The bars are letting out in downtown Bellingham and Drew Wadley decides it’s time to head home. It’s a quick walk, only a block or two—just long enough for him to come face-to-face with an urban legend.
A black SUV pulls up and a small Asian woman in her 30s rolls down the window.
“She screeched into a parking spot right next to me,” Wadley said. “She started sucking her finger and told me that she’d give me a ride, even though I just lived right down the block.”
Wadley declines.
College-aged males have been getting this same offer from this same person for nearly a decade now, usually as they stumble home after a night of drinking.
According to the legend, some wake up the next morning with a hangover and an embarrassing realization.
Sometimes, they don’t make the connection until a friend tells them days later.
Dude, you slept with a dude.
“I don’t know what her name is,” Wadley said. “I’ve heard ‘The Black Widow.’”
The Western Front was able to piece together a portrait of the Black Widow and her activities through about a dozen extensive interviews — both on and off the record — with people who said they had been picked up or nearly picked up.
But to truly understand and confirm the legend, we wanted to talk with the Black Widow herself.
We did, and we found she is not just a legend, but a human being:
Western Front (WF): When you meet guys, why do you go about it the way you do? What I mean is that sometimes the guys do not know that biologically you are a man…
Black Widow (BW): So your question is why don’t I just go out and tell guys, ‘I am a transvestite—here, here I am’? To everybody? I can’t because of my own security. I will tell that to people I know for sure aren’t going to hurt me. I have been hurt before, and my friend who is transsexual—she got hurt before. And some of my friends in Seattle, they got hurt before. So, because of our own security, we cannot just tell people right away who we are. We have to test the waters and see that they are not homophobic. I cannot just put my label on my chest and say, ‘Hey, look at my label.’ I can’t. I can’t. I cannot do that at any time. Some people are really confident to put a label on their chest and say, ‘OK, I am gay.’ They can even put that on their car, and say, ‘OK, I support gay marriage.’ Some people are really confident in doing that and some people aren’t, because of their family background, because of their perspective.
WF: Can you tell me anything about how you have been hurt before?
BW: I have been hurt before by a guy. He attacked me and I had to go to the hospital. I cannot tell you the details. He freaked out when I told him. He freaked out when he found out, and I didn’t do anything with him. He just found that out and he punched me. I cannot tell you more details about how I met him and stuff like that, but anyway, he freaked out. He said he is homophobic—he hates gays. That’s what he told the court, when we brought him to the court. He got caught because he hurt me. We brought him to court and he went to jail for one year.
WF: How long have you been a transvestite?
BW: I don’t know. I can’t remember exactly but it’s been a while...I was a little bit older. When I matured. I was over 18.
WF: Have you always found yourself attracted to men?
BW: When I was young, I was bisexual. But once I became mature—an adult—I knew that I liked men.
WF: Do you understand that even though you don’t intend it, people feel deceived by you?
BW: I don’t know how I can answer your question. But I do not intend to make them affected by who I am. I will open up who I am to someone who can accept me for who I am. If someone cannot accept me for who I am, I stay away from them because I don’t want to get hurt and I don’t want them to feel awkward. I don’t want them to be affected and freak out. I am not intending to make them be affected by me. So if I know, for example, that a person I make a move on—or [if I think] he is going to make a move on me—is going to be affected, I’m not going to do that.
WF: When you go out to a club to have fun or go out dancing, do you always go out as a woman?
BW: Yes.
WF: Do you ever go out as a man?
BW: Not anymore.
WF: When do you go out?
BW: Only on weekends. A lot of people know that I tend to be a transsexual, and a lot of the people who know me encourage me to do it because they say I look good when I become a woman.
WF: Do you ever think about going for the operation?
BW: For the complete one? Yes. I am working on it. Not now, but I am working on it.
WF: How would you describe yourself?
BW: I am very liberal. I like to make fun for people because life is short. Life is very short. Life is very unpredictable but life is very beautiful in some ways. So if I know a person likes some things, I try my best to bring it to him or her. People cannot control how they feel, right?
Early one morning in 2002, Joel Myrene was walking home from a show he had helped organize. He said it was about 3 a.m. when the Black Widow rolled up beside him in her SUV.
“It was pretty obvious it was a dude wearing a summer dress,” Myrene said. “There was the offer of beer, and whatever else was implied, but you knew damn well what was coming down the road.”
Myrene said he continued to walk, and they had a conversation as the car crawled along the street. He said he was also offered drugs, but when Myrene didn’t take the bait, the Black Widow backed off.
“Then he reaches over and extends his hand to me, and I remember thinking, this guy is going to pull me into his car and rape me and dismember me or something — or it’s just a handshake,” Myrene said. “So I shake his hand, and he had the softest hands I’ve ever felt in my entire life.”
Janis Walworth of Bellingham’s Center for Gender Sanity said she does not know the Black Widow personally, but she highly doubts he is violent or dangerous. She said he probably deceives straight males into thinking he is a woman to satisfy a personal need.
“Some people really feel like, when they dress as women, it makes them feel good if people think that they actually are women, especially in a sexual way,” Walworth said. “So if they can feel they’re attractive to men who think they are women—that can be very satisfying to them.”
Chris Furman was a Western student at the time of his encounter, about two years ago. He was walking along Holly Street at about 1:30 a.m. when the Black Widow offered him a ride.
Furman got in the car, but said he quickly started to feel uncomfortable and asked to be let out.
“She dropped me off and she was like, ‘I want a hug before you go,’” Furman said. “Then she was like, ‘I want a kiss, too,’ and she started reaching for my crotch. I was like, ‘No, no, no.’”
The Bellingham Police Department has received complaints about a person who closely matches the Black Widow’s description, but Deputy Mark Young said the police have no open case on him.
So far, none of the complaints have resulted in criminal charges because they have all involved two consenting adults, Young said.
“It is unfortunate, and it is embarrassing for the people who involve themselves in this predicament,” he said. “But at the same time, if they are intoxicated and getting into a car with somebody who they don’t know, there lies danger. And by golly, people need to be really alert and aware of what they’re doing.”
Wadley said most people probably would not even want to report something so embarrassing to the police.
“How are you supposed to call the cops on that?” Wadley said. “‘Oh, I was dumb and drunk, and didn’t know that I slept with a dude.’”
When it comes down to it, Walworth said, people seem to be making poor decisions on both sides, and it is difficult to place the blame squarely on either party.
“Certainly he is deceiving people, and doing that pretty purposefully,” she said. “But his intent is pretty innocent, in terms of what he wants from people. He just wants the satisfaction of people recognizing him as a woman. That’s a pretty innocent goal. That in itself doesn’t hurt anybody.”
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