Tranny blues in Argentina (a work of fiction)

In the dusky bar an older man, maybe in his fifties, possibly in his sixties, drank his beer and then slammed it on the counter. Foam slid down the side of the glass. A slender woman, wearing too much make-up, just finished adding another coat of lipstick and walked away into the night. She left the older man alone. From his barstool he watched the transsexual sing a silly song, her vocal chords straining with each octave. The tranny, once finished with her song, announced to the small crowd that she just had the operation that made her a woman once and for all. The old man asked the tall bartender for another beer and while he waited for it he stared at the empty barstool where the slender woman once sat. Edward Stess still had a full head of hair and nice white teeth. He grew sad when he thought he would never have a chance to speak to the young woman again that had got up and left. She was gone and he was alone with a transsexual.

The bartender put the beer in front of Edward and he studied the bubbles that floated towards the top of the glass. In back of him a man and woman clinked glasses.
Waiting for a lull in their conversation, Edward finally turned to the couple behind him.
“You know, two of them left me today.”
“I’m sorry,” the man said.
“Well, I know I’ll get over it. They all leave you and sooner or later they come back.”
The man nodded to Edward and then returned to his date.

Edward looked at the transsexual, her purple spangled dress now flowing, and wondered when he decided to chop off his penis. Was it when he was fifteen, when he played with a skein of yarn and tied it around his genitals? Or was it later in his life? Perhaps it was when he was twenty-five when he got lost in a bathroom at some rave?

When the transsexual finished her next song, her voice blared raspy on the microphone. She wanted someone in the audience to give her a song request. She flipped her puffy red hair and licked her lips.

Edward got off his barstool and then yelled something that rippled through the audience; waves of laughter abounded.
“Hey…when was it when you decided to cut off your penis? That’s what I want to know,” Edward asked.
“Oh how brave, this old man is very brave,” the transsexual responded into the microphone.
She then lifted up her purple dress and showed the world her scar. It was not fully healed.
“This is my pretty vagina, ya’ll and I can’t wait to show the world…now you old man, you look like you need a good fuck,” she said, touching the big mole on her right cheek.

Edward chuckled and then realized that it was time to for him to go too. Knowing had availed him nothing; he walked home to the tiny apartment in Buenos Aires and peeled an apple in silence and then threw the skin over the balcony. He thought he saw the tranny's penis in the garbage below, but it was just that he had not gotten enough sleep in the last few days.