The Greatest Lie Part 15

S., and had gotten a stingy five thousand dollar grant to further my research and study the sexual behaviors of Thai katoey sex workers. We would first return to Phuket in southern Thailand for surgery to complete the vaginas our Thai surgeon had fashioned the previous December. Then we would enroll in the summer session at Chiang Mai University, in Northern Thailand. There we would meet our newly post-op Thai friend Nancee, who would help us with the katoey research.

Our idyllic return to transgender paradise had been clouded over by unforeseen developments in L.A.: I found out that I had probably fathered a beautiful baby daughter by my one and only high-school girlfriend. When she visited her cousins in Long Beach, Tran found out that her little brother, Li, whom her father had taken in when her parents split up, had been cast off by her father into the toils of L.A.'s hideous foster-care system. Their father had thrown Li out like so much garbage as soon as her transgender tendencies made themselves known.

Li was now living very precariously, halfway between the cruel streets of L.A., where she survived as a runaway prostitute, and the abusive world of serial foster homes, where she was constantly clocked and targeted for taunts or sexual assault.

My own daughter lived with her mom in my mother's boyfriend's guest house, in constant danger from her old boyfriend and my own murderous nemesis, Miguel. Our own desperate circumstances had been further burdened by the even more dire circumstances of our families.

"Forget about your romantic fantasies, Tran. We just have to make this study we're doing in Thailand a real blockbuster, and then get some serious grant money for our next project. Professor Finch loves my stuff, and he'll back me once we turn in our results. We just have to get more money in the next grant. It's like Allenina said about making a porn movie: you propose a bigger project, you get a bigger budget." I had proposed a study of one hundred sex workers in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket, and Kho Samui.