Yvolved: The Memoir of a Tainted Beauty

By Yvy DeLuca

Yvy spent her life discovering what it meant to live authentically, and realised that her truth lay in her identity as an Indian transgender woman. After discovering who she was, Yvy ensured that nothing would impede her from evolving into the woman she always knew she was, despite her upbringing in a Muslim community and the many obstacles she faced, as her journey took her to places she never thought she’d venture to.

As the continuing story from Tainted Beauty, Yvy takes you even deeper, reliving her experiences with relationships, culture, family and finding strength through adversity. Yvolved is a personal, intimate and unapologetic story of a woman who is not afraid to break the social construct of gender and affirm her queer identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398451544

Yvy DeLuca

Yvy DeLuca is a writer, performer and activist. Yvy is the author of Tainted Beauty – The Memoir of an Authentic Creation, telling the story of her experiences as a South Asian transgender woman. She also performs as The BollyWitch, blending Bollywood culture and witchcraft to create performance art. She currently resides in Salford, with her husband, Jack, and their two cats, Nyssa and Pirlo.

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About the Author

Yvy DeLuca is a writer, performer and activist. Yvy is the author of Tainted Beauty – The Memoir of an Authentic Creation, telling the story of her experiences as a South Asian transgender woman. She also performs as The BollyWitch, blending Bollywood culture and witchcraft to create performance art. She currently resides in Salford, with her husband, Jack, and their two cats, Nyssa and Pirlo.

Dedication

For Zohra, the strongest woman I will ever know.

Copyright Information ©

Yvy DeLuca 2023

The right of Yvy DeLuca to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398451537 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398451544 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Prologue

Hiyas! For those who know me from reading my first book, welcome back! It’s great to have your hands all over me again! For those who have no idea who I am or what I’m about, let me be the first to say…rude!

No, wait, I’m only teasing. If you don’t know who I am, my name is Yvy (that’s pronounced ‘ee-vee’; trust me, it helps if I explain it to you in the long run). A little summary about me. I’m Indian. I’m trans. I’m fabulous. Now, for the next number of pages, you’re going to learn a little something about me, about life and maybe even something about yourself. It may seem that I’ve got my life together, given that I can so openly say that I am a trans woman of colour, but that’s not the case. It’s taken a lot for me to get to where I am. So much so that I couldn’t fit it all into my first memoir.

And so here we are. Once again, I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. I’m simply here to speak a truth that we as Desi Queer people seldom get the opportunity to do so. We all have a story to tell, so when life gives you an opportunity to tell it, you should. The story continues…

Chapter One

Blackburn, 1999

I lay in bed, knowing that today was the day I was going to do something so drastic, so final. I looked at the mini alarm clock that Feroza claimed through collecting an abundance of Benson & Hedges vouchers, and saw that it was just past 8:00 am. I didn’t want to go through with it. I was starting to have second thoughts. Should I go through with it? Will it be worth it? I mean, up until now I had endured it all, but when does the time come when enough is enough and you have to take back control? That time was now.

I willed myself out of bed, quietly rolling out of my bottom bunk so as not to wake my brother, Fareed. I always tried to avoid waking him up on the off chance that he awakened in a bad mood. As I lifted off the bed, the metal coils retracted under the thin mattress, causing the whole bed to shriek like rusty wind chimes that had been disturbed by a sharp breeze. I looked up and saw his face, firmly planted in a pillow stained with spit. Then again, I’m one to talk. I may have had nice sheets but the pillows look like they’d gone through a decade in a skip. The curtains were still drawn, blocking out the morning light, but I knew my way around our bedroom like a carefully planned maze. Every obstacle, every creaky floorboard under the royal blue carpet was imprinted in my brain. Before long, I was out of the bedroom, Fareed still sound asleep. I looked out the window just outside our bedroom door and saw that it was a beautiful day. A Saturday. The day I was waiting to finally come. I had made my decision and my decision was final. I’m going through with it.

