Nadir to Zenith

They say that pride becomes before a fall. I wasn’t feeling proud when I fell. I was concentrating very hard of the job at hand. My name is Damon Rose, and I was just nineteen when I lost my grip, and nearly my life.

At school I had been nicknamed ‘The Demon’, but that did not follow me into my working life. I started work in a fabrication workshop and I was ‘Rosey the Rivetter’ from day one. The fact that nobody did much riveting these days wasn’t enough to stop the men on the shift. The day that my life changed was a location job. We were adding an outside staircase to a high building.

We had built the staircase in sections in the factory and needed to erect it in place. We had put the first six flights up, welded them together and secured them to the side of the building. It went past windows which would be opened up to create emergency doors. It was a classic case of over engineering to cater for the fears of the apartment tenants. The building was old, but it had never needed to have an evacuation.

The design had allowed for more trying to escape as they went lower, so some levels were wider that the ones above. The first level could take people going down four abreast; the third could take three abreast; the fifth and above was designed to take two abreast.

It was stupidity, rather than pride that caused my downfall. I was welding the seventh level to the sixth and was sitting on the balustrade of the sixth level, welding the uprights to the underneath of the seventh, when my free hand lost grip and I tumbled backwards. I remember reaching for the rails of the fifth level, but all that did was to rotate me so that I was feet first when I straddled the balustrade of the third level, jutting out a couple of feet further. I know that I screamed in pain before I blacked out.

Eighteen months later, I was thanking the driver who dropped me off near Bugsy’s Tenpin Bowling on the Margate waterfront. I had told him that I was going to visit my aunt, but I doubt that he believed me, seeing that I looked, and smelt, homeless. He had taken me from Chatham with his window open, and the one beside me open as well, even though it was now winter. The heater was on full blast to take the edge of the chill.

When he left, I walked a little way to the walkway that led to the Newgate Promenade. I went to the railings on top of the cliff and leaned, looking out over the water, seeing a line of ships on their way in, and out, of the Thames Estuary. I could see the Lower Promenade beneath me. I heard a car door close, and an elderly woman came to stand beside me.

“If you’re thinking of jumping, the only way you can be certain is to land on your head. If you’re thinking of walking into the sea, it’s very shallow until you reach the channel, and it is one of the most watched areas around. You’ll be picked up before you can drown. You’ll still be unhappy but then will be soaking wet.”

“What’s it to you, Lady?”

“I was sitting in my car, in the warm, looking at the water, and I saw you arrive. I’ve seen depression before, and you, my lad, were looking as if you had decided to end it.”

“I suppose you’re right. Looks like I didn’t pick the right spot. Can you suggest one?”

“Beachy Head is very popular, or so I’ve been told, but that’s quite a way from here. I do have a gas oven you can use, but you’ll have to come back to my home and tell me why before you use it.”

“Why would you do this for me?”

“I collect strays. I offer homes to those without one, mainly cats. I did try it with a dog, but it barked a lot, so I had to take it to the pound. Cats are happy to be somewhere warm, and let you know when they’re content. Come on, get in my car. You’ll have to keep your window open a bit. The first thing you’ll need is a bath, I doubt that you’ve had one for weeks.”

I followed her to her car and got in. It was still warm, but I followed orders and put the window down a bit. She drove out of town, past the cemetery.

“If you do top yourself, they won’t have to carry you far. You’re lucky today, sometimes I go to Ramsgate to look at the water. It gives me time to think.”

Her house was a bungalow in Flete, she pulled into the driveway and through to an open area in the back. She led me to the back door, pointed to the bathroom and told me draw to a hot bath and dump what I was wearing. She told me to put my valuables into my shoes, as she would wash everything while I soaked.

“There’s soap and shampoo there, take your time. I’ll bring you a dressing gown when you’re dry. There’s a razor and shaving cream in the cabinet, tidy yourself up; it will make you feel better. When you’ve done that, there’ll be something to eat and a hot drink.”

I filled the bath, disrobed, and sat in it, feeling the warmth soak into my body. I hadn’t felt this warm since the beginning of winter. The warm air outlets in the city are carefully guarded by the older homeless, who carry knives. As I was soaking, the door opened and she picked up my clothes, putting a man’s dressing gown on the hook, and a pair of slippers on the floor.

