Maybe Mum can give me advice, where nobody else can? I was lonely…… When I wrote that yesterday, together with ‘Drea’s painful words about the hurt from others, I started thinking about the time I was in this situation. We are talking 1967/1968. Of course, there was nobody to confide in. Life was different then……… (No hairdressing in this chapter, by the way!)

Chapter 14 (There is no chapter 13!.. that would be unlucky!)

At the time I was a young adult, struggling with my personal issues, it is important to remember that this was not the 21st century!

There was no Internet. There not even any personal computers. No typewriters with memories. No places to store thoughts apart from shoeboxes in the wardrobe. There were no Social networks. There were no Blogs. No Facebook, No Twitter. No acceptance of “Diversity”. No acceptance of “deviation from the normal”. No clubs where people who were different could meet.

No understanding that we’re all male or female, but that there are positions on a continuous scale between the two. On a scale of plus 5 to minus 5, I am, and always have been, at point 2 or3 on the male side. In other words, there are parts of me over towards the girly side.

Crossdressers were nowhere to be seen. If they had emerged onto the street, they would have been branded “Queer”, just like any homosexuals who were still facing legal prosecution if found engaging in what homosexuals engage in when they are together. If anyone knew about it, crossdressing was evidence of homosexuality, I’m sure. It’s what poofs wanted to do to attract eachother. No understanding that crossdressing and wanting a sex change are not inextricably linked. No understanding that the majority of crossdressers are in face most certainly heterosexual, usually men, who admire the opposite sex greatly. Likened to being a lesbian, in those days, being a crossdresser meant you didn’t exist!

This was the dark ages!

That’s why I was lonely. That’s why I wasn’t like my friends at school. That’s why I stayed at home more than others. I had nobody to talk to about what really mattered. What was all-embracing. My conundrum.

If I had been gifted with sites like the Big Closet, or Crystal’s Storysite, or Sapphire’s Place….. There would have been heaven on earth. Even if there were sections in the Municipal Library marked with such a classification as “Transvestism” or “Crossdressing”, there would probably have been queues of people lined up out the door to get access.

But then there were few if any books on the subject.

I remember reading (and how I got my hands on the book I’ll never recall) a book about a French transsexual. The book was called “Coccinelle”. Then there was another, which I think was serialized in a Sunday newspaper, which was all about a woman called April Ashley. These had been published a few years before — around the late 1950s. They were books for weirdos about weirdos.

That’s what I was made to feel about myself, from the very little I could see publicly, I was most definitely a weirdo. That’s why I was lonely. That’s why I wasn’t like my friends at school. That’s why I stayed at home more than others. I had nobody to talk to about what really mattered. What was all-embracing. My conundrum.

In the late 1960s in England, the media were less in evidence, but no less powerful, than they are today. Imagine then, against this background, that the BBC, the public service broadcaster, should commission and show on prime-time Saturday night television, a variety show featuring the country’s only celebrated female impersonator.

Everyone knew that pantomimes at Christmas had “dames” who were played by men. They were the Ugly Sisters in “Cinder-fucking-rella”, for example (my apologies to the cast of ‘Pretty Woman’). That was ok, because there was always a “principal boy” who was played by a girl. The men were “drag queens” (all of whom were weirdos) and the women were “actresses playing a part”. So they were respectable.

So, I felt classified as a weirdo. I didn’t feel that I was weird. This was part of me being “me”. And I really didn’t want to play around with other guys. I was not homosexual. (Nobody had used the word ‘gay’ at this time). I wasn’t a “queer” or a “poof”. All I would crave was the freedom to dress at home, indoors, out of sight, in the way I wanted. As a girl, a pretty and if possible glamorous girl.

And I had nobody to explain that to.

In my own little space, I coveted the looks and the clothes that made the pop music divas of the time who they were. I plastered the walls with pictures taken from pop mucus magazines. English female singers were in great demand then. Sandie Shaw, Cilla Black, Lulu and Dusty Springfield, all looked down at me from the walls. I looked back at them, imagining I was their guy… I was their lover.

Or sometimes, I was “them”, or dressed, styled and made-up like them.

The dresses they wore on television and in these pictures were wonderful, colourful and totally glamorous. My, admitted now, fetish for hair was rampant by now. I loved their different hairstyles and colours. But I couldn’t be them. I couldn’t even be “like” them, because there was no doubt, I was male. So I wanked, frequently and excessively, feeling guilty as I did so — because you were meant to feel guilty about it in those days. It’s what guys like me, any guy of my age I’m sure, but you weren’t meant to feel good about yourself when you finished.

18 years old now, facing life-changing school examinations, I might be at Uni by the autumn. There was pressure all around. Pressure to grow up. Pressure to stop being childish. Pressure to keep a girlfriend and be totally normal.

That took constant work and effort.

My girlfriend was great and a friend and mainstay. There was no way I would shatter the relationship I was building with her by saying “oh, by the way, can I borrow a bra and some panties of yours?” Weirdo! She would have screamed and run out of the room, never to be seen again. Hell’s teeth!!! I could not let that happen.

And yet, there was my stash of clothes in my closet at home, my collection of make-up (which by now included mascara, despite me still being absolutely useless at applying it).

I was trapped between the “Devil” — my cross dressing — and the “deep blue sea” — my girlfriend. The Devil would not let go of me, the deep blue sea was inviting me always to “dive in”. How easy could it be to run with both? Answer, well, it ebbed and flowed emotionally.

People talk of the “Elephant in the room” — the issue that nobody wants to mention. Well, I had my own elephant! When I dressed, I may secretly have hoped that Mum would “discover” me, as had nearly happened with a few close shaves in earlier years. What would I say? The question frequently flashed through my mind. Maybe it would be good to have it out in the open. I so wanted to confide in somebody. But the risk to my relationship — which was now a love affair — was too great to allow it to happen.

I dressed in my underwear. I used my make-up. I dreamed. But I couldn’t wear Mum’s clothes any more — not only had I grown to reach her size, by now I was of a larger size. I would have been an English ‘size 16’ and she a svelte ‘14’. But I was by now thinking that my look was incomplete….. incomplete without some pretty outerwear. Perhaps a blouse and skirt, or perhaps a full-length dress. Something sheer and feminine, but not too figure-hugging. My figure was only the result of paper stuffed into the cups of the bras I had now had to replace with a larger size. 36B or 38B seemed the next step up.

So, with my underwear on, for the first time I went out and headed for the shopping centre, where Marks & Spencer’s store was. I should have loved to wear some lipstick and this time I could! For the first time, my most recent shopping trip had included finding a Maybelline stick with natural skin colour. So much was the fashion at the time for the palest possible lip colours! The taste bore be up to exhilaration all the time I was shopping.

Chapter 15 will reveal my most treasured acquisition….. a blouse and floaty flowing skirt!