Standing in the bathroom, I barely recognised myself. I was so sick of being taunted, harassed, humiliated. I mean, what the fuck is so fascinating about me that generates so much attention? Are the people at Pleckgate High School so intrigued by me that they don’t know how to act around me? Or is it that they simply don’t like me? The freak. The khusra. The gay. I fucking hate that expression. The gay. Like I’m the only one in the whole damn school. They know fuck all about me. What’s infuriating is that girls can walk around with their skirts rolled up, with glossy lipstick and perfect hair, and the boys don’t say shit to them. It’s as if beauty and popularity is all that fucking matters. But dare to act like yourself, and you’re done for. I’m tired of being myself. I’m tired of being tired. I want all of this to be over. I’m going to do it today.

I was going to ask Mum to help me do it, but decided not to this time. She helped in the past but this time I felt like I had to do it on my own. This was my choice. I mean, if this is really what I wanted to do, I didn’t want this moment to be tainted with other people trying to talk me out of it. I had already made my mind up and in all honesty, I was beyond caring what anybody thought.

After getting dressed and saying my goodbyes to Mum, I left the house and started my journey. Walking down Shear Bank Road, the steep, declining hill made my pace unsteady. I listened to the rustling of the looming trees that shielded the sun from touching the grey pavement as I made my way into town. I always preferred Shear Bank to Shear Brow because of its privacy, its emptiness. Shear Brow was on the other side of the street that I lived on in Blackburn, but was much more exposed and busier with traffic. They both led into town, but although walking down Shear Bank took slightly longer; I didn’t care. It gave me a little bit more time to myself, to collect my rattling thoughts and take in the quiet. Once I made it to Preston New Road, all the quiet I was enjoying soon vanished. Car after car drove along the busy road and soon enough, I was in town and standing at my intended location. This is it.

By now you’re probably thinking ‘what the fuck is she going on about?’ First of all, thank you for using the correct pronouns (and never be afraid to ask respectfully if you’re ever unsure). Secondly, this was a very big day for me. To put things into context, it was the 1990s and I was sporting the signature curtain hairstyle that most teenage males were rocking at the time. My thick, Indian hair never rested on my head the way I wanted it to, and so, before I transitioned into the beautiful woman I am today (and learnt about the miracle of GHD straightening irons), I had to rely on a nocturnal routine of sleeping on my hair in a desperate attempt to keep my thick waves from being so prominent.

All I wanted was to have beautiful hair. I mean, I had dreamt of it ever since I was a child, when I would put a jumper on my head like a perfectly styled lace front wig. Although my attempt to straighten my hair when sleeping didn’t quite have the desired outcome, it was enough to get me through most of the school day before the waves and kinks started showing. That is, unless it was rainy or windy outside. I wish that was the only reason why I had decided to cut my hair off, but there was a lot more to it. I suppose for many of us, our hair is a huge part of us. Whether you have long hair or don’t have much at all, it’s still one of the first things people notice. Some of us, myself included, see our hair as an extension of ourselves while others don’t really think much about it. The funny thing is, the people who say they don’t care about their hair often don’t want to make any changes. That in itself tells you that a lot more people see their hair as a part of their personal reflection than they even realise.

I stared across the street at the barbers, Passerini’s. I had never entered Passerini’s before in my life. I always had my mum, Zohra, cut my hair. I just couldn’t face it. I imagined it being a fortress of tough men looking at walls covered in bare-breasted women and roasting every newbie that sat in their chairs. In short, it was a man’s world. For as long as I could remember, I always gravitated to anything feminine. I didn’t know I was transgender at the time, but I knew for sure that I wasn’t a man. I didn’t want to associate myself with being a man.

However, school was becoming unbearable. All the taunts about my hair were getting out of hand. Funny, that all the taunts and laughs were coming from other Asian kids. I mean, can I not even fit in with my own culture? Why was having curtains such an issue when there was about a hundred other people in Pleckgate with the same haircut as me? I just didn’t understand. I knew I had to go in Passerini’s and face my fear. Just go in and get your hair cut. Look like everybody else. It’s easier that way.

