In The Beginning…

…I was being readied for the annual Sunday school nativity play.  I can’t quite remember what role I’d been cast as but it was probably a shepherd with my dressing gown and pyjamas giving both a reasonable representation of the sort of thing shepherds wore in those days and protection against the cold drafts that were a feature of the ‘high’ churches my mother deemed essential for the conspicuous practice of her religion.  And if my recollection about my role is correct, a tea towel on my head would have completed my costume and I’d have been ready to take my place beside the crib.  Except, as I quickly found out, in the eyes of the ladies fussing around us children, there was one thing missing.

As I intimated, this was a lofty stone church.  The sort of place where even the slightest noise would reverberate around its cavernous nave for several seconds.  Services were ceremonial in nature, the organ playing quietly as we entered and then reaching a crescendo as the choir entered followed by the vicar and other ‘officials’ in full Church of England regalia.  Services followed the prescribed order to the letter, a little book handed to each member of the congregation as they arrived to ensure that the right responses were given at the right time.  If we were lucky, we’d get one of the new ‘jazzed up’ hymns to break the interminable tedium but it was usually one of the traditional ones that seemed to go on for ever, as of course did the obligatory sermon.  I could go on (the vicar certainly did in his sermon) but given all of this has zero relevance to the plot, I’ll say no more other than to point out that it was a church, not the BBC studios or The Palladium theatre.

BBC broadcasters and actors at the London Palladium and other theatres require makeup to counteract the effects of the harsh lighting in the studio or on stage.  The sort of incandescent bulbs that were hanging in that 1960s church were anything but harsh and, six decades on from that fateful day, I still have absolutely no idea why the fussing ladies thought that makeup was necessary in the dimly lit church.  But before I knew it, a powder puff was being dabbed into its compact and then onto my face.  I seem to remember that I was a bit taken aback but said nothing.  Worse was to come, though.  Out came the lipstick and with a quick flourish from my ‘MUA’ my lips took on a deep red shade.  Then, I really was deemed ready and, looking like one of those old photos of POW camp theatre night participants, we were all led out to take our places in front of the assembled throng of parents.

I have no recollection at all of the play but the absence of a speaking part probably just required me to sit there and look shepherd like while ‘Mary’ and ‘Joseph’ tried their hardest to look like the proud parents of the doll in the manger and the three wise men delivered their goodies.  With my time in the spotlight over, I was cleaned up and taken home by my parents.  And as far as I recall, absolutely nothing was said about my appearance either during the journey or ever again.

It’s perhaps predictable that those of us who, for whatever reason, feel the need to cross to the other side of the street from time to time look for signs of our future proclivities in our early life.  Personally, I try to avoid this because there are plenty of signs that marked me as a completely normal boy which shouldn’t really be overlooked.  It’s something like declaring that a tossed coin will always come up heads, tossing it ten times, ignoring the five or so times that it’s tails and then insisting that the subset of tosses that were actually heads proved the point.  So I don’t recount the nativity play experience as proof that the die was cast in the early 1960s but just to mark it as my first faltering foray into a world that my chromosomes tried to deny me.

Of course, the 1960s were very different times.  It was three quarters of the way through the decade before homosexuality was legalised for over 21s and men who dressed as women were to be mocked and trivialised, not understood.  Mention of Sidney, the local drag artiste (who, apparently, my uncle knew quite well) or others like him, would be accompanied by jokes about limp wrists and utterances of ‘ooo ducky’ in camp voices.  My mother would invariably opine that ‘there must be something wrong with a man who wants to wear women’s clothes’ before declaring that it was almost certainly caused by an imbalance of hormones and, perhaps, a slight hint of sympathy in her voice as a result.

Given my mother’s views on CDing, it was perhaps strange that my father’s casting as a fairy in one of his school plays became the stuff of legend in our family.  Whereas I’d been mortified by my feminisation to play a shepherd, he seemed to revel in his memories of playing an unashamedly feminine character.  In fairness to him, being at an all-boys school meant that there were no girls to take on the female roles and it was just an accepted part of school life.  From what I understand though, his father did not share his enthusiasm and it’s fair to say that even at my young age, I knew that there was no way that I would ever want to follow in his footsteps in that particular respect.

