This is the story of Penny. A closet Transwoman thrust into the outside world 24-7 when she would rather go and hide away. Perhaps the title should be Welcome to Penny’s Paranoid World…

From part one:
The sound of my heels on the road seems enormous... Clair comes round from the back of the house to greet us… “Hello Sweetie. Hi Jenny. Come on round the back, everyone’s in the sun room, and you can bring Jenny’s wheelchair straight in that way.

And now as they say, read on…

“Here, let me take mum.”

Before I can say anything someone has taken mother’s wheelchair away from me and over to one side where her friends in the village are sitting around a glass coffee table surrounded by a wicker sofa and chairs set with a space left for her wheelchair.

“Come on, sweetie, come and meet the girls.” Clair pulls me off the other way. I glimpse a cup of coffee being handed to mother. I may be scared stiff of being here, but at the moment I am worried that as soon as mother finds she cannot see me she will panic, and I do not want people to see her in distress. But it is also good for her to talk to her friends again even though I know she will probably not remember who they are, she is very good at disguising the fact she does not know who she is talking to. So both sides are happy. When we get back home I know she will say, ‘I don’t know who they were, but they were very nice people.’ The sad thing is she has known them for years and now does not have a clue.

“Hi. I’m Evie.” A tall good looking women in her sixties told me.

“Hello. I’m Penny.” I say back nervously, I’m about to put my hand out, but Evie is quicker and moves in and hugs me and does the cheek to cheek thing with air kisses. I try to follow half a second behind her. Tall and thin like me, and around the same height, if a tad taller, and totally un-bothered about being tall. She must have been quite a looker in her younger days. As we part two more hugs and kisses follow quickly from Trish and Jill. I am a bit stiff at it but they act as if they have not noticed. I knew Evie and her husband Johnny by sight as they have the farm a couple of doors up from up from us and we wave to each other when we past each other. There are three farms in the village. Evie and Johnny’s Apple Tree Farm is the biggest. They have three of those big tall four wheel drive JCB tractor things and a couple of the caterpillar track kind as well. As well as some bog standard tractors of various ages along with two combine harvesters and all the other weird powered machines a successful modern arable farm has. One of the combines is an all new all singing and dancing thing that looks like it came out of the spaceship Enterprise. I know they hire out the old one with a driver to the smaller farms that do not have one of their own come harvest time.

Trish’s husband turns out to be a surgeon at one of London’s big teaching hospitals, ‘The Queen Ann’s Medical Centre’. Jill and husband Nigel’s Back Beck Farm is one of the smaller farms on the other side of the village down Back Lane.

I keep waiting for someone to get nasty as I am introduced to the ladies one on one, sometimes two or three at a time. Expecting someone to make a caustic remark or something as time went by, but it does not happen. Clair keeps me moving around so everyone gets introduced. All have their moment to say hi to me. Some are pleasant but not interested in me. Others clearly want me to feel at home among them. Closest I come to the nasties is Zoey MacTavish, a solicitor who is taking a break from the practice she and her husband run, to bring up there six year old daughter, April. Zoey wants to know how I feel about being a woman, now. She is the only one to mention the male2female thing.

I am not sure if she is genuinely curious or is trying to remind the others I am a male in a dress pretending to be female among them and not really a proper woman. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid. But solicitors like politicians are word people and very careful about the words they use, and this puts me on edge.

“I’m at last at peace with myself.” I say. I can see in her eyes that she is going to continue with this, but Clair grabs me and hauls me away to meet someone else before she can.

“Sorry about that. Zoey is going stir crazy now April is in school. She would like to go back to work part-time at least, but Donald won’t hear of it. He likes coming home to a ready cooked meal too much to let her do that.” She lets on that Donald has told Johnny that before April was born it use to be takeaways every weekday night and restaurants at the week-end. Zoey never cooked. Now she thinks he is having an affair every time he is five minutes late arriving home after work.