I pushed the door open and entered the waiting area. It wasn’t a large room, and had a few seats lining the walls. The walls were dull and had old posters of what looked like hairstyles from Happy Days. Against the window were two arcade games. I peered through the open entrance to see a few barber chairs and suddenly I heard a booming voice coming from inside.

‘’Ave a seat, son. Be with you in a sec.’

Oh God! Already I could feel my skin peeling off and my skeleton trying to escape. He just called me ‘son’. I sat down, listening to the intro music to Mortal Kombat blaring from the arcade machine. I watched as Sub-Zero kicked the crap out of Liu Kang and then sever his head and spinal cord from his body. Oddly comforting.

‘Alright, son! Your turn!’

I had to bring myself back from the Netherrealm and face reality. I walked into the barber’s area and found, to my horror, that I was dead on with how I imagined it would be. It was as if I had somehow walked into my imagination with the dense, macabre soundtrack of Mortal Kombat adding to the terror that was a man’s world.

‘Get in the chair, lad.’

I looked at the barber and the three other men stood across the room. I didn’t know how to act. Should I be manly or should I just be myself?

‘Hello!’ I said with a wimpy wave. The men all looked at me and then looked at each other. Oops, bad move. Butch it up!

‘What’s it gonna be then, son?’

‘Errrm.’ I didn’t know what to say. Sitting on the faux leather chair, the barber threw a white sheet around my neck and awaited my instruction.

‘Short back n’ sides, is it?’ he asked impatiently.

‘I guess so.’

‘You sure, lad?’

I wasn’t sure if I had a choice. The way this guy just assumed a short back and side haircut was what I wanted, I assumed that was pretty much the only haircut he was able to accomplish, other than possibly the greasy Fonz hairdo that was plastered on the wall in the waiting room.

‘Yeah, but not too short.’

‘I’ll give you a number two, then.’

‘Umm, okay.’ I just pretended I knew what a number two haircut was. Maybe the hairstyles he did were numbered, like when you order off a Chinese takeaway menu.

I looked around the room and saw an array of topless photos of newspaper models, with a few smaller pictures of Max Power girls bent over cars with their unusually large breasts resting on the hoods. I didn’t know where to place my eyes. I didn’t like looking at women in this setting. I knew that all the men were objectifying them. I never thought at the time that it could be seen as empowering for a woman to be so positive about her body, showing it off in ways that she chooses. Instead, I felt more protective of these women on the walls. I looked at each one and saw that they were plastered on the wall for nothing more than to be ogled by a bunch of sweaty men who couldn’t care less about who the women were or what she was all about. It was purely about tits.

I looked in the mirror in front of me to try and keep my eyes focused. Thankfully, the mirror reflected the waiting room. I could see the side of the arcade machine peeking out from the door frame. As the barber grabbed a chunk of my hair and started cutting and razoring, I felt shivers going down my spine. With every snip, I felt a part of me fall away. I knew I was making a mistake by coming here, but I had to prove to the world that I could do it. I should just be the boy I keep being told I’m supposed to be. I am a boy. I must be. I have to be.

‘All done, lad.’

I looked in the mirror and I wanted to scream. I saw a skinny Asian boy staring at me. His skin was blotchy with spots. His ears were small and nose slightly large. His hair was completely shaved at the sides and a patch of hair sat on the top of his head like a top hat. Is that really me? I stood up as the barber took the white sheet off of my shoulders and paid him the three quid it cost to take away the last remaining external resemblance of the person I related to and made my way out. As I walked past the arcade machine, a low booming voice sounded.

FLAWLESS VICTORY.