“Make sure you wash your hair; you’ll be much nicer then.”

By the time I got out of the bath, I did feel better, and I pulled the plug to let the grey water out, running the tap to wet the wiper to get rid of the bath ring, as I had learned in my younger days.

I dried and put the dressing gown and slippers on. They were a good fit. I opened the cabinet and found the shaver and cream, carefully ridding my face of the stubble that must have made me look like a hobo. I hadn’t shaved in three months and had forgotten what I looked like. When I finished, I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled, probably the first time I had done that in months.

I picked up my shoes and left the bathroom, going back into the kitchen. She was just putting a bowl of soup on the table, with a plate of bread.

“There you are! I was beginning to think you may have gone out with the bathwater. You do look like a human being now. Your clothes, or those that can be saved, are in the wash. When you’ve eaten, I’ll show you to your bedroom. It used to be my son’s, but he left us some years ago. If there’s anything in there that fits you, feel free to wear it. I haven’t done anything but dust in there since he went.”

I made short work of the soup, so she got me some more from a big pot. While I was eating, I was inspected by four cats.

“The cats are called Nadir and Zenith, that’s the black and white ones. The two gingers are Apogee, that the one with the white paws, and Perigee, without the white paws. I used to teach science at the school in Ramsgate.”

“Nadir is very apt. That’s where I was when you first saw me.”
“It’s a place where a lot of us see, some time or other in our lives. I think that you really need a good sleep now, and we can talk in the morning. As I said, anything that fits you in the bedroom is yours to use.”

She showed me to the bedroom, pointing out the separate toilet. The room was as if the owner had just gone out to fetch a paper, with a pair of pyjamas on the pillow.

“I made up the bed with fresh sheets while you were in the bath. Have a good sleep, I’m sure that you’ll feel better in the morning.”

She left me to go and tidy up in the kitchen. It wasn’t late, by any means, but I used the toilet and put the pyjamas on, snuggled into the first bed that I had seen in months, and went off to sleep. I had to go to the toilet through the night, but she had a nightlight in the hall so I could find my way. When I did wake up in the morning, I found that I had the black cat on the bed, against my legs. That one, I remembered, was Nadir.

I rolled onto my back, and it got up and came up to sit on my chest, staring into my eyes. I put my hand out and rubbed its head and it began to purr. That’s when I started to cry in a severe bout of self-pity. We stayed like that for a while, until I got myself together. I moved out from under the cat, put the gown on and went to the toilet. When I came out, I could smell food, so went into the kitchen. She was in her gown, cooking up a storm.

“Come in and sit down. I’ve cooked you something, but it isn’t a lot. You won’t want to fill up after going without for so long. You’re as thin as a rail but may fill out a bit. My boy was thin as well, but that was from running while he was at school.”

She put a plate with an egg, some bacon and toast in front of me, and poured a cup of tea. She sat opposite me with her own breakfast and we both ate, quietly. When our plates were clean, she looked at me.

“It’s time we knew who we are, young man. I’m Sophia Winstanley, and I used to teach science. My parents liked Italian movies and I have a sister called Claudia. My husband died some time ago, and my son followed a few years later. I look after cats, and I write. I do short novelettes for women, you know, the ones that have the barely dressed girl with the evil looking man on the covers. I write them by hand, but my publisher wants me to type them. I do have a computer but never learned to type.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sophia. My name is Damon Rose and my father loved things that went around a track, from cars to dogs. I was lucky I wasn’t called Bolter. I trained as a welder.”

“And?”

“We were erecting some outside stairs and I fell from the sixth floor, but only got as far as the third when I landed on the balustrade. I would have never tried jumping off a cliff. Been there, done that, and have the stigma to prove it.”

“Stigma? Not scars?”

“There’s just the one scar. It’s where my genitals used to be. I straddled the balustrade, which, so I was told later, not only crushed my genitals, but split my groin. All I have left now is a flat front and a hole to pee from. I have to sit to do that.”

“No other injuries?”

“Other than a fractured wrist and other bruising, no. I suppose that I was lucky to have got out of it alive. It was what has happened after that took me to contemplate walking into the sea.”

“So, what happened then?”

