If You Only Knew (15 page)

CHAPTER 35

VONLEE TOOK TO DENVER
as though the city had been built for her. Before the move, Vonlee had rented an apartment with some friends, a married couple that soon divorced after Vonlee had spent about three months there. She had purchased a salon with another friend, but that was failing horribly, she said. One day when she took a look at her savings account, she realized now was maybe her chance to start over and—along with the idea of Denver being new and fresh and accepting of her lifestyle—she took off.

The friends she moved in with in Denver were “never transsexuals,” Vonlee explained, “but they [were homosexuals that] dressed up as females.” They wanted nothing to do with “the change,” as Vonlee put it, but liked being females when they went out.

“You are going to love Denver,” her friend Mickey (pseudonym) told Vonlee as they traveled northwest from Nashville. “It is so much more accepting.”

Not long after hitting the scene and taking in Denver, “I really started to come into who I was,” Vonlee recalled.

Although the idea to start an escort service had been germinating for some time, it wasn't something Vonlee did as soon as she arrived in the Mile High City. What's more, she wanted to do it right: operate as a legitimate business—paid girls that went on dates with wealthy men. She never intended it to be a prostitution service.

While digging through the daily newspaper one day, Vonlee came upon an ad for a local club looking for dancing girls. The dirty kind.

A stripper,
she thought.
Could I pull it off?

By now, Vonlee had gotten silicone implants and had large breasts. She was taking massive amounts of female hormones and, with her long, curly blond hair and a burgeoning swimsuit figure, she was an attractive female. There was nothing about her that said “man.” Her hands were feminine; her body hair was gone; her curves were real; her voice girly, but not overly so.

Vonlee walked in and applied for a job—a cocktail waitress, she'd decided. Turned out, Vonlee wasn't so confident that she could pull off being a female stripper in a strip club predominantly geared for heterosexual males.

She was offered a job, as was her girlfriend.

The strip club she worked at sold alcohol, so a requirement by the management was that all the girls wore two G-strings. This helped promote the rule that they were only to expose their breasts to patrons. If you were caught showing what you had downstairs, you were fired. The club could lose its liquor license if one of the girls exposed her vagina.

“You and Mandy want to make more money?” the manager asked Vonlee one night. Mandy (pseudonym) was a full-on transsexual herself, and she and Vonlee could have passed for sisters.

“How?”

“The stage.”

Vonlee had never told anyone at the bar she was a male. No one had ever asked. Vonlee knew about the G-string rule and figured it would be easy enough to hide her manhood, tucking it underneath.

“Why not?” she said.

Vonlee spent two weeks stripping. No one ever questioned her. She made lots of money, according to her. But, in the end, it was “far too stressful for me to continue,” so she went back to waiting tables.

“Hey, Vonlee,” the owner of the bar said one night while Vonlee was cashing out, “I got a friend who wants to meet you.”

Vonlee wasn't seeing anyone. She was saving for her operation. She'd known a few transsexuals who'd gone up to Montreal and she was planning on doing it herself, once she had the money.

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

She never told the guy she was a man. He had some money. He was looking for a place to live. All three of them—Mandy, Vonlee and Vonlee's new friend—decided to get a place together.

Vonlee and Mandy had moved out of the apartment they had been sharing with Mickey, the transsexual they had traveled to Denver with from Nashville.

“All she wanted to do was party all the time,” Vonlee said about the other girl. “And she was way into the gay scene, bringing home all sorts of men . . . and we decided we wanted to move on.”

So they left, and it pissed the girl off. As a result, Mickey called the guy they were moving in with and explained, “Hey, do you realize that they are men—Vonlee and Mandy?”

The guy had no idea.

“As it was, we were all going to move in as friends,” Vonlee said.

