This is a story about a trans snooker player.

As I bent over, lining my cue with the white ball, my mind was in turmoil. What should I do? The cue felt like an extension of my arm. It was a Peradon. I remember back to the hell my mother kicked up when my father brought it home. He showed me and we stared in awe at it. It was as if he had shown me Excaliber itself.

My mother berated him for spending over £100 on a "bit of wood". She said we would only be able to go to a caravan at Clacton for a week instead of Spain like she wanted to.

"Next door has had two foreign holidays this year, we haven't had one. You and bloody snooker. It's not like you're any good."

That wasn't true. I thought he was wonderful. I remembered the day he took the car out of the garage and I asked where we were going. He told me he was going to use the garage to put a snooker table in.

Later that day a brand new half-size table was delivered. My mother huffed and puffed and let everyone know about her disapproval. My six-year-old self was enchanted, listening to balls clicking and cracking. I watched as the balls bounced off the cushions into the holes.

Snooker rules are simple. There are 21 balls. There are 15 red and 6 colored balls, and one white cue ball. Players have to pot a red ball first, followed by a colored ball, a red ball, a colored ball, and so on. The red-colored sequence continues until all of the balls have been pocketed. Your turn will be over if you fail to put the proper ball into the pockets. The winner is the one who achieves the highest scores, which are calculated based on snooker ballpoints,

Red ball = 1 Point
Yellow Ball = 2 Points
Green Ball = 3 Points
Brown Ball = 4 Points
Blue Ball = 5 Points
Pink Ball = 6 Points
Black Ball = 7 points

So if you pot a red, you can try to pot the black. This would get you 8 points. You keep going until you miss potting a ball, or pot the white.

Snookered in the game means you cannot take a shot because other balls are in the way.
It can also mean, to deceive, cheat, or dupe or to do something that prevents someone/oneself from doing or achieving something.

This was the situation I was in now. What should do? My 10-year-old self would have ploughed ahead giving it my best effort. Things were not so clear cut a 60, there was a lot to consider.

I started to play as soon as I could reach the table. Dad was enthusiastic, I was a chip off the old block. I used snooker to quiet the other things going on in my mind. I had always felt that I should have been a girl. This is not something you could ever tell your friends at a tough North London school. I would be beaten up every day and called a poofta. No, you could never show any weakness.

The few friends I had drifted away. I just went to school and played snooker at home. I was an only child, but I can't say I was unhappy. Well apart from the growing need not to be male. Around puberty, I started to hate my body. I started to grow in areas I did not want to grow. My body started sprouting hair everywhere. Snooker kept me sane. Concentrating on the angles of the shots quietened the girl screaming to be free.

I couldn't hold her back. Everytime my parents went out I spent in my mother's wardrobe. How she never caught me I'll never know.

At 17, I left school and got a job with the post office. That was when I started to buy my own clothes. I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I spent nearly all my money in department stores. I used to write myself lists and say that my mother had asked me to get birthday presents for my sister. I don't know if any of the ladies ever suspected. I remember one watching me keenly as she showed me the lace edging on a pair of pink frilly knickers.

I would hide the bags in the bushes in the garden and sneak out to get them at night. It couldn't last. I came home a few days after my eighteenth birthday to find my female clothes laid out on the bed.

"Your father and I want a word with you."

After hours of confession and tears, I told them that I was going to live as a woman, with or without their help. My mother was conflicted. She tried to talk me out of it, but she did not her "baby" to leave home.

It was decided that I could live as a woman, but we would have to move house. We moved Cheshunt, just outside London. The house was more expensive and had no garage, so the snooker table had to go.

I was never sure if my father ever forgave me. It may have been imagined, I don't know, but he always seemed disappointed with Mary. I think he missed Mark. I feel it was my fault that he had to give up snooker. The new house was more modern, but smaller. He kept the cue but sold the table to the local pub.

My mother tolerated me. When my father died a few years after the move she blamed his death on me. She told me his heart attack was caused by his smoking,, which had increased after the snooker table went.

At his funeral, I vowed I would carry on playing. A few days later I went to my local snooker hall. Not a nice place for any girl, especially a trans girl. I put up with a lot of abuse when they realised I wasn't quite what I seemed. I don't know what gave me away, but soon I had a regular few "haters".

I challenged the worst one to a game and wiped the floor with him. If it were not so busy and the burly barman being sympathetic, he would have punched me I'm sure. I became a regular and was eventually tolerated. I still got snide comments, like "tranny" and "pervert", but I grew into my new persona and passed more easily as the hormones I was now taking took effect.

In my mid-thirties I decided to enter women's tournaments. It is funny, no one cared when it was low-level stuff, but as soon as money gets involved the knives come out. As I progressed up the leagues my past was dredged up. I became "butch Mary". even though I always wore makeup and dressed as feminine as possible. Almost every woman that lost to me would say.

"Well, you're a man after all."

I was asked by a local paper to do an interview. I foolishly accepted it.

"So Mary, do you think it is right for a man to steal prizes from women in women's competitions?"

I was shocked that she would be so offensive this early in the interview.

"Now listen to me. My birth certificate says female. I am officially recognised as a woman. I don't steal anything I win fair and square."

"Don't you see being born male as having an unfair advantage?"

"What? If I was a weight lifter or a boxer, maybe. It can vary wildly, but we are talking about snooker here."

"Well, surely your male strength helps."

"I have been on Estrogen, testosterone blockers, and progesterone for over 35 years now. You are a couple of inches taller than me. You could probably beat me in an arm wrestle. You tell me, would you have an advantage over another woman playing snooker?"

"But surely you need to hit the balls really hard when you break?"

"You don't do your research very well do you? Snooker isn't played like that. You are thinking of pool. You don't rely on spreading the balls all over the table."

"Well, er..there must be some advantages to being born male."

"Should a man be better at darts than a woman? No, there is no real reason. Should a man be better at poker than a woman? No, of course not. But they are, You want to know why?"

"Well because they are stronger and er, er."

"No. Physical strength has nothing to do with it. Women play other women. The best get good enough to beat most women. If they want to get even better they should play men. Men are better because a lot more men play. There are probably 20 times more men than women playing snooker. That means the top 10 male players have to be better than hundreds of thousands of men."

"Are you saying women should play men?"

"Yes. That's why I am so good. I played men for years in snooker halls. Women's football teams play teenage boys because they know they will get a hard game. If they can adapt to that they will play better against women."

"So you believe you are doing nothing wrong."

"No. I don't think having a cervix gives any women a disadvantage in snooker. Isn't it strange how many times we women tell men we are just as good as they are and can do anything they can, then any time a trans woman has a chance of winning anything we scream unfair? Are trans women suddenly superhuman?"

I was unhappy with myself afterward. I knew I shouldn't have done the interview.

That brings me back to now. I am 6 points behind on the last frame. I can see the black ball up the far end. The white is on the cushion. I will have to top it and hope it stays straight.

Sandra Billings winks at me, and mouths good luck. She is the reigning champion. She told me backstage if I beat her she is going to call for me to be banned from the sport.

I want to beat her so badly. I would love to knock that shit-eating grin off her face. But what will happen if I do? I have seen what happens when trans athletes win anything. We are allowed to compete. Yes, look how progressive we are, there was a trans woman competing today. You should be happy with just that. Don't you dare win anything though?

I can feel the sweat form on my brow as draw back my father's cue. I am truly snookered. Even though I can make the shot, I just can't.

Then I just couldn't help myself. I stared into Sandra's eyes as she watched the black sink into the pocket. I knew my life, for the second time, would never be the same again.