CHAPTER 29
Tuesday came along on time, as it does each week, but it nearly caught me out. It was Anne who reminded me, and I was a little quick down the A2 on the bike...
I caught the silhouette of the police car just in time, and was only doing 80 as I passed. He didn’t pull out after me, so I relaxed a bit. I don’t try and deck the footpegs on the Whitfield roundabout as there are too many holidaymakers and foreigners coming across it with their brains in neutral and their eyes on their maps for it to be safe. Down the hill and through the lights, and soon I was home.
Shit, the clock was running, and I was in biker gear rather than mummy kit. No time to wash, just off with the leathers, on with the mother-frock, stuff small handbag into big one, on with some heels and out the door after a lippy retouch. I walked down to the school brushing my hair in the street as I pulled on my wool coat. Sod them, if they thought I was odd, I just didn’t have the time.
A flock of long-tailed tits zipped through the bare trees as I entered the school gates, and I got to the assembly hall and its seats at four twenty two. Made it.
The headmistress was waiting as I entered, slightly out of breath. She had a bit of a north-eastern accent.
“Hello, I’m Janet Hetherington, the head teacher. You are Jim Hall’s step mum, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Sarah Powell”
“I just wanted to congratulate you on how much of a difference you have made to Jim’s behaviour. He has always had a real problem with women teachers, and we don’t have much else at this stage in his education”
“Yes, Tony–his dad–said he was having difficulties relating to women after his mum passed away”
“That seems to have eased, he was always….well, not disruptive, but he would drift away in class. He has a new aunty as well, I believe”
Oh shit. “Yes, she’s very fond of him”
She leant in closer, and dropped her voice. “I understand. That little bald man that lost his beard and picks Jim up some days…is it just recreational, or is it more?”
“Janet, this is not an ideal time to discuss Alice, and I would rather not breach her confidence by doing so. All I feel able to say is this: no, it is not ‘recreational’, and she is a lovely lady whom I love deeply, and who loves Jim. Please, if this is a problem, I shall have to talk to her first”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sarah, look at the size of my hands and feet. Just don’t make it obvious, I am completely a maiden head teacher from Sunderland as far as they are concerned. I tell you this only so you will understand I have no spiteful intent towards the poor girl”
This was surreal. “Have you had, you know, the op?”
“Over twenty years ago. Now, please, no voyeurism”
“What’s it like?”
It came out before I could shut my big mouth. “Mine’s in January”
“You are joking. I thought two of us was stretching things”
“No, that sort of slipped out.”
“Look, we have to talk properly at some point, but I HAVE to go now, we have a play to present. May I call round after?”
“Certainly. This is all very odd”
Fuck me was it odd. She was either telling the truth, in which case we might have a very useful ally, or she had been fishing and I had just dropped the entire family in the shit. All the lectures I had given Jim about being careful about what he said…shit.
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Nativity plays are the same whichever school they are performed in. Lots of parts so that almost every child can be on stage, truly dreadful singing that only a parent could ever love, and a story that everyone knows. They sang “Once n Royal David’s City” to start with, and finished with “Away n a Manger” In between, the shepherds, all fourteen of them including Jim, did the nasty to “While Shepherds Watched”
He was a perfect little shepherd, in one of his dad’s grey T-shirts and one of my tea-towels held on his head by a sweatband. The training shoes didn’t really work, and his shepherd’s crook was obviously a broom handle with a cardboard cut-out hook taped to it, but he was grinning on the stage and clearly happy. Along with other parents, I got several good shots of my child in his moment of glory.
My child. Yes indeed.
I walked him back along the footpath to our house, him still in his shepherd costume but minus the crook, left behind as property of the school. Alice was home by then, and while I sent Jim to get himself ready for bed before I put the tea out, I ran her through the conversation..
“You haven’t changed yet, Alice. She will be coming round after tea”
“I will just check on Jim, then.”
I busied myself with some fish fingers as a treat for Jim, and warmed up left over shepherd’s pie for Alice and me as a joke I hoped Jim would spot, and just as I was about to plate up Alice came in to put the kettle on.
Alice. Not Alan.
“What are you doing? She is coming round in a matter of bloody minutes!”
“I know, but she has been open with you, I am not gong to hide from her”
“But we don’t know if we can trust her!”
“We can.”
“Alice, how the hell can you know that?”
“I asked Jim what he thought. He said I should wear my hair.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, woman, it’s too late now. Can you get him down for tea?”
Jim spotted what we had on our plates as I hid his. ”Shepherd’s pie! I’m a shepherd!”
“You want the pie?”
“Yes please!”
“You don’t want these fish fingers, peas, mash and ketchup then?”
“Mummy, you hid it!”
After a microsecond of indecision he went for the fish, exactly as I had expected, but I gave him some of mine so he could feel like a shepherd. We had just finished eating when the bell went. It was Janet.
