Man? or Woman? You Decide

We've all heard about (if not seen) chicks with dicks. But how about a dude with woman's plumbing? Buck Angel is a hot, real man with a mangina who maintains that he likes doing it with males, females and she-males. At least, that's what his Web site, www.buckangel.com, states openly about the porn actor turned film director. As the first female-to-male transsexual with a vagina, Angel has become something of a demi-celebrity in the underground sex-and-Downtown-avant-garde scene.

Angel is currently in New York City as the featured guest at the Black Party on March 25th. The whole show is written around my character, Buck Angel, the Black Prince, he said in a recent interview. I'm going be the most shocking performer there.

Considering the history of the shows at the Black Party, that's a heady boast. Held at Roseland every year on the weekend closest to the Spring Equinox, the Black Party is a huge all-night mostly gay male bacchanalia and sweat-drenched rite of spring, where leather-clad men have sex with one another to the sounds spun by some of the world's best-known DJs.

As part of the festivities, bizarre sex shows take place on a stage upstairs from the dance floor. Buck will be performing live sex acts with male partners. He says he's looking forward to putting on a show.

He's also shooting a new film at the moment, with some of the scenes set right here in the city. He wanted to know if I would join in the fun. Certainly, for this straight real girl, a close-up view would be titillating, to say the least.

A Turn-On for Women

I first met Buck Angel in New Orleans in February during Mardi Gras week thanks to a mutual friend, his personal chef. I was curious to meet him after perusing his distinct Web site that's plastered with pictures of a macho, tattooed muscled man. If you click onto www.transexual-man.com, his other Web site, you can see him spread-eagled displaying his prominent penis-like clitoris, enlarged by the shots of testosterone he gives himself every two weeks.

At first, I wasn't sure whom this human hybrid was meant to appeal towomen, men, gays or straights. But when I met Buck in the flesh, I discovered he oozes sex appeal. He's also smart, healthy and funny. Ever the showman, he entertained us at his balcony party on Mardi Gras day by rubbing a Krispy Kreme donut on his not-so private parts in broad daylight. A guest wolfed it down and his wife Elayne licked off the sugar.

Although Buck was born a female and raised in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, he never felt like a woman. He spent his time with the usual male preoccupations: hanging out with other guys, drinking beer, getting into fistfights and tinkering with cars. After years of misery, he decided in his mid-twenties to go for it and become a man. (He's now 41.) He had his breasts removed surgically and began a treatment of male hormones, which he still regularly takes.

The decision to keep his vagina was easygetting a penis costs $50,000 to $70,000, and you still can't have an orgasm or get a firm erection with reconstructed penises. So Buck opted to enjoy his sex life. A devoted body builder, he's careful about what he eats, doesn't drink and leads a healthy lifestyle, although he smokes the occasional cigar.

Buck began his porno career in February 2003 after getting bored with Internet porn. It's more fun to make movies, he says. His first film was the aptly named Buck's Beaver, which was nominated for an Adult Video News award. I do it pretty gonzo style, he says about his movies. I have a cameraman, a hotel room, I get some talent, and we just go for it. My porn is for beating off, but I try to make it fun and comical, with an amateurish quality.

His other films include Buck Fever, Allanah Starr's Big Boob Adventures (the first flick depicting sex between a male-to-female and a female-to-male transsexual). While in New Orleans, I watched The Adventures of Buck Naked II which is being re-released soon. Buck plays an out-of-control cop in the New Orleans Police Department who disciplines and has sex with a man and two women, one of whom he throws into a cage and screws with his nightstick. As an advocate of safe sex, there's a condom on the nightstick.

A Weird 'Matrix' of Sexualities

Because of the humor and the hand-held camera effect, there's a John Waters-like quality to his films. The upcoming Buck Angel: V is for Vagina is a spoof on Matrix director Larry Wachowski's new movie, V for Vendetta, appropriate since Buck maintains that Wachowski stole his first wife, Ilsa Strix, a well-known dominatrix, away from him. At the time, Buck lived with Ilsa in Los Angeles. Wachowski fell in love with Ilsa Strix when he was one of her clients and now lives with her.

As reported in Rolling Stone, Buck met the two at a transsexual club in L.A. in 2001. Ilsa and Wachowski were wearing nearly identical outfits. Buck threw Ilsa out of their home and later split for New Orleans after falling in love with his current wife, Elayne Angel (her maiden name, which Buck adopted). Elayne is a body-piercing artist whose celebrity clients include Lenny Kravitz. The two met on a play date while Buck was living in L.A. Sometimes simply known as Angel, Elayne is a legend in body-art circles for the elaborate tattoos decorating her body, especially her angel wings etched across her back. Buck also has plenty of tattoos. His posterior is emblazoned with the word pervert, his rear labeled Irish Bottom.

The couple still acts like newlyweds. And, just to be clear, they were married in New Orleans as man and womandespite his unusual pubic area, Buck is legally considered a man.

Despite the marital bliss, straddling two genders can be complicated.

Buck recently visited a gynecologist in New Orleans to get an ultrasound. They sneaked me in through the back door. I'm sitting in the waiting room with a bunch of women staring at me. I wait for an hour when a lady comes in saying, 'Sorry, no one wanted to do this. They were all freaked out by you, but I have a lesbian sister.'

Then there was the time he was arrested for making an illegal left-hand turn. They put me in jail and it was scary, he recalls. There I was with my pussy, and the guys are looking at me like I'm fresh meat. He told the guards he was transsexual. They thought I said 'homosexual.'

Luckily for him, they put him with a harmless older man and not in the cell with the other inmates. I never pack (his groin region), but for some reason, I packed, thank God, since they made me strip to my underwear. You don't ever wanna go to a Louisiana jail. I didn't want to drive for two years after that.

On the up side, Buck can identify with both the male and female points of view, which his wife says makes him a better lover. People talk to me different than when I was a woman, he says. Doors have opened up for me. You could say it's the best of both worlds.

Although not a millionaire yet, he's accumulating a nest-egg, which he hopes will put him behind the camera permanently instead of in front of it within a few years. A resident of New Orleans since 2003, he and his wife (whose store Rings of Desire has been a fixture in the French Quarter for a more than 11 years) are moving soon to Merida, Mexico, where they bought a palatial hacienda. Merida is rapidly becoming a trendy ex-pat enclave on the Yucatan peninsula. Elayne will take over as Buck's manager and continue her piercing business with a select clientele willing to spend the money to travel to Mexico for a private session.

The end of Buck's 15 minutes of fame, however, may be imminent. He's been getting a lot of press lately. Despite his career in porn, Buck is very serious about transitioning issues and tries to use the media to promote discussion on the topic of changing one's sex. I do believe that people need to recognize this as a real medical condition, he says. I do also believe that a lot of people don't take it as seriously as it needs to be taken. It's kind of become a trendy thing. They're playing with their gender, and maybe they don't really want to be male. Which is fine, but as a real transsexual person, I don't consider myself a transsexual, I consider myself a man.

Perhaps inevitably, he ended up on Howard Stern's program in February. (Stern, in his inimitably kind and gentle manner, kept insisting he was a woman because of his vagina.) At one point, Buck hopped on the Sybian, a machine with a dildo, and had an orgasm, which managed to gross out even the Stern posse. Nonetheless, Stern awarded Buck his ultimate accolade when he called him the most memorable guest that he had ever had on his show. Now, that's an accomplishment.