It was a three-bedroom apartment. At this time of her life, Vonlee viewed the world through a prism of always being on the defense. She got up and went about her days and was always on guard, waiting, anticipating, projecting that next insult would push her further into completing who she was. Thus, she saw people, whoever they were, as the enemy, no matter what they said or didn't say. She wanted acceptance; yet she wasn't prepared to accept herself completely. There always seemed to be a reason not to complete the transformation. By being a stripper, and not telling the owner and fooling the patrons, Vonlee was lying about who she truly was, or wanted to be. Essentially, she was living and working as a female, and yet lying about it still felt wrong.

CHAPTER 36

ON DECEMBER 4, 2000,
Tony DeLeonardis, a detective sergeant for the Area Three Detective Division of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), sat in front of an apartment building at 1501 West Fullerton. It was cold outside his vehicle; the skies dark and gloomy; that infamous Chicago wind was whirling up newspapers and other garbage along the curb line of the street. DeLeonardis was sitting surveillance on a three-story building—the bottom and top floors occupied by businesses, apartments sandwiched in between—watching for a woman whose photograph DeLeonardis had in his hand.

It was 12:50
P.M.

Up the street, near Greenview, DeLeonardis had already spotted Vonlee's two-door white Buick Riviera. It was parked out in the open. He had confirmed it was Vonlee's by the license tag.

Vonlee had relocated back to Chicago, where she'd spent a considerable amount of time before leaving to move back home and sober up, to start a new life. She hadn't run to Chicago from Troy. Or taken off in the middle of the night because she felt the heat of the law, as some had later suggested. Vonlee had decided it was time to get away from her aunt and begin her life, once again, in a place she was familiar with.

As DeLeonardis sat and watched, he witnessed the “subject” walk out of the West Fullerton door of the building. Vonlee had her hair pulled back and tied up like a rooster's tail. She wore a knee-length blue coat and white shoes. She was toting a laundry basket full of clothes.

Vonlee got into her car and pulled out into the heavy traffic on Fullerton. DeLeonardis followed, but he lost Vonlee somewhere near Demon Dogs, a restaurant several blocks from her apartment.

DeLeonardis drove back around and parked in front of Vonlee's building again. Almost three hours after losing her—Vonlee had still not returned—DeLeonardis, as he noted in his report, “terminated” the surveillance.

What this proved to the TPD, however, was that Vonlee Titlow was living in Chicago, but not hiding out in any way. She was out and about, doing laundry, grabbing some food. She wasn't on the lam.

The next obvious task for TPD detectives Don Zimmerman and Don Tullock, who had taken over lead in the case, was to put everything they had into a search warrant and see what they could dredge up at the Rogers house. They had most of Don's financial records already and knew that a lot of money had been spent by Billie Jean and paid to Vonlee. It proved nothing by itself. But, in the context of a search warrant and what else they now knew about Vonlee and her aunt, they could think about dragging the two of them in for a little chat.

CHAPTER 37

TWO TRANSSEXUALS LIVING WITH
a guy in Denver during the early 1990s—this was not the ideal domestic situation Vonlee had seen for herself in the crystal ball of her life. By this time (heading toward her later twenties), Vonlee was hoping to be settled down (with a guy), her operation done, hold a nice job, and maybe have a small slice—however different it was—of the American pie. Quitting the stripper job was probably a good move, she thought. But where would she go? What was she going to do for a living?

Just a few days after the three of them had moved in together, when the guy came home from work, he called Vonlee and Mandy into the living room.

“Sit down,” he said. “Both of you.”

“What's going on?” Vonlee asked. She could tell he was upset about something.

“I got a phone call at work today.”

“Yeah . . . and . . .”

Vonlee knew this guy had ties to organized crime, or did at one time. He was not someone to mess with in any way. Or, in this case, they should not lie to him.

“It's time for a little show-and-tell, girls,” he said. He wanted them to drop their pants.

Vonlee and Mandy looked at each other.

Mandy tried to say it was nothing but lies. Whatever the other girl had said was out of anger because Mandy and Vonlee had screwed her over and left without warning. She was just being a bitch and trying to make up stories about them. Both she and Vonlee were females. There was nothing to worry about. After all, didn't he meet them at a strip club?