***

I would say I’m a very complex person. Then again, who the Hell isn’t? We all have those moments in our lives that for some reason stick in our minds. Even something small like getting your hair cut can somehow embed itself into your brain and surface the moment you are ready to understand what you’re supposed to learn from it. Over the years I learnt to adapt and understand what it meant to be me, but I still had so much more to learn. For a while I thought I didn’t need to learn anything because I was in a better place than I had been only a few years before. That’s the tricky thing with the old noggin, it can proper mess you up when you least seimaerdemosemmig—sorry, Pirlo just put his big cat paws on my keyboard. What I meant to say was, it can proper mess you up when you least expect it.

With that said, nobody is expected to have to deal with every single little memory that creeps up. Not every thought has to have a lesson to learn. Most of the time, a memory can simply be a memory. Often a memory can leave you feeling a certain way, whether it be happy or sad, but if that feeling doesn’t leave you and starts to carry into other areas of your life, that’s when you should pay a bit more attention as to why that particular moment in your life still resonates.

Sitting in that barber’s chair, I felt exposed. I was a fraud who had entered a masculine world. A world I had no place trespassing in. I mean, that’s how it felt at school every time I did something remotely masculine. My all-time fear in high school was P.E. For me, P.E was the only subject in school that set the binary boundaries so ferociously that it felt as though it had nothing to do with exercise or getting healthy, and everything to do with dictating what a boy should be doing and what a girl should be doing. Boys play football, now do it! That’s how it felt to me. I was forced to participate in a sport I hated, not because I hated football, but because of what I was made to believe it meant. I’d see the girls doing P.E and wished I could be with them. Instead, I was made to stand on a field and attempt to kick a ball around without embarrassing myself. Of course, I failed miserably, and looking back I bet I looked like the most femme queer trying to kick a ball around without dirtying my white polo t-shirt and shorts. When I think of it that way, it does sound kind of cute!

When I got home from Passerini’s, I went upstairs to Feroza’s room. My big sister’s bedroom was where I spent a lot of my time when I was at home before Mum gave me the front room downstairs and I stopped sharing a bedroom with Fareed. The three of us were all so different from each other. But I got on with Feroza the most. I walked in and saw Feroza’s face as she checked out my new hair style.

‘Bloody hell, Sal,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe you really did it!’

Neither could I to be honest. The moment I heard the buzzing of the clippers as they made contact with my scalp, I had a flash of the moment when I made the decision to cut my hair. I was sat in Maths class, bored out of my skull. Nilufar, an Asian girl I sat next to, was a nice enough person but I didn’t really have much to do with her in school. I didn’t have much to do with anybody really. She was petite, with a short, black bob. She rarely had anything interesting to talk about and always seemed to be slightly awkward around me, as if she had something important to say to me but never actually said it.

‘What’s the formula for this again?’ She asked.

‘I have no idea; I’m as lost as you are.’

Nilu let out a giggle, which then made me laugh. We got on well during class, but never really spoke at any other time at Pleckgate. Mr Garrett, our Maths teacher, looked up from his textbook to find us giggling. He gave us a stern gaze and went back to addressing the class. Nilu and I started whispering to each other and couldn’t help but laugh again. This time, we couldn’t keep the volume to a mere giggle and I let out an uncontrollable high-pitched sound in a failed attempt at holding back my hysterics.

‘SALEEM!’ Mr Garrett boomed, sending a shockwave through me. ‘See me after class. You as well, Nilufar.’

The whole class was looking at us with judgemental glares. You’d think they would’ve been happy that someone had caused a fuss in class to steer it away from having to learn equations, but instead the vibe I was getting from everyone was one of annoyance. It felt like because it was me, they were pissed off. I’ve seen plenty of other students cause a scene in class and the rest would find it hilarious, but not when I did it, no, when I do it, they don’t like it. They already think I’m a freak, so who wants to listen to one in class? That’s how it always felt.

When class was done, Nilu and I stayed back while the rest of the students left for lunch. I was so hungry, my stomach tied in knots. I wasn’t too bothered about what Mr Garrett had to say. He was creepy and unsettling in his own way, which made it hard to take him seriously.

