Shadows From The Past, Part 4

First published in 1995

Once I moved on to the Grammar School, however, I knew no other way to live, and I remained virtually alone throughout my childhood and teens. While the junior school had been boys only, the grammar school was co-ed, but the playgrounds were separate. The school itself was bisected by an invisible line, separating the boys' and the girls' sides, as were the classes. After my childhood friend, and apart from a week's holiday at my uncle's farm, which I spent with my female cousin, the first time I spoke even a single word to a girl of my own age was when I was about fifteen

Along with bodily maturation, the sexual feelings of childhood take on a new meaning in teenage. Until puberty, I hadn't taken any notice of girls; they were just there. I certainly did not, as transexuals are supposed to do, completely reject my male body in favour of being female; it just wouldn't have occurred to me. In those days boys did not take girlfriends as early as they do now, and, of course, I hardly ever spoke to anyone, let alone to discuss sex.

There was no sex education in schools in those days! As I grew into maturity I started to have the normal nocturnal emissions. I had actually thought I had started bed-wetting again, except that the bed didn't seem particularly wet. My dad took me on one side one day and muttered something about Mum's laundry, and that was the extent of my sex education. I didn't even know what a girl looked like undressed. I had seen the occasional pinup, but, in those days, they had the relevant bits carefully painted out.

I started to get bizarre fantasies, along with my erotic episodes, associated with a time when I was seven, where the beach on a seaside holiday was mostly tiny fragments of shell rather than sand, which stuck to my wet legs like scales. I imagine that, without any actual sexual experience to go on, my mind just improvised. Later, I found I ejaculated with physical exertion, like press-ups, and this became the usual method, and the fantasies disappeared. I understood you did it in private, just as you did when going to the toilet, but I never felt any problem with it. After all, nobody had told me it was wrong had they? It was just like emptying a cistern, from time to time, that had got over-full, but pleasurable nevertheless.

I was about thirteen or fourteen, when a new girl joined the school. She was well endowed for a girl of her age so, naturally, she aroused considerable interest among the boys. She was a dark haired, dark eyed girl, (like 'A' in fact), with bright mischievous eyes. She gave me a warm feeling. I found myself having unfamiliar feelings, though I don't recollect, at that time, associating these feelings with erotic ones. I imagine that I hadn't got as far as associating girls with sex.

But I wasn't deaf, and I overheard boys talking about girls, and about sex. I realised that there were things I needed to know. It so happened that a salesman for the Encyclopedia Britannica had persuaded my parents to acquire a copy on easy payment terms and this formed the material for my studies - my first independent research project.

So I learnt about the mechanics of sex, but I didn't find a girlfriend. In general, it didn't occur to me to date the girls at school. In any case, I had never initiated a conversation, still less a relationship with anyone, and I hardly ever spoken to a girl. Even if I had, I wouldn't have known what to do next, and if any of the girls were interested in me, I wouldn't have recognised the signs. Masturbation, at least, became less dangerous physically, as I worked out how to do it in a more conventional way. and the earlier fantasies were replaced by normal heterosexual fantasies.

I had known about men who dressed as women for many years. Back in junior school there had been a parody of the song of that time Mighty Like A Rose:

Funny little fellow,
Wears his sister's clothes,
Don't know what to call him,
But we think he's one of those!

But, somehow, I never related it to myself. I discovered about strange men in lavatories by myself. From time to time, men had spoken some sort of greeting, but I had not thought anything of it, and simply left. Nothing happened, I suppose, because I didn't react in any way. On one particular occasion, however, a fellow stopped me as I left and said "Do you know what he was talking about?" I didn't, and he proceeded to explain about men who tried to entice young lads, and tell me all about sex. It was all Double Dutch to me, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was the one who wanted to entice me, not some other mythical person, so I quickly made my escape into the crowds on the bus station.

There was also a fellow in the village who had been taken to court for gross indecency. My mother was, possibly, one of the few people who didn't shun him. That was the extent of my knowledge about homosexuality for many years.

So I joined Standard Two (for some reason, there wasn't a Standard One) and began work. My end of term results were hardly distinguished, being in the lower half for the class, especially in Art, French and Literature.

Since there were Sea Scouts to complement the Boy Scouts, the Association introduced the Air Scouts. My school decided to start a troop and I joined, going with them to the summer camps and, one year, we were invited to a local RAF base and were given a flight in an Anson. When the school started a Combined Cadet Force, however, I decided it wasn't my scene.

I continued to avoid sport as far possible. The sniffles that had begun in the long grass of the 'rec, at the old school, while waiting to bat, turned to full-blown hay fever. I was thus excused cricket and spent the time in the pavilion. This might have been a reinforcement, but there was no doubt of its physical reality. At times I became so run down that I had a series of boils and sties, with, once a carbuncle so large that I still have the scar forty years later. I finished up in the Infirmary having a massive shot of penicillin.

Though the hay fever lasted from May to August, I used to take long rides, in the Summer holidays, over fifty miles in the day, on my old sit-up-and-beg bicycle.

I became very interested in what women were, what they were interested in, what their life was like. I took an interest in ponies and horses for a while, because they were girlish interests. I also discovered books on ballet in the library and used to imagine myself in a tutu, indeed there was a book on making costumes. The library was disposing of old magazines, and I asked the teacher if I could take some old copies of the Girls Own Paper "for my cousin." The teacher looked at me quizzically, but said "yes." So I found out about bras and periods and so on.