I find myself sitting between Evie and Trish as I drink my tea. Mother is with her friends enjoying herself. I’m glad about that. When she gets bored she tends to start singing to herself. Being hard of hearing, the volume of her singing is not something mother thinks about. I have to endure it, but others might not be so kind. I think Evie and Trish have appointed themselves my protectors from any unwanted attention. Although apart from Zoey everyone seems ok. It is a coffee morning, but tea is available which is good as I hate coffee. I know that sounds a daft thing to say, but I have gone into coffee houses/cafes before and asked for tea and been told, ‘It’s a coffee house. Dum, Dumb. No tea’.

Clair rings a small glass bell when the consumption of the cakes the Piranha Club members have brought along has taken place and a second round of hot drinks are being enjoyed.

“Everybody. Tomorrow. Our visit to the new Boundary Mills Store. I take it everyone is still coming.” There are nods, voices saying ‘Yes, can’t wait’ and so on. “Good. Travel arrangements as usual then if that is ok with the normal drivers. Now meet up time is…”

While Clair is going on getting confirmation of this and that and discussing dates for a future visit to a big shopping centre in a nearby town. Evie leans in. “Normal, I take Clair and Trish with me, but my Audi’s at the garage getting the brakes fixed tomorrow. Do you mind if we ride with you and Jenny.”

“No of course not. My pleasure.” Then thinking about it, add, “Um, when is it though. I have to take mother to the hairdresser’s tomorrow morning.”

“That’s fine. We won’t be off until around two, to two-thirty. Have you got your appointment booked too, Penny?” Trish askes.

What appointment is that? Then realise Trish means me at the hairdressers. “Ur, no. no not yet.” Going a bit red. I had not thought about the fact that I would have to meet Rose and her granddaughter tomorrow dressed as a woman. I guess that I still thought I would be switching back to being Paul, despite the way Clair had been talking this morning. Now it is becoming clear that as far as the ladies of the Piranha Club are concerned I have crossed over from the boy’s side of the room to the girl’s side and it was a one way trip.

I mean I want to live as a female, I know that, have always known that since I was about seven years old. But now it has happened. All I can think of now is how it is all going to blow up in my face.

Evie and Trish are nodding understandingly. Oh god. Normally I take a magazine or read a book on the kindle and sit on the sofa for an hour or two with a cup of tea while mother has her hair done. That is because if she cannot see me she panics. Except now I am going to be sitting there in a dress. Will Rose want to do my hair as well? No, I think not, at least not this time. Hairdressers are funny about bookings and appointment times, aren’t they. So there would be no space to add me into tomorrow’s schedule. But I bet she will want to next time. I’ll have to think up an excuse when booking mothers next appointment to get out of it.

This is going to be embarrassing. I ask myself again, is this what you really want? All this embarrassment. Is it worth it just to wear make-up and a dress and heels when you go shopping. The answer is yes, I know that. I want to be able to go shopping as a woman, be outside, go places in a dress with nail polish on. I have always regarded female finger and toe nails without polish as kind of un-finished, naked. But I am scared. No, I’m terrified of being rejected and scorned out loud and stared at. And I am not sure if I am brave enough to handle all of that.

I’m dreaming. I sort of know it, but it does not help. I am in a big clothing shop with the doors about to be opened to let the shoppers in, and I’m wearing a cute flimsy bra and panty set with a matching suspender belt and cream stockings along with super high heels that I absolutely love. I feel like a fashion model. I’ve got perfect make-up on. I’m also running about panicking looking for Evie and Trish. My boobs are jiggling away like crazy and I’m trying to hold them down and I’m mortify because there is a foot long soft penis swinging around mocking me sticking out from my panties, and I don’t know how it got there and I don’t know how to get rid of it as I know it’s not mine. The doors open and the store is suddenly full of shoppers and I’m running around among them in my underwear like a headless chicken with that damn thing swinging away and no-one seems to notice it or me. It is like I am invisible. But I know they will see me soon and they will all be staring at me pointing and laughing.

I wake up bathed in sweat. The bedside clock says three am. I get up shaking and go make a cup of tea. I cannot face going back to bed yet. Too afraid I will slip back into the dream. Around ten to four I slip back in bed and hardly asleep when I hear Mother talking to herself. Clock says it is four-twenty.

