The Oracle
By
Spirited18
Everyone seemed to despise Chelsea. She had to change her name because she was christened Plato after her great grandfather ten multiplied to the power ten or something thereabouts. From morning to night all she heard around her was what Echart Tolle labelled the “pain body!” Instantly, she fell in love with the Plato cave allegory. Strangely, it reminded her of the oracle her great grandfather, Plato devised and found the light of her experience had gradually become unblinding as it once did. She understood it now in the minutest detail but she did not believe in beating people over the head with philosophical dialectics. The pain body was associated with the selfishness of the ego as opposed to unconditional selflessness that emerged as she grew at watching her own mind rather than becoming subservient to its dictats.
It was like the embodiment of disclosure or of closure by unconditional love, two sisters that swore themselves to secrecy knowing or otherwise that lent itself to process. At first, all she felt was the confusing backlash of prejudice or what she saw as the anger of the cave inhabitants ‘self obsession lay in the illusion of life rather than in the purity of light (the mundane and the perpetual confrontation with the nature of reality) nevertheless managing to stay intact awaiting the courage to emerge!’ Those in the darkest recesses of the cave, its moistened nooks hated anything different; anything they could not understand, anything like Chelsea’s trans-experience left them at a loss. All Chelsea was asking for was empowerment. Nobody cared for the outsider they saw in her. No one cared! Anyone that didn’t dance to the same tune was set on with a vengeance.
Chelsea never was ‘run of the mill.’ Her philosophically sound mind started talking at the speaker’s corner where a friend advised her that she could make a difference. Her friend, Sukini would fit nicely into the city dwelling “safe” or darkest side of the cave type or felt so Chelsea at first.
‘Chelsea,’ said Sukini in that soft voice that had a way of moving Chelsea. ‘What makes you think this is good for you? This operation to make you a complete woman,’ Sukini picked up a picture of Chelsea taken before Chelsea had the procedure. ‘How does it work?’
‘As simply as any woman’s body without the hang up of procreativity might be; I don’t want to begrudge those that have children but it is not for me nor do I want to hazard to tell anyone what to do with their bodies!’ said Chelsea uncertain whether to be happy talking to Sukini about what Chelsea thought she could not possibly understand. Chelsea had no intention of biologically having a child if she could but she felt encouraged that, that was not all that made the woman unlike some people she knew. Just then, she though about Sukini, the woman with a child or without and smiled. Since the first time they met they knew that they were meant for each other.
‘Hasn’t anyone told you that you looked handsome? If I knew you then we could easily have been an item,’ Sukini continued carefully but cautious so she did not say the wrong thing.
‘Don’t be silly!’ said Chelsea off handedly but gently enough to keep Sukini onside. It brutalised Chelsea’s idea of herself to do it but she could not give into one of the petty darksiders. She secretly loved Sukini but not in a romantic way. She found herself chanting the Guru Rimpoche’s mantra to calm herself. Somehow she didn’t even want to think right now. ‘How could one chant something so profound and think of sex in the same space of time?’ she wondered as she touched Sukini’s laps. ‘Yey,’ Chelsea said feeling the raw heat of her hand on Sukini’s lap, loving every moment of the experience.
‘What is this, yey?’ asked Sukini somewhat confused. “What do you mean, yey?” she wanted to ask but she couldn’t. ‘Anyhow, have you tried the Speaker’s corner?’ Sukini said despite herself. It would not have been her first choice but she decided that it would do. She had nothing to lose!
For Chelsea, the thought of speaking in public of her private transitioning experience stopped gnawing at her mind. She had been put on the spot a couple of times. Prominent in her mind was her experience at “Fixies” – a place where lottery funds helped mend damaged talents or Tam’s Out! –a women only club that continued barring non op and pre op and at others even post op transwomen while accepting transmen whom they strangely saw as “lesbians” in spite of the cost to such transitionees. Chelsea knew she could take it. After all, she was a big girl at heart and speaker’s corner was “the challenge”.
*
The Speaker’s Corner speech went well. Chelsea noticed that her “trans-lexia” was on the wane. She also realised that she could speak confidently about her experience without risking the threat that she might collapsing any moment. Once, because of the over-indulgence of the community she lived in which was predominantly Islamic. She of the said Muslims felt the community was exclusively theirs but she no longer responded to any of the passing slurs tossed at her. She thought it best not to engage injustice but the more it happened, the more she found, the opportunity to practise engaged and social Buddhism in a harsh world. Sukini, however, brought difference into Chelsea’s world. Time with Sukini had healed a lot of pain so much so Chelsea saw her increasingly as somewhat closer to the light than typical members of their community.
