Paul makes up with Mandy and starts work...

Thanks to my friend Kris who has helped enormously with this.

Chapter 3

Let's stay together

“BLOODY-HELL!” she exclaimed and threw her arms round me. “You look… Blimey… What’s…? Come in… holy shit!”

“Mandy! Mind your language!” said a voice from another room.

“Sorry dad!”

Giggling, we piled up to her room.

I felt elation that I had not felt in a long time, finding that Mandy was not responsible for putting me in that God-awful position with Greg Bridger at the Cordoba; it was just a complete misunderstanding. I guess it was just a lack of understanding and patience, typical of a bunch of hormone-driven teenagers.

Mandy was looking at me kind of strange a lot of the time.

Was it wonder or something else?

Look at me. I was back with someone who I suppose could be best described as my best friend and there I was trying to find fault with everything she did. Mind you, after having put up with the back-stabbing at home, the name-calling, bullying and everything else at school, it’s not surprising. Not only that, but I had just turned up in a dress for God’s sake, I had to expect some strange looks, even from Mandy.

We chatted like nothing had happened and I was so pleased that Lily had brought me here although I felt a little odd not having the others here too. Perhaps that rift could be fixed as well, I mean, I thought I had burnt my bridges with Mandy yet here I was.

“Hey, I got that new Blancmange album last week. Wanna hear it?”

“Go for it!” I said and as it played, we went through Mandy’s magazines, looking at pictures of Bowie, David Sylvian, Steve Strange and bands such as Soft Cell, Thompson Twins, Yazoo (the Alison Moyet version) and were comparing fashions and so forth.

It wasn’t long after that the makeup came out and I was back in my element. While I applied the makeup, I recounted what had happened, bringing Mandy right bang up to date with the ongoing saga of Paul/Suzanne.

“You left home? Cool!”

“It’s not like that.” I said. “I got so much stick after you lot made me over last time that I decided I didn’t belong there. Mum said to Lily and Ray that if they wanted me, they could have me.” I tried to sound off-hand about it, but it still caught in my throat.

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Poor Lily was in tears. I don’t think she likes my mum. Don’t think she ever has. She certainly doesn’t now anyway. They’ve just been SO nice. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay them.” I could feel that lump in my throat getting bigger and I tried to blink away the tears that were threatening to blast forth and ruin my makeup (don’t worry, I’m slowly getting used to it).

“I really missed you all.” I said, trying to deflect the emotional avalanche that was happening.

“Me too.” she said taking my hand and squeezing it.

“Are you going to have a sex change?” Mandy asked. Straight to the point; that’s my Mandy! It got my mind off of the emotional rollercoaster anyway.

“Honestly? I don’t know. If you’d have said to me a month ago that I would be standing here now, in a dress, heels and doing your makeup, I’d have laughed at you first, then shit myself, but here I am and it doesn’t feel odd, in fact, quite the reverse. It’s only when I think about it that I start to get cold feet.”

“I can understand that.” she said. “What about boyfriends?”

Boys?

Hmm. I didn’t think that’d work.

I had been accused of ‘looking’ at the other boys in the changing rooms, but it wasn’t true, well not in that way anyway. Being near to boys was for me, a threatening experience. Not one other than Ray had been nice and thanks to Mr Georgeson, it felt like even the older ones, the ones that had ‘grown up’ so to speak, appeared to be as duplicitous and untrustworthy as the kids I had been forced to associate with.

About eighteen months or two years before this, boys in my year started to develop hairy armpits and legs, muscles, facial hair and ‘pubes’ and were generally getting bigger. Many of them had had their voices change, but not me.

I HAD looked at the other boys, but it wasn’t ‘checking them out’, it was because they had sprouted and I hadn’t, so I was making comparisons. I was trying to figure when this was going to happen to me, why was my Willy so much smaller than theirs, would mine get like that, would I look like that too and why didn’t I already?

I spoke to mum about this and all she could say was “don’t worry it’ll happen to you sooner or later”. In the meantime of course it had happened or was happening to the other kids and I was getting left behind. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone, but by the time I had reached the last year of school, I was the only one whose voice hadn’t broken or who hadn’t developed physically and I was understandably worried, because suddenly I wasn’t the same as the others and wasn’t getting treated the same either.

It had been a painful period and I really couldn’t see myself getting romantically involved with one of those very people who had made the last two years of my life hell and turned me into a nervous wreck.

“I don’t think so.” I said finally, grimacing at the thought. “I’m really into Lisa and I thought she was into me too, but I haven’t seen her since that day.”

“Lisa?! I didn’t think she was into girls.”

