All Over the Map (9 page)

T
he Samoan islands, floating in the South Pacific at the edge of the international date line, look like Hawaii in a time warp. There are the same rugged mountains, lush rain forests, and wide sandy beaches but no high-rise hotels or honeymooners in sight. The jungle at the perimeter of the runway is thick, startlingly green, and threatening to take over the tarmac by tomorrow. The air is thick and sweet as mango flesh, so warm that if Samoans could, they would probably dress only in their tattoos. Instead, everyone wears light T-shirts and sea-colored sarongs called lavalavas.

I’m here doing a story about gender blurring in Samoa—really, about a third gender, called
fa’afafine
. I’ve hardly been home these months, which suits me down to the ground, though I’m vaguely plotting to get back to New York to see Gustavo. That’s foolish, I know; by this time I should be able to see through the fog of romance and hope and realize that if it had been anything more than a fling, I would’ve heard from him. I am always working myself up into frenzies about men and finding
myself disappointed that things don’t turn out happily ever after, but then I don’t see why I should have to exclude myself from that falling-in-love fantasy. I know that expectations can poison beautiful moments and too easily transform them into resentments, but I keep hoping one of these flings will last. It’s hard to say whether such a delicious encounter thousands of miles from home is worth the feeling of longing later on. As a traveler, I know it’s impossible to repeat amazing chance experiences, you have to appreciate them fully for the moment you’re there; life is just a series of those present moments, adding up. But as a woman, I want to be back in his arms, or in the arms of someone I know will still be there tomorrow, who’ll take care of me. I realize I’m always falling for men far from home, then flying away. Still.

So here I am, on the way to the South Pacific. I got this Samoa assignment because I recently wrote an article about a friend who switched genders—the article was unfortunately and sensationally headlined “My Ex-boyfriend Became a Woman”—so the editors figured I must be an expert on the topic.

I’m not, but my friend is. She is still basically the same person, different pronoun—except with highlights and happier with herself. She hasn’t lost her sense of humor: when she pulls out the hormone pills she’s taking, she says, “This one makes you cry at movies and want to be in a relationship, and this one makes you hate professional wrestling and the Three Stooges.” She has a new softness about her that is more than physical. Talking about it, she says she also has an unexpected new sense of vulnerability that came along with her new vagina. I am
amazed that after forty-two years of being male she feels that physical sense of vulnerability so strongly—maybe because it’s so new—but that fear of violation is, for women, built into the anatomy.

We were roommates in New York City for a while, twenty years ago; at the time he always liked me, he said, because I was “a feminist who could still wear pink socks.” We started a little romance that fizzled out after an awkward sexual encounter. For years I thought it was my fault—I was young and inexperienced and worried I wasn’t sexy enough or doing things right. Finding out that he was a she, all those years later, was, selfishly, a relief—and a Note to Self that when things don’t work out with a man, you can’t always blame yourself. So that was all good. Going shopping with her, on the other hand, was annoying as hell, since everything fit her perfectly—she’s a biological
male
after all—while everything was too tight on my curves, proving that designers have a warped and probably misogynistic sense of the female form.

In any case, after a year, I almost forget that she was ever a he. When the editor calls with the Samoa assignment, I can hardly claim to be an expert in the topic of the social-versus-biological construction of gender, but having dug around in that territory, I am fascinated. I even have a third cousin who is married to a Samoan, so I have a place to start—though being fundamentalist Christians, my cousins are a little confused when I call them asking if they know any Samoan drag queens. But they’re helpful, and I’m as excited as the young Margaret Mead to be heading off to Samoa.

A
T THE AIRPORT
in Upolu, I glance around, and, in their similar dress, it’s hard to tell Samoan men and women apart—especially since the women have big biceps encircled with tattoo armbands and the men have luxurious long black hair and gold-hooped ears. Samoans of both genders are big-boned, hearty types, evolved from people who were strong enough to paddle from island to island to survive, who were quick enough to escape rival tribes, and who fed on the starchy breadfruit and taro roots that grow everywhere on the islands. They’re like tropical flowers—big, bright, and meaty, with a humid, amorphous sexuality.

I find a battered lime green taxi, shell necklaces dangling from the rearview mirror, greet the driver—
“Talofa!”
—and set off with a squeal. We whiz by thatched huts on stilts near the beach, nut brown children laughing and playing in bright blue waves. The villages are tidy, with a profusion of bougainvillea, red ginger, pink hibiscus, and exotic flowers I’ve never seen. The place exudes relaxation, as if the vibrant colors are soaking up all the available intensity.

We arrive in Apia, where modern offices stand next to palm-thatched houses, rickety food stands, and open-air markets. Near the center of town, across the street from the harbor, we pull up at Aggie Grey’s, an incongruously stately, rambling, white colonial hotel with bellhops in red uniforms out front. This place, the oldest hotel in town, was built decades ago, when adventurers wanted a civilized respite between their forays into the savage wilds and World War II GIs needed a real hamburger for
a change. After the war, it became a chic getaway for the Hollywood set, farther even than Tahiti, where stars like Gary Cooper, William Holden, and Marlon Brando could sit by the pool and know that no one could possibly know who they were, except that they were rich.

I’ve arranged lunch with a famous Samoan fa’afafine. An anthropologist gave me her name, along with some background about the fa’afafine, which means “in the way of a woman.” Men who openly dress as women are an accepted part of life in Samoa, are treated as women, and play the same roles in Samoan culture as genetic women: caretakers, teachers, Bible school leaders. They’re also entertainers, able to get away with doing some of the things women used to do in Samoa that have been frowned on since Christian missionaries came around 1830, such as dancing provocatively for visiting guests. Samoans are a little huffy when talking about sex and gender, saying that people have been making a lot of assumptions about Samoa ever since the young and gullible Margaret Mead solemnly recorded every joking story told to her about the supposed promiscuity on the islands in 1928. Today fa’afafine are treated like ladies—except that men are more likely to banter and make bawdy jokes with them.