“I was three months in hospital, after several hours in the operating theatre. Before the fall, I had a good job, a flat, a car, and a fiancé. While I was in hospital, my fiancé found out that I was now sexless and called off the marriage. She returned the ring. Actually, she gave the ring to my father as she was walking out of the hospital, and my life.”

“Yes, I can see how that could hurt. What about the rest?”

“The landlord threw me out of the flat with my parents picking up my things. My father pawned the best stuff, sold the ring and my car, and they went off for a coach tour of Europe with the money.”

“What a nasty pair! What did you do about that?”

“What could I do from a hospital bed? I hoped that I would be able to live at home when I was released, but they had a lodger in by then. I went to the firm that I worked for, and they told me that I was now a liability, having had one accident from my own stupidity. I found a room in a hostel and got casual labouring work but found that I didn’t have the strength that I used to have. I spoke to one of the visiting doctors about it, and he told me that it was a natural side-effect of not having any testicles, so I wasn’t producing testosterone.”

“What brought you to Margate?”

“The work dried up when winter arrived. Without money for the hostel, I had to leave. I was on the street for a few months, begging or running errands for food. The next step would be selling my body and that was something I couldn’t bring myself to do. I suppose that I could have got involved in the drug trade, but that would have put me in touch with the product. So, I ended up on the sea front at Margate. I hate to say it, but looking at how run down the place is, it would have been a perfect place to end it.”

“You’re right about that, Damon. It used to be a bustling place, crammed with holidaymakers in summer. The Lido was a water playground then, not the bit of rough ground behind the crumbling sea wall it is now. It was drugs that took my Robert in the end. He had been such a lovely child, a good pupil and a champion runner. It was when he was about eighteen that he became withdrawn and depressed. I never found out why, he wouldn’t tell me. He was found, not far from where I first saw you, stone cold with enough Angel Dust in his system to kill a horse.”

“I’m sorry, Sophia. It must have been terrible for you.”

“I had my own nadir then, but I did get to bury him. That’s why I haven’t done anything about his room. If you stay on, you can use anything you want. He’ll not be coming back for them.”

“If you’ll have me, I can do work around the house. I used to do a lot of computer stuff when I was younger, I can type for you if you allow me to read your writings.”

“Go and brush your teeth, there’s an unopened brush in the bathroom. Then go and see what fits you. After that, you can explore the property and get some wood in for the wood burner.”

I went and brushed my teeth, rinsing with mouthwash. In the bedroom I opened every drawer and looked in the wardrobe. Robert had been a smartly dressed lad. I was intrigued by the underpants he had. They were thinner and didn’t have a slit to pee out of, but they fitted me like no other undies I had ever worn. I dressed in his jeans, shirt, pullover and his work boots even fitted me. When I went out, I saw that Sophia was a little shocked.

“Sorry, but you did say to use his things.”

“It’s all right. It’s just that if it wasn’t for your different face, he could have been standing there.”

I went outside and looked around. There was an old shed beside the driveway with a saw bench and piles of lumber for the fire. I pulled on some gloves that were there and cut the branches to a good size for the wood burner, filling a bucket and taking it into the house. When I had replenished the box by the fire, I took the bucket back and then looked at the bigger shed along the back fence.

Inside, it was every man’s dream. There were three work benches, with vices, a couple of big toolchests, an anvil, and an ancient weld set next to the oxy and acetylene bottles. In one corner, under a sheet, was a small Myford lathe, next to a hydraulic powered lifting platform. On the other side of the shed, under sheets, were three motorcycles. That’s when I twigged that the lifting platform was used to raise them to be worked on. Two of the bikes looked like they could do a hundred just sitting there, and the other was in what I knew was a ‘scrambler’ frame.

I went into the house and asked if I could have a notebook and pencil. Sophia gave them to me.

“What have you found, Damon?”

“What did your husband do for a living, Sophia?”

“He was a motor mechanic, and then became a salesman visiting the garages selling tools and oils. He died by walking into a workshop while looking at his catalogue and falling into a pit. Why do you ask?”

“The big workshop out the back, was that his hideaway?”

“He would spend hours out there, tinkering on his motorcycles. I haven’t bothered with clearing it out.”

“I’ll know more when I’ve checked, but I think he may have left you a considerable legacy out there.”