I will admit I stared. As with Steph at the airport, I was looking for vestiges of masculinity, and now that I had been alerted, I saw what seemed to be some. Hands and feet a little larger than one would expect, a strong jaw line; nothing definite, but she could be being truthful. Jim had no worries. ”Mrs Hetherington! Hello! This is my mummy and my aunty Alice! They call mummy Sarah”
Alice and Janet eyed each other like two prizefighters before the bell, until Janet broke the spell, extending her hand to Alice.
“Hello, Alice, I am really pleased to meet you. It gets a bit lonely sometimes, and I hope we shall become friends”
That was a concept I understood extremely well .Being trans is not something you can share with anybody .All of our experiences are different, but at least another transgender person has that one thing in common with you. It was why Alice and I bonded so easily, and it was why she had trusted me as the person she came out to.
We are only human, after all, despite Anne’s opinion, and humans are sociable beings. We need contact. I had tried to live without it for so many years after Joe, and now that I had Tony I realised how wrong I had been. Alice wanted, needed love. Not some romantic fantasy, but the simple facts of affection and acceptance.. Janet sat and watched Jim for a few minutes as he prattled on about the play, then spoke to us.
“From what Sarah accidentally came out with, we have no need for the ritual of ‘I knew when I was…’ as we all know what we are. What I will do is give you a little history.
“I ran a small manufacturing firm, just small turned metal items,, until I could take no more, and sold up so I could get on with life. I started teacher training as Janet halfway through my life test, and when I came out of college I found a very amenable head who had a slight accident with some of my records, which then needed replacing.
“ Things weren’t as tight back then, you know, and as my college had awarded all my teaching certificates to Janet, that was no problem. When I left Sunderland my then head sent certified copies of things like my degree certificates to my new school, together with his references.
“Of course, he had carefully doctored the photocopies he faxed so that they were in my new name, and then the little fire ‘destroyed’ the originals, so sorry, but I can vouch for her”
Janet grinned. “I feel a bit like one of those CIA thriller heroines, all false identity and denial, but this ID is real. As far as anyone can tell, WYSIWYG. It is school tomorrow, James, I hope you won’t fall asleep on me”
Alice nodded, and I carried my little man up the stairs to his room, and read him some of ‘Dr Dolittle in the Moon’ before settling him down. They were laughing as I came back in, and for a moment I saw Enid in Janet’s smile. She turned to me.
“Sarah, it is just wonderful to be able to talk to someone about life who can follow my meaning. Someone who has the same bloody scars!”
Alice was smiling happily. “This is like a coven, Sar, we should invest in a cauldron”
“Please don’t say that to Anne, Alice, you’ll totally fuck her mind. You’ve explained the problem?”
Janet sighed. “She has, Sarah, but I am unsure of what advice I can usefully give on that problem, seeing as I have covered my tracks completely. I can help her with presentation, I can give her support, but I dealt with the bigots by running away”
So did I. Perhaps it was time to stand up; perhaps Alice was right about just pushing ahead.
No. Jim came first. No scandal or stupidity would hurt him, not if I could help it. We had a new ally, but the plan continued.
Comments
standing up vs. running away
'Janet sighed. “She has, Sarah, but I am unsure of what advice I can usefully give on that problem, seeing as I have covered my tracks completely. I can help her with presentation, I can give her support, but I dealt with the bigots by running awayâ€
So did I. Perhaps it was time to stand up; perhaps Alice was right about just pushing ahead.'
each person's needs are different. I think for Alice standing up is the best one for her.
dorothycolleen
What are the odds?
I'd say they are getting better. In the small town of Pauls Valley, OK, I have met two M2Fs (1 in RLT and 1 postop by about 8 years), 2 F2Ms (one early in transition, one post-op), and one questioning. One of the F2Ms graduated from the same small town highschool I did but I preceded him by about 45 years!! He said there was one other in the closet at the same school, younger than he was, but probably graduated by now. So, as more people take advantage of the resources available, I think encounters such as the above become more likely.
CaroL
CaroL
It takes courage to stand;
I ran away.
I do admire, though. those who have the courage to laugh in the face of bigotry. It's a hell of a risk; I wasn't strong enough.
I enjoyed the story, the humour, the ups and downs of life, and the obvious mutual support. I also appreciated the detail that was omitted and which is available, if required, from other sources.
S.
Good Chapter
You're moving well on this Cyclist.
Exploring the different stategies and describing how different individuals deal with them.
This story deals well with the issues without going into unecessary details and protecting Jim is all important!
Children are just so vulnerable to peer pressure and such stuff.
Well done for declaring that Jim comes first. He has brought the pleasure of surrogate motherhood into Sarah's life so she is morally and eternally bound to maintain a reciprocal happiness in the boy's childhood.
What happens in Jim's adulthood is then a matter for fair adult discussion.
Well done Cyclist.
Love and hugs,
Beverly.
The only ...
... TS I can claim to know at all well was (and is) fortunate in her friends and family in that, although she isn't 'stealth', she may as well be because it simply isn't an issue. Perhaps she's lucky. She decided against 'stealth' (or 'running away') because it would have meant cutting herself off from her own past and, depending on how good the past was, that can be very traumatic, I imagine. Obviously she doesn't explain her status to everyone she meets but neither does she deny it. In fact she thinks that many of her friends have simply forgotten - or, at least, never think about it.