‘I’m not going to tolerate this behaviour again,’ he said, his face stern and unhinged.

‘We won’t,’ I said, trying to keep the conversation to a minimum so I could get the hell out of class and stuff myself with chips and beans.

‘Good. It’s not fair on the others, Nilufar, and you shouldn’t be holding up the class.’

‘I’m Nilufar,’ Nilu spoke up. I looked up, realising that Mr Garrett was in fact addressing me as Nilufar. The prick doesn’t even know who I am.

‘Oh, well, you both look so similar with your girly hair. Now, I’ll see you both on Thursday.’

I was in shock. Did Mr Garrett actually say that I had girly hair? That means he’s seen me that way all this time. Girly Boy. If this were ten years later, I would have been thrilled for someone to mistake me for a girl. But in that moment, it hit me in my sixteen-year-old face like a sudden punch. It’s one thing being called all sorts from my fellow students, but when my teacher actually called me a girl to my face for having girly hair, well, that was the last straw.

What will it take for people to leave me alone? I was tired of being judged by how I looked. Plenty of white boys in school had curtains. Why was it such an issue for me to have the same hairstyle? Am I not worthy of having slightly longer hair? I loved having longer hair. Even though I was still secretly putting my long-sleeved tops on my head in my bedroom when Fareed was out and pretending to have flowing locks of hair, I liked that a tiny part of that feeling stayed with me. I could look at my hair and imagine it growing longer and longer, flowing all around me. I’d imagine braiding it into a beautiful Indian hairstyle. However, the moment I stepped into school, the students were savage with their taunts. It just never let up.

The moment Mr Garett called my hair girly, I’d had enough. One thing I always did in life when things were going badly was pull away. I became invisible, or at least I wanted to be invisible. To go unnoticed. As I made my way out of school for the long walk up Pleckgate Road and home for lunch, I pushed past all the students in my way. I saw the gang of Asian boys standing near the front of the school. They all turned towards me after one of them alerted the rest of my approach. I walked past, holding tightly on to my rucksack, trying not to make eye contact.

‘Eh, khusra! Nice hair. GIRL!’

They all burst into vicious laughter as they continued the joke. My cheeks were burning red as I pushed for the exit.

‘Khusra! Khusra!’

I stopped in my tracks. My head slowly raised until I was staring at the reflection behind me in the glass on the school entrance door. My burgundy rucksack slowly slid off my shoulder and I unzipped the top compartment. The boys were still behind me, shouting their inane taunts. Suddenly, I turned, pulling out two steel blades. I looked at them all straight in the eyes and leapt into the air. My legs were bent with precision and as I descended towards the ground, I flipped the blades to reveal a set of razor sharp fans. MORTAL KOMBAT!

One by one, I tore those motherfuckers up limb from limb, dodging every worthless punch and kick they attempted to make. With each swift move, I swung my fans in their direction like a boomerang, watching their blood splatter across the school walls and their heads roll in the air. The last boy, the one who alerted the rest to my presence, was the only one standing. He stood there, whimpering, staring at me with fear. I walked towards him and as I looked to my left and caught a glimpse of myself in the school reception desk window, I saw a beautiful woman, dressed in royal blue, and long, long waves of hair. I walked towards the last bully, raised my steel fan to strike at his worthless fucking throat and—

Well, you can imagine what happened next, yep, that’s right, fuck all. I didn’t do shit about nothing and carried on walking until I was through the school doors. It felt rubbish being noticed like that. Something had to be done. I watched as the barber cut my hair, knowing that I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. To this day, it’s a memory that has stayed with me. But the question I ask myself now is, what do I do with the feelings that come with that memory? Is it really about my hair, or was it about something more than that?

I never realised it at the time, but that moment in the barber’s chair set in motion a whole new path that went undiscovered for a very long time. A path that could have given me a strong sense of self. A path that had I embarked upon, I may have been even more secure in myself once I began my journey of transition years later.

