CHAPTER 39
Bangor was three years of intensity. I was racing to a high level, and though never scaling the heights of those wonders Coe and Ovett I wasn’t doing too badly on the UAU circuit.

For those unfamiliar with the UK, there are two universities that consider themselves a different breed to the rest, being Oxford and Cambridge, and they have what they refer to as ‘varsity’ competitions. The Univerities Athletics Union was established to cater for proper sporting competition between real universities, and even though it rapidly turned into an annual presentation of a trophy to Loughborough, who won the points championship every year it seemed, it allowed us plebs to get some serious racing in.

My activities polarised quite quickly. Winters and the tag-end of Autumn found me running cross country on muddy tracks all over the UK, while the warmer weather allowed me to take to the high tops of Snowdonia as well as push my climbing skills. I was eventually seconding routes like Cemetery Gates and that Corner next to it, but I could never manage a lot of the Villain’s thug routes, one of which was famously described as being like its originator, “nasty, brutish and short”

I lived in my body, as I have said, grown into it and used to the balance and articulation. No matter what I did, however, I could never build up the strength needed for what climbers refer to as thugging, overcoming obstacles by the scientific application of brutality. I was wiry, I had excellent feet, but I couldn’t manage the roofs and overhangs that male strength could. My forte was in the technical slab, the delicate move up on minimal holds, and when I was first shown Clogwyn Du’r Arddu I fell instantly in love. Serious routes in serious positions were what I came to love, positions, as I had been told right from the start, that only a climber could attain.

We had a couple of trips out to near Sheffield, where there were low cliffs with lovely rough rock, but the climbing tended to the thuggish and it didn’t suit me. The heather was pretty, and the grouse noisy, but there were no real mountains.

Em was doing her own thing, of course, and the competition bug had bit her too. She was no great athlete, but she became a competent swimmer and I made a point of turning up for her races whenever I could. It was only fair, after all. I loved swimming too, but the thought of what I would look like racing against other men made me nauseous. I was living with my body, but only just. I think, with hindsight, that it was only Em who kept me sane, kept me working.

There were a few things I did avoid, like the plague. Discos were one. I was never that much for dancing, anyway, but when we tried a couple of nights out, and I got men asking to dance, and my arse and my tits groped, it got to be just too much and we dropped the idea. I worried then that I was stifling Emily. One night I had it out with her.

“Why don’t you go out anyway, love?”

“Not without you. We work together, we play together, we do naughties together”

“No, seriously, if you want to go out and shake your thang… you have the right to a social life, pet”

“Stephen Jones, if it wasn’t for the ability of a particular young man to see past spots and flab I wouldn’t have any social life”

I had to smile at that, the memories of my first kiss would never leave me. There were times when I was under Charlie, or the Allisons were being particularly perverse, and I would taste the lipstick they put on me and dream it was Emily’s, so that I could find that little doorway into a dream of love and green eyes.

“My love, without you I wouldn’t have a life at all, so we’ are at least even”

She grinned happily. “I make that you owing me, so how about you start repaying? Fancy a shag?”

Typical of my girl, that. I worry about her not going out, and she shows me the best way to stay in. Sometimes you think you might love someone, other times you just know, in everything you and they do or say.

We lay together afterwards, sweaty and fuzzy n the head, and she murmured into my ear:

“My darling, you do know that I am not joking when I mention marrying you, and I am getting a little tired of waiting for you to ask. So take a hint, love”

I rang Nana ten minutes later, then Brian, and then Iain, and finally Roger. Tom already knew, as he was in the next room and heard Em’s squeals. No, not those squeals, the other ones, the ones where she was shouting “Yes I will!”

The next week, after ring shopping, we made a point of going to the newly-named GLT group meeting. I had been to a couple, and it had led to one of those moments of understanding. I had always seen myself and Tessa as somehow different, similar but fundamentally of another kind to each other. It was listening to some of the others’ experiences that brought it properly home to me.

There was a fundamental difference n the three letters being discussed. Nowadays there are four, but back then bisexuality was derided as ‘greedy’ or ‘indecisive’. I realised that we were dealing with things internal as well as external. The gay man, or the lesbian, seeks another who will return their affection, their need. Sexuality finds its answer in another person, despite the taboos and abuse that come from ‘straight’ society.

Gender, on the other hand…Tessa could have found any number of men who would have loved her for herself, but that self would not have been her. It was an internal thing; the eyes she looked out of were in the wrong place, and so she was doubly cursed, despising herself and being despised by society at large. I recognised myself in her, finally; the only difference between us was that she had been malformed by nature, or the Great Sky Pixie, or whatever, and I had been twisted by a man. The outcome had been the same; a misfitting of mind and body.

We were so alike, but I had avoided the persuasive entreaties of suicide partly because of Em, but mostly because Mitchell had never finished the job I was beginning to suspect he had planned. To be blunt, I still had my cock, and it still had a lot of sensation, and I still peed standing up when I wanted to. Sounds petty? Not at all, every time I doubted I was a man, Em would make a point of treasuring that part of me, of showing me that she knew my fears and doubts better than I did. That little bit of flesh kept me as sane as I could be.

We had arranged a visitor for the session with the GLT lot, and she arrived in her little mini the day before. I had to laugh, as she came strutting up to the door in a tiny miniskirt and truly silly heels, her sharp nose poking out from under really, really big hair, her blouse showing as much skin as she could get away with without being arrested.

“EMILY!!!!!”

A serious amount of hugging and squealing, and then a much softer greeting to me.

“Tessa, are you worried people will think you’re a bloke or something?” I teased.

“Darling Stephen, the best Moroccan surgeons have turned my stalk into the smoothest butter you could imagine. Want to see?”

“Er, no, thank you, Tessa….what the hell has happened to your self confidence?”

“A pair of 38C’s, all natural, and a streamlined knicker area, my dear!”

She turned serious. “It’s called being myself, Steve, something I never thought I could do. Every time I look at my wrist, and then into the mirror, I know how close I came. Now, answer a question, truthfully.”

“OK, if I can”

“How much money did you give to Roger for me?”

“Er…”

“Thought so. Steve, you do know that I could never repay you, don’t you? I don’t mean in cash terms, I mean in the life I can now have. Why did you do it?”

I sighed. It was a thought I had had many times, before and since.

“Tess, because you were hurting, and I could see myself, and, well, it was only money, and… look, it was dirty money, it was from those two psychos, and what better way to clean it up than to help someone hurting like I was?”

She kissed me gently on the cheek. “Stephen Jones, it’s been said before, but you are a good man. You know I am in your debt, and it will never be repaid, so all I can do is say if you need me,,,”

There was a little silence, and then Em said “What if I need you?

“Anything!”

“Well, how about a tissue to wipe that lipstick off my fiancé’s cheek?”

We made a tight little group heading down to the meeting, Tom and I strolling behind, me watching Em’s nice bottom with an owner’s eye, and Tom just ogling, while the girls nattered about girliness. Tessa introduced herself by making a little autobiographical speech, and then all eyes were on me. I decided to face up to life.

“Hi everybody, my name is Stephen, and I suppose you can say that I am a transsexual”