the third sex

“What you think?” asked my ladyboy friend, hand on hip and turning her profile towards me. She had had a chin augmentation job done. Actually, it wasn’t bad. She looked fine. But many ladyboys who opt for cosmetic surgery make a sad mess of themselves. And some of the older ones look grotesque, because they fill their faces full of plastic when they are younger, and they don’t know when to stop. As they get older, parts of their face change: other parts don’t. Bangkok is renowned as one of the world centres for cosmetic surgery, and there are some fine surgeons here who will do a good job at a rate far below those charged in the West. But there are also a lot of slash-for-cash merchants about, and their rates are even lower, thus attracting the kind of clientele that has high hopes but not too much in the way of money.

Not that long ago a young ladyboy friend of mine who had a sweet and perfectly symmetrical face went for a chin job. Heaven knows why she did it: it wasn’t needed. She came out looking like Desperate Dan. It did nothing for her at all. Even worse was the ladyboy I knew some while back who had a chin job done that left her with a square chin that jutted down from her face in the shape of a short beard. And the one who wanted to make her face heart-shaped, and had a pointed chin added that was so badly done you could see where it joined up with her face.

Everyone wants a nose job, whether they need one or not. The people of Issan, who probably produce the greatest number of ladyboys, are rather self-concious about the ethnic characteristic of the squidgy little nose. There is very little bone or cartilage in the Issan nose, which tends to be flat. Women and ladyboys alike have nose jobs done, and it forms one of the staples of the cosmetic business. The routine surgery involves squeezing an off-the-shelf pre-formed plastic bridge up a nostril, with the result that a lot of Issan people are walking around with the same nose, so to speak.

So I see a lot of ladyboys who have had this operation done. Others who want a custom-built job will pay more money, of course, but some of the results I have seen have been frankly a disaster. Yo, who appears a few times on the main site, had the sweetest little feminine face. Then she had a nose job and a chin job that, in profile, made her look like Mr Punch.

Some ladyboys are simply never happy with their appearance. Anny, an early model, went through six noses. Somewhat alarmingly, she had one of them damaged in a minor accident just before she and I were about to leave for Pattaya. It had simply been a slight knock when she was larking about with a friend, but the transplant was dislodged and over the next 24 hours became very painful. We cut our visit short, and hurried back to Bangkok so that she could visit the clinic. I think that had been nose number five.

Another ladyboy friend, whose big eyes and clearly defined eyebrows gave her real beauty, managed to make a mess of herself by having cheekbone augmentation, which distorted the shape of her eyes. Just to finish the job off, she plucked her eyebrows. She just did not understand that she could have enhanced what she had, rather than change everything.

I won’t even get onto the subject of boobs, except to say that I have seen (and felt) some that are so hard that they stand out like water melons, and others where the sacs have been inserted so badly that the nipples point in different directions. I am still haunted by the memory of a ladyboy friend who turned up one day with only one breast. The other had started leaking, and the doctor had whipped it out. This was a ladyboy for whom I really had the hots, but on that afternoon I was struck impotent.

I could go on…the craze a few years back for vampire teeth…the startlingly blue contact lenses that occasionally confront me…lip collagen jobs that create a trout-like effect…adam’s apple reductions that leave the voice a hoarse whisper…it is all very unsexy.