It looks like Janet (and Sarah to a lesser extent) has taken the step of starting a whole new life. Alice has to make some serious choices in the near future. It'll be interesting to see how our interlocutor treats it. My only reservation about this story is the number of coincidences (how likely is it that 3 TS women would come together independently in real life) but how would I know? Anyway, it makes for an interesting story.
Robi
COINCIDENCES
Ach, it's fiction. lol.
Seriously, I wanted to try and contrast three methods or sequences that happen to people in this situation. Sarah has been out with her family and friends since her youth. She's now pushing 40, and looking at finally taking the big step she has put off for so long. She doesn't shout about it to strangers.
Janet stepped across the gap much earlier, in a time when there was much more suspicon and ignorance. She has literally built a new life, but because she can't be open she is lonely.
Alice has hidden all her life and actively avoided taking action even though that has meant becoming suiciidal and physically ill. She hears about Sarah, and realises that life might just have an opening for her.
Three different outcomes for the same basic issue. I can't do it without a few coincidences, and the focus, as you have probably guessed, is not Sarah, but Alice.
Try a few numbers
This is only a trial to see if the hypotheses is worth investigating...
All of these hypotheses/estimates are open to challenge, and I ain't interested in defending them. That is not the point. Possibility is the point.
LBGT proportion of UK population - around 1.5%
TS proportion of that group (as those living publicly as their preferred gender) - total guess 1%
Population of Dover Town ~30K >> Total TS population 5 ± 5
Population covered by Dover District Council ~100K >> Total TS population 15 ± 15
Now it gets even hairier. I applied the theory of 'seven degrees of separation' (the concept that you know or have met someone who knows/has met someone... and that gets you to everyone in the world in seven steps); the average 'circle' to make that work is less than 30. (Seventh root of 6.5 billion with a safety factor - the population was ticking up as I watched...)
(Very flaky) To get to 30K you need only 3 steps Sarah>Tony>Jim>Janet (yeah, that is a biiig stretch).
My point is that the probability here is quite real numerically; where this all falls down is identification. But I have no problem suspending disbelief; experience tells me with everyone I meet for the first time there is immediately some common ground (over and above being in the same place at the same time and the reason that brought us there.)
Numbers
Interesting calculation, but I rather think that the LGBT UK population is considerably higher than 1.5%, probably ten times that.
Now...some real numbers. When I lived in Dover, I knew four TS people, five with myself.
Three of them I worked with in various ways.
One of those is alsu on this site.I didn't know her personally, but I believe I knew of her.
Edited to add: I also saw, in Canterbury, an unfortunately very obvious FtM, so that adds even more to the mix.
Experience
... always trumps theory. So your setting is, in a sense, from life? From a real coincidence, if you will. (Perhaps Puddin' will provide the etymology - I mean simply a bald description of an event without ascribing causation, without rationalisation and without any judgment(s) attached.)
The 1.5% LBGT comes from a recent survey. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11398629
That survey result is hedged about with caveats, but the reason for using it, and also for making a very low guess that only 1 in 100 LBGT was TG, was to look at 'worst case'. I only know three TGs to meet and talk to, but they are all within the same 'connection'. Apart from being science-orientated and rather middle-class (ie possibly a more benign than average environment), that connection is entirely TG-neutral.
Numbers
Thanks for the link. I suspect Stonewall's comment has a lot of truth in it: people don't often 'fess up when approached directly.
But there is absolutely no mention…
…of transgendered in the article; even the headline—UK gay, lesbian and bisexual population revealed—makes no reference to “usâ€. To make sure I had not missed something, I did a global search for trans and got a big zero.
Therefore can any conclusions be drawn as to the TG statistics for the UK be drawn from this article? Somehow I think not.
Gabi.
Gabi.
'Us'
I rather get the impression sometimes that the 'other three' have an element of wishing the 'T' wasn't there. Being very serious, there is the never-ending argument attempting to wean people from confounding gender with sexuality. How does that sit in a mishmash like 'LGBT'?
Faute de mieux
"All of these hypotheses/estimates are open to challenge, and I ain't interested in defending them."
Of course
The first thing about any survey is to find out how the questions were asked, which was important here.At work, we have regular surveys that allow 'anonymity' which, as you are logged in on your own work e-mail account,is a bit, well, rubbish as an idea.
What this survey tells us is what proportion of folk are willing to identify themselves publicly to strangers as GLB.
Edited to add: nice link,interesting discussion
It's Alice's Call
The choice between running away and standing and fighting is a totally personal one and depends on the person's courage and on who will get caught in the crossfire amongst all sorts of other considerations....like making a living for one.
Only the author knows which way Alice will jump, but I think we'll all be jumping with her,
Joanne
Cold Feet 29
I remember being in nativity plays and my nieces being mary or the animals or angels in theirs.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
This was surreal
Goose-bumpy even. And snaps the paranoia back up to attention.
Teri Ann
"Reach for the sun."