Something to Declare by Cyclist

Chapter 37

I have already said more than once that real life is not like a film, dramas don’t happen every five minutes and there aren’t plot devices to unravel. Real life also doesn’t stop with a “and they all lived….” like a fairytale. It just carries on from day to day, and it is no less valuable for that.

In essence, I had arrived. Apart from minor things I was living the dream I had never really dared have. We went to work, we shopped, we sorted the house out, we visited family, he went off and rode 400 miles every so often….

Except for the obvious changes enforced by my shift working, the weeks had settled into a pattern. On Sunday evenings, for example, if we were able we would ride out to the folk club and catch a late train back. Every so often as the roster allowed the team would meet up for some beers, or maybe a barbie at someone’s house. Geoff was at my side, and it is hard to put into words what that meant. Not just my feelings towards my man, which are simple, and complex at the same time. I have explained so many times here how much he means to me, and there can be no doubt in my dear reader’s mind on that score. No, the thing that went straight to my heart, the thing that woke me in the small hours simply so that I could smile again, was how the team treated me. Their wives, husbands, partners, their kids, it was almost as if Steve had never existed. There were still moments of well-meant advice, sometimes rather unwelcome in their assumptions (it is amazing exactly what sexual diversity exists in suburbia) but all in all we went about as a normal, heterosexual couple. Simple domesticity.

This is the point, of course, where the stories I had read veer off with some sort of odd twist. I would come home unexpectedly, and find Geoff cavorting with a woman, or a man, or some unspecified form of mammal; or, worse, my arrival would coincide with a time when he just HAD to wear my clothes and stand in front of a mirror, and I would enter the bedroom and he would look at me and ask “Do my thighs look big in this?”

Well, dear reader, that is exactly what happened. There he was, in my clothes, asking my opinion.

Of course, they were clothes I had given him when my life changed, so technically they were his now, and the items in question were a pair of skinny-fit jeans that his cyclist’s thighs were straining a bit, so shame on you for your unkind and deviant thoughts.

Geoff was actually affecting my new wardrobe, in that he would take an interest in what I wore, and every now and then, in a totally abnormal-for-males way he would venture an opinion. I was wearing shorter skirts than before, as he said he liked my legs, and I was even buying things that could be described as “pretty”. Then again, as I was shopping properly now instead of doing it online or furtively in charity shops it was a lot easier.

I had made a series of visits to the local charity shops when Steve was alive, each time browsing the books with one eye whilst scanning the rails with the other. I only ever made one clothing purchase in each shop as “we’re having a drag night party” can only really work once. So, after each purchase I would find another shop to play the same game with. I sincerely hope there is no trade body where they swap stories of weird customers.

The most awkward purchase ever was my famous sports bra. I had prepared for it with copious internet research, but there always remains the terrifying fact of walking into a major chain of sports shops and asking for one for “the girlfriend”

I had to guess the size, for a start, and having had, at that stage, a decent amount of electrolysis done on my face, I didn’t have the option of going all moody and unshaven butch rugby player. And you know now exactly what a blush means to me. I suppose that I got away with it largely because any half-serious transvestite, in the minds of the shop assistants, would have been drooling over some lace and froth confection and not a name-brand plain white female jock strap. Then again, I did once find a gentleman (professionally, that is) with a magazine that depicted women in interesting garments made of rubber. I assume they were women; there was no visible flesh at all under the fishing waders, Sou’Wester hat and rubber coat.

And gas mask. It really does take all sorts.

I came up with some story about a sponsored run for charity, and as I grew and changed, that was my sole support until I managed to find a couple of alternatives on line. Same problem.

“Please enter the name of the cardholder as it appears on the card”

Now, I know that nobody is really going to go through the records looking for suspicious cross-dressing Welshmen, but you have to understand the fear that lived in me. I was so sure of who I was, who I am, and yet so scared of what the world would say. I have already made all the jokes about balls that are needed, but any girl who has gone through transition knows what it was and is like.

It was that beach at Dunwich, with the icy sea awaiting me. Do I walk in, feeling the cold work its way up my body inch by inch, until I am finally in? Or do I plunge head first and hope my heart doesn’t stop with shock? That was my dilemma, until the Woodruffs, but I had been worse. Like the child who has asked for, and received, all the toys to play in the sea, the face mask, the snorkel, but won’t even put a toe in, that was me. Sally was getting me my toys, but I didn’t dare take them out to play.

I remember when I really was a child, on the beach at Barafundle or Traeth Mawr, with the sun glinting on the waves and the rocks, and my father would watch me hesitant just beyond the reach of the dying waves, and without warning seize me from behind. Holding me across his chest he would charge out into the sea, thrills of cold water splashing my back from his pumping legs, as he ran, laughing, to dive full length holding me, so that the choice of going in, that risk, the need to face down the fear and make a bloody decision to do what I already knew I wanted to do, all those were taken away and I got the gift of being handed something I already had.

I miss my father, I miss him dreadfully and constantly. I was old enough when he died to understand that he loved me, but not old enough to truly understand how he loved me, and why, and the depth of the love a parent has for their child.

Naomi speaks to me of my mother, and she is sure that she would not have loved me more, for that is not conceivable, but that she may well have loved me differently. Neither better nor worse, but as my father had loved me as a son, as any father loves the little man he has to follow him, perhaps she would have seen me in a similar light.

When I think of Big Bill, and Tony, I am seized by the deep belief that a child should never, ever predecease their parent. I can feel his loss through the lens of my own, but without Bill and Geoff, and now Kelly, I am sure he must needs have felt the future was dead before it started. For me, it is so different. I have been swept up, in strong arms, and carried full tilt into the wide ocean.

But how I wish they were here to share it with me.