Nora made a late entry to the trans and gender diverse community, her traumatic past culminating in a life of drugs and sex work.
The photographs on the walls of her cramped apartment tell a story that spans back to his conflicted teenage years; one depicts a bronzed and muscled 19-year-old, back in Greece in 1994.
ABC’s Four Corners this week reported on her plight. It is a shocking story. In another life Nora was Savvas, who at the age of 47 left behind a wife and three children in Greece.
The ABC found Nora working as a prostitute on the sordid streets in Sydney’s Kings Cross district.
“Oh my god, it’s tough labour. I charge them cheap and I keep many hours, four hours,” Nora said, with a hint of her original Greek accent still showing through.
When reporter Caro Meldrum-Hannar called the next day at her housing commission flat, the camera captures Nora smoking ice, the drug habit brought on, she said, as a way to cope with the demands of sex work.
It isn’t apparent whether she wants help. She appears content with her chosen life.
But Nora is in survival mode: a brave face and humorous reflections concealing desperation and suppressed fear of ever-present health risks.
It’s a situation symptomatic of the trans and gender diverse community’s plight in the face of discrimination, unemployment and the constant threat of violence, with many turning to prostitution as the only way to earn a living.
The photographs on the walls of her cramped apartment tell a story that spans back to his conflicted teenage years; one depicts a bronzed and muscled 19-year-old, back in Greece in 1994.
“That’s me, ripped. Savva… ex-professional bodybuilder. Nineteen years I spent in the gym,” Nora says.
Another photo shows Savva dressed as a woman with make-up at his wife’s house.
“She dressed me like a girl, took me picture. My mother took the picture, went to tear it. My sister grabbed it, my father saw it and then he shot me in the leg,” Nora says, before showing the scar left by the bullet.
As a boy he was routinely beaten by his parents and sexually abused by a male relative from the age of eight. By the age of 16 he was in jail.
“I got locked up in prison for six months. I was happy. I wanted to stay there and I said to the guys in the prison, ‘What do I have to do to stay here?’, ’cause I was happy. you know?” Nora explained.
“I had friends. They loved me, they won’t beat me, they won’t bash me, they won’t smash my head, smash my bones.”
Nora found prostitution late in her new life and defends her profession, and her situation, philosophically.
“I do what I do. I am what I am,” she says. “All my clients and all my partners: they’re not normal people. Like, they don’t have a day job, you know? But I am good,” Nora said.
Brenda Appleton a spokesperson for Transgender Victoria, told Neos Kosmos that a recent study by Curtin University involving almost 1,000 participants concluded trans and gender diverse mental health was the worst of any community in Australia.
“Sadly, [this] community is over-represented in sex workers and there are inadequate services for them,” said Ms Appleton.
“They’re particularly vulnerable to contracting HIV, other sexual disease, and violence. Mental health is also an issue, with trans and gender diverse suicide rates at 40 to 50 per cent.”
The Four Corners program ended with Nora hearing the results of an HIV test. She hadn’t had one in seven months. She was free of the virus.
“I need to take care of myself now, have more rest, do a normal life,” she said, hinting that it might be time to change her ways.
“Take care,” she said, as she bade farewell to the ABC’s camera crew; advice we can only hope Nora heeds herself.
The Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council offers resources and support at www.agmc.org.au
QLife offers telephone and webchat support services on 1800 184 527