Right now, you’re probably wondering what that means. Let me put it to you this way, in life we have those moments when we know what we need to do without question. For me, it was the moment when I knew I was transgender. From that moment, I knew that I had to transition because it was the only choice. But then we have the flip-side, the subconscious, the moments when we realise something even deeper. So deep that the realisation of what you need to do can get lost in what you are dealing with at the forefront. For me, that lost realisation was building the foundation that was me, Yvy. Sitting in the barber’s chair, I saw a part of Yvy literally get torn away. I was watching a part of myself that I actually liked because it was an extension of who I was inside falling away because of the fuckwits at school.

It was at that point that my journey to the core of who Yvy was derailed and I temporarily lost my way. It wasn’t until many years later that I finally got back on track, but by that time I couldn’t help but wonder: am I too late to find Yvy?

I See You;

Do You See Me?

Chapter Two

Manchester, 2006

It was creeping towards midnight and I was nowhere near sleep for the third night in a row. Moving to Chorlton after living in Blackburn with Mum and my two siblings was a huge adjustment. For one, no matter what time it was, there was always someone in the house. Even when sitting in my room alone, I heard Mum cooking in the kitchen, or Feroza playing a CD in her bedroom and feeling the bass from her subwoofer vibrating through the walls, or Fareed going in and out of the house with his mates. All the while, I sat in my bedroom downstairs, comfortably listening to the world around me.

It was a huge step to move away, but one I had to do. I was so tired of commuting to work and hiding my transition from everyone. The pain of getting ready in Blackburn and skulking in the shadows all the way to the train station to avoid being seen was getting harder and harder. It was like I held my breath every time I travelled on the train to Manchester, buried within my long, hooded coat, finally exhaling the moment I stepped into work. This is getting really old!

I sat in my tiny attic flat, alone, with nothing to do. Looking outside, I saw that the flat across the street were having yet another party. People were dancing, and the music travelled softly through the air and into my living room. I wasn’t annoyed though, I actually liked hearing the bustle outside at night. Living on the corner just off the main road, it was never silent. Whether it was the night bus, people going to bars, or dragging themselves home after a night out, there was always something. You get used to it after a while and it soon became a comfort to me. I felt less alone in the world. Still, I had to do something to occupy myself tonight.

Fuck it.

I picked up my cordless landline, punched in some numbers and let it ring. After an automated voice boomed through the speaker, I punched in some more numbers, paused for the beep and put the phone down. There! That should do the trick.

I was getting peckish, but what should I eat at five to midnight? I looked through the cupboards in the kitchen and found a jar of hot dogs and two onions. Perfect. I fried up the onions, boiled the hot dogs and stuffed them in some buns and got comfy on the sofa. It was a hot night, and even with the window wide open, I felt the stuffiness in the room. A perk of living alone when you’re trans is that you’re free to not give a shit about appearances. The tucking panties were nowhere to be seen and I could lounge around in a baggy t-shirt and some shorts without a care in the world.

I had another rough day at work. It seemed these days that I didn’t need to have anything bad happen to me to have a bad day. Just waking up, putting on a full face of make-up and having to smile my way through the day was getting harder and harder to do. I was still on the waiting list to be seen at Charing Cross and I was not going to wait for hormones to start my transition. I wanted to hit the ground running from the moment I realised I was trans, which was why I couldn’t hold off until I moved to Manchester and decided to start transitioning while living in Blackburn. Hiding it from my family was so difficult, but I knew that once I moved to Manchester, things would be better.

I finished a long day at work and walked from Deansgate to Piccadilly Gardens to catch the 86 bus to Chorlton. It was crowded, so I put my earphones in and played some Amerie. Soon enough, the blaring intro to ‘1 Thing’ filled my head. As I got onto the bus I went straight to the upper deck and sat near the front. I always avoided the back of buses, which is usually