Although Kaz lived in Sydney she frequently travelled to Melbourne for work. At the time of meeting Kaz, I had just returned from a break from the industry and was preoccupied with finalising a previous booking as she approached the reception desk. While she stood at the desk introducing herself and making her request to leave work for a couple of hours, not something I normally agreed to but did on this occasion, I managed to lock the keys to the safe inside the safe, something which did not escape her attention. It was strange how Kaz and I ‘clicked’ the first time we met.
Kaz started life on a cattle station in Central Queensland. Her paternal family were hardy Nordic cattlemen stock and her place as the first born male sealed her fate as far as her father was concerned, but Kaz knew she was different from a young age and destined for a different path. The little she knew as a young boy growing up on an isolated cattle farm made her think she was gay but Kaz was and is transsexual. Without any knowledge of transsexualism, what other conclusion was she to come to but of being gay since she was attracted to men? This quandary between gender and sexuality is not uncommon amongst the transsexual community.
Sex and gender are two very different things (something you should come to learn from my novel). Your sex is what you're born with, which is part of biology, and gender is what we identify as which is socially constructed and part of sociology. Kaz may have been born male but her brain is very much female. Kaz doesn’t want to fuck other men or be fucked by other men as a man. She wants to be made love to as a woman.
In time, that caterpillar of a country lad evolved to become the butterfly of an intelligent, beautiful and very insightful woman. Kaz is now doing her masters in criminology, focusing on race, gender and offender profiling, works as a forensic crime scene cleaner and volunteers with the Women's Justice Network and a community legal centre in Sydney. She has also been the editor to my novel, Madam Is Not A Four Letter Word, and is still editing my works. Most of all, she's a very close friend that I call a sister. We share so many interests, especially our interest in human behaviour, and as we live in different states FaceTime is a Godsend. Whenever I have asked for advice to answer some of the riddles in life that I have encountered she has provided thoughtful and intelligent responses and when she hasn’t had answers she has always informed me so. I particularly admire and respect her for this. Somehow, I feel we are attuned even though our lives have had such different paths.
Kaz has surpassed so many obstacles in her life. Physical, psychological and emotional abuse at the hands of her father, sexual abuse at the hands of a boarding school teacher and religious deacon and a society that failed to provide protection and security (neither of her abusers was convicted for their behaviours although charges were bought against both) are just a few of the more salient challenges she has overcome. It is no wonder she found herself with a well-developed and unsustainable drug addiction in her early adulthood, not to mention her twisted sense of humour. Through all this, Kaz’s one regret is not being a mother although she hopes to adopt one day to provide a loving home for a child in need.
To become the woman she is was a long battle and reminds me, transsexuals are our humans too. This blog is, obviously a homage to Kaz, who is so much more than her gender and one of my closest and most supportive friends.