I’m usually called Franky, even by my parents. I don’t like the name, and all my friends call me Francesca and know I prefer being called by a proper girl’s name. I like make up and frippery undies and looking pretty now, but I couldn’t be bothered for years. Any old blouse and skirt, even a frock was fine as long as I was dressed to look like a girl, and the hell with the comments. Family didn’t like it, but they put up with it because I was cantankerous, and I was the one one getting the grief for wearing girls clothes when messing with lawnmowers and the like.

I’ve had to walk a lonely path all my life because the way I think about myself and like to look has always been seriously at odds with my interests and natural abilities. I’m good at looking like a girl, but I’ve never been able to act, speak and behave like one. In the words of one of my friends “Francesca, the truth is no matter how good you look, and I’d kill for your body, you’ll never pass.” I didn’t used to care, and now I’ve been like this for so long I can’t do anything about it.

School was hell. The boys never accepted me because they wrote me off as a faggot, a queer, a sissy and they only left me alone when I took up self defence and marshal arts, but I had to administer a few good beatings before they did, which of course was all my fault in the eyes of the school authorities and all just because I wouldn’t wear a pair of trousers. God alone knows how many days of suspension were on my school record in those days. Looking back, it’s fortunate no one saw beyond my freaky appearance and interests and fathomed that I actually liked boys the same way the girls did, but they didn’t care, and you could see their thought on the matter was, ‘Why waste the time on a pervy misfit?’ Now men treat me exactly the same, which I suppose is at least consistent because boys tend to grow up into men, or at least poor facsimiles of men.

Girls never accepted me either, initially because I wasn’t interested in dolls and dressing up and I wouldn’t play properly. I only got interested in clothes and make up when I realised I liked looking pretty because it finally dawned on me that even for me it was part of being a girl. I’d have been fourteen or so when I discovered perfume, by which time the girls said me being pretty didn’t make any difference because the nearest I would ever get to being like them was to be a butch, dyke tranny. Which was stupid because what’s wrong with that? A couple of my friends describe themselves a trans butch dykes, but they don’t use the word tranny, because it’s not nice. I’ve never had any cis female friends, but it’s only recently I’ve realised a lot of cis females are jealous of how pretty I am without having to try. For a clever girl I can be really thick sometimes.

My life screwed up big time when I found the old BSA motorbike behind my uncle’s barn, badgered him into giving it to me and then got it running and put it on the road. I had wheels at sixteen and hell was I sexy in leathers! Specially when viewed from behind. Sit on it girls and boys! I did physics, chemistry and double mathematics Advanced levels, got straight A’s and read electrical and mechanical engineering at University. Other than the office staff, I was the only girl in the entire department, and I caused a mini riot when I refused to use the men’s lavatories. The law said all women, cis and trans, had to be provided with appropriate facilities, and the head of department was taken aback when I told him I wasn’t too sure what that meant, but I sure as hell knew it didn’t include any lavatory with a sign that read ‘men’ on the door.

I told him that in spite of being the only student in the department legally designated as female I was still entitled to use a lavatory with a sign that read ‘women’ on the door and I didn’t want to find any men in there, ever. The office women said they were staff, and students couldn’t use their lavatory. Which translated into real speak as, ‘No chicks with dicks taking a leak in here please, and that includes any who used to have dicks too.’ The cost of policing a student action across the entire university made a new lavatory seem cheap, and the vice chancellor had it paid for out of some special budget, which was probably referred to privately in whispers as the TCF, tranny contingency fund, after that. Yes, I really am that cynical!

At the beginning of my first year I was challenged by three students and the lecturer who considered that since I couldn’t possibly understand the mathematics of DSHM, damped simple harmonic motion a piece of work I had handed in for marking had to be someone else’s work. The look on their faces was absolutely priceless when I told them there wasn’t a big girl alive who hadn’t experienced it in her bra when she turned round too quickly, and handling the mathematical theory was a piece of cake compared with handling the reality of it without falling over. I continued as I’d started, by taking no prisoners.