I went out to the workshop and looked for identifying numbers on each motorcycle. They were all B. S. A’s, a roadster with clip-on handlebars, and the scrambler, both had DBD34 engine numbers, and the roadster had a matching frame number. The other road bike had normal handlebars and was a DB32. I then opened up the tool chests to find that he didn’t stint on these. He must have sold Stahl Wille tools to the garages. These weren’t cheap.

I went back into the house and asked her if I could use the computer. When it was on, she stood behind me as I checked the values of the bikes against others for sale. I could hear her sharp intake of breath as the figures came up on the screen.

“All right, Sophia. It looks like your husband had around twenty to thirty thousand pounds worth of motor bikes that he played with. Did he ride them?”

“He did ride before we got married and had Robert. I had no idea that they were worth so much.”

“We will have to clean them and make sure that they run before putting them on the market. I’ll have another good look and see if there’s any handbooks or paperwork for them. The scrambler could be worth more if it’s been ridden by someone famous.”

“Will you do that for me. It would be wonderful if you stayed long enough to do that. It may help you move on, as well.”

I went back out and contemplated what I had let myself in for. I could see that he had been meticulous in what he did, so my first line of attack will be to clean the workshop and oil up all the tools. He had an industrial vacuum, so I used that to get rid of the dirt and fluff on everything, then worked on the roof to suck up all the spider webs. I found a drum of old cloths and spent most of a day wiping everything down. The place was clean enough for Sophia to have a look. I showed her everything, pointing out that the tool chest contents would bring in a lot at auction.

She had gone out to the shops and cooked us a decent meal that night. By the time I had closed up the workshop, it had been inspected by the cats, with Nadir jumping up onto a work bench to watch me as I wiped things down. I had to pick it up and make sure the others weren’t hiding before I closed the door.

Over the next few days, I wiped and oiled the tools until they were like new. The three bikes were another day, each. They all needed a wipe and some oil on the chains and cables. With each one, I took the spark plug out and squirted some oil into the barrel before attempting to see if the engine would turn over. The fuel tanks needed to be drained and they all needed an oil change in the engine and gearbox. I dragged up forgotten knowledge of my teen years and I nearly forgot that I was just a visitor.

It was satisfying when the 350cc fired up, and then settled to a steady idle. I rode it down to the gate and back again, to make sure it was all right. The scrambler was next, but that took a bit of work getting it bump started. The 500cc must have been the one that he had ridden, because the carburettor was fouled from old petrol and needed cleaning. When that started, I left it on its stand and worked the gear change through all gears to make sure it all worked.

When I knew that everything worked, I borrowed her phone and took pictures from four angles, then recovered them. I had been living there a week now, and the cats treated me like one of the family. All except Zenith, who favoured Sophia. It wasn’t strange to wake up with one or more cats on the bed.

It was when we did the next laundry that there was a question about the underpants. I had been working through them and found them to be very comfortable. Sophia asked where I got them from and when I said that they were all from the drawer in the bedroom, she murmured that she had never seen them before, and had wondered if Robert used to go commando.

I looked at the label and looked it up on the computer. I found that it was a recognised brand, and that the closest shop that sold them was in Chatham and was called ‘Shemale Heaven’. I said nothing to Sophia about that, not wanting to open up a can of worms that I had no answers for.

I phoned a reputable auction house that sold motorcycles and they asked for photos to be emailed to them. We sent the photos, and I added pictures of inside the workshop, saying that it could be a clearing sale from an enthusiast. Two days later, we had a visit from a staff member to look at the bikes and the contents of the shed.

Two weeks later, a truck had arrived, and the shed had been cleared, only leaving the gas bottles. Six weeks after that, the auction brought Sophia a total of just under forty thousand pounds.

In that time, I had come out of my depression and had been helping around the house. Once the work on the workshop had finished, I was typing her manuscripts and proofreading them before we sent them off to her publisher. I had worn almost every item of her son’s clothes at least once, and she was all right with that. I was almost part of the furniture and feeling that I was some use to the world.

I was cleaning the room one day and pulled a suitcase off the top of the wardrobe to dust the top. It was heavier than I expected, so I opened it up to find a full range of female clothes, a beauty case with make-up, another small case with jewellery, three pairs of shoes, and a couple of wigs in bags.