Vonlee got up, walked into the kitchen, made a drink. She took a few pulls from the strong cocktail and worked her way back into the living room.

“Mandy . . . let me. Look,” Vonlee said, addressing their new roommate, “the truth is, neither of us ever had any intention of having sex with you. It wasn't anything like that. I feel like we misled you. Sure. But if you want to back out of the apartment and leave, we understand. I'm really sorry.”

They had a conversation. Mandy actually had a crush on the guy, but that was quickly suppressed once she and Vonlee told him that they were, in fact, men. He couldn't believe it, of course. Nonetheless, he decided to stay. They had been honest. They fessed up.

No more secrets.

Both promised.

As time went on, Vonlee said, “There was some sexual energy there between us.” She and the guy had gone out one night and started drinking heavily together. When they got back to the apartment, Vonlee said she was out of cigarettes.

“Let's go,” he said.

On the way back from the store, he pulled the vehicle over and “just started kissing” her. No warning or lead-up. He just took her.

“One thing led to another, and me and him started fooling around,” Vonlee recalled.

They never committed to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend, but as Vonlee told it, “It was like we were friends with benefits. We were living in the same apartment.... I loved him, but I wasn't
in
love with him.”

Vonlee began working at a local chain restaurant after leaving the strip club. She wanted out of the stripper scene entirely. There was too much cocaine and drinking and dishonest business going on, and she saw herself, if she stayed, not coming out of it without a few serious bumps. She and the guy living at the apartment still had relations as the weeks turned into months, but it was all within that friends-with-benefits thing they'd started and never went beyond that. Vonlee and Mandy, meanwhile, became closer. Best friends, Vonlee said later. They always had told each other they would one day go into business together and were beginning to take that pipe dream seriously.

Working one night at the chain restaurant, a nicely dressed guy left Vonlee his business card and implored her to call him if she wanted to go out. As Vonlee sat home alone a few weekends later, she took out the card and dialed the number.

“And we just hit it off,” she remembered.

They were inseparable after that first night out. Vonlee never shared her gender with him; she didn't feel she needed to. Their relationship just kind of took flight and she made the decision not to tell him.

Six months went by. They were in love. They'd had sex on a number of occasions, both oral and anal. He never questioned Vonlee about her gender. She'd always make an excuse: “I'm on my period. . . .” Or, “I have a yeast infection.”

The time came to renew the lease where Vonlee, Mandy and their male roommate were living and Vonlee told her roommates she was moving out and getting a place of her own, but she would being staying with Jay (pseudonym), her boyfriend, until she found one.

After moving in with Jay, Vonlee and her girlfriend were sitting around talking one night. Jay was at work.

“I have to tell him,” Vonlee confided in her friend. She'd been freaking out lately about it, stressing over the “right time.” Their relationship had turned into something Vonlee never saw coming. They were deeply in love.

Both women agreed that when Jay returned, Vonlee's girlfriend would do the dirty work for her.

“Sit down,” she told Jay when he walked in. Vonlee left the room.

“I don't understand,” Jay said when the girlfriend finished.

Vonlee came into the room. She explained it to him as bluntly as she could.

“He was upset, confused and didn't believe it,” Vonlee recalled.

Vonlee had always told Jay there was a secret about her he needed to know. She'd mentioned this many times. Jay had wondered, but never pressured her to tell him. He obviously didn't think the secret was that she was a man.

“Well, how in the hell did we have sex?” Jay asked. Vonlee could see that Jay was going back through his rolodex of memories and thinking,
Were there signs? Did I miss something?

Vonlee explained how she carefully manipulated the situation and fooled him into having anal intercourse. He had worn a condom, so there was no worry there for Jay, but he was still very disturbed by everything.

“I was scared to death of losing him. I wanted him to get to know me
for me,
as a person. I loved the guy. Is it deceptive? Yeah, of course. But, at the same time, if you walk around telling everyone, they are going automatically to judge you and not even give you the opportunity to get to know you.”

