Something to Declare by Cyclist

Chapter 4

WARNING: rather unpleasant childhood distress

I suppose I should take a step back from the here and now and give some background. Imagine this page doing a lap dissolve, with swirly distortion and tinkly music and clearing to reveal a short, skinny, auburn-haired lad astride an orange Raleigh Chopper.

That was the secret weapon of the UK cycle industry, an Easy Rider-styled monstrosity with a three-speed gear lever on what passed for the top tube, which is the real name for a bike’s crossbar. Brake too hard, slide forward off the banana seat, and say hello to sudden genital pain. Did I say secret weapon? That should be secret suicide device, as the Chopper handled so badly it put a whole generation off cycling for life.

I was an odd mix as a boy, tiny beyond belief till a growth spurt took me past average height in my mid-teens, so I had the twin devils to face of being firstly the short skinny kid that everyone beat up, and then the beanpole apparently fit for the same purpose. I had four passions in my life: music, reading, cycling and, oddly, rugby. No, not that one, the REAL one with 15 players each side. I may not have been big, but I was blindingly fast, and for a number of reasons I was willing to throw myself into tackles that shocked opponents. My favourite position was open side flanker, that home of psychotic speed merchants since the game was first formalised. I idolised such people as Neil Back, the small hard missiles that hunt the half-backs.

Cycling was my other active pastime, and it was never a club thing, unlike the rugby. It set me loose from the immediate streets of my childhood, allowing me time to settle into that near-Zen state of contemplation that comes when winding a steady cadence down the coast road or pulling up one of the long, long hills to the East. It let me sink into my own world, a chance to try and put some sort of order into my shipwreck of a soul.

I simply knew I was different. Not in the way the bullies shouted, not the “Puff!” that I was beaten so badly for that I twice tried suicide with pills filched from my mother. There, that was blunt, but how else to bring it up? I was found, washed out, and after the second attempt I decided to at least, at last have a go at living my own life. I just didn’t know what it would be.

This is the point where I am traditionally supposed to introduce tales of childhood cross-dressing, of dolls and make-up, but they never happened. I was too solitary in my habits to have suitable friends, and I was simply so introverted that my gender and sexuality only announced themselves even to me when I was pulled up by my housemaster for what was a true Freudian slip.

“Why did you say that, Stephen?”
“What, sir?”
“ ‘The other girls’ “
“Er, I meant ‘The other pupils’, sir”

That was the moment when it suddenly burst into my mind, the source of my confusion, the root of all that conflict in my life. I was 12, and I knew who I was for the first time. The signals picked up by the bullies were being misread; I was no pansy, no sissy, no nancy-boy poofter after a bumming that needed a proper kicking, but rather a girl with a problem. I had found myself, but I was unreachable.
That afternoon was my second suicide attempt.

My mother found me, forced me to drink salty water and called an ambulance. The tube down my throat was unpleasant beyond belief, and I spent a short while in hospital as a sullen, withdrawn little bundle. I read to keep the nurses from talking to me, and in one of the newspapers I found on the ward I first came across the story of a Bond girl who had been born with my own problem.

There was light at the end of the tunnel, and not from an oncoming train