“…well I don’t know how to get up. And I need to have a wee. Stop it. STOP IT, It’s not my fault I don’t know…”

I think it is like when you have a baby. They make a noise and you wake up regardless of the time of day. For me it is mother. She only has to be mumbling to herself and I wake. That is why I got the baby alarm with a tv screen, so if she wakes I can see if she is just mumbling in her sleep, or if she is awake and needs me. This time she is sitting up.

“Hello there, do you want to go to the loo.” She look up smiling. It is the little girl smile.

“Yes. How did you know that?”

I grin back, “Magic.” She giggles. I move her covers and hold out my hands and she takes them. A gentle pull and she is upright and wobbling as I lead her the three feet to her wheelchair. She has slept in an arm chair for the past twelve or so years. It started with the odd night. A new bed and mattress did not improve things and eventually she choose to sleep in an armchair or on the sofa fulltime. To be honest I do not know how she does it. This was before the dementia took hold. I guess there were signs before then, but I did not notice them.

“Can I get you a bacon roll?”

“No. it’s alright, I’m not hungry.” We are in the bathroom now and she has forgotten she wants to go to the loo. “Okay. Are you going to get on the loo, now.” I ask gently.

“Are you sure, you don’t want a bacon roll. They are good for you.”

“No, I’m fine, do you want to move over onto the loo.”

“Nooo. Why?”

“You said you wanted to have a wee.”

“No I didn’t.”

“You did. That’s why we came in the bathroom.”

She shakes her head. “Noooo.”

“Yes. That’s why we’re in the bathroom.”

“Are we in the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Really. We are? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well I don’t want to go, now. Thank-you.” There is more than a hint of I’m not going to play ball in her voice.

“How about you give it a try just in case.”

She firmly shakes her head. “No.”

“Please, it won’t take a moment.”

She considers this, should she indulge me.

“…I suppose…” I say nothing. “I suppose I could… just in case…”

“That’s a good girl. Up you get.” Reluctantly she gets up holding onto the wheelchair, and with prompting turns around and starts to pull her nighty up out the way. Sometimes I have to remind her what to do. Most of the time she remembers.

“Ohhh, ohhh, I’m going to wee… I’m going to wee.” She is starting to panic. “Oh, oh, I’m going to wee in my knickers. Oh, oh, oh.”

“It’s alright, let’s get your knickers down.”

“I’m going to go. Oh, dear, oh dear. I’m going to gooo.” She is making little girl sobbing sounds now, panicking.
I get her sat down seconds before she goes. Tears start welling up.

“I wet my knickers.” Big little girl sobs now. “I wet my knickers.”

“No you didn’t. You got them down in time.”

“Nnooo. I didn’t.”

“You did, it’s alright.”

“Nnooo.”

“Honest. You did.”

“Really. Are you sure?”

“Yes, really.”

“Really.”

She is back in bed, her armchair by quarter to five. A super expensive recliner I got her so she could lie back as far as she wanted to, but she refuses point blank to use it that way. With an empty bladder she curls up and snuggle her head on big Ted while cuddling Fred who is a soft toy dog, or bear. I’m not sure which. He has a wry grin on his face and a small brown leather patch on his bum for some reason. I have told the district nurses that if anything happens to me, while she is being looked after till family gets here to make sure she has Fred with her. He is her comforter. The two of us are her safety net. I go back to bed. Setting the alarm so I do not over sleep. My back aches, I do too much lifting with mother, so I take a buprenorphine and settle back to sleep.

I don’t know how I did it, but here we are outside Rosemary’s Hairdressers in Mid-Steeping at five to ten. Lucky it is only a five minute drive away. I still have to remember to factor in the time it takes to put my make-up on in the morning now as well as decide what to wear. I went for the same as yesterday and show boobs again. It is a psychological boost to my brain. I.e. boobs equal female. i.e. you are female. i.e. everyone else will see you as female. Like I said. I’m paranoid.

I was economical with the truth when I said I begin every day as Penny to stay sane. Make that two, three times a week and Sundays if I can. It depends on if we have to go out that day or not and how tired I am. That is why I am amazed we are here on time this morning.