“Lisa? Into girls? I’m not a girl.”

“Aren’t you? You look pretty girly from where I’m sitting. Hmm. Let me see, dress, high heels — nice, makeup; definitely girl. Even when you weren’t dressed this way, I thought you were really a girl, leastways, more girl than boy.”

I sat down. I was too wasn’t I; more girl than boy?

This was something I hadn’t thought about.

If I was supposed to be a girl and I felt that was the probably truth of the matter, was I supposed to be into guys? Wasn’t that a prerequisite for being a girl?

I certainly hoped not!

I mean I still dreamt of Lisa, the only girl I have ever kissed and straight away, into my head came the memory of her; the softness of her touch, her scent and well I didn’t know what it was about her or any other woman, but to forego that for a spiky-faced, hairy, inconsiderate MAN?

I didn’t think so.

I really couldn’t reconcile the concept of changing what appealed to me. If Lisa and I were not destined to be anything other than friends then I could imagine other women appealing to me, but not men (as girly as some of them looked at the moment and I was thinking of Marylyn and Boy George et al).

Not exactly my cup of tea.

I felt odd. It was one thing to show myself to others as a girl, to behave like a girl (which frankly I seemed to have been anyway), but quite another if it meant I had to include male partners or a husband figure. If that was the case then the deal was off.

It was late by the time we finished and Mandy’s mum let me phone Lily. I hoped I wasn’t being too much of a nuisance by asking her to come and get me, but somehow, I didn’t feel particularly safe walking back at this time of night.

“How did it go?” asked Lily.

“Alright. I’m surprised that she seems to have accepted it so readily. Even I can’t quite get to grips with it and there are some things that scare me.”

“Such as?”

“Boys for one.” I said.

“That’s something you’ll have to talk to the good doctor about, but if it’s any consolation, you completely fooled her.”

“Is that good?”

“I think so. She said she could spot someone with transgender issues from about half a mile. She didn’t see YOU coming at all.” she said chuckling.

“Transgender?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s where someone crosses the line between one gender and the other.”

I’d crossed the line alright. Most boys would find it hard to even touch women’s underwear (unless there was actually a girl inside it) under most circumstances and there I was finding it hard to not to.

“What happens now then?”

“That depends largely on you; whether you want to stay as Suzie or Paul.”

“Yeah, but it’s a one way ticket isn’t it?”

“Eventually, yes, but that part of things is a long way off yet. You really are going to have to give this some thought before you go ahead with anything. You’ll be expected to live as a girl for a period of time before you can consider that as an option.”

“Yes, but I will have to won’t I?”

“Not all do. Some live on the outside as a girl and still retain the male sex organs.”

“They do?” I asked, wondering why anyone would want that. Either they were a girl or a boy weren’t they?

I had so much to think about, but it looked as though going ahead with Suzie was the best thing. I felt a lot more comfortable as Suzie than I did as Paul, but then that wasn’t difficult.

School’s out FOR EVER! (I know, but it’s a perennial and seems to pop up every year)

The last week at school was much less fraught than I had expected, the bonus being that I didn’t have to be there anymore after my last exam. That meant I had Friday off and fortunately, so did Mandy.

I spent that day as Suzie and Mandy and I went round the shops of Brighton We got eyed up by boys, which surprisingly I found thrilling. Being close to them wasn’t quite so much fun though and I confess I had my eye on more than one of the girls, not the boys.

They’re so different. I didn’t realise how big a gulf there was between me and the boy I thought I was supposed to be until that moment and although Mandy was in her element, I must have come across a bit standoffish for which Mandy was peeved to say the least.

We ended up having a sandwich in a crowded little café and were chatting away when I saw someone go past the window.

Lisa.

I got up and charged as fast as my heels would allow, outside and up the street, leaving Mandy staring after me, mouth open full of cheese and pickle.

“Lisa!” I shouted and the figure stopped, looked round, but looked right through me. She was with her parents I think (who didn’t stop) and when I caught up with her, she was shocked.

“Er, oh, it’s you!” she said.

The response was not what I had expected, nor what I had hoped for.

I was hoping for a fifties film type thing where the star-crossed lovers see each other across a crowded railway station platform and run to each other in slow motion while dramatic music builds up in the background. Finally they fight through the crowds and catch each other in a passionate embrace.

You get the picture?

Suffice it to say “er, oh, it’s you” didn’t really have the same impact.

“You’re looking well.” I said and tried to retain some semblance of enthusiasm even though it was obvious that things were not as I hoped they would be. It seemed that she had had more of an affect on me than I had had on her.