I went to Sophia.

“Sophia, I believe that I’ve just discovered what your son was depressed about.”

She took a look at what I had found, opening the box with jewellery and pulling out a bracelet with ‘Bobbi’ engraved on it.

“Oh! My poor boy. If he had told me he could have worked it out with me. His father would never have understood, but I could have helped him.”

I closed the case and put it back up on the wardrobe. Now that the workshop had been cleared, I was only helping out with the typing. I started to feel like a hanger-on. Sophia would have nothing of it. We were sitting in the lounge one evening talking.

“Sofia, you always call the cats ’they’. Which ones are boy’s?”

“None of them, If they haven’t been seen to, I always take them to the vet to be neutered.”

“That’s something you didn’t have to do when you rescued me. Look, I’m starting to feel that I’m a hanger-on. I wonder if it’s time I move on.”

“Where would you go to. Back on the streets?”

“Maybe I could get a job?”

“What would you do? Look at yourself. The lack of testosterone has wasted your body, even Robert’s earlier clothes hang on you now. I doubt that any workshop would look at you as a welder, no matter how good you are. Your typing is very good, and you helped me get enough money to pay you. There aren’t many places for males with typing skills, there’s plenty of jobs for girls, why don’t you try Bobbi’s clothes on and see what you get. You’ve already been wearing his panties happily.”

For the next few days, I looked at the internet and the local papers for jobs. One that interested me was a Ramsgate engineering company that wanted a typist to keep records of jobs, create invoices and receipts, and to type up quotes. I rang them up and they told me that the office was only for women, as they only had facilities for women. That night, I lay in bed and looked at the suitcase.

I didn’t get much sleep that night. I had been a red-blooded male with a girlfriend. I had been a man in a group of men in the factory. When I thought about it, I realised that I must have had some feminine ways to be called ‘Rosey the Riveter’. I knew that if I carried on trying to man up, I’ll be on the top of a cliff again one day.

The next day, I had a bath and took the razor with me, shaving my legs, arms, pits and anywhere else I could reach. When I had dried, I wound the towel around my waist and padded through to where Sophia was writing, razor in hand.

“I’m bowing to pressure to see what it’s like. Can you check my back for hairs, please.”

She worked on my back, then told me to turn round and drop the towel. It was the first time she saw the real me.

“You poor thing. You have one advantage that Bobbi never had. I only hope that he bought enough to dress you properly. If you get a job, I’ll take you on a shopping trip to get some more outfits for work. You can pay me off with your typing here. After that, the typing will pay for your lodging. I admit, it’s nice to have you here. Cats are all very well, but they can’t converse.”

That day, I pulled the suitcase down and hung the few dresses in the wardrobe. There were two tops and two skirts that screamed office girl. I wondered what Bobbi thought of himself when he was dressed. He had spent a bit on underwear, although I didn’t need the special panties to hide a penis.

There was three bras, all well-padded, a couple of camisoles, a couple of slips, tights in packages, and the three pairs of shoes. One pair were one-inch heel with a strap across, one was four-inch stilettos, and one was ankle boots with two-inch heels. It wasn’t a lot to go to work with, but it was a start.

I took a deep breath and tried to remember the order that my fiancé redressed after we had made love. When I had finished, I looked into the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. I wondered how many times Bobbi had done the same. I felt a cat rub on my legs, looked down, and saw Zenith.

I tried each of the three wigs, picking a brunette one that reached my shoulders. I went through to see Sophia and she had to sit down.

“I saw that girl, some years ago. She saw me and ducked into a shop. I wondered what I had done to upset her. Now I know I had seen Bobbi. I was supposed to be at the school but had been chosen to escort a sick girl to the doctor. He must have skipped school to go out as Bobbi. I thought that she looked like a suitable girl for my stories, and she did appear in one. I think I called her Dianne.”

“Zenith thinks I’m female.”

“That’s another thing I should have picked up on. Zenith would sometimes sleep with Robert. I wondered about that. He must have been wearing a nightie or had an aroma of scent. Cats have wonderful noses. Did you spray anything?”