I go through the door bum first as is common with people who drive wheelchairs from the back.

“Hello Jenny, Hello Penny.”

I turn to see Evie who pulls me into a cheek to cheek greeting. She whispers in my ear.

“Thought you would like some moral support since it is your first trip out, proper.”

“Thanks, yes. I am a bit nervous.” I whisper back.

“Don’t worry, Darling. Everything will be ok. All is arranged.”

Rose is saying hello to Mother, Melissa her granddaughter is watching me. Then Rose turns to face me, taking hold of my arms.

“Wow Babe! Who’s got a painting hidden in the attic, then? Who would think this pretty thing was hidden in plain sight under that boy. And where did these boobies come from.” She says looking down at them and grinning, before letting go and spinning on her heels to survey her world while talking to Melissa.

“I’ll start on Jenny, you start on Penny.”

Before I can get mother out of the wheelchair, Melissa takes my hands and pulls me away to the other chair.

“It’s okay, I don’t bite. Gran and Evie will look after Mum.” Melissa’s smiling at me.

Melissa is a lovely very pretty sweet natured young woman and probably because if I was younger I would fancy her something rotten. I am embarrassed.

In my mind I can easy imagine us kissing, two pretty young woman. Funny that I think so easily of myself as a young woman in my fantasy. Instead all I can think of is I am FORTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD. I am a old tramp ship with its rusting hull painted white to make it look like a superyacht. Fine from a distance, but a mess up close. I think of those old ladies you see in the supermarket with way too much make-up on and Melissa young and beautiful pulling back from that embrace to see she is not kissing a beautiful girl like herself, but an old hag.

Embarrassed, I try to argue, but Melissa tells me it is all arranged, Evie’s treat, and has me in the chair before I can stop her. She has changed the subject to ask if I have any ear buds on me as I cannot use my beloved Bowers & Wilkins headphones while she does my hair. I often wear then to listen to music where Mothers hair is done. I do not, but she delves into a container, pulling out a packet of ear buds. Telling me she always saves the ear buds that come whenever she gets something that comes with a free pair. I am dismissed to my mp3 player until done with.

Still embarrassed, I close my eyes and take refuge in the music and then with all that tugging going on with my hair, I fall asleep. When I am nudged awake, all is done. Clair has arrived it seems for the un-veiling and they are all very pleased with themselves. They make me close my eyes again and I feel all embarrassed and stupid for falling asleep. Clair and Melissa manoeuvred me to the waiting area of the small salon.

“Okay, you can open them.”

I… I… I am stunned.

About a year ago I saw on google a website for a make-up artist who did make overs for transsexuals, and booked a day with her so she could teach me how to put on make-up. I arranged it for when my sister was coming over from America so I could have a break from looking after mother. So I spent a day with Suki up in Lancashire.

My Mother and sister have never worn much make-up. Just foundation and lipstick and with my sister a bit of eye shadow. So I had no-one to learn from and left it alone. I was stunned by what Suki did to me. The thing was I looked so much younger with make-up on. I always thought you were supposed to look older with make-up. After she had brushed my hair to a more feminine style I was amazed. I looked younger, much younger than I was. She said I had lost fifteen years, which I found it hard to believe even though the evidence was staring back at me. But then I could never tell peoples ages.

When she took me to get my ears pierced she asked Jasmine who was doing it, how old I was. She looked at me hard and said, ‘Well, since you’re asking me, I guess it’s older than you look.’ She paused and stared at me some more. ‘Ok, I’m just going to go with how she looks right now this moment and that’s around I guess, thirty-two to thirty-fiveish. So ok, how old is she, Suki.’ Suki smirked, grinned at me. ‘Forty-eight.’ I watched Jasmines mouth doing gymnastics as she shook her head. Before she just said. ‘You lucky Cow! Whatever it is you’re eating, I want some.’

Now I could see my mousey light brown collar length hair was gone. In its place I had long light blonde hair over my fake boobs and past my shoulder blades down my back. Looking in the mirror even I have to admit I look no more than thirty-two. I’m stunned, I can’t speak, say anything. How could I look so young? This is me through some weird looking glass. This is the woman I always wanted to be. I just stared at myself. I touched my hair.

