I was born female and all my early life I was totally happy with that. I went through puberty as a girl and I was perfectly happy with that too. When my peers at school started becoming interested in boys I was naturally interested in them as well. The problem was I couldn’t see the attraction. Boys were crude, coarse, crass and none of the ones I met were of any interest because they upset me. I knew eventually I would want a family and a loving husband, but none of the boys I knew would ever meet the criteria. I wanted a boy who was as considerate and caring as a girl. I went out on dates with dozens of boys, but never went out with any of them a second time. Their insistent fumblings and gropings at every opportunity with no consideration of my desires or needs disgusted me, and I walked out on more dates than I could count. I don’t think I ever stayed to the end of a movie in a cinema. The rumour was that I was lesbian which was not true, for I wanted a boy, eventually a man, but I wanted a nice, decent one who would consider our relationship a matter of mutual fulfilment in all ways, be they financial, friendly, social, emotional and sexual, naturally including all matters parental.

Eventually, much to my joy, at university I met Evanni, who was a Ukrainian theoretical physics student who was twenty-seven when I was twenty-one and studying pharmacy. He was studying for his doctorate in quantum computing. He was everything I had ever wanted in a boy and later a man. Kind, considerate, a skilled lover with far more experience than I who cared that I enjoyed the time we spent together in and out of bed, he was all I had ever hoped for. I was desperate that he would offer me a lifetime relationship. When he did, I accepted him immediately. It was of no significance to me whatsoever when he told me he had been born a girl.