At the hotel, Sonia is sitting by the pool, under an umbrella, wearing a tight flowered tank top, miniskirt, and heels. She has beautiful dancer’s legs and an erect posture. Only the extra layer of makeup shows her sixtyish age, and nothing reveals her biology.

I greet her, and she kisses me and gestures to the stage. “I used to dance here, from the time I was nine.” She gazes at the
stage, the canopy of painted bark cloth, the pots of tropical flowers and ferns. “I was the star of the show. I was the best.”

“I’m sure you still are,” I say, and Sonia waves away those bygone years with her long coral nails. A waiter comes by with drinks. He says, “Excuse me,” to Sonia, and they both snicker. After he leaves, she explains that the way he said “Excuse me” doubles in Samoan for “Suck me.” Fa’afafine are famous for their sexual double entendres and teasing, she says, and waiters know they can get away with it. I make a note never to say “excuse me” in Samoa.

We sip our mai tais as Sonia relates her history. There were always “aunties” in her family. Her father was a high chief in the village—a
matai
—and from a young age, she liked to play the role of the princess, serving drinks in the kava ceremony. She loved to dance, hopping up on stage as early as three to perform for the village families, twirling around in a little skirt as people laughed when they could see what was underneath. “Deep inside, I’ve always known myself to be a woman.”

Sonia started having sex with other boys when she was nine or ten. Back in those days—contrary to what Margaret Mead wrote—most girls wouldn’t have sex with boys before marriage. Fa’afafine were another story. “We filled in the gaps,” Sonia says. These days, of course, more girls sleep with men before marriage—especially the young tourist
palagis
from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States—but boys still “practice” with fa’afafine. That doesn’t make them gay or bisexual, Sonia explains, because fa’afafine are considered women. “Gay men are only interested in sleeping with other gay men, they’re fully
male.” A fa’afafine would never sleep with another fa’afafine, because it would be considered lesbian and therefore taboo.

I try to keep track of all this and scan the restaurant, considering that many of the men here, as well as the macho, muscular, tattooed men I saw walking around Apia earlier, have had sex with other men, with fa’afafine, and considered it straight sex. The women are still pressured by the church to wait until marriage. All in all, it’s a pretty good deal for the men.

Sonia sips her drink and glances back to the stage. “Marlon Brando!” She lifts up her feet and points her polished toes. “Marlon loved to watch me dance.” She leans toward me. “He didn’t know … well … let’s say he was surprised.” She laughs, throwing her head back and shaking her long, dark hair.

S
ONIA GIVES ME
names of other fa’afafine, and for the next two days, I track them down—dancing at a club, playing netball, watching a thrilling rugby game against Tonga. In just a few days, people begin to wave to me on the street. I go a little native, learning to tie a sarong and wearing it with a T-shirt, as everyone does on the street—though when I show up that way at a club, a young fa’afafine scolds me, telling me to go home and dress up, girl, no one dresses like that to go out.

When I return to the palm-thatched club wearing jeans and high-heeled sandals, I sit with a friendly young woman I met at the hotel and her friends. Soon the lights dim and drumming starts. A troupe of dancers enters the stage—the men in aqua lavalavas and black tattoos that circle their waists like giant bat
wings or cover their legs like bicycle shorts, the fa’afafine in coconut bras and grass skirts. It looks as though it’ll be a cheesy talent show, but from the start, everyone dances as if it’s the purpose of their lives.

When the applause for the floor show stops, everyone in the audience gets up to dance. The girls pull me, and I can’t help but follow them onstage, doing whatever approximation of Samoan dancing I can muster, something like flamenco on acid at a Grateful Dead show. Everyone laughs—with me, at me, it doesn’t matter. They all dance, dazed by the drumming, exhilarated. Each of my body parts seems to be responding to a different rhythm. I’ve left my mind, my story, my culture, everything but my body back at the table with my beer, and I dance and dance.

It’s delirious—to be included as an outsider, to have stumbled into such a colorful group of revelers. All that dancing feels like shedding a skin. By the time I return to my hotel, I’m exhausted with exhilaration. I jump into the pool, float, and stare at the unfamiliar stars, content. If I had a husband and children, I wouldn’t be out dancing with Samoan drag queens and floating in tropical pools.

T
HE LAST EVENING
in Apia, I meet Sonia in the bar. She’s wearing a leopard-printed mini with a stretch lace black top and is accompanied by Tini, a burly fa’afafine with a flower tucked behind one ear and gopher-size biceps. The waiter flirts outrageously with them, giving Sonia a squeeze around the waist.

“Do the men still see fa’afafine after they’re married?” I ask, when the waiter leaves.

“It’s still cheating, but it’s more cheating to be with another woman,” says Sonia. “That’s when the wives really get ferocious.”

“Being with a fa’afafine is like a joke to the wife,” says Tini, shrugging her giant shoulders.

It’s not much of a joke, really: knowing you are a woman but that men won’t take you seriously. Wanting to have a husband and children and not being able to manage it. I’m beginning to identify too closely with these fa’afafine, I think, and I have another drink. The fan twirls on the ceiling, and I realize we’ve all become quiet. “But did you ever fall in love?” I ask.

Sonia sighs. “We have women’s feelings, so of course we fall in love.” She waves this thought away and begins ticking off several long-term boyfriends she’s had.

“But the men always eventually leave,” says Tini, shaking her head. “They go with women who will give them children.”

“Do you have children?” Sonia asks, ignoring Tini’s last remark, and I shake my head no.