“No, but I do detect residue of scent on the clothes. I haven’t done any make-up. That’s one thing I didn’t watch my girlfriend do. I should have taken notes.”

“You could never have predicted what would happen to you. You do look like a typical office girl in that outfit. It suits you. Go and get the make-up and jewellery box and bring it into the kitchen.”

I did as she asked, and she worked on my face, plucking my eyebrows and the nose and ear hair, which made my eyes water. When she had finished, I took the boxes back and looked in the mirror once more. I couldn’t believe how good I looked. The weight loss and the smooth front of the skirt hid any vestige of Damon. It was still morning, so I looked in the suitcase and saw a small handbag. It had all sorts of things in it. There was a phone, condoms, a sanitary item in a paper tube, a purse with money and a credit card with Bobbi Winstanley as the name. I looked in his bedside drawer and found a bank statement which gave me the account number. Bobbi had written the password on the top.

When I got back, Sophia had made herself ready to go out.

“I’m taking you into Ramsgate. There’s a salon that does free piercing if you buy three sets of earrings. They can also sort you out with the correct colours for your skin, and you could have some new nails fitted. My present to you for the joy you have brought me since I rescued you.”

I was self-conscious when we got out the car and had to be told not to slouch. The more we walked, the more I felt at home in the clothes. This had been mentioned as a way to go while I was still in the hospital, but I could never consider the option at that time, too much of a bloke still. It had taken those months being homeless to destroy my pride and my self-esteem. I had the chance to start again.

At the bank ATM, I checked the credit card balance. The password was simply BobbiW20. The card showed more than two hundred in credit. At the salon, where Sophia was known, they treated me as a normal girl, and I bought some new cosmetics in my correct colour range after they had given me a make-over. The piercing didn’t hurt – much! When we came out, I had pink nails, only slightly longer than my own, as I had told them that I did a lot of typing.

She drove me to the engineering shop where I used the female voice that I had been using since this morning. I told them that I had seen the advert for a typist, and I was interviewed straight away. I think that my knowledge of the materials and processes they used was a big plus. The guy asked me how I knew such detail, so I told him that my late father had been a mechanic and I had spent a lot of time in his workshop. They gave me a typing test which I passed, and then they offered me the job, starting Monday.

They wanted my details, so I gave them the address and the phone number of the phone in my bag, which I would have to charge up. The bag also had the ID for Roberta Winstanley. I don’t know if it was a forgery, but it passed muster for now. When I was back at the car, I told her that Roberta had a job, so we went to find a clothing outlet to get me more skirts and tops.

Back at the house, I took my purchases into the bedroom and hung them in the wardrobe, taking out those things of Robert’s which didn’t work as a girl. It really wasn’t a lot. He must have been very close to being ready to go full-time himself. It was a pity that he was too afraid to speak up. My things that I had worn when I arrived were still in a bag, so I filled spare bags with the ones to go and took them out to the now empty shed.

There was something that Sophia had said that niggled in my mind. I had found everything but nightwear among his things. If he had a nightie, it must be close. I had looked in every drawer, so now pulled the bottom drawers out to see if he had hidden them in the space between the drawer and the floor.

Not only did I find a couple of nighties, but a light gown as well. On top of that, there was a wad of cash, alongside some explicit photos that showed me how he had earned it. I tore the pictures up and burned them in the log burner when I went past it. They were something that Sophia didn’t need to see. I put the nighties in for the next laundry.

I found a ladies bike and cleaned it up, oiling the chain. Sophia said that she used to ride to school on it. Monday, I rode to work for my first day in the office as Bobbi. I was able to fit in with the other girl, and my previous workshop knowledge allowed me to be productive almost immediately. I rode home with a smile on my face.

We settled into a new way of living. Sophia called me Bobbi all the time, and we became more of a team with her writing. Her stories weren’t very long, but she was prolific. One weekend, she drove us to see her publisher, who took us to lunch and told us that her writings needed the least amount of editing than any others on his list.

I was tempted to write my own stories, and I started with the one you’re now reading. I was living a life that I had never thought that I would embrace. I became, to all intents and purposes, Bobbi. I suppose that it could be encapsulated in the fact that I often woke up with Nadir snuggled against my back, and Zenith in pride of place, in the bed and warming my front.

Marianne Gregory © 2024