“Yeah, you too. How have you been?” she asked, looking a little uncomfortable.

“It would take too long to tell you, but I don’t live at home anymore and things are much better now thanks.”

“You look er, good.” she said and I tried to see whether that was saying that I looked well presented or I looked GOOD (nudge, nudge), but couldn’t tell. “What are you doing down here?”

“Mandy and I are just window shopping. I was kind of hoping we could get together, you know like we used to round at Mandy’s? You, me, Mandy, Julie and Caroline; just like old times.”

“Maybe. Gotta go.” she said and looked round to see her parents half way up the street and waving with a look on her face that I couldn’t read, she ran off after them. “See ya!”

To say I felt deflated would be a very conservative way of describing what I really felt as I plodded back to the café. I could see Mandy standing outside the door looking up the road towards me.

“Lisa?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“How is she?”

“Fine I suppose.”

“It’s not the same anymore is it?”

“No.” I said, and I couldn’t help it, I was starting to cry.

Can’t get used to losing you

That feeling of rejection after the indifference of Lisa’s response didn’t go away. I was, I suppose, the epitome of a hopeless romantic (although I preferred “new romantic” as the term then was), offering more melodrama than a Bette Davis movie and moping round the house like a fart in a trance.

I questioned being Suzanne at all. After all, it was Lisa’s affirmation of liking what she saw on the day of the Cordoba that made me go along with it all in the first place. The kiss in the toilets just made me feel if that was what being a girl was going to be like then I didn’t ever want to change, a fact that was strengthened by the kiss when she left me at mum’s.

The trouble was of course, it didn’t last.

I didn’t know whether Suzanne was the real me or whether she was just an excuse to hold on to the memory of those two kisses; the only emotional releases I had had in my relatively short life that had truly made my toes curl.

I reverted to dressing as Paul and Lily didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was disappointed even concerned. Even Mandy, who didn’t seem to express a preference one way or the other, appeared to be more than a little reticent around me and that just served to confuse me more.

“Right young lady.” said Lily after the third day. “Come here this minute. We have some things to talk about.”

Young Lady?

Did she just call me Young Lady? I was Paul wasn’t I?

Regardless of the mode of address, I went obediently and sat as once again, Lily took out her pad.

“What is it?” she asked. I didn’t know what she meant. What was what?

“What is it that’s eating you?”

Ah!

It didn’t take long before I was blurting everything out in one huge great gush of words, sniffs, sobs and gesticulations. Lily’s eyes went wide as this torrent of “stuff” just poured out, crashing through the space between us and bombarding her senses.

By the time I stopped, Lily just sat there looking shell-shocked.

“Oh.” she said.

“Yes and now I don’t know if she loves me or not, if I’m supposed to be Paul or Suzie and… oh Lily, what do I do?” I cried.

Hugs came first.

Having spent years thinking that Lily didn’t like me, she was the one person now who could deliver a hug or a cuddle that just left me feeling warm and snug, loved and content. Had I four legs and a soft furry coat, I would have been purring loudly.

“Alright then. I can’t tell you what to do and you obviously have conflicting opinions about what or who you are, but you need to decide, for your own sake one way or the other. These feelings will not go away otherwise.”

Lily said that at my age, relationships often didn’t last long, however much we wanted them to, so I had to face the fact that Lisa may well have been doing a little “experimenting”, seeing what it might be like to be with another girl and since I wasn’t a girl physically (regardless of how I may have appeared), it satisfied her desire to see herself with a girl by being with a boy who looked like a girl, as she was comfortable with the boy part.

That seemed harsh. I knew it was only a hypothesis, but I couldn’t believe that she would have done that to me. Everything else pointed away from that, but then what did I know?

It was my choice to believe otherwise and I felt there was more between Lisa and I than just a bit of helping out. The kisses for a start (they still make me go all goose-bumpy just thinking about them), the almost kiss during makeup, the looks. There was so much that wasn’t said. I found a happy medium in my head and although I had outwardly accepted the fact that Lisa and I were not going to happen, I chose quietly, not to believe it was so.

It was true that every time things got a bit awkward, Paul would resurface and I guess that because I had been Paul for the thicker end of seventeen years, he was what I thought I should be. It was his insecurity that kept bubbling to the surface, asking me whether I thought that turning all girly was going to make everything better and I had to wonder because right when the question was posed, things weren’t alright.

Meeting Lisa outside the café and being treated so indifferently had hit me hard and I guess that being emotionally inexperienced didn’t help, but I thought that she and I really had something that was ‘special’, worth persisting with. As I said earlier, even if we didn’t become intimate, then at least we’d be friends. After that last episode, I didn’t see either happening.

