CHAPTER 25
“No, not really. I have tried, you know…”
He sighed. “Tell me, how have you presented?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you feel that others have perceived you, over the years?”
Over the years…my thoughts went back to my school hell.
“I was always a bit small as a kid, like. I think now, you know, if I had started treatment, back then, perhaps I might have had a better future, more feminine, like. But that’s not what you meant, though, is it?”
“I‘m here to listen, Jill”
Thank you, Alec. “No, I was picked on from the day I arrived. Small, clever, vulnerable…”
“What did they call you?”
“A puff, mostly. Homosexual, like. It’s odd, isn’t it: the way they can smell blood, like sharks. They see the difference, and they might not know what it is, exactly, but they can guess, and it doesn’t matter, really. Just being different, that’s enough”
“And how did you take this?”
“How the hell do you think? Two bloody juvenile attempts to get away from it”
“You like euphemisms”
Not a question. No argument from me, either.
“Yeah, I found my way of hiding. What’s that phrase? Hiding in plain sight. As soon as I got away from them, I started the man game”
“Game?”
“Aye, you’re right there. As much of a game as Russian roulette, aye? Same outcome if you fuck it up”
Alec took his glasses off, rubbing them clean on a scrap of tissue from his box. Eyes bare, he looked tired, and I wondered how his job wore on him; day after day of hearing other people’s shit whilst trying to steer a neutral and constructive path. He slipped them back on, and looked at me again, head cocked.
“It is quite a classic picture, you know. The attempt to be more butch than a pit-bull, more manly than–well, I half expect the next James Bond film to come out as ‘Licence to Transition’. Tell me, what do you hope for from this chat?”
“Well, more chats, for a starter”
“The flippant answer. It’s a displacement activity, you know? A delaying tactic before the truth slips through. So, can we cut to the chase?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…what do you want? Not just what you desire, but what you think you need”
Yet again, those calming breaths.
“I need not to be in this body. What I desire, that’s another story”
“And?”
“Will you stop the cryptic stuff? Look, all I want is a few adjustments. I can’t have what I always wanted, but I can at least make a few nods in that direction”
“But you are frightened”
“Of course I bloody am. I mean, what chance do I stand of fitting in?”
“So why did you grow a beard? I can see the difference in your skin tone; how long ago did you shave it off?”
“I thought you’d have known the answer to that one. Shaved it off very recently, as you know”
“Ah, indulge me again”
“You know damned well, aye? Once I grew too big, I needed a way to stop myself dressing up, as you called it, a way to take away the temptation to go out, the death wish, aye”
“Death wish”
“You know what I mean”
“Tell me…”
“I stopped trying to be me years ago, just for a decade or two, tried what you said, tried to be a man, and it hasn’t worked. If I had ever tried to go out on the streets I’d have looked bloody stupid, so I made it absolutely failsafe, like. And then…”
“Then?”
“Well, there’s always the hope, aye? Always the little dream to put myself to sleep with. If I had shaved all my life, the skin would have been, you know, rough as all hell. Just let it grow, get rid of it properly if, when…”
“When? You had a plan?”
“Of course not. Just get through each day, like, get it past, move on to the next”
The next stage. Suddenly, that seemed further away. I realised that despite the nastiness of Von’s explosion, I was past the worst, or so I hoped. MAC was going, Mam was on side, Larinda…Larinda would try, try her best, that I was sure of.
“Alec, I sort of have a plan now, if it works, like. I haven’t got a lot of people that I worry about upsetting with this. Well, not any more. The ones I worried about have either come on side or pissed off in a huff, so all I am left with, in essence, are strangers. There’s always a risk there, like, but I think I can cope there”
“What if you can’t?”
“I don’t know”
“Liar”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Jill, you have so many little tics and tells it is easy to spot when you are either lying or trying to steer this onto safer ground. Like. So please be honest”
He was tired, clearly, he was cynical, but he was very, very good.
“You’re obviously not daft, Alec, so you know what my options are”
“Oh, I do indeed, but do you know what they are?”
“I think so”
“I don’t”
“What, you don’t know, or you think I don’t know?”
“Jill, see what I mean? You know perfectly well what I meant, but you try and derail the conversation with side issues, deliberate misunderstandings. I will share a secret with you, a therapist thing: the more you try and steer me around, the more I know I have something juicy to bite at, LIKE”
I almost laughed at that. He was, of course, spot on.
“Alec…Alec it’s obvious really, isn’t it? I either cope or I die, slowly or at a time of my own choosing. Is that what you wanted to hear? The typical suicidal tranny? Yes, you found your juicy bit, but then we both knew it was there, aye?”
“Aye, lass, appen we did”
“For fu–god’s sake, Alec, that’s Yorkshire. I’m a bloody Geordie”
“So when did you intend to kill yourself?”
“Once I’d sorted…bastard”
He smiled, sadly, and with that word I don’t mean a little bit of world-weariness, rather a weight of near-despair that I might not have noticed if I wasn’t so wound up. I looked at him differently.
“I wouldn’t be the first, would I?”
He gave a very deep sigh, and sat for a few moments, clearly weighing up his options.
“No, Jill, you wouldn’t, neither in general, nor for my own patients. Think how long it took you before you saw me, yeah? Staff cuts, funding cuts, all of that crap, and in the end none of us can switch caring off. So, yes, I know what you have planned there, in what you think of as your private space, and I have a limited time, and less support, in which to help you see further than you realise you can. So all I ask, please, is that you talk to me. I can do nothing for you without that”
Shit. “You weren’t, you know, that girl, the motorway?”
He shuddered, his face curling in on itself in remembered pain.
