CHAPTER 8
“Hiya, love!”

The phone had gone almost as soon as I was on the train back from Barnes. Von had been for a job interview that morning, with an eye on finally settling everything in Hampshire and moving home. It was a conversation I really didn’t want to get drawn into.

“How’d it go?”

“Was good. They liked me, and I liked them. Just dunno if I want to go full time, innit?”

“Well, the boys are getting to the stage where they should really be looking after themselves, like”

“Aye, well, but I’m still their mam. And if I work full time, we won’t see as much of each other. I won’t be able to come up midweek. Can’t be having that, I see too little of you as it is now. Anyway, what you up to?”

“Just been for another wander around the bird place, love”

“Boring, innit? We need to find something else for you to do, somewhere you can dress tidy for once”

“Yeah, I know, proper shoes, chinos, jacket…

“Aye, I bought you that nice blazer Christmas, and you never wear it!”

“Von, I spend all day at work in a bloody jacket and tie, I like to be comfortable, out of work, like”

I thought my idea of comfort would not sit nicely in her worldview, but no need to bring that up. My one nod to femininity apart from shaving my legs was to stop crossdressing as soon as I walked in my front door. I realised I looked grotesque, but it was the only way I had found to feel even slightly as I knew I should have been. She was still going, though, on one of her regular themes.

“A man should look tidy, not like you. Any old slacks, some rugby shirt or whatever. And all that fuss you made when I wanted to buy you some cufflinks! I ask you, aye?”

That had been a hard day for me, wandering around West Quay in Southampton as she dithered over stuff I would never wear. Not just because it wasn’t to my taste, which was largely true, but because I would simply never have the opportunity. I didn’t desire the clothes she wore, I desired her freedom to wear them. The cufflinks had been nothing more than a symbol waved in my face on a bad day, a day that the weight of my form had pressed down ever more heavily as the hours ticked by.

“Von, I like it, it’s healthy, and it gets me out of the house for a bit. I don’t drag you round the way you make me wait in shoe shops”

“You’re a man, innit? You will never understand what shoes mean to a woman. Anyway, got a favour to ask. Got Estelle’s wedding coming up, marrying that Italian feller, down Bournemouth way. Found the right shoes, but the only place we can get to that has them in my size is that hooj Debenham’s in Crawley. So there’s a job for you. I’ll send you an e-mail with the details, aye?”

“No good, love, laptop died on me”

“Then you need to go and get all connected again, ay ess ay pee. Let me know when you are on. Pity you can’t make the wedding, that’s what I mean about seeing you all tidy like”

“I will let you know, love, mail you when I’m hooked up again. Look, coming into the Junction, so I’ll have to hang up. Speak later”

“OK, and make sure you ring your mother today. Bye!”

I changed trains quickly, humping the bike up and then down flights of stairs, and my phone beeped at me to tell me I had a text.

“Was nice day. Make u dnr sm nt. I do edible 2. L”

All I wanted was to peel away the layers of people around me so that I could get on with it, and more layers just kept sticking to me. That was one of my worst failings; I needed to break away from my friends, to find the room to be myself, or not to be at all, and yet I kept letting people into my life. I was lonely, simple as that. All the resolutions, all the vows of celibacy and solitude, they all came to nothing when someone smiled at me. That was how it had been with Siobhan, a bit of fun that turned steadily more serious, and now I had Larinda in tow. I realised that she was probably going to instigate more intimacy, and my inner lesbian rejoiced at the idea while I was simultaneously aroused and repelled.

I adore women, sexually as well as aesthetically, and while I couldn’t be one myself I desperately needed to hold and caress them, and have those caresses returned. The trouble came when it got to the truly intimate, for at that point there can be little pretence. It always went the same way, sexually. I would meet and like the girl, we would end up in bed, my excitement would be sufficient to override the incongruity of my anatomy, and for a few months it would be fine. Then the reality of the act would slowly exert its strength, until my own arousal, physically, would drain away. I would do as much as I could for my partner, and then plead fatigue.

And one after another, the relationships guttered and died. They were women, mature women, who wanted love, and sex, from a man, and I gave them the love, but after a while I couldn’t manage the sex, for the woman I wanted was not one who would ever want a man.

Catch-22. I could never find a loving Sapphic relationship, because I was a ‘man’. I could never sustain a heterosexual one because I was neither hetero nor male. I needed that laptop. The research really needed to get underway.

I took a detour by way of the big supermarket at Purley, hopping off the train and they had a simple laptop which had enough features for me at around  £3oo, so that ended up strapped to the rear carrier as I spun straight round to the station again for the next local service.

Bike in garage, me in shower and then into a maxidress I had ordered while drunk one night, a pair of pumps on to let my feet relax, and within an hour I had everything set up again. Von’s e-mail was there, some peep-toed two-tone heels her desired purchase, and I had a momentary fantasy of being able to buy three or four more pairs at the same time, the sales assistants somehow being unable to realise they were a different size to Von’s. After all, there was no way on earth my size nines would be able to squeeze into her size sixes. Yeah, dream on, Carter.

I had taken the time to clean up my legs again, and the tights slid on so nicely without the stubble. I caught a glimpse of myself, though, in a mirror, chest hair curling over the neckline of the dress.

Hideous. And still no booze. I settled down with a cup of tea instead, and read my way through the backlog of stories I had missed. I liked the dress, I must admit, and for once I felt almost right in myself as I sat with the laptop where its name suggested. The thought cropped up that there was supposedly a risk of sterility by using a computer in such a position, and that set me off laughing. As if that was a worry for me!

The laughter turned to crying quite quickly, and I started to regret my decision to leave the booze alone for a few nights. I really needed a cosh to get myself to sleep.

A little blue square popped up as I dried my eyes, telling me I had mail. It was from Karen.

“Jill
Not heard from you for a few days. Given the circumstances, a little worried. Please let us know all is OK your end, or if not let us know whether we can help. And James wants to know if there are any other places he can see birds with you. Speak to us.
Karen, Terry and James”

No, Karen, you can’t help. I called up a medical supplies site and started my research.