Uncle Len’s Amazing Transgender Encounter By Uncle Len, the Gender-Suspender

     Have I got a story for you…I am so excited that I just dropped a slimy sandwich which I rescued from the dumpster last night. Already the cockroaches are fighting for it on the floor of the shed, but once I finish this article, I will fight them all for it. This time, I may even win.

     I have met my first transgender person, and found her, or him, to be well…just a person like me. Here is how it happened. I was going through bins on North Terrace, Adelaide, looking for food, which the rich Asian students usually throw out. For new readers, I add the footnote that I am the resident homeless, near-senile dispossessed Anglo, a living symbol of your future. Right. Now where was I?

     Anyway, this Asian girl approached me, and wanted money for a charity, one which I have been banned from approaching. Sorry, could not think of another word for “approaching.” What about “harassing’ or “pestering”?

     At last, I had someone to talk to, adding an end of sentence preposition. I began to tell her the story of my life. By the time I got to telling her about my fraternal – that’s a nice word – relationship with cockroaches, she was very uncomfortable, realising that she was in the company of a very disturbed man, of sorts, with deep mental problems, psycho-political neurosis to be exact.

     Then she told me that she was a transgender woman. I did not know what that meant, so she then had to explain things to me the way you would tell the facts of life to a three-year old, or I suppose, the way a three-year-old would explain it to us old folks.
     Lot’s of hand waving, and even a sketch in the dirt on my hand. It seems that when she discovered that she was not a man, when she was a boy, her Chinese parents, and whole extended family viciously turned on her and literally threw her into the street. Pretty sad stuff, and that’s coming from Australia’s greatest loser.

     I felt sorry for her, and told her that people can be intolerant.  Although she was collecting money, she gave me a whole dollar out of her own pink floral ultra-girl purse (not the collection money, she was of high integrity and honesty). I thanked her, realising that I now had great riches and could buy many things in the great shopping wonderland one street over, Rundle Mall.

     Now that I am enlightened and beaming with tolerance, I have rethought my position on same sex marriage and intend to vote….
NO!

     Did anyone anticipate that punchline?