A transvestite goes on stage to perform The Human Voice, by Jean Cocteau. She had had that dream for a long time. “The great actresses in history have done that work at some point,” she thinks. The audience applauds and waits for her at the exit of the theater. In her childhood, when he was still a child misunderstood for wanting to wear his mother’s dresses, she never imagined that she would reach where she has reached. But the idolatry they profess of her does not blind her. Her years have turned her into a cold woman who does not respond to the call of viewers. She prefers to sleep with the director and go to her house. There, her gay husband and her adopted son are waiting for her, whom she makes sure every night he takes antiretroviral medications for HIV. She adores him, but she never imagined being a mother. She thinks that was the beginning of the end of her marriage. Or, maybe, he was already dead before it started. Under this premise, Camila Sosa Villada (Córdoba, 1982) writes Thesis on a Domestication (Tusquets). Or, rather, she rewrites herself, since she has changed part of this story, which she published for the first time in 2019 and which was distributed in newsstands in Argentina.
How different is this book from its first version?
The story is the same, but I thought it was important to review some aesthetic and language issues. She did it while filming the movie.
From this same book?
That’s how it is. It does not have a release date, but I imagine that it will be seen throughout 2024. Putting myself in the shoes of the protagonist made me see that some changes were necessary.
For example?
It seemed more interesting to me to enhance some relationships that the protagonist maintains. With her brother, her friends, with other transvestites… In the first version, she was more alone. And now, by having more contact with other people, she becomes even more aware of how alone she is.
Is it a reflection of the author herself?
I feel very alone. There are many explanations, but the main one is that I am an Aquarius. There is some astral loneliness in me. But that’s not the only thing in which I’m similar to her.
Are you saying this because both the writer and the protagonist are transvestites?
For all. For that reason, because of her past in prostitution and, also, because of her way of being. I consider myself a surly woman, like her who, when it suits her, knows how to be naturally kind. Of all the characters I’ve ever written, she’s the one I identify with the most. It’s me. Not line by line, but in many ways. And having achieved this makes me think that this was the best book I wrote to date.
Unlike her previous works, she talks about a transvestite from a position of power and not a marginal one.
She is better positioned than most readers, financially speaking. But that doesn’t mean he leaves aside that stupidity of feeling fulfilled through work and affection. That makes her a slave to the system. It’s hard not to be. I myself have set the goal of putting slavery aside in 2024.
In what sense?
Sometimes, I feel like I live a life that isn’t quite mine. I find it amazing to walk down the street, to be recognized and to be told that they love my books. But it is something that neither the protagonist of the book nor I ever sought. We are known for a series of coincidences. I would like to be able to be in a bar with my friends and criticize whatever I want without fear of being judged from another table for being who I am. This affects my relationships.
A lot?
Yes and at different levels. For example, all the guys I have romantic stories with, whether romantic or just sexual, are people who don’t know about me. They have not seen me in the theater nor have they read me. I could tell them my name is Marta and they would believe it. For moments, I live from an anonymity that allows me to be myself again.
And he values ??it.
A lot, because, indirectly, it allows me to indulge that voracity for loneliness that I have and that not everyone understands. Just before moving to this house from which I speak, I lived as a couple. We spent the pandemic together in a one-bedroom apartment, so we were forced to see each other all the time.
Did she feel suffocated?
I needed my space. There was a moment when I couldn’t stand that situation anymore and I asked him to move to a bigger house. He didn’t understand it and we ended the relationship. But this and other experiences, everyday and on the street, I collect and keep in my mind, in case I ever need them when I write or to cope with a situation myself, although I prefer to think about happier things.
Like sex? There are many explicit scenes in his book.
Many readers have confessed to me that they get excited when they read me. My mother, on the other hand, had to abandon this book. She said that she imagined me at all times. Eventually she picked it up, she finished it and cried.
For the leading actress, sex is an escape.
It allows you to return to a lost savagery. The first step to domesticating a species is to corral it. She has a house, a son, a husband. A conventional life that she renounced and that frustrates her. She feels like she lives in a cage. In a beautiful, but trapped, little house. And she believes that her only escape is to return to the times when she was a transvestite and a prostitute. Transvestism is for her a form of freedom. And for me too.