Chelsea went back into herself. She went deep inside in order to take a fresh look at her own feelings. At times, she caught her mind’s eye at work in Jandon. Jandon is London as London through the eyes of Nigerian in the Diaspora, gburu and getting on with life as people in self imposed exile, economic immigration and living on the fast lane. There, she saw images that represented the media’s position on fraud among Britain’s Jandonians exploded on the canvas of her mind: Honour killings with intense brutality, gore and dismembered body pieces every where and in Jandonian terms there were also the financially bruised contending with the explosive revelations on the level that threw America into recession, causing the melt down of Northern Rock and chaos in the heart of London’s commercial centres. Even the treasury and the high street banks got defensive. Unlikely wage migrants whose daily trail to “gburu”. Chelsea remembered the word well: ‘Gburu is a Yoruba slang which literally means toil’ and its routes since time immemorial paves all major European cities without exception. Some just excelled at turning the dealer’s wheel. One such individual was Fola Hendricks. Where financial institutions struggled to work out complex issues out; for Fola was child’s play.
How did black people become so stereotypical for better or worse eternal entertainers, musicians or sports men and women or worse: drug dealers, fraudsters or rich by any means possible? As Chelsea sat thinking about the home boys and girls around her, she saw examples of Nigerians and their wanton delusion of grandeur and wondered, “Why?” The insistence that one lived in an ‘all or nothing world’ that everyone hoped for a share of the national cake or simply the disappearance into what some called, “paupers’ paradise”.
Chelsea could not help remembering a couple of “close shaves” of her own. Fola, fraudster and university drop out, was a man with a ‘sweet tongue’ and a serious axe to grind with regard his beloved, ‘pound sterling’ which must be acquired in case loads for his every whim. He loved fast cars, a stately mansion in the country and being surrounded by lots of money guzzling girls. To him, his dreams were real. Before leaving Jandon he took good care to shop around in the microcosmic British Isles of Victoria Island and loved what he saw. He loved it so much that he lost all perspective in the process. He was a ‘resident wannabe’ that rubbed shoulders with tycoons, rogue politicians, corrupt bureaucrats, most of them too spent, to spend their loot sensibly. Fola was not a ghetto-hugger nor was he interested to claim state benefits. Rather he lived big wherever he was. Somehow Fola knew better or so he thought deluded by free money and state of the art cars at his disposal. Not bad for a Computer Science drop out whose only dream was to make his first million as self proclaimed ‘dealer.’ Monthly wages weren’t for him. In his eyes, a monthly wage couldn’t even clothe him never mind cater for his other excesses. He was one of those strangely clever types. Nothing could stop him.
‘You have a current account, don’t you?’ he asked Chelsea out of the blue with that disarmingly infectious smile of his.
‘What does my account have to do with anything?’ said Chelsea bewildered by Fola’s warped sense of humour.
‘We could make a killing together, trust me,’ said Fola as he sat facing her in his designer clothes, Raymond Weil wristwatch and his Churchill shoes. He was the picture of a dream smart dresser.
Somehow he managed to beat the rat race. The Jandon nightmare as he saw it faded in a flash. Fola and Chelsea met at Sukini’s only sister’s flat in Peckham or what Jandonian inhabitants humorously named, ‘Little Nija’. Esther was fine in the way Jandon girls were too. All they needed was the thought of wealth and Esther had that abundance. In fact she was mesmerised by it.
‘Hey there, Chell!’ said Esther sounding too American for Chelsea’ liking; she disliked to have her name abbreviated.
‘Hi Esther, long time no talk!’ said Chelsea for a fleeting second upset but checking herself; her state of mind concealed under a carapace of good humour. ‘How are you, hon?’
‘You know me!’ said Esther oozing with arrogance as she batted her eyes suggesting a carefree attitude.
‘Hedonist of London’ said Fola and Esther sprang out of her seat to welcome him some loving. ‘Have you told Chelsea about things as I asked you too? We can all make it, you know?’
‘Look at me, Chelsea!’ said Esther in that insufferable way to Chelsea’s mind. ‘Can I offer you guys something: Beer or wine?’
‘Just water for me please,’ said Chelsea.
‘A quick beer can’t do any harm!’ said Fola with that perpetual grin of his. It didn’t bother him that he was driving. Such things rarely did.
Chelsea could only wonder what some of her online friends that were against media representations of Jandonians as fraudulent would have made of Esther and Fola but somehow she managed to take it without compromising her self too. Besides she couldn’t see the point, she did not want to be tarred with the same brush as some Jandonians so as gently as possible she made herself scarce. She, for a moment, thought what moved either of them made of her if they knew that she was both transsexual and lesbian.
