The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3462 by Angharad Copyright© 2024 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I was sitting at my desk in my office and Diane was chasing up some info for me, she loves doing it and I'm happy to let her. My mind, blank for a moment, returned to my time of slide making at Sussex. While almost anything went in Brighton, I preferred Hove. These days they are joined and form the city of Brighton and Hove. I discovered there had been a small private hospital in Hove where they did sex reassignment ops. I even walked past it once, it was called The Avenue Clinic. I hurried away, afraid the stigma of being transsexual would become public. Although I was in deep denial, thinking I was actually female not some sort of weirdo, it was becoming more mainstream but it was still a target for the tabloids who were rarely filled with compassionate articles about the plight of such people; no they were a target and the stories were lurid and sensationalist and the murder of such a person would be only beaten by some relationship to royalty for tabloid readers interest.

At home my father occasionally bought the News of the World, a tabloid with a greatly disreputable reputation for sleaze and porn exposures as they liked to call them, or human interest stories. He saw me reading one one Sunday before I went to uni and knowing of my proclivities he sarcastically pointed at the article and said, "Is that how you want to end up, making money for these scurrilous scumbags who write these things or read them? Well, is it, can't you see how I'm trying to protect you from this sordid part of life? Do you want them to headline it with Biologist defies nature to become a woman, well, is it?"

"No, of course not, and I don't understand why the story should be about an individual rather than the snobs who look down their noses at transgender people before going home to abuse their children."

"Are they snobs or just ordinary people who have no idea of this underworld where poofs and effeminate homos like to pretend they're women? t\They're not, they still got penises; so how can they be women?"

"There is something inside them which tells them they are women not men but the average man in the street doesn't want to listen to their stories or their pain, he just wants to look at the pictures while using his left hand, which once his desire for sensational has been filled, he can go back to being a pretend respectable member of society who then condemns anyone who is different, pointing the finger to distract from his own foibles, which are probably worse than someone wanting to change their sex."

"So you want people to point you out and laugh at you, do you? You want to be one of these creatures who are neither fish nor fowl, and who anyone can see are more male than female. Do you want school kids running behind you and calling you names, because that's what will happen to you and your mother and I have to live with the shame you will cause us."

The discussion was over other than him to issue another warning about if he caught me again, he would knock the silliness out of me and make a man of me. I ran up to my room afraid he would see my tears and misinterpret them as a sign of weakness. The date for me to attend Sussex couldn't come quickly enough and I could legitimately leave home. Of course, he asked me if I was only going there because it was the gay capital of England and I'd be at home amongst all those weirdos? It wasn't as I didn't particularly like the place, but they were running the course I wanted to study and had a good reputation for a worthwhile degree.

He had been on at me about my hair length again; this time he told me if I got it cut shorter he'd give me an extra tenner a week towards my keep. Seeing as things were going to be pretty tight in a financial sense, that seemed like a very useful trade off. I mean, my hair would grow again although it was very long at present. My mother offered to pay for my visit to a salon, she knew a few things he didn't and she gave me twenty pounds towards it.

I made an appointment for a week later but spent the whole time as an abject wretch, my only outward display of femininity was being lost and I would become just another weedy teenager, a seven stone weakling just inviting others to kick sand in my face. The hair had marked me out as being odd, but that just meant most people left me in peace in case they caught my disease. I could live with that, I wasn't very sociable and spent my time cycling round the neighbourhood noting the remains of hedgehog road kills and putting them on a streetplan. I sent the plan and my rather amateur paper to Professor Stephen Harris at Bristol university, he invited me to go and see him. I went the day after I got my hair cut, it was a girls type cut, but my hairdresser only ever thought I was a girl so what did I expect. It was a bit like a long pixie cut and if I combed or brushed it flat, it looked more boyish, well to me it did.

