Something to Declare by Cyclist

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1
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It’s a ghost day. The time spent in bed half dozing has made little impact on the deep pit of tiredness that would get worse as the first night shift bit, but there was no choice. I get up, shock myself with a shower, and fumble something to eat.

Baked fish, some new potatoes, steamed foliage…..yawning already. Four nights to work, and my tits hurt. All my life I have slept on my front, and it’s only when I finally start becoming myself that it causes problems. Finagle lives, and is keeping a very personal eye on my well-being.

I have only a fortnight to work before the Big Weekend, but the previous week(ish) has been enough. A string of seven days on the trot had been preceded by two “rest days” that had been swallowed by court duties, resulting in nine days’ work without a break. Nine days of arseholes from both public and colleagues….meh.

One day I will have to fix the shower. I set the screens, walk back to the bedroom, turn it on, walk back to the bathroom, shower, etc., and back to the bedroom to turn it off, and I am doing my little bit of feminine faff by using two towels, one above my breasts and one around my hair. Observation, a wonderful thing, and the damp hair is held without spraying the walls as I walk back to the bedroom. Towel dry, hang them both on the radiators, and check my legs for foreigners. Nothing new there, not since the last waxing, anyway.

Then comes the ritual wrapping of the elastic bandage around the assets that, let’s face it, wouldn’t be noticeable if the uniform wasn’t so utterly unfit for purpose. Contract signed, first shirts delivered, company goes bust. Deep joy. If I wore any form of bra, even a T-shirt sports bra, it would show, so I wrap the elastic, compress my bosom, and then slip a vest over the lot, just in case.

I’m digressing…..those assets may be small, but ye gods they make the point. Points. I’m 34. For 34 years I have pretended to be someone I am not, and at some point I intend to be me. But not just yet. Not just now.

Into my commuting kit, the lycra not flattering me, bum too small and chest too flat, and I set the lights a-flashing and dice with the Friday night drunks to the airport. Lock the bike in its little space, change into the Tool of the Establishment uniform and head up into the terminal. This is my worrying time, that I will get picked for a random rub-down and some security drone will ask why I have my chest strapped. This is one of the times I want to cry. There are only so many times I can claim a rugby injury, and some day my luck will simply drain away.

Today is one of the good times, I escape with minimal attention, and head round to my station. I’m a Customs Officer, working to keep all sorts of nasties out of the country, from heroin to counterfeits, but I have no powers over bad dress, not even in the Season of the Flying Vermin, when the skiers flow through in a whining, whinging torrent. No, this is Summer, and the season of the muffin top, the bad tattoo and the stupid woolly hat. Listen, sonny, it’s in the nineties, you are wearing a woolly hat…..course it makes you look kewl.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I realise how much angst I throw out on strangers. I don’t know whether it is the years of deceit I have had to practice, or more simply if I have a low tolerance of people with a hazy grasp of reality when it comes to their appearance, but I find I am increasingly acerbic towards the externally-challenged. Of course, it doesn’t help that I am so worried about the weekend coming, the first weekend I plan to spend as myself. Will I be read? Of course I will. Will I care? Not unless someone takes me to task…the only place I will have issues is at the ceilidh. And that, of course, is utter bollocks. How could I not care? The options…of spending a whole weekend crying in my tent, or of cutting and running, or of finding the courage to dive in headfirst and try to swim with the sharks I am dreading.

Damn, Dave has been talking to me for some time. Get some control …we have a target at eleven off the Caracas, and I have been handed the back-up position. We head on down to passport control as soon as it chocks, and he stands out in the queue like a goat in a wolf pack. Up to the Channels, Dave takes him, the false bottom is found, and he runs.

I take him off at the knees, Sue and Dave right behind , but he still struggles. His elbow smacks me in the ear, but I punch him on the shoulder and his arm goes limp. I have the lock on, Dave has his legs, and Sue cuffs him as I present his wrist for the other bracelet. Dave says the words, and we get him to his feet and into the back office. Sue is talking as I hyperventilate.

“Shit, Steve, you are always bloody there, what would we do without you? You OK? He caught you a good one there!”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the big hard man, the dependable tackle and backstop for the team. If you only knew.

“Aye, Sue, just a bit of a clout. Had worse, Dave will tell you that”

She laughed. “Yeah, mate, and given out one hell of a lot more!”

We booked him in, and went through the rigmarole of property list, photographs and handover of evidence that a job entails and by the time it was all done it was about time to go home. I had resolutions, I had ideals, and yet I still stopped off at the grocers on the way out and bought a litre of wine.

How else can I sleep?

CHAPTER 2
Finally that week’s work was over and I was ready for the festival. I was absolutely screwed; I mean, what does a girl take to a folk music weekend, especially when the girl is officially and mostly physically a bloke? I decided that I would simply take all the usual impedimenta apart from some bras. I don’t mean I wouldn’t take bras, I mean everything would be ‘the usual’ apart from the addition of a brassiere or two. Well, a brassiere, anyway. I only had the one.

I suppose it’s time I said hello properly. My name is Steve. Or Steph. I am male. Or not, depending on what evidence you believe; my birth certificate says “male”, my genitals say the same, but everything inside has always expressed a different opinion. If you don’t like it, go and read something else. This is my story, and I will tell it as it was, and is, rather than how people might wish. I spent all of my earliest life in a silent scream of “It’s not FAIR!”, until I settled into a sort of armed truce, an accommodation with my lack of fit, and slowly, but steadily, started to fall into smaller and smaller pieces. After far too long, I found an NHS shrink that appeared to understand my inner voice, and…

Work is the problem, I don’t have many friends outside, so there isn’t anyone else’s opinion to worry about. Work, though; a climate of machismo and banter, of real men and harder women, and it scared the real me half to death at the thought of how they would react. In the end, I looked elsewhere, and decided the festival was to be my big unveiling, hence the worry about what to take. So…..bra. Tent, bike, sleeping bag, fiddle and bra. And a Welsh rugby shirt, wrth gwrs…

I had real hopes for the weekend. No, not the great romance, not A Bloke; I was so screwed in my head that I had no idea what I was, which way I swang, because my hinges were seized, but I hoped for a chance to be me, to be a girl, to play music in my own little world of creativity, to dance–and yes, to be asked to dance and to dance as a girl. Ye gods, I had dreams, and in reality I knew the best I could expect would be staying in my tent to avoid the laughter that I knew would come my way.

Still I loaded my bike and set off for the station. Alea iacta est.