I took the top first after having been ostracised and denigrated by staff and students alike for three years, and they were glad to see the back of me. Actually the hypocritical, leering perves had always been glad to see the back of me, and the front too when they thought I wasn’t looking. They didn’t realise it, but treating me the way they did left me with little to do except study, so it’s their own fault I did so much better than the other students. It seriously embarrassed the staff when the media reported that their best student ever didn’t bother to attend the graduation ceremony because she was glad to leave their bigotry and prejudice behind. I believe subsequently there was an inquiry into the treatment of ‘minorities’, probably just to prevent such embarrassment again, so maybe some good came of it.

Now I have a heavy goods vehicle licence and can legally drive anything with wheels, though usually I only used it for super heavy special loads with a police escort, mostly stuff for my employers’ oil platforms. I also have a private pilots licence and will be licensed for helicopters before long. And I do it all wearing frocks with a low cut bosom just to rub it in. You know what they say, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. I want the copter licence because I’m a senior engineer on a platform in the North Sea, and it’s handy when I want to go somewhere without the hassle of finding a pilot with hours to spare.

I don’t give a stuff what folk think about me. I’ve heard it all, butch, dyke, tranny, queer, faggot, weirdo, paedo and a lot more I can’t be bothered to recall. I’ve never tried to defend myself against it because it’s pointless. You can’t reason with a bigot, that’s their major defining characteristic, and the kindest thing anyone ever called a bible basher is a halfwit because they don’t even have shit for brains.

The people I have always envied are the trans women with feminine thoughts and interests, simply because their lives are so much easier. Nobody even notices that they don’t have the same skills and interests that I do, they’re not expected to. They wear pretty clothes and make up and it would be a surprise if they expressed an interest in tools or swore like a trooper, which I’ve been known to do on more than one occasion. It’s considered normal and appropriate that they have female interests and behaviour and are ladylike. Most folk aren’t even aware there is anything different about them at all. The only friends I’ve ever had till recently are all trans women, and their support and friendships have been and continue to be wonderful. When I first met Gina and started accompanying her to the pubs and clubs her friends frequented it was a revelation to me, and I started to enjoy life because I wasn’t alone any more.

It’s true what I said, I don’t care what the bigots say about me, but that’s only for me. I care what they say for Sven because I care about Sven. Sven has asked me to marry him and I’ve said yes. But I’m getting irritated by all the tossers who are trying to give him a hard time for marrying a man in drag. He doesn’t care, he’s over two meters tall and as solid as a brick built outhouse, and I think it all amuses him though he never says much. Sven’s a machinist, give him a lathe and a milling machine and there’s nothing he can’t make. He likes my friends and reckons meeting meet me on the rig and then my friends on shore has been the best chapter in his life so far. It’s certainly been the best one in mine.

I’ve got nothing but respect for all decent folk whether cis or trans, male or female, or anything else, provided I’m given the same in return. However, I don’t know any decent cis women because experience has taught me to avoid them and most cis men that I’ve met are a pain in the arse. Come to that I don’t know many trans men, but the few I do know are decent folk. Of course there’s the odd bitch or bastard in the trans groups too. Hell why should they be any different from any other set of folk?

But all the friends I’ve known for any length of time are trans women. I’m certainly not going to start shunning the folk who finally made my life bearable just to satisfy the prejudices of a bunch of so called men suffering from more inadequacies than most shrinks would come across in half a lifetime’s work just because I’m now earning serious money. And in any case most of the idiots I meet now can’t upset me because I’m their boss, and if they rattle my cage I’ll fire them. What they say in private is their business, but if they do it in public it’s not only against company policy it’s illegal too, and I’m a big enough bastard to enforce it. I did warn them, but I only had to fire the one before the rest stepped back into line.

So, let’s have it right out in the open, because I never managed to get in the closet and I’m tired of hiding in plain sight, and in any case I won’t be able to soon. Despite the beliefs of the bigots, I was born a girl, grew up a girl, hit menarche as a girl and my breasts, hips and bottom are those of a girl, courtesy of DIY girl’s hormones. I like being a girl, I always have, and now in the ultimate state of girlhood I’m four months pregnant. I felt my daughter move for the first time yesterday and I’m thrilled about it. I just happen to have the soul of an engineer and all my friends are trans, who are fine with me being the way I am and looking forward to being aunties. If the bursting of your bubble of sanctimonious, self righteous delusion upsets you then up yours.