“No, not me; that was a colleague of sorts. That what scares you? Another bunch of arseholes with the need to hurt The Other? Just remember one thing: Melanie was alone, completely and utterly, apart from her own therapist. You have friends, yes?”
“Yes…”
“Friends who know and accept what you are, and don’t run screaming away?”
“Well, Von did, and Larinda isn’t too happy…”
“Von is history, no? And this Larinda…is she still around?”
“Well, aye”
“Melanie had friends, but she forgot that simple fact. If she had picked up the phone, they would have been there. Your friends are right here and now. So you have it easier, don’t you?”
“I suppose so”
Off with the glasses again, and I revised my estimate of his age downwards. So, so tired.
“Jill, here’s the score. Suicide amongst people like you is far more common than in the general population. Don’t look surprised; your nature is bloody obvious. How you have managed to get through life so far in stealth mode astonishes me, but I didn’t say that, OK? But remember this: people tend to kill themselves for two main reasons. The first is despair, and that exit is usually made simply and efficiently. Not a bundle of pills, or anything like that, just off Platform 13 at Clapham Junction as the Gatwick Express is going through, or a short walk off Beachy Head or the nearest multi-storey car park. Bang, done.
“Trouble is, it screws up so many other people’s lives. Train drivers, bystanders…I had one of the poor buggers who drove over Melanie’s body. You have more than that. Every person you know is on that list, yeah? How old is your mother…ah”
He shook his head. “Your face is crap at hiding stuff, you know. Look, we are out of time, and in the manner of the NHS I have people queued ten deep outside. Just remember this: to those people, you aren’t a random body splashing their hush puppies with Kensington gore, you are a friend, a son, a lover. Do nothing in a hurry, yeah? Look…”
He wrote a number on a compliment slip.
“My mobile. Any time you feel that shitty, you call, right?”
“Well…”
“RIGHT?”
He stood, and I took it as my cue to leave.
“Jill…look, there are rules here, but fuck ‘em. Inappropriate behaviour, yeah? So if you don’t want a hug…?”
I did, and, clearly, so did he.
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Comments
Thanks Steph,
ALISON
'again,just thanks,you are someone very special.
ALISON
therapist
It looks like the therapist has almost as many problems as Jill,i think they will become good friends in the end .
Another good chapter ,Thanks.
hugs Roo
ROO
dancing around with a therapist
I'm glad she could come clean with him.
Dorothycolleen
Hitting home once again...
...how often I've moved in the other direction? Almost neglecting my appearance, believing that the needful and necessary expressions of who I am were not allowed or possible, so why not just look like everyone expects. My son asked me last month...actually insisted that I grow out my goatee again; almost but not quite suspecting what might really be true if I was clean shaven? The things our hearts bring to mind, yes?
Why do you feel the necessity to make me cry every time, Stef? Oh...I understand...you write and I respond. As I've said...too painful to read and too...much to needful not to. Thank you!
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
The typical Suicidal Tranny!!!
Dammit Steph!
Those are hardest words to bear. The typical suicidal tranny!!!
That's where I was for nearly fifty years until I realised there was more than just transvestism. It took me forty years of 'not living' before I finally cut through the shit dumped in my brain by 'Therapists' or more properly 'Psychiatrists'.
Living in stealth, all through the children growing up. Suppressing it in the bedroom by keeping it to a minimum. 'Not going out'... oh how poingnant is that expression. Certainly no comedy.
You cut to the quick Steph. Reading this chapter only reinforces my conviction that it is probably still unsafe for me to ever contemplate 'therapy' again.
I'm drawn to this story like a moth to the flame.
Beverly.
Love the counsellor
Another person of the type we all need in this world. Out there allowing himself to be hurt by other people's pain, and talking reality rather than reading it out of a textbook.
Keep up the good work, and glad to have you back and writing this. I missed it. No guilt trip intended. We all need a break from time to time, my own recent lack of output standing witness.
Thanks for another one
However you do it you make your characters human, and we care about them.
Damn
There I was with this clever comment about how funny it was and typical and then that last little bit. Tried a beard in my mid 20's, girlfriend and such. The beard lasted 3 months, couldn't stand it, the girl until I told her. Like I said, funny.
Love your work hon, characters to touch and feel. The Damn? Well raised a tear didn't you. A knack, worthy, but tough.
k
Thank you all once more
I have met a few therapists...well, it sort of goes with the turf. And some of them were, indeed, sods. (Sorry--no more atrocious puns)
I have tried to bring them into reality, as much as I can, because my characters use them as sounding boards. It is a cheating way of writing lots of exposition, but keeping it as dialogue. What produced Alec in this story was the thought that so many suicides miss in their pain and despair, and that is the effect on others. I deliberately left out Alec's second type of suicide, the "You'll be sorry when I'm gone!" tantrum, because I wanted to focus on the collateral damage. A friend of a friend is a train driver who had "one under" at East Croydon station. He will never drive a train again, and the effects on the bystanders can only be imagined. Another friend was at Southampton station in June when the poor sod put their neck literally on the line.
That led me to Alec, whose own 'PTSD' comes from having to bear the weight of so many people's pain while working in an under-resourced and understaffed clinic. Just like my local one.
Shrinks
It's all too easy to generalise and dismiss them all as nutcases or charlatans, but then you get a good one who blows you out of the water.
You make everyone all-too-human,
Joanne
I don't read stuff
I don't read stuff that makes me reach for the tissues. I'm reading your stuff though. And it does. The moments, it seems, when a human reaches out to another hit me as much as any loss or tragedy. Maybe the fact I too have rather a lot more grey hair in my collection than I used to, and almost certainly a bit more life behind than in front, helps to give me an empathy for our friend.
Carry on, I can always get more tissues.
Teri Ann
"Reach for the sun."