As a result, Paul popped up once again to question the point of being Suzanne, who up till then had been my happy place, but was it just hiding? Was I just burying my head in the metaphoric sand or sweeping an awkward childhood under the rug as it were? Was I just hiding in Suzanne to try and make Paul’s problems disappear or was Paul hiding from Suzanne?

Then it hit me.

As Paul, I was often mistaken for a girl. Perhaps it was my slight build, my soft features, long hair. I didn’t know, but one thing was for sure, I never got mistaken for a boy when I was Suzanne. Not even in jeans, without fake breasts or makeup.

I came to the conclusion that what other people were seeing may not have been Suzanne, but whether I liked it or not, they weren’t seeing Paul or more pointedly, a boy.

Phew! That was one heck of a conclusion to come to! Scared the pants off me I can tell you.

I made a choice and whilst it scared me to death, it scared me in a good way. As Paul, being scared meant bruising, detention, humiliation and worse. For Suzie, scared meant wondering about the future. It wasn’t hard to make a choice between being scared for life and limb and being scared because the future was an unknown.

Just what I always wanted

I was starting to find my feet again and was getting back into being Suzanne, which confused Mandy. She couldn’t quite decide whether I was a girl or girl trying to be a boy. I quickly pointed out that for her, being a girl was all she’d known and came naturally, but for me, not only did I have to learn how to be a girl, but also how NOT to be a boy. That seemed to do the trick.

When I went to the good doctor Whaite, all the trials and tribulations had to come out again. I have to say that I must have taken a rather over simplified viewpoint on being either Suzanne or Paul since once I’d got it squared up in my head, it became quite easy; logical. That was until she asked me to explain things.

I thought it was simple, but you’d never have guessed with all the questions she asked.

“Are you going to stick to it this time?”

“Yes.” I said with my most affirmative voice. “I don’t know which way round I am, whether I’m a boy who’s really a girl or a boy who’s trying to hide from himself by looking like a girl, but I intend to find out.”

“In that case, might I suggest you make the name Suzanne permanent?”

“I can do that?”

“Most certainly. You’re over sixteen. It will help in establishing your new identity too.”

Where I’d currently got to felt right on so many levels, I actually had a feeling of positive anticipation about the future. So much so, that I found myself walking around in an almost permanent state of wonder. Suzanne was going to be a real, living, breathing person.

It had taken a good few weeks of intensive talking to and a number of object lessons to get me there, but for the first time, I felt like I was doing something right and regardless of what mum had to say or anyone else for that matter, I was following my heart and my head, not someone else’s.

Speaking of mum, I received a phone call from her shortly after making the request for my name to be changed by deed-poll to Suzanne Paula Turner (I thought the ‘Paula’ touch would be nice, a mark of respect to who I used to be).

The name didn’t go down well with mum though. She was still convinced that I was being led around by “that bloody Lily and Ray”. At least it wasn’t my fault this time, but I was still saddened by the fact that everything seemed to her to be someone else’s fault all the time.

“I can’t deal with this right now.” she said and the phone went dead.

I stood there looking at the receiver in my hand. Were we just cut off or had I just been excommunicated?

Despite mum’s apparent lack of understanding, I thought the phone call went quite well. I wasn’t expecting her to be rational. It was easy for me to understand, but for someone who wasn’t the best at being a loving and understanding parent, I had expected far less. I had almost anticipated sparks flying out of the phone and a mushroom cloud, so I suppose, yes, it went well.

The next thing to do was to get Suzanne Turner a job.

I liked that; Suzanne Paula Turner. Somehow, making that my REAL name made me all tingly again.

Once again, I was beholden to Ray for this. He had refurbished a beauty salon in the centre of Hove and Gwen, the owner, was a friend of his. He got her to see me and as he said, the rest was up to me. So taking the photos taken of the girl’s makeup that I did, I went to see her.

It wasn’t well paid and she could only manage part-time for me, but after talking for some time and showing her the photos, she agreed to give me a trial.

I was more surprised than anyone that I actually got the job and whilst it was only part time to begin with, Gwen said that if I fitted in, there was the possibility of going full-time and an apprenticeship to boot. I think cloud nine was passed and the one I was on had fairly large calibre double figures!

It was just as well that Lily and Ray didn’t want any money for me staying in their house.

“All in good time.” they said. “Right now, let’s get you on your feet.”

So I spent the next couple of months working at the salon and soon was given the opportunity to work there full time. I jumped at the chance although Mandy was a little peevish about me continuing to work on Saturday’s. Not that I minded. I was still a ‘stick-in-the-mud’ when it came to boys and I felt rotten for cramping Mandy’s style.

