siberian Empress lips from beautiful to nasty for thirty seconds—more breath-holding on our part, there will be blood—then she said, “Do you know that wild rats die if they are handled. It’s not like those doctors have our best interests uppermost in their minds. I see the end of us girls. I do. They will turn us into Hottentot Venuses. The Bearded Woman at the circus will have it better than us. We will not survive as ourselves."
Had I known the word, ‘hyperbole’, then, I might have used it at that moment, but I just thought, oh, crazy Old Sybil, I mean what could possibly be disastrous about becoming more woman unless, you know, you bled out or something. But, less than two years later, there came the news that Barbra had taken sixty-nine too many Seconal caps the day after Dr. Ron Barr had told her the neovagina-or-nor-final-assessment-committee had ruled not, no, never, no appeal on Barbra’s neovagina because that test with pornographic pictures and electrodes attached to Barbra’s dick showed Barbra liked girls too much for any sort of vagina at all. Plus, Barbra’s jaw, we supposed, and facial feminization surgery still below the yonder horizon.
You manipulate people in an unconscious fashion as a part of an overall type of manipulativeness that we have come to recognize as part and parcel of the personalities of many individuals with gender disorders. Let me say candidly that at this point in time you are not deemed, for your own best interests, a good candidate for immediate sex conversion, and we cannot give you a definite date in the future other than to say you are on a hold status.
To be honest, Barbra had broken into my room, lifted my stereo player, and hocked it at Gorman’s Pawn and Loan, and I wanted, without much hope, a way to blast Electric Ladyland and Aretha Franklin and John Coltrane and the Moody Blues and Quicksilver Messenger Service, Surrealistic Pillow and Gustav Holst at myself and the neighbors again, so the mean part of me thought crematorium and black star for Barbra might be fair, but the other part of me wondered if Miss Sybil Fontaine had been right about the consequences of the cisgender-heterosexual-maybe-doctor-with-a-research-agenda and transsexual girl patient relationship. I shuffled, cut, and shuffled the Tarot and got the Tower. Oh, God. How was I to be worthy of that?