Chelsea saw herself in a fray pumped full of bullets and still on her feet one moment and answering questions about life in the Bardo the next. She could not understand some of the visions she saw but they were metaphorical otherwise she would wonder why she was still here. She wondered whether she was “over boiling the egg” sometimes. The more she looked at her own mind however, whether she was dreaming in sleep or fully awake, she watched and the more she did so; the more she found herself awash in the cleansing light of the outer cave or what felt tranquil. She kept exploring the cave. Increasingly it became a template for the conditioned human mind as opposed to the emptiness of all things.
*
Meeting Sukini told her a different story. Although the first time she met Sukini, Sukini was with friends on the isle of the local Sainsbury doing her weekly shopping, Chelsea was put off by Sukini’s friends who all wore the unlikely black burkahs for Jandonian women. Chelsea was not used to seeing the fashion conscious black Jandonian women in such apparel. Chelsea could not understand how Sukini could be any different. She pictured Sukini in a Hijab and that sort of got in the way of seeing the real person but it didn’t stop her going around the isle pretending she forgot something for a while. She even found herself playing it down once or twice or wishing Sukini’s friends to another isle or something like that.
‘Do you know that woman?’ asked one of Sukini’s friends in that private way some Jandonian girls or women speak to each other while excluding those around them. ‘She’s been round here a number of times already. Why don’t people just ask if they need us to move? Do you know her?’
‘Who, which woman?’ said Sukini as there was more than just one woman around at the time. She saw Chelsea and felt a sudden rush but managed to conceal what she felt.
‘The black bald one!’ said the same one directing everyone’s attention towards Chelsea.
‘My…’ said Sukini to herself without voicing what she was actually thinking to her friends. Instead she shook her head to mean, ‘No!’ But she liked what she saw.
‘Why does she keep coming round?’ said another of Sukini’s friends, ‘Perhaps she’s one of them sex starved lesbians or somefing?’
‘Perhaps, she is? How do you know if a person is?’ asked Sukini as she revelled at the idea while inwardly smiling at but also how women and their adoption of the strict “cover all ethos’ that captivated young Muslim women around her intrigued her. What would they have thought if they found out that she was transsexual and a lesbian? She wondered.
Somehow Chelsea picked up on their conversation and instantly made her self scarce but she decided that it wasn’t the last time that she’d see Sukini. She decided that she and Sukini were meant to be together. There and then she decided that the next time they met; if Sukini was alone she was going to ask her out. How could she allow such a catch to escape she thought? She asked herself as she made her way to the Sainsbury checkout that day.
Sukini was gorgeous in a way that rocked Chelsea’s world.
*
The Buddha’s Lotus and Plato’s Cave allegories seemed to have a lot in common in Chelsea’s mind. She sat in her brand new flat. She had just moved back in after living in other people’s space forever. She had started work as soon as she finished University because she dreaded getting caught up in that cold world that classified upper to working class individuals or what her mother used to call, ‘the dregs of society!’ At times, since discovering that she was a Buddhist, her parents dreaded the worst. They half thought Chelsea might pack everything in and become a nun but that in there eyes would just be another excuse. Rather, they did not want to know Chelsea because she; their own offspring had become dregsome. To their minds, they had a son they called Plato for reasons she could not understand. Although she disliked the name from childhood, the way it made her stand out was bothersome. She was one of those women that hadn’t started out as a girl but she hadn’t told many people this. She killed Plato off as soon as she finished school. Even in transition for a while she was called “Socrates” from a building site when she lived on Jerningham Road. She transitioned when she was seventeen and preferred to forget the past. Chelsea remembered the good times and erased the bad for a while. However, when she became a Buddhist she had to tell herself what she called, “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!” A year after she converted she became a novice nun. Shortly before she was about to be ordained into the Tibetan Nyingmapa Order of nuns realised the Dharma meant more and decided to spend the rest of her life as a lay person.
Working as a journalist online she made more than a comfortable living for herself subsidising her income with writing. She loved life. That day, she sat to watch the news on her plasma 35 inch television she felt taken over by thoughts of the cave and lotus allegories once again.
Although she was in her own sitting room nothing prepared her for the picture that unfolded in her imagination. The cave unfolded its spellbound prisoners in the darkest recesses of the cave sponges of illusion and belief and the lightest reason and intellect. In her mind’s eye she saw teachers and students ruminating over illusions of fixed views and absolutised belief that turned humanity in on itself, she saw conventional reason in shadows seeing those security guards that had bullied her at job club in Chelsea’s pre journalism days that accused her of whatever they pleased for looking masculine and stern reflections of herself in her enemies; she saw the transparency of intelligence and the radiant vision of unconditional love helped her to admit that she had a lot of learning. She shook her head to clear it of the nightmarish visions she kept having. For a moment, what was on telly came back into view. It was the same boring news. She switched the set off.
