Being Trans
Photo credit: William T. Vollmann
"That is not how Vollmann views Dolores. In some ways, Dolores—a woman whom Vollmann controls by virtue of having created her—seems like the logical extension of the sex workers in his previous fiction and nonfiction, who are offered, or offer themselves, for male control. (He has often patronized the hookers he writes about, and once bought—to save her from street life—a Thai teen girl.) 'Dolores belonged entirely to me—was in fact my construct,' he writes, and so he drew her, painted her, dressed her up and did her makeup, and photographed her."