I was luckier though, at least until 1970 when I made my parents proud by attending the same school as my father, still devoid of girls a generation later.  But as the 1960s played out, I was still surrounded by girls and was conflicted between considering them as ‘soppy’, a word in common parlance at the time, and being fascinated by them.  In those days, girls dressed like girls and white socks were the order of the day; ‘nylons’, as they were universally referred to in those days, were the sole preserve of grown women.  But from time to time, one of the girls would turn up at school wearing what we now refer to as ‘nude’ tights but with the regulation white socks over the top.

How I marvelled at those girls who, even aged just 9 or 10, were grown up enough to wear nylons!  I’d sneak a glance whenever I could, at least until I was finally caught out.  We were on a school trip to somewhere or other in the south of England and I was sitting near the back of the coach.  In the centre of the back seat sat Carol who let’s just say was looking particularly grown up that day!  I was captivated by both Carol and her legs but obviously made my fascination a bit too obvious as another classmate, Neil, who was sitting nearby piped up ‘I know what you like about girls….it’s those!’, pointing to Carol’s legs.  I don’t remember much from that point other than attempting a mumbled denial as I was rapidly engulfed by embarrassment. If any hard evidence was ever needed that I had an early fascination with hosiery, that little incident provided all the proof one could ever need.

What I find particularly perplexing about my fascination with the girls in my primary school class and those totems of femininity like nylons is that all of this started when I was 8 or 9 years old.  And yet it would be several more years before I entered puberty.  In fact I was quite a late developer in that respect which sucked at the time when my squeaky voice, silky smooth skin and lack of height was quite a contrast to my classmates.  Incidental perhaps but it does suggest that my fascination was driven by something other than a pubescent flood of testosterone.

And even when I was transplanted into the all-male environment of my father’s alma mater, that fascination persisted.  Whilst puberty was late in my case, it did finally arrive and that fascination then predictably went into overdrive.  It would be nice to say that, with testosterone now working its ‘magic’ as it made its way around my body, I became a ‘babe magnet’ and girls were falling over themselves to date me but, sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.  Although my school was devoid of girls, the local girls’ school had plenty (!) and strong social ties between the pupils were formed (although not with the blessing of the headmistress of the girls’ school who made it her life’s mission to try to keep us as far from her girls as possible) so I had plenty of social contact with girls.  However, my clumsy attempts at trying to get dates never seemed to bear fruit; at best I’d get the message when the target of my affection started going out with one of my friends but usually they’d just tell me ‘no’, either directly to my face or via a mutual friend.  Strangely, though, whilst my dating attempts were spectacularly unsuccessful, I seemed to be the sort of person they liked to befriend and several close but platonic friendships resulted, some of which persist to this day, half a century on.

I could perhaps declare that those lasting friendships were a subliminal indication that I saw myself as one of the girls but a more overt sign that I may not have been completely comfortable being one of the boys was soon to manifest itself but a look at the few photos of me from that time that still exist give a cast iron explanation of why things never went any further!

Back in the 1970s, ‘genderbending’ was largely restricted to people like the aforementioned Sidney and other female impersonators like Danny la Rue, pantomime dames and comedy spots in the ‘Carry On’ series of British made films.  Mockery was widespread and, outside the comedy aspects, was seen as either a quirk of nature or a perversion.  But one day, I had a friend round and my mother decided to tell us about a book she’d been reading about a man who’d had a ‘sex change’.  The book was ‘Conundrum’ by Jan Morris and I was immediately intrigued.  I’d never considered that changing from male to female in any form was possible, let alone relating to me personally, and in fact I’d never even thought about CDing in any shape or form.  To be honest, it was the exact opposite and I would actively reject the idea unlike my father and his enthusiasm for his brief thespian career as a fairy!

