Experiences like my salon first timer that day live with me for ever. It’s only when you write tracing back earlier days that you feel what you felt then. The more I think about it, the more I know, I felt lonely. Little did I know that, before the year was out, I’d have had my first kiss with a girl.

Chapter 10

The end of the salon day came within an hour of my return home. I had dressed and made-up my face. I had studied my reflection in Mum’s full length mirror. For the first time, and because of my hair that was styled in a style that could only be described as feminine, I began to feel that I might one day satisfy myself with a female self-image. That day, of couse, I was still a young man in some girly clothes. But that didn’t matter — it was the “doing” of what I was doing that made me comfortable and at ease, more relaxed somehow. I had relaxed in the salon as the stylist, Angie, put in those rollers so nicely and tightly.

I wished I had relaxed enough to engage her in conversation. Bless her, she did try, like she did with all her ladies when they’re being styled. Had I got plans for the weekend? Going out somewhere perhaps? Had I seen the Coronation Street programme that was on last night? Was it a programme I watched? Oh, it was,… who was my favourite character? All she got from me was one-line answers, I’m sad to say. I would have enjoyed myself a lot more than I did — and I did really enjoy myself! — if I had given her full answers to the questions. I did tell her that I thought that Elsie Tanner was a top character. I did really think that. We only had black & white television at home then so I couldn’t appreciate quite what a go-er Elsie was. I had seen magazine pictures — TV Times and the like, so I knew she was an auburn-haired raver! Her clothes were very “right” for a northern English middle-aged woman who used her body to good effect.

As I thought of her, I was absent-mindedly patting the curls on my head, feeling the way they reacted to a little pressure. They were totally “set” it was true and I loved the feel of them. I got close to the mirror as I applied my lipstick again……. Elsie was a good kisser, I’d bet.

Then I realized, quite suddenly, how fast time had been passing. It was nearly time for Mum to get home from work. I had bunked-off school so she wouldn’t know that I had been absent on my adventure — and never would do about this time. Maybe another time I might get reported by the school and have to provide an explanation of why I wasn’t at school. But not today. But she would be home soon. I had to remove the clothes of hers that I had tried on. Carefully, putting them back in the right drawers, having remembered which was closed and which was not. I put everything on her dressing table back where I had found them. I knew I was playing with fire.

I stood in my undies, and took a last look in the long mirror. I knew I had to wash those curls right out of my hair!!! And fast!! For the first time, because of my cross-dressing, I was overwhelmed by an impossible urge to cry my eyes out. I couldn’t help myself. Tears ran down my face. I so loved the salon experience, among all those other women, that I couldn’t wait to do it all over again. I resolved that I would even if it was months before I could.

The bathroom had no shower unit. Not even a flexible hose from the bath taps. I usually washed my hair in the bath. But there was no time for that. I filled the hand basin with water —

The water was proved to be too hot when I plunged my head in after a last caress of the curls. I was so sad to know that they would be gone within minutes….. After they were first made wet, I ran my fingers through them and found they gripped my hands….. almost saying “don’t do this!........” I reached out for the shampoo and found hot water draining down my neck and into my bra straps.

The bubbles became thick very quickly — so much had I over-dosed myself on the shampoo. Easily, I stroked the velvety foam and gradually felt the resistance of the curls, once so tight, relax and disappear. The tears welled-up in my eyes once again. It was gone. My lovely set hair….. Rinsing the shampoo and washing the hair again, I felt bereft. But also cleansed, in the sense of my inner self being washed of the desire to cross dress. What a mixed-up little boy I really was.

Drying my hair, I heard Mum’s car stop on the driveway outside the house. I had to get out of my panties and bra, and get my boy things on. Quick! It was easy to do that, but time didn’t allow me to finish drying my hair. What the hell. It was gone… My “set”, ….my lovely curly set.

By the time she was in the house, I was downstairs and pretending to have been there since school would have finished. She knew that school times were flexible in the year I was studying, so any time would have been fine for me to be home. She asked if I had a good day, to which I said, Oh, yeah!”…. maybe a bit too enthusiastically perhaps. She turned to look at me, saying “That’s good, honey……. Have you just washed your hair?... It looks a little different…..”

Think fast! An explanation….. “er..er…Yeah, some bully boy put chemistry materials in my hair from behind in class…… I had to wash as soon as I got home.”

