The toilet humour continues - there's a a surprise!

Easy As Falling Off A Bike.
by Angharad
part 86.

Driving out of Portsmouth I was very lucky I didn't have a crash. My temper was up to my eyeballs and I was ready to trade punch for punch with anyone who wanted to try it on.

I mean, that supercilious cow Jo, and her precious fucking bogs. What is she frightened she might see or that I might see? I suppose the argument is that girls use them for changing. So what? Don't they appreciate I'm not interested in them anyway? I suppose that would make me gay in their reasoning! Fuck them! I shall use whatever toilet I bloody well want to. Don't they realise how difficult this is without such petty mindedness? I don't suppose they do or care.

It was with great effort that I managed not only to avoid giving in to self pity or suicidal anger, but also started to calm down enough to drive. I actually stopped after a while to get a coffee and cool off. My head was still spinning with all the things going on in my life, but I had little option except to keep going.

Part of me knew the university would support me as much as it could, they had pretty well made that clear. However, I was aware that there was a core of feminists who were really hardcore in their protection of their view of femaleness, and I didn't meet it.

Some time ago I came across a diatribe called the 'Transsexual Empire' or some such title, by a Janice Raymond if I recalled correctly. It was an ultra-feminist propaganda on how men were trying to infiltrate the women's movement by making pseudo-women out of men. Their object was to continue controlling women. It was the biggest load of crap going, a view I still hold, written by a paranoid academic with a mind as closed as some of the racists or homophobes who seem to live on pure hatred of something they fear.

Yes, I was seeking to join women, but as for infiltrating them or influencing them, duh? I want to be at peace with myself, in becoming Cathy, I have largely achieved that so far. Yes, I want to integrate as a female and have friends and relationships, earn a living and so on. I accept I will be competing with biological females for partners and jobs and things, but so will other females, so what difference will another make? Besides, I have some disadvantages especially if a potential mate wants children. So the threat I pose is nil, except apparently in using the womens' toilets. Oh boy, some of them need to get a life.

I sat watching the cars coming and going at the motorway service area and sipped my coffee. I was going to use the toilet, the ladies toilet and now felt very self conscious about it. Grrr, I felt really cross with that stupid cow, not least because she's only with us on a placement. She's a fucking wild flower picker, sorry botanist, who is studying with one of our bug hunters, okay an entomologist, on pollination. I hope he pollinates her, bloody flower arranger!

Now I was being as irrational as she was, and also sensing that that reaction was a male one. Oh shit! Let's face it, they have us by the short and bloody curlies. If they complain loud enough the press will get involved and have a field day, at my expense. In which case, Simon, assuming he hasn't run a mile by then, will drop me like a stone. I can see him meeting his friends in the bank, and assuming they still talk to him, saying things like, "Hi Simon, still going out with that girly-boy?" or, "Has it had its operation yet?"

Why did I feel so negative about it all? Why did the prof make me tell them? Did they have a right to know, if so, why? I rose from the table and walked in some trepidation to the toilets. I tried to breathe slowly and deeply, but it was difficult.

I walked in through the double set of doors and had to wait for a cubicle, some were out of order. Shit and double shit! I nearly turned around and walked out. Instead the woman in front of me, a thirty something who was wearing a nice dark grey suit and carried one of those handbags cum attache case thingies, spoke to me.

"Bloody typical isn't it, I've got an appointment with a client in half a bloody hour and I'm going to spend half that waiting to use the bloody toilet. If this was the mens' one, there'd be hell to pay."

I looked at my watch, it was after twelve time was getting tight. "Yeah, I've got to be in Bristol for a meeting and time is getting tight."

"You know, I've got a bloody good mind to use the mens' loos. Any of you coming with me?" My new acquaintance addressed the five or six women who had come in after me.

"I dunno," said one quietly, "We could get arrested," said another. I nearly laughed at the prospect of me, a biological male being arrested for using a mens' toilet. It would give everything a new sense of the absurd, except part of me was terrified not to get any publicity if I could help it.

The conversation was getting increasingly militant and two minutes later, a group of seven women, six others and me linked arm in arm, singing, 'We shall overcome' walked into the gents and used the cubicles. Thankfully there were enough and by the time the management arrived we'd gone.

I think I hadn't felt as frightened in a toilet since I went as Cathy for the first time, and Stella was with me then. If I remember, it was her that frightened me. Now, I peed and ran for it. Not even bothering to wash my hands, although I could have gone back to the ladies for that. I was completely and utterly terrified and ran to my car and drove off as quickly as I could. I couldn't even smile at the bemused faces of the men as we went through the door. I'm also surprised I didn't do more than pee, I was frightened enough!

Ten miles up the motorway, and driving so carefully it was untrue, I began to relax and laugh. It was funny really. I mean I'd spent most of my life trying to legitimately use the womens' toilets which I think it's now appropriate to do, ending up back in the mens' which I thought I'd eschewed! It had a stupid sort of logic to it, or at least it hit my funny bone, once the heat was off.

It was the sort of luck which would happen to someone who had fought for the right to wear skirts and dresses, only to end up in a job where the women all wore trousers. I know, it's not about clothes, but they do influence how others see us. I know, these days, I could wear Charlie's clothes with my hair combed nicely and a bit of makeup and no one would think I was a boy anymore. I pretty well did that with my cycling kit, no one seemed to think I was David Millar in drag. Mind you he is about a foot taller than I am.

Then I got to thinking about what could happen if the news got out? It wasn't nice and could spread to Bristol and worry my dad. That wouldn't be fair on him, even as nasty as he's been to me in the past, he's isn't well enough to cope with it and it could also make it difficult for him with his fair weather churchy friends, none of whom seemed to visit him in hospital.

I wondered if all this had happened because everything had happened so quickly, without me controlling it as I had intended. But then how much could I control? Possibly more than I chose to, possibly less. I hadn't been forced to walk into the mens' toilets earlier, except when they grabbed me and linked arms, I didn't like to opt out for umpteen reasons, including a degree of solidarity as a 'new woman' with the others. The queues in ladies loos are legend, but why are they, is it simply because no one ever builds enough of them? I suppose there's a PhD in it for some bright spark, one day.

I noted the time and began to put my foot down a bit harder. This little car could go a bit and I made it do so. For the next hour my mind was occupied with avoiding speed traps and looking out for possible police cars, usually big BMWs but not always, some were Jags or Mercs, the undercover ones I meant. More than once I slowed because a white car or van seemed to be like a cop car, but they weren't.

At exactly two fifteen, I parked my car in the hospital car park and walked quickly towards my father's ward.

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See my topic on discussion, Easy Hundred, for the future of this story.

Angharad.