Once I got to know the customers and found that most of them were alright, I started to become a little less of a shrinking violet. One or two of them I thought needed a punch up the bracket, as they wouldn’t let Steve the stylist near them on account of him being gay. They were however happy to let me work on them as they had no idea I wasn’t what I appeared to be. I was only washing hair though, not cutting.

What I appeared to be...

It wasn’t what I was. It was all a facade. I wasn’t actually a girl. I was a boy in girl’s clothes and was beginning to think that this would never change. How ever much I looked in the mirror and no matter how much I told myself otherwise, I was still a boy and not a proper one at that.

I had heard the other boys talking about ‘wanking’, ‘tossing-off’ and ‘hand-jobs’, but in truth, I had no idea what they were talking about. The slow development had left me with something that would occasionally ‘rise to the occasion’ as it were, but well never for long enough to do anything with and as for orgasms… I’d never had one.

Watching Steve working, I could see that I was not like him. It wasn’t sexual orientation I had a problem with, it was MY orientation. The way he lisped and minced around, the limp wrist. It wasn’t female, more a parody of female. He seemed to take a few key feminine mannerisms and enlarge them, like a drag queen, larger than life.

I hoped to God that that wasn’t how I came across.

I was strangely happy to know that I wasn’t gay, well not in a man-man way (that all seemed particularly yucky) and I was convinced that if Dr. Whaite found out I was still attracted to women or girls, she might just say “stay as you are then” and I didn’t know whether or not to tell her.

I was pleasantly surprised when on my next visit to the good doctor, she suggested starting hormone therapy.

“You’re working now, your name is officially Suzanne Turner and you are part of the community. I see no reason to delay the next step. In fact I would suggest we did, before you start down the road of male puberty. You’re uncommonly late in this and under the circumstances it’s likely to work in our favour.”

“What’s hormone therapy?” I asked. I knew basically what hormones were, both men and women had them and I knew that the males had testosterone. I had heard this term bandied about when some of the bigger boys at school were getting rowdy.

“There’s too much testosterone in here.” Sally George had said. The girls all laughed as they left the room to stand out in the corridor and the boys all went “Huh?” Typical!

It transpired that I was to be given female hormones to make my body feminine.

Holy shit!

That was it. I was going to be changed and I felt guilty because I wasn’t telling Dr. Whaite the whole truth.

“Er, does this mean I’ve got to start liking boys?” I asked in a small voice. I don’t think anything has ever frightened me more than the concept of being sexually aroused by the same group of animals that spent their lives making me miserable at school.

“If you want.” she said in an offhand way.

“You mean I don’t have to?”

“You may find that your attraction changes as a result of the hormones, but sexual orientation isn’t the same as preference.”

“It’s not?”

“God Lord, no. Quite a number of transsexuals are like you. They prefer females and it stays that way. Some change with the hormones and become female with the desire to be with members of the opposite sex, well opposite to their new identity anyway.”

I was asked to drop my knickers and was given an injection.

I hate injections. “This won’t hurt” they say, but it always does. Lily was given a prescription for some pills or capsules which I was to take daily.

I asked what this was and the doctor said that these would help my body to change, to take on the appearance of a female’s body. It wouldn’t happen quickly, but because I had still not entered puberty and was still relatively young, this was likely to be quicker than others. I would start to develop breasts, broader hips, slimmer waist more feminine features etc.

“Wow! Breasts?” I asked.

Lily rolled her eyes and shook her head and doctor Whaite jokingly asked whether this was such a good idea.

I was well on the road to becoming what I hoped would be what I was supposed to be. It was at that point that something in me changed. Suddenly, I felt very relaxed, very calm and I don’t know whether it was a result of the injection, but it felt like the boy in me said goodbye for the last time.

Of course, no amount of injections or pills were going to get rid of that one boy part, I would need surgery for that, but the rest of me felt one hundred percent female. It was like one of those times when the mind goes ‘click’ and you just know that something is right.

“When will I start seeing results?” I said, wanting to be like other girls I had seen that didn’t look like they had one vital statistic for every point on their body from top to bottom.

“Probably in about three months, maybe sooner.” said the doctor and then ran me through the general time-frame of how my body would react to the hormonal treatment, which according to her, would be about two years.

It seemed so long, so far away, but I thought that at least I was moving in the right direction. I may have been wearing the uniform of a girl up until then, but hopefully it wouldn’t be long until I actually looked like one too — properly.

Bring it on…