“Well, it looks nicer than usual — more curly than usual if you ask me…” Mum said, genuinely meaning what she said. At least my explanation fitted. Phew! Later, I looked in a mirror and saw what she meant. There was a curl of a sort in what were usually straight strands. I rather liked that.

oo00oo --

Time passed slowly that autumn. School work got I the way of every social activity apart from sports. I stuck to my plan of wearing my panties but not my bras for as many days a week that I could. I washed them separately from the family wash and had several pairs by the time Christmas was coming round. Difficult to dry them in secret. Dreaming of getting more of what I wanted out of life, I gave myself the joy of a “Wish List” if I were lucky enough to receive what I really wanted this year.

Shoes!! My own beautiful strappy high heeled shoes. They didn’t even have to be HIGH.. just a couple of inches would make all the difference. And stockings! The shoes wouldn’t look at all right without sheer stockings to highlight them. That meant a third wish…. A suspender belt or garter, to fasten the stockings, or perhaps a light corset…. Now that would be very feminine indeed wouldn’t it?

Sadly, none of these gifts arrived on Christmas Day. I got aftershave, instead of Eau de Toilette. I got socks instead of the stockings. I got trainers instead of the heels.

1966 dawned with my first New Year’s Eve party with friends not family. I was allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house with a couple of other guys…… Only just in time did I appreciate the importance of NOT wearing panties, however much my New Year’s wish would be to wear girly underwear every single day of the year of 1966!

The party was a complete success. Everybody nearly died laughing we were so happy.

Given my feelings about being seen to be a girl, or feeling like I was at least partly a girl. At least in my head… I actively considered, for the first and only time in my life, what it would be like to fall in love with, or even have sex with, any of these guys. It was ludicrous.

They were all my own age, for a start. They were loud and lairy and make jokes about shagging and farting and being sick, oh, and about football and poncey pop singers who were the sweet-hearts of the girls they fancied. It was ludicrous also, because they all had penises, like I had a penis, and I could not begin to even think about what they would do with theirs, because I knew what mine was for and it wasn’t for anything they might do if I fell in love with one of them. Eeeeyuk!

My love of girls was never in doubt, and has never been in doubt. This was just a usual teenage thought that was easily dismissed. Thankfully, nobody in the group of four of us was thinking about the same thing so all went well. The party was a gas! I drank beer for the first time. Quite a lot of it — one of the guy’s Fathers was very liberal and had a very large beer and wine store. Even when we were pissed, nobody wanted to play anything but vinyl 45s and LP 33s.

Never having had a girlfriend, and going to an all-boys school, I was yearning to spend some time with girls, like I had dreamed of doing when on holiday. Those four girls in Jersey never left my mind. I wished I could meet someone like them. How could this be achieved? Not in my neighbourhood at my age. I was still six months away from joining a Youth Club.

There was a column in one of the teen magazines that were coming to the market at this time. It was a fore-runner of what became known as “Lonely Hearts”. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released the following year, I believe…. There was a hopefulness about finding friends that way, in an innocent way. To write to someone who you’d never met. Maybe confide some inner secrets to share. To be true friends……

So I wrote off to the magazine’s box number. I used my real name and my real address. The idea was that you wrote a short box advertisement about yourself and, through a ‘box number’ you would get letters from people who liked the sound of you. Molly from north Essex wrote back.

To cut a long story short, by the time summer came, Molly and me, we were arranging to meet. It turned out to be the very same day that England would play in the final of the soccer World Cup. How could I forget that day? What the hell! For the first time in my life, I had a date!!

I met Molly for the first time, took her for a coffee at a café near the place we met — halfway between north London and north Essex and I took her to the cinema. I’ve long forgotten what the film was. The reason is not bad memory but more the memory of waiting only a few minutes before slipping my arms around her. And then turning to her and moving in for a kiss. And then spending half the film with my hand up her skirt ferreting about for what I wasn’t yet sure! I remember it so well…… She was a brilliant kisser.

And all the time I kissed her, I dreamt I was a girl myself.

Needless to say, our love affair was short-lived… and I had missed the World Cup final!

Chapter 11 finds me in real trouble with a real girlfriend, a local girl, and what would become a long-term relationship; even though I was only 17 by this time.