Even so, just the knowledge that a man could turn into a woman had a profound effect on me and I needed to know more about the process which seemed akin to waving a magic wand.  With no internet in those days, finding out more was not easy to say the least but, from time to time, I was rewarded – a spot on the news about Renee Richards’ tennis match against Billie Jean King and an article in the Sunday Times colour supplement about the ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ bank holdup which included brief mention and a photo of Elizabeth Eden whose sex change the robbery was to fund being particular memories.  So it’s fair to say that something was definitely stirring within me by then.

There was something quite characteristic about the smell of my parents’ bedroom.  It was not an unpleasant aroma, just a little stuffy from the lack of adequate ventilation with an overtone of the unmistakeable scent of cosmetics.  It struck me every time I walked in, regardless of the time of day.  I’m not quite sure what drew me to their room when, home alone, I entered on an otherwise unremarkable day in the mid-1970s but it certainly wasn’t with the intention of CDing.  And yet, the feminine scent in the air struck me and as I looked down to the floor, spotted a pair of my mother’s tights discarded in a heap, presumably awaiting washing.  And at that moment, the urge to try them on was overwhelming and so I removed my trousers and sat on the bed, carefully rolling them up one leg, then the other.  And at that moment, I became a CDer.   And the somewhat predictable reaction I had ‘downstairs’ shortly afterwards well and truly sowed the seeds of conflict that has plagued me ever since – the simple conflict of whether to embrace what felt amazing or fight what felt demonstrably wrong for a teenage boy to do.

The question is whether that fateful decision was made on the spur of the moment or preordained from the moment I heard about Jan Morris’s magical operation, seeing Carol and her classmates look oh so grown up or even in that drafty church.  And were those early signs of what was to come or just a coincidence, memorable only because of what came later?

People in our position love things that fit the narrative particularly if they can in some way explain why we feel the need to cross the gender divide.  Many is the time that I’ve used DES which I’m 99% certain that my mother took during her pregnancy not only to explain why I’m a CDer but also to justify it.  In all honesty, there’s insufficient evidence either way to speak with any authority but until someone stands up and categorically proves that DES and transgenderism are in no way connected, it’ll continue to be my ‘go to’ explanation for my situation.

But what about the nativity play?  As I said, memories are very hazy and I’m not sure whether I was ever shown the results of my ‘makeover’ in a mirror.  Did the characteristic smell of cosmetics plant a seed in my immature brain that subconsciously drew me to want to experience more ever after?  And whenever the subject of my father’s brief acting ‘career’  was raised, were my inner feelings that I would never have done what he did and fear of ever being put in that position myself driven by my subconscious doing whatever it could to avoid discovery?  And what about the inner excitement I felt when learning that a man could have a ‘sex change’ and become a woman and my determination to find out as much as I could about both it and those who had taken that momentous step – pure fantasy or ‘asking for a friend!’?  And was my lack of success with girls an indication that I didn’t try hard enough, my subconscious telling me that it was not compatible with being one of the girls?

If I had been an effeminate child, maybe all of the foregoing could have had significance.  But I wasn’t and there are hundreds, if not thousands, more incidents in my life which have no significance to this side of me whatsoever.  Granted much of the perceived differences between the sexes in childhood are stereotypical but I am stereotypically male in almost all respects.  Or, though I’m still sceptical, was my almost certain exposure to DES in utero a ticking timebomb?

In truth, I don’t really care.  It’s fun to look back on childhood with a sense of mild amusement that all of those seemingly unconnected incidents were a sign of things to come even if they’re pure coincidence.  It’s also nice to think that whilst I haven’t got anything more than a couple of theories as to what started this, I do at least have vivid memories of the moment that the die was cast.  In fact, I can remember the whole thing as if it happened just yesterday.  Much water has flowed under the bridge since that fateful day around half a century ago and it’s only recently that I have had anything approaching clarity of thought in how this meshes with my other life and have been able to realise that inconveniences like chromosomes do not need to stand in the way of living that life as fully as possible when the mood taps me.  For too long, I have looked back on that day in the mid-1970s as the start of decades of internal turmoil as I struggled to come to terms with it; I just wonder how things would have panned out if, when I was marvelling at the sight of my legs encased in nylon for the first time, a little voice would have reassured me to ‘hang in there, it’s going to be quite a ride but wonderful experiences lie in store’.