She had a light supper that evening, a shower and then went to bed early. As soon as she got into bed the scene before her looked so real. It was the Buddha with his disciples around him as he explained the life of the Lotus flower from the seeds painfully slow germination in the muddy floor underneath the water that it developed in. The Buddha talked about the seeds that were just germinating, the ones that had formed shoots, those with shoots showing above the water, the partly opened up and the ones that were fully open.
‘Oh monks,’ said the Buddha. ‘The lotus allegory is a representation of spiritual development and growth from lower to higher consciousness...’
Chelsea needn’t have bothered why patriarchy grounded mundane life in concepts. ‘They couldn’t even do that right, go figure!’ thought Chelsea. ‘What happened to process in the middle way?’ She stood up and did twenty one prostrations in honour of the Buddha while doing the Sakyamuni mantra silently apparently while fast asleep.
*
The Gburu brigade on the way back from the daily draining toil and washed out; Gburu had its impact on the body but that was it was huge strife chasing scraps of income. Before Chelsea got her job she watched their going and their comings. At times she saw Jandonian’s dozing off and drooling on other passengers around them on their return journeys home steering momentarily only to repeat the whole sorry business. It was an ordeal for the passenger that sat beside them but the sleeper did not realise not to mention care? At least they had an income unlike the government handout that they thought Chelsea depended on because she wasn’t seen on any of the gburu trails up and down of London. On one similar occasion they made their feelings known.
‘Yidiot, yu are a man!’ said a West Indies sounding woman; her accent was so heavy Chelsea couldn’t make “head or tail” out of what she was saying but she deduced that she was the butt of whatever it was the woman was saying. Both women sitting at the back laughed out aloud.
‘He finks ear rings and make-up is all it takes to be a woman! Fool!” said the other woman who couldn’t wait. She laughed out as loud as she could in an attempt to upset Chelsea’s tenacious confidence in the face of their perpetual prejudice depicted through the tyranny of laughter. ‘No woman dresses like that!’
‘Wat make dem young pikin go about dressed like dem ar woman?’ said one of the other female passengers.
‘Ma...aaan!’ said the woman with the strong West Indian sounding accent of one of the Gburu brigade and everyone on the back seat laughed together in a carnival like manner. The man that sat beside Chelsea stared at her and hit her as hard as he could as he was getting off provoking more malicious laughter. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Although it was not funny, Chelsea couldn’t help noticing the lugubrious nature of the two ring leading women and their dress sense. Both women seemed to be the type that struggled to get into two sizes smaller than their actual figures demanded. ‘How do you talk to women like this about their low self esteem?’ One look was all it took but she didn’t give in to what her mind demanded. Rather, she noticed all the strain of their cellulite clad clothing but she knew better. The realisation that they didn’t understand their own gender identity let alone someone else was enough. Sexuality didn’t even figure in their world beyond the strictly heterosexual. The rage in their voices was just an attempt to draw unnecessary attention but Chelsea wasn’t going to play that game. Chelsea saw it as an opportunity to practise fortitude instead.
Shortly afterwards Chelsea and Sukini met again in Sainsbury’s and they decided to go for a meal together. This meeting felt as if they had been together forever, they just gelled. They went for walks at night by the riverside realising watching the moon and the ebb and flow of the river. It didn’t bother Sukini that Chelsea was transsexual any more –she saw a beautiful woman. Sukini as a Jandonian, Muslim, sister to a mother of two was one of those women for whom the rejection of the idea that ‘women were the property of their husbands’ by all means. Chelsea was the first and only woman who stood by Sukini during the attacks on her because of her sexuality for breaking with the ‘assumed heterosexuality’ which even friends pilloried her for at will without knowing the first thing about her.
Now, together, they did the weekly shopping visits to Sainsbury hand in hand. Sukini and Chelsea confident in the knowledge that no one was going to browbeat them into playing their love for each other even the Jandonian “macho boys” and their loud mouths couldn’t reach them no matter how hard they tried.
‘Pussy yurrr!!!’ some of them shouted in passing in line with their “bad-boy street-credibility”. ‘We’re going to kill…’ They threatened their assumed victims all attentive ears.
Chelsea and Sukini just held on to each other more, even though they noticed some of their predators were in employ of a law enforcement agency. They kissed when they felt like doing so without thinking or giving in to the detritus of compulsory hetero-normativity. When the death threats came they dealt with them but remained steadfast in their affection for each other.
‘I love you!’ said Sukini with her femme passion that took Chelsea’s breath away.
‘Ditto honey, I love you too,’ said Chelsea in her in between butch femme even androgynous tone as she moved confident and gently into Sukini’s femme body as the music of their commitment assailed them.
Spirited18 © April 2008.