Vonlee was going through an incredible personal inventory at the time of who she truly was, she said. She wore “gaff” underwear every day, which kept her manhood tucked underneath. Vonlee never had a small penis, nor did she have an overly large penis. Still, it was hard for a while to hide it—until she amped up the female hormones and her private parts shrank remarkably.

“At one time, another inch of shrinking and I would be a girl,” Vonlee explained with a casual laugh. “And it works the opposite way, too: For a girl to take male testosterone, her clitoris will grow—I've seen them three, four inches long! But it's still easier to go from a guy to a girl. It's much easier to dig a hole than to build a pole.”

Jay and Vonlee dated for another year. She wanted to be clear that Jay was not a gay man. He was heterosexual—a heterosexual, nonetheless, now faced with a personal dilemma: should he give up the woman he thought he was in love with, or stop dating a man?

“In the two years we were together, he had never seen my penis,” Vonlee said.

Jay stayed with Vonlee, but he began to push her to get the surgery. He wanted Vonlee to be as completely female as she could be—or, rather, as surgically and humanly possible. When they talked about it, Vonlee was taken aback. It had been on her mind, clearly, for many, many years. What stopped her, every time, was the finality and how things could turn out. There were no guarantees with the operation. She could lose the entire feeling and sensation of orgasm—and every time she revisited getting the operation, it scared the hell out of her.

“I'm going to open an account for you,” Jay said one night while they were discussing it. “I'll give you half the money, but you need to come up with the other half to show you really want it done, too.”

Vonlee said she kept “derailing” the procedure. Any money she saved for the surgery, she'd go out and shop until it was gone.

“I don't know if I was a shopaholic or I was just putting it off,” she later explained.

Vonlee had gone as far as meeting with the doctor, taking and passing the required HIV test, then scheduling pre-op meetings. The surgery in Montreal she was going to get was about the estimated twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand dollars, which included hotel and airfare.

“But I wasn't ready,” she said. “This guy was everything I had ever wanted, too. He was the president of a company. Good-looking. He didn't use drugs.... He had taken me to meet his mother. She pulled me aside and said, ‘He must really, really love you because he's never brought a girl home.'”

The second Christmas they spent together was special, Vonlee said. She decided to go all out on the guy as far as gifts. The surgery was on hold for now, but she'd promised to reconsider after the holidays. He seemed to accept that for the time being.

There was something different about Jay, though, throughout that entire holiday season. And Vonlee knew it.

“I've been reading a book,” Jay said during the holiday that year. He was sitting in the living room. He had a mocking look on his face. Vonlee could tell something was on his mind.

“What book is it that you've been reading?” Vonlee asked.

“Didn't matter,” he said. “But in the book, there was a guy going down on a girl and it really,
really
turned me on.”

Jay was missing out on so much was the point. He couldn't experience the things he wanted to with Vonlee. There would always be a gulf between them. Operation or no operation, she was a man. Jay was having serious problems with it.

“You're never going to let up about the surgery, are you?” Vonlee asked.

They got into a fight.

During dinner later that same night, after another comment from Jay about something that only a guy could do to a “real” female, Vonlee “snapped,” she said. She shoved her food across the table toward Jay. Stood. Then screamed: “I cannot do this anymore. I am not what you want me to be, and I am not ready to be that right now. . . .”

Vonlee ran into the bedroom and cried. Jay took his time, but he came in and consoled his girlfriend.

“You've taught me how to love, Vonlee . . . ,” Jay said.

Vonlee tried to get up to leave, but he wouldn't let her go.

“I've never felt like this,” he said (according to Vonlee).

As they began another round of yelling, the phone rang. It was Jay's work. The alarm system was going off and he needed to get over there immediately.

Jay grabbed his coat and, before leaving, said, “We'll finish this later.”

Vonlee sat and watched Jay walk out the door. Moments later, she made a decision.

It was time to leave—with all of her belongings.

“And I never saw him again after that night. We had phone sex once, when he called, but that was it—we were through.”