“Not a wig?”

“No way a wig, babe.” Says Melissa grinning.

“Well, I think she likes.” Adds Rose.

At last I turn back to them and nod as I try to speak with a broad smile on my face. Finally I manage to get words out. “It’s fantastic, I can’t believe it. It’s unbelievable.” I turn to Mellissa. “Thank-you, thank-you so much. It’s unbelievable. It’s fantastic.”

If I had not been so gobsmacked that I would have noticed mother desperately trying to get hold of me. She finally manages to grab hold of my dress and pulls hard as she can to get me within reach to grab hold of my wrist. I realise and turn back to her bending down.

“Well. What do you think.”

The determined frown gives way to a big smile on her face. “Oh my! Oh my, you’re so beautiful.” She grabs my new long hair and keeps hold to make sure I do not move away. For a moment I think she is going to pull the new hair out, I can feel the pull against my scalp. But see just wants to keep me there so she can look at me.

“Oh my, Oh my. So beautiful.” She keeps repeating and starts to cry. I move in closer and hug her till she stops.
Smiling I gently ask her. “Are you going to let me up now. My backs killing me bent over like this.”

She blinks, smiles and releases me.

I turn standing trying to ease the pain in my calf muscles and back to see myself in the mirror again. Wow! My hair. This long blonde hair is mine. Ok, mine with a fair bit added. With a shy, but enormous smile I turn and take hold of Evie and hug her. “Thank-you. Thank-you so much for this.”

“That’s alright. It suits you perfectly.”

We drive back in a convoy. Evie leading in the farms muddy 4x4 pick-up, then Clair in her small Fiat 500 and Mother and me in our ageing Mercedes E220 estate. I found it was not totally plain sailing having super long hair. It may look great, but as soon as I got in the car I trapped my new long hair behind me with my head bent backwards. Leaning forward I swept it forward over my left shoulder so I could look through the windscreen and turn my head.

Back home I wanted to just sit down and fall asleep. I’m knackered! It had been an eventful morning. Who would have thought having your hair done was so tiring. Melissa had put a scrunchie on it with a black bow on it, and I liked that. I am so much on a new learning curve on everything regarding having long hair. But, mother is ready for her lunchtime soup. So no peace for the wicked. We alternate between Heinz chicken soup and Heinz mushroom soup. She will not have any other. That done I set the alarm for one-thirty to make sure I am ready if I fall asleep. But my head is buzzing too much with everything that has happened for sleep to come visit and I decide to change my boobs for fake bouncy stuck-on boobs.

It takes about an hour to get to the New Boundary Mills Store. I picked up Trish with Evie at the farm house. Then we went back to form up with the other cars outside Clair’s house. Then at half two on the dot Clair stood by her car grinning.

“Ladies, start your engines!” then got in her little red car.

After that I half expect her to stand up on the doorsill and sweep her arm forward yelling ‘Wagons Roll.’ Especially as Rawhide had just started to play on the radio causing us to have a fit of the giggles in the E220. Clair’s little Fiat 500 moves off and so do we. Behind us another five cars start one after the other.

The new Boundary Mills Store is about the size of a football pitch full of quality discounted clothes and footwear. Nine tenths of it female. When my sister Carol was over last year we went to a similar place closer to London. For me it was the pain of being somewhere where all I wanted to do was hit the rails for myself checking out the dresses I liked, and all I could do was act the male part by following around behind her pushing mother’s wheelchair with the traditional bored man’s expression on my face. So close and yet a million miles away at the same time. It was the most depressing day of my life.

Now I was going to go through it all over again. Only this time I was wearing a dress and make-up and the place was going to be full of female assistants and shoppers and at least some of them were going to see straight through me from the start. That was unavoidable with so many women about. This was going into the lion’s den and sticking your head in his mouth, yanking his tonsils and hoping he does not bit your head off. Part of me wanted to finally be able to be ‘Me’ and just look through the dresses like any other woman. The other part of me just wanted to just ‘Get the Hell out of Dodge’.

To be continued…