La Morena
Script Translated to English
Off screen voice:
It’s hard to be different
They call me “La Morena”, the dark one, because when I first hit the streets and was out there in the park and the square, all the people who hung out, the whole gang there gave me that nickname. They said: We’re going to call you La Morena, they just started calling me that, and it stuck, La Morena
From the time I was little I wanted to grow up and live my life and all that, but even then I knew that I was wrong to sell myself like that, I was so young, but when I grew up, the other life began
I was raised as a boy, but then I was out of grade school, I went through grade school as a boy and all that, but then when I got to high school I was transformed, I didn’t feel the same, and you know, I had to get on with my life.
The first women’s clothing I ever wore, I like…liked it, it made me feel good, and well, I could see that with being all made up and dressed up in drag a little change was happening and you know, I liked it and so… then I wore drag
I felt…very light, more feminine, I felt feminine, and that gave me the courage to accept and then I said, yes, yes I am, gay
I no longer cared what people said…if God knows, then let the whole world know, nobody feeds me I preferred to get on with my life and I am doing just that
(song “die ugly ones, die ugly ones…die ugly ones, all the ugly ones must die”)
I like wearing dresses, my mother has seen me, and she likes how I look, says I look good in a dress, but that I better not let my stepfather see me like that
Then there was my stepfather, who we say always treated us worse than dogsThat’s why I say that I was never loved, none of us were loved, always abused…and I used to say, ah, when I can’t wait to grow up so that someday I can treat him the way he treated us
He was the first one to figure out that I was gay, then, he said he didn’t love me that way, that I needed to change, and that if I didn’t, I couldn’t live at home anymore
For us it was very hard to be ourselves around our parents
I don’t know… people were always telling them a lot of things about me, and trying to make them feel embarrassed for having a son like me, and then there was going out with them, if they’re not ashamed then I am ashamed to go out with them…for me, I am embarrassed when I go out with my mom, but she says that she isn’t, that it isn’t embarrassing for her
So for us, love is difficult, it is very difficult for us In the beginning, yeah, we feel loved and all that, but then, when you are with the man you love, it‘s like, I don’t know, sometimes we’re just there on a whim or something, but not me, I was there for the love
I had my first lover fairly late, at seventeen years old
The date was, it was the first of September
The guy told me, because I had told him all about my life too, he told me all about his life and we talked about our lives
And then he asked me if I wanted to be with him
I told him yes, I liked how it happened, I liked the way he felt, how he spoke to me, his talk, how he talked about his life and the fact that he offered me the little bit of cash that he had on him
He gave me 200 pesos that day
It doesn’t matter what he’s got, this will be good for me
So I accepted it from him
But I remember that day, that I was older when I had my first lover
He says that he wasn’t ashamed of me, that he wasn’t embarrassed by what I am
He always took me for a woman
He was married, is married to him, but for him I am a woman
We are seeing each other
Right now it has been about two weeks since the last time we saw each other, because neither of us goes out much anymore, or perhaps he does and I don’t
And now, I haven’t been out in two weeks, and just now, I am finally going to go out, I am finally going, to see him…for me two weeks is a long time and I’ve really wanted to see him
And if I go to The Zone, and if I don’t end up charging or robbing or doing anything else to whoever I end up running off with it is because…I’m going to…it is because
I’m still learning
First, I said, I am going to make my way in, I am going to start with the men
First just going off and doing them, not asking for much, or little
Up until now things have gone well for me with them, they give me a hundred, or a fifty, at this moment I am in it because I’m crazy, not because I’m greedy
Everybody that sees me thinks I am doing okay, they just warn me to be very careful, and to not just go off with any macho dick that…I need to be careful not to get burned here
A lot of the gay hustlers here have gotten sick and I didn’t want to be one of them
Later almost any job would be okay although I’d prefer not to work The Zone, no, I’d choose a better job, maybe in a factory or something, or at a company, whatever, anything but working The Zone
But then, I won’t have any choice but to work The Zone
It is the only job I can take
Right now I work for myself, and looking like this, I can’t find anything else
My eyebrows are tattooed and that is one of the reasons I can’t find a decent job, so, I can’t find a decent job right now
Some places I go they tell me that they can’t hire me because my eyebrows are tattooed, and well, they are, and so even if I did dress like a man they still couldn’t hire me
I got my eyebrows tattooed in December, in October, on the 5th of October I tattooed my eyebrows
I tattooed them on the 5th of OctoberI was saying that I didn’t want to draw them on anymore, that I was sick of plucking mine out, that I wanted them tattooed on…and so I tattooed them
That way I don’t have to fight them anymore, and if I feel like wearing them another way I’ll just cover them up
I cover myself with makeup, I cover it up, no fight, and that way I don’t have to struggle
I don’t have to buy tweezers to pluck anymore or eyebrow pencils because my eyebrows are tattooed on permanently
So, right now I can’t find work as either a man or as a woman
I want to go somewhere else, I mean what I want right now is to go to Tijuana to work