I wore some tidy cargo pants that I hadn't worn while falling into river mud or stagnant ponds, so they were still nearly pristine, and a sweat shirt. In my rucksack I had copies of my paper and I was looking forward to meeting the great professor. His subject was more urban foxes or badgers but seeing as it was urban hedgehogs or deceased ones, I thought he'd be interested and he was.

He called me up to his office. It was quite a warm day, and he offered me a cold drink which I accepted. I had signed the report and my letter C.Watts. I knocked on his door and he called me to enter, stood up and shook my hand and addressed me as MIss Watts. Despite my butch haircut and male type clothes he took me as female and I was too embarrassed to correct him. He complimented me on my report and asked me if I was still in school. I told him I'd just been accepted to do biology at Sussex and he nodded. "If I'd seen this before you applied to them, I'd have offered you a place here to do biology." I thanked him but hinted that I wanted to get away from home. I also knew my father would have curtailed my freedom if I had gone to Bristol.

We then discussed my report and he showed me how I could improve it, to get some other papers to see how they wrote about the subject and to copy their style, he told me what else I needed to do including references although I could alter the title to show it was an observational study. He gave me a whole hour and I was overwhelmed by his generosity with his time. My head was buzzing with ideas and he offered to read my amended report and would suggest which publication would be most interested. I was walking on cloud nine and almost didn't hear him call me Miss Watts as I left. Years later I met him as I really was and I was also seen as a mammal ecologist due to my dormouse work and we always got on well together.

I caught the bus home and spent the next couple of days in my bedroom. I rewrote that paper so many times, trying to put in all the suggestions he had given me and downloading all the papers I could find on hedgehogs and also road kill in urban settings in the UK. I had hoped to finish it by the time I left for Sussex but It was a forlorn hope. So it was a year later when I found the manuscript on my laptop and having had some lectures on writing a scientific paper, I sent the final version to him, reminding him that he had invited me to send the final draft to him a year ago. I emailed it and that was it.

I was amazed when a few months later he replied or a colleague of his did, offering further amendments and the reasons for them and suggested the name of a lesser known journal who might be interested because it was in their locality. I made the changes he suggested and submitted it to the journal, 'Proceedings of the Bristol Scientific Society'. I was astonished months later when I received an email from them to say they were going to publish it and the amendments they would make to fit their editorial presentation. I agreed and told them so by return. They wanted to know a little about me so I told them I was an undergraduate at Sussex University.

Again months later I received an electronic copy of their journal and there was my name in print, well, Miss C. Watts, said the journal and I wasn't going to complain but it was some time before I could actually share my achievement because I was still pretending to be a boy although most of my contemporaries were either fed up with my indeterminate appearance and longish hair, my clothes were baggy and grungy. I did all the field work I could but it shortened the life of my attire. It concerned me because I knew that most women would wear better clothes or smarter ones. Having bought my bike, money was tight so I only replaced things when they were falling apart, so my sartorial presentation was very limited. I was still an expert slide maker and was rapidly acquiring a reputation for my increasing knowledge. I just soaked it up either from lectures, the literature, or fieldwork. I was regarded as an oddball, either an effeminate scruffy male or weird academic woman who had no interest in her appearance. It kept people away although at times I felt quite lonely and wanted to talk to someone about me but avoided student health because I worried it would be on my record and my father could find out.

We had some further confrontational episodes which had at times become violent on his part. I stopped going home and he retaliated by cutting my allowance. I was now working as well as studying to make ends meet. I was buying my clothes from charity shops and mainly wearing women's clothes provided they weren't too obvious and besides, my hips were now too wide to fit men's trousers unless they were sizes too big and didn't fit anywhere else. I did alter some with my home sewing kit, so they were a little better fit and I did my own repairs where they got torn or seams split.

My job was delivering papers which I did before going to college or on Sundays, when I had to pull a trolley behind me because they were so heavy, but I tried to see it as exercise to keep me fit and slender.

Diane entered my office with the required research we needed and my reverie ended, but she had made some tea, so I forgave her and I showed her my first published paper, on hedgehogs.