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In childhood we suffered a great deal with that home situation. On the rare occasions we went out into the street (always together and holding hands: we felt more protected like that), the neighbors would point to us, laughing and sneering: look at the children of the androgyne. And we were perfectly normal, the boys as well as the girls; we answered back (we yelled; sometimes in despair, we yelled), we are normal, we are normal. They didn’t believe it: normal, my eye. Normal, a stick up your ass. And they dared us: pull down your pants! Lift up your skirts! Always holding hands, we left, running at full speed. We were timid, so says tradition, like the children of androgynes. Also timid was that person who had procreated us and whom we called ‘father,’ because he looked like a man with his short hair and his relatively deep voice— besides this, he wore masculine clothes, except for when he wanted to get comfortable (to watch tv, for example),then he would opt for an old, flowery dress. We never saw him or her nude. We knew nothing of his genitalia; we had to imagine it or then turn to the books he had collected on the topic in his extensive library: at a certain point in time he had decided to inform himself about his condition and had read everything that had fallen into his hands. He had become so informed that he and the surgeons could have discussions as equals. The professionals said an operation could resolve his case, but this wasn’t the problem: the problem was that he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to become a man or a woman. Contrary to others who saw within this duality a wild mistake of nature, he considered himself to be a superior being: I’m enough for myself; I’m sufficient unto myself, he used to say, and he was never wrong. He had developed a technique, a secret he never revealed to anyone and which had allowed him to fulfill the dream of many of his breed: autocoitus. Which he rarely practiced. Actually because the act apparently demanded of Moacyr Scliar The Children of the Androgyne 250 moacyr scliar him long psychological preparation. Weeks before this act, he was already acting distant, reserved, even a little perturbed; we felt he was focusing his energies on the big moment: one night he would communicate to us his inclination to go to bed early, alleging indisposition or something similar. As soon as he shut himself up in his room, we ran to glue our ears to the door (the hole in the lock was, of course, blocked). Given the thickness of the wood, what we heard was very little: some sighs, some laughing, some exclamations—I love you, I love you—sometimes in his usual masculine voice, sometimes in falsetto. The oldest child, a boy who later would become a teacher, observed in a low voice that the expression was incorrect; the right one would be I love me, I love me. The youngest was already showing her vocation as a future psychologist by retorting, with disdain, that language was not the best way to understand androgynes. The discussion ceased when the door was abruptly opened, and he appeared—not relieved, but irritated; he had guessed our presence in the hallway. To avoid a reprimand, we fled, some laughing, others in tears. He took precautions to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. Even so, we believe we had once seen him pregnant. He had a hard time; occasionally he would vomit a lot, partly due to anxiety: at the time he had a good job, the pregnancy could mean dismissal pure and simple. He must have aborted because he spent a few days in the hospital, and when he came home, he cried a lot, in secret. A rough ordeal, according to Dr. Raimundo, his doctor. We also went through rough ordeals, and it wasn’t only on the street, or in school, or at the club. tv people would constantly besiege us, and more than once we were approached on the street by young adults in whose pockets we noticed, ever so badly hidden, a portable tape recorder. All that trouble, however, was compensated by his extraordinary capacity to give affection. When we became sick, he would take us in his arms; we could then feel, under his polyester shirt, the small breasts, always hard, despite...

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