I also used to like to see the girls in their hockey shorts, but besides looking at the girls legs, I was also imagining myself wearing them. I was put on detention for some reason, one Saturday morning, and managed to sneak into the girl's changing room and purloin a pair. I was lucky enough to get the pleated kind. I sneaked some sort of camisole belonging to my mother. I can't remember much else, her clothes were simply too old-fashioned. So any cross dressing at that time was distinctly limited. Then my parents rented two bedrooms to a young couple. It still embarrasses me to think about it, but I began sneaking in and trying on the wife's clothes. Another of my fantasies was to imagine myself entering the mind of a girl, when she got up in the morning, and hitching a ride in her head for the day, trying to imagine what it was like.

I have already described my mother's tolerant attitude to homosexuality. It disappeared instantly when she caught me wearing something or other. She literally hit the ceiling, and screamed "Do you want to be a sissy-boy?" I didn't know really what a sissy-boy was, except that it would make me noticeable, and I was making a career of blending into the background. I didn't, in fact, feel personally guilty about cross-dressing, but I made even more sure that it remained a secret.

I read about a racing driver who had changed into a woman, possibly it was Roberta Cowell. I wished with all my heart that it could have happened to me, but the Telegraph report treated the matter as if she had a physical condition. I never saw any other papers, for my parents disapproved of the Mirror and other popular papers. I have never regularly bought newspapers, being so much within myself, current affairs had no interest for me. So the first time I heard the facts about "changing sex" was when I came out a few years ago.

As I went into the fifth form, I attempted one of my few attention-seeking episodes. The others had found that by connecting a pipe between the water tap and the gas tap, in the Chemistry laboratory, the top end of the gas pipe would be filled with water. The first unsuspecting person who tried to use the Bunsen burner would thus be treated to a fountain. However, I tried to go one stage further and try to get water from the Physics lab to appear in the Chemistry lab, via the Bunsen Burners. Needless to say, the water went straight down and wrecked the gas meter. The Gas Board were quite nice about it. Since the meter was around fifty years old, it was overdue for replacement, so that saved my parents a large bill. The Physics master muttered something about not knowing much about physics. But then I was still trying to learn it parrot-fashion, wasn't I? I certainly didn't understand it. The French mistress took it into her head to become my personal shadow. I wasn't her favourite pupil, anyway, being about 32nd. in a class of 33. I achieved a certain notoriety among the other pupils but found that, not being used to being in the limelight, I couldn't handle it.

In due course, I took a set of GCE 'O' levels, apart from French and passed them. I carried on with French, along with the first year of 'A' levels and, just before Christmas, something clicked. Instead of translating English sentences into French, I was suddenly starting to think in French. My exam. marks that Christmas were in the nineties and, suddenly, I was the apple of the French teacher's eye. I thought to myself "Well - the old hypocrite" I think an important part of teenage is discovering that grown-ups, including one's parents, have feet of clay. After all these years of disuse, however, I doubt if I could string two words together.

I doubt, if girls, generally, took much notice of me but, one day, I was travelling home on the bus, and a girl of my age plonked down in the seat next to me with considerable violence. She also seemed to require an inordinate amount of room, jamming me up against the side of the bus. When I arrived at my stop, I asked her to excuse me, and she got up, giving me a most peculiar look. A few days later, she was with her friends on the back seat and, as I passed them, they all burst into laughter. It took me some weeks to work out what was up with them.

To earn some pocket money, I did a paper round, then one Christmas I worked as a casual postman. The following Easter, I asked the owner of the local laundry for a holiday job. I began to work there on Saturdays and on my holidays, mostly as a van driver's mate, collecting and delivering parcels of laundry and dry cleaning. I gained confidence in myself, and when I passed the driving test at eighteen, was able to take over rounds in the Summer for drivers who were on holiday.

The others found my naivete somewhat hard to fathom. The Belper round had a customer, a hosiery works, to which I was never allowed to deliver. Apparently, I was considered too young, for the driver would reappear with his face scarlet. The office was at the far end of the factory, and the driver would have to run the gauntlet of the female machinists and their ribald comments. The joke is that I probably wouldn't have understood them anyway!

My mother had returned to nursing on a part-time basis and had made friends with the cadet nurses. We went to one or two of the staff dinner dances, but I was out of my depth, so I just sat quietly and looked on. I enjoyed watching the others enjoying themselves. At one point, the band played a polka and my mother grabbed the senior charge nurse and whistled him down the dance floor, so his feet hardly touched the ground. One Christmas, she held a party for the cadet nurses at our home. Whether she hoped I'd strike up an acquaintance with one of them, I don't know, but I found them very sophisticated and rather daunting. One of them referred to me as a "perfect gentleman," but it wasn't meant to be a compliment.

In time, I took one or two girls out, but kissing and cuddling didn't feel like anything, because I didn't know what it was supposed to feel like. Finally, I took a girl out that did nothing but take a rise out of me all night, so I decided to give it all up as a bad job.

I had this strange idea about love anyway, picked up from the average popular songs of the time, that somehow there was one woman for one man and, by fate or divine intervention or whatever, they would meet and that would be it.

I carried on with my mediocre studies, going on to a B.Sc in engineering at the local 'tech. Being administered by the University of London, my practical exams were in London. In between exams, I enjoyed sight-seeing, though it was stiflingly hot, so I stayed near to the river. I remember thinking it would be nice to have a girl friend with me to share my enjoyment.

In the event, I failed the exam. and decided that I had lived off my parents for long enough. My National Service had been deferred, because I was a student, but now I decided to sign on. My father was not one who often expressed his opinions, but he was quite clear in his advice that, of all the services, I should choose the Air Force. So it was that I applied to train as an Air Radar Fitter and 'signed on' for five years.