Misty uncovered....

She went with Misty back into the dress-out room which used to be a small bathroom with a shower and sink and privacy for the changing of street attire into the orange jail uniform. It typically took about five minutes to do a proper and complete dress-out but it was only about sixty seconds before Lena came charging out of the door with a face as red as a stop light.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, her expression a mixture of surprise and annoyance, “That’s not a woman, you jerks! I suppose you think this is real funny, right?”

The idea that someone was playing a practical joke on Lena was really not that hard to believe, it was not at all unusual for officers to torment one another with embarrassing tricks and antics. But to my knowledge, nor that of the Sergeant or other officer on staff, no such practical joke was in process.

“Are you serious?” Sarge asked.

Lena was huffing with annoyance, “That’s a gawdam guy!” she spouted. “And if you think I’m gonna strip search him, you better think again! Real hard!”

Several looks were exchanged and then Rudy, the other male officer, walked over to the change-out room and peered in. His shoulders began to shake, not with fear or annoyance but with the hysterical laughter he was trying to hide. He was unable to contain himself very well though, and when he looked back around at Sarge his eyes were tearing with hilarity.

“She’s right, Sarge, it’s a guy.” He said between gulps of air. “You want me to finish dressing him out?”

Sarge was grinning, not at Misty’s disclosure, but at the furious annoyance on Lena’s face. “I guess you better,” he replied in his typically Former-Marine tone of voice. “Can’t have our little Lena writing us up for harassment.”

The next five minutes was just a back and forth continuum of snide remarks between Sarge and Lena. I was standing by, wondering how poor Misty was faring through it all and also wondering why he did not say something when he was taken back into the bathroom to dress out. Later, after I had gotten to know him, I understood why, but on that summer evening I had not yet come to figure out the workings of the transvestite’s mind.

Rudy immerged in a few minutes with Misty in front of him, now wearing the orange jail uniform and looking somewhat abashed but not really upset. Rudy tossed something to Lena, which she caught in both hands. It was a rather large roll of money.

“Found this on him,” Rudy said, “Better put it on his books.”

“How’d they miss that on the pat down?” Sarge inquired.

Meanwhile, Lena was looking at the roll of bills with a wrinkled nose, “Geeeze, it’s wet...” she murmured, and then her green eyes shot open like ping-pong balls and with a shriek and an audible gag, she flung the money across the booking area and began doing the yucky-bug dance and rubbing her hands against her thighs like she wanted to peel the skin off.

“Ahhh, crap, Rudy! Ah, dammit!” she shouted fiercely. “That’s not funny, you chicken-lips!”
Rudy, Sarge, and even I were laughing in unison by then. Sarge took several moments to catch his breath and then finally asked Rudy where he found the roll of cash. Rudy explained that Misty had his genitals secured back out of sight with a wire bread tie and that the cash had been fastened there along with the package. Further examination proved there was nothing more hidden within.

Once the hilarity ebbed, I began to wonder how on earth Misty, whose real name was Mitchell, ever managed to secure himself so well that he could have worn those spandex pants without a hint of his gender being evident, even through a surface pat-down. Wire bread ties must be amazing things! The discomfort it certainly caused him made me shudder.

Misty, all the while, was taking everything pretty much in stride. I got the impression this was not the first time he had experienced such a situation and if he was embarrassed by it he did not let on. It was also not his first time in jail. He seemed accepting of the whole ordeal.
Typical of the gay community, Misty had one of the keenest senses of humor I have ever known. He had practically invented the word “campy”. He was housed with the sex offenders and child molesters, not because he had even one single trait that earned him that status, but because he was one of those “lost inmates” who could not be placed in the general population for his own safety. That dormitory area was at the far end of the long, echoing hallway, and so every time I went in back to talk with an inmate in one of the other dorms, Misty would pick up on my voice and shout from the back in his very best falsetto, “Hey, Girlfriend!”

You always knew when Misty was being moved, too. As he would pass along by the other dorms, escorted by officers to wherever he was supposed to be, there resounded a flood of hoots, wolf whistles and catcalls that was almost deafening. And not being one to let the others down, Misty would offer up his best hip-wiggle as he passed.

He was in our jail for several months, during which time we grew to be pretty good friends. He invited me to “do lunch” with him some day after he was out and I told him I would love to. I learned that he shaved his entire body every day, which, considering the cheap, plastic razors the jail issues to it’s inmates, would have been enough to dissuade most people from his particular lifestyle. He used red punch to color his fingernails, lips and cheeks, and the women’s buttery pencil shaving concoction for mascara. He never looked quite as feminine as the evening we booked him in but he always turned heads as he walked by, and he had mastered the same walk that made Marilyn Monroe a superstar.

He was also a twenty-three-year-old kid, in my eyes, and well educated at that. During his time in the Yavapai County jail we spent quite a few hours talking about life and all its intricacies. He eventually dropped the falsetto and gay camp and began to expose himself in emotional ways to me.

He was from the Midwest, had left home a couple of years before and was prostituting himself to earn the money for a sex change. He told me his family, good Bible-Belt farm stock, had no idea where he was nor that he was transsexual. “It would kill them,” he told me sadly. I asked him if he didn’t think it was already killing them, not knowing what had become of their son, and he replied that if I knew his family I would understand. They would rather think him dead than know he was transsexual.

It eventually occurred to me that the urge for any human being to want to change his or her sex must be incredible. It was far more than an impulse or a sexual fantasy. To endure the verbal slings and arrows and actual physical discomfort they subjected themselves to, it had to be an incredible psychological obsession or need. Why would anyone choose to be Gay or Lesbian or Transsexual or even a Cross-Dresser? It seems to be the loneliest and most emotionally painful lifestyle one could ever imagine. The desire, the need for that life must be terribly intense, certainly not a life anyone would want to choose capriciously.

Misty could never explain it to me, at least not so that I understood. It was just who he was. He explained he had never felt like “Mitchell”. Ever. His early years had been a series of bad jokes, fights, verbal attacks and lectures from his parents, and his delight in playing with Barbie Dolls. He admitted to me that wanting to change one’s sex, or living a Gay lifestyle, was not natural and probably could be considered sinful if one looked at life that way. He also told me he simply could not live as “Mitchell” anymore - that the thoughts he had of suicide were far scarier than the process he was trying to undertake to become Misty.

I remember thinking that Misty was more like a caricature of women than how real women act or speak. So often that seems to be the case with Gay men - their assumed idiosyncrasies are far more feminine than most of us females truly are. It’s as if they see the ideal woman as a combination of Betty Boop and Mae West, and they strive to identify with that. It’s an impossible journey.

Misty finished his case in our county and eventually was extradited down to Maricopa County to face charges there. I never knew what exactly became of him but I assume he did a little prison time. I have thought about him on and off over the years, hoping he might have gone home to the farm and reconnected with his family, knowing he probably did not. He could be a woman by now, or maybe he is still prostituting himself to try and earn the fee for that change. Or maybe he is dead. I hope not. I probably will never know but I’d like to keep that lunch date one day.