Galery

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Aloma, the legendary leader of transvestites on Syngrou Avenue, with her blond wig and bright red lipstick who never controlled her language, has left this world.

Aloma, or Babis Tamoutzidis as indicated in the identity card, has lost the battle for her life that she had fought over the past five days in the intensive care unit of George Gennimatas Hospital in Athens. She was taken there on Friday with multiple burns after the small flat she had rented in Neos Kosmos broke into flames for an unknown reason. The likelihood of arson by gangs with which Aloma had misunderstandings is under investigation as well.

"I have sex once a week, with young people whom I pay. The shoe is on the other foot now," she said in one of her last interviews, in which she acknowledged that she had become a prostitute in order to make a living and that, if born again, she would do the same job. "Because I could not be married, have children and run after transvestites, looking for abnormal things. I find it disgusting ", she stated with disarming sincerity.

 
Aloma’s life was quite turbulent, she was considered a mythical character from the piazza of transvestites and priestess of paid love. She was born in a small refugee village in Kilkis. She moved to Thessaloniki at the age of 15 and later returned to the city to fight for the transvestites to be able to have their own piazza, together with other prostitutes, on Politechniou Street. She was on the sidewalks of Syngrou Avenue and Kavala Street in Athens as well as on the small streets with a bad reputation around Omonia Square, she was in prison. In 1989, she created the political party PAKI (Panhellenic Movement for Equality) and was in constant conflict with famous Greek writer Costas Tachtsis in the early 1980s. She would always protect the transvestites and prostitutes who were attacked in some way.

Aloma spoke of love and her sexual orientation openly, in the language of the street, not concealing anything. She was a pioneer and she was free in everything. In the 1980s, she shot three porn films as follows: "Madame Aloma’s house", "How transvestites have it off" and "Power prefers transvestites", which she produced, directed and wrote and which were distributed with the help of her friends. In March 1996, she was put in Larissa prison, having been convicted of extortion. There she became friends with Kyriakos Papachronis, "The Dragon of Drama", to protect themselves, as they did not take part in a large rebellion of prisoners.

Rottweiler

Six months ago Aloma left the cheap hotel in Omonia Square where she lived together with Zeus, a big Rottweiler, in her flat in Neos Kosmos. "Sometimes I think who will die first, the dog or I, and I am scared," Aloma had said recently, but she has perished first as fate has willed. As for Zeus, he has been left an orphan in the hands of an Albanian who has taken care of him all these days.

Recently Aloma admitted in public that she had gone through a severe depression and seen a psychiatrist. "My soul is black", she said, adding that she no longer had friends, "All have left me. I was always surrounded by many people before but now they avoid me, they do not talk to me." Aloma never wanted to become a woman with a sex reassignment surgery. "My inner world did not go beyond transvestism", she said and dressed as a woman two years ago for the last time, when, together with the members of PAKI, she protested in the square in Larissa because the owner of their party office in the city wanted to expel them.

"Now I am tired of making this change. I have to put a sticking plaster to stretch my skin, in the summer I feel like I am in the underworld because of the wig, and I think all this is very difficult," she explained, no longer turning when someone called her Aloma and wanting to become again Babis Tamoutzidis of Kilkis.