I want to see if over there I can sell myself as I am
There maybe I can change, dress in drag, from now on I only want to wear drag, be more feminine, you know
Right now I should go do it while I still can, because if I wait I won’t be able to, I won’t be able to do the hormones and being my age, old as I’d be, it would be very difficult for me to make that change
And so now, right now while I’m still relatively young, I want to start the process
And once I’m changed, I can come back here to work
I mean, first I want to change before I start working here
So first, I’ll do the shots and all that first, I thought I might start on Saturday, getting the injections, but right now being out of work I can’t afford to go have it done, they’re cheap, about 40 pesos, but right now I can’t
They said that I should start out with the hormones and then with vegetable oil
The hormone shots are to even me out so to speak, make me thin, make my hair grow, and then after that the vegetable oil shots are to make me grow hips, boobs
It is a whole litre, but you really only use a quarter of that, but if you use the whole litre, in time, as the days go by, the oil will putrify
I always say I’ll never change, even if I change on the outside, I changed and all that, but on the inside I’m never going to change, I’ll always be the same
When I was six or seven years old I was raped by my father, my uncles and two of my cousin’s friends
Umm…one day everybody was going out, supposedly to a party or something and my cousin invited me to go therewith her, and I believed her, I had no reason to think that she would lie to me, but she it was no party she took me to, um…
She took me to a shack, and then she tied me to a chair and left me there, for days and weeks
After several weeks had gone by, I had been there with no food or anything
They came and started drinking there, my father, my uncles and the boys
So they started drinking, and drinking, and they got really hammered
Then this friend of my cousin started feeling me up, handling me, and then he started to, he started taking his clothes off and then he took my clothes off…and then,
I started screaming, I asked him to help me, I also asked my father if he would help me, but no, but nobody paid any attention to me
Um…the guy that did it…he said that nobody would help me, that I couldn’t count on anyone there for help, that we were very far away there
The first was one of my uncles, and then my stepfather and then another uncle, and then after that, the other two friends
There were five of them
Then later on, the next day, they took me home and when they got there they started saying how they had just found me or whatever…as soon as I walked in I told my mother what had happened, but no, she didn’t really believe me, I told everybody in the house but nobody believed me
Even though I was telling the truth nobody believed me
Being raped scars one for life, I mean, uh, every man that goes through this is damaged, and each time I stared at one of them, I remembered, I could see in them the reflections of the faces of the men who attacked me and that
I was afraid of them uh…all of them, if a cop went by, uh, salesmen or workers like that, I saw those other faces,
So I say my life, damned as it is, has been marked forever
I thought about trying to get back at them and at my cousin, get revenge and such, but why bother, God is there, and God is the only one who knows what is going to happen
No, I will never do anything to hurt anyone
I have left the past behind, but anyhow it is one thing to forget, to leave it behind is very difficult
For me the truth is, that I really have left it all in the past, but sometimes I do remember and it makes me angry
Every since what happened that day happened, I have given more and more of myself, trying to figure it all out, was
I already that way, I ask, what exactly was it about me, why did that think that I was made to be used like that, was it because I liked it or something, no, it wasn’t that, ‘cause I never wanted it to be like that, so I already had it in me, it was in my blood, all right
My stepfather, after everything he had done to me, did want me to change, yeah, but then he didn’t, he started to see me for what I was, that I wasn’t going to change, and that it wasn’t really my fault, that it was his fault for what he had done to me, and I told him, actually, he told me, you ended up like this because of what we did to you, and I told him, no, it isn’t that so much as the fact that I was already like this, so
Now he sees me the way I am and doesn’t say anything to me, on the contrary, now he sticks up for me
Yes, I do thank him for that
After everything he put me through, he’s helping me now
And yes, when I talked to my parents, they said that the only thing I deserved from them was support, never mind rejection or whatever
I thanked them and I continue to thank them for their understanding and for accepting me as I am
So for me what have changed are my thoughts and my dreams
My big dream is to have a baby and the other one is to become a hairdresser,
Those are my dreams
So I said to myself, I have to think about something else and not, not keep thinking about that
I have to do something to get my mind off of it
If I kept thinking about it then maybe I would end up doing nothing with my life, so I decided to think my nice thoughts and to dream, and that was how I managed to get my mind off of what happenedI dream, that, I see a baby in my dreams
Oh, and when I have it in my arms, I don’t know what I am going to do, or how I am going to feel…when I see my dreams made real
I think I’ll just give him all my love, give him understanding, and give him schooling; a child deserves all that, love and an education
I would give my child joy, give him all that I never had, to be able to give to him, to be able to give him love and affection, and…give him the things they never gave me, what I didn’t get, and that is my dream.