Some people accept my being a ladyboy. I have felt like this since I was a child.

Every ladyboy’s dream is to be just like a real woman, with breasts and female sexual organs. I dreamed of saving money for the operation when I grew up. But when I finally saved up enough money for the operation, my dream was shattered. The transgender operation was impossible, because I have HIV. My boyfriend at the time was an injecting drug user. And I was a sex worker. So I never knew for sure how I got HIV. In the end, I only got the boob job.

For a time, I felt very down. I used to have nobody with me. My dad and mom didn’t want anything to do with me because I’m transgender and HIV-positive. My parents have now passed away.

When I first entered show business, I started as a dancer. Then I got to be one of the lead lip-synch performers. The first song I lip-synched on the stage was “Miss Saigon.”

Most people think that a dancer’s life is exciting, wearing all those wonderful costumes. I worked as a show dancer and sex worker at the same time. Sex work is the easier way to earn money. I’ve never seen a job ad for a ladyboy, though the ladyboy situation has become much more open now than it used to be. For example, flight attendants can be ladyboys now. As for military service, in the past they always identified ladyboys as mental misfits. Now the policy has changed to identify ladyboys as people who inhabit their gender differently from when they were born. I want to use my life as an example to newcomer ladyboys, that they should be extra careful.

It made me so happy and proud to be a ladyboy when a real man asked me to marry him. I keep this wedding photo to be displayed at my own funeral, in case one day something happens to me. This photo will show that I was beautiful once.

Sometimes I feel despair. I feel lonely. I feel like my life is at a crossroads. It’s hard to be different from others. But am I afraid? At first I was so scared of HIV, but once I got to know and learn about it, it wasn’t that scary anymore.