Memoirs of a Transvestite Pt. 01

I was in luck. I don't know if it was universal, but they used the same categories as at Asket's, with other suppliers as well, and a few additions. I pretended I was having difficulty as the older assistant, Margaret, began my instruction.

It was with some surprise that the working day came to an end. I had met several members of staff, used the lavatory, and (hardest of all) had a lunchtime chat with some. I was shy and embarrassed, not just because I was new, but because I didn't know things like the names of the teachers at the girls' school, or exactly what I had done in my charity work. Thankfully they were older, so none had been in the same class as Beatrice.

Perhaps my aching legs and feet had distracted me. The others expected it, and sympathised in a jovial way.

I was surprised to find 'Victor' waiting for me. The bank finished earlier, so Papa had gone home while she had strolled around a bit, enjoying the freedom.

"Did they give you the push?" were her first words.

"No," I said, "and from the looks of you, you did all right."

She was so elated about her first day, that I could not refuse to do the next one, and the next one, until we passed our trial week.

We helped each other to learn our respective backgrounds and a bit about what one sex might say and think away from the other. There were some close calls, but somehow we got round them, or they got forgotten.

Strangely, the only thing that was not a problem was our sex. I suppose it was so unlikely that no-one considered the possibility.

And by the weekend I needed no persuading to continue. Maybe it was the fact that I was complimented on being a fast learner for the first time in my life. Maybe it was the fact that anything would be better than the bank.

Maybe it was the fact that I liked being in a dress and being treated as girl.

My sister actually liked sums and percentages! And she loved what she saw as the freedom of being a man.

"It's funny," she said. "I don't feel like I'm pretending to be a man. I've just stopped pretending to be a girl."

I was still pretending, but it was better than failing as a man.

Somehow we stuck in our roles until they just became us. My sister was Victor, and he. I was Beatrice and she. We had no thoughts of sex or marriage, and we were in a society where people stayed firmly clothed, so our differences were only inconveniences.

Victor had it worse, because of his monthlies. He told me when he had them and I learned the secret ways in which women convey this information to close friends (which is not very much, and then only if a severe pain or bleeding needs some action). I took to wearing a towel whenever he did. Maybe it helped in my pretence.

He also could not use the urinal, though he would sometimes come out of the closet and wait to be seen buttoning his flies when someone came in.

For me, it meant there was no shame in being a spinster and ultimately an old maid, as many women of our generation were destined to do. On the other hand, for Victor as he approached twenty-one, he became something of a prize, and mothers sought ways to make an introduction. The bank also expected its older male staff to be married (but female employees had to leave when they wed).

It had been common for a man to only marry in his thirties, when he had made a sufficient position, and Victor did not yet have that. But at this time young women, or rather their mothers, were more desperate to catch a single man before someone else did.

It was therefore not unusual for Victor and Papa to be walking home and a parent and daughter would be coming the other way and the parent would find some pretext to speak to Papa. There were often longer queues at his window when he was serving where the customer was accompanied by his wife and daughter

Unlike today, it was very much hands-off (for the middle class, at least), just walking and talking in the open or in company, so there was no immediate danger. Young people could not approach each other, they had to be introduced, at least in our middle-class and slightly stuffy world.

It would have been suspicious if Victor had not socialised with the young ladies that kept coming his way, but nothing came of it. As we know now, there were gay men in the same predicament, who generally married eventually.

In evenings with Nanny and Victor, I would sometimes ask if it was fair for me not to marry. But we could not just swap as we did when we were children. I was no bank clerk, and how would the shop, or more importantly the customers, take it if I were to became male? We were sure to lose our positions and cause a scandal.

Victor hugged and kissed me.

"I could manage," he said, "but it would kill you. You're more of a girl than I ever was, and it's been wonderful to see you so happy. I wish we could go away together and pretend to be husband and wife."

It was such a wonderful idea the three of us often talked about where we might go.

If only we had the money, of course. You can do anything with money.

Yet in many ways we lived together as husband and wife. I actually helped Nanny with the housework while Victor talked about the world affairs with Papa.

So far as we knew, we were the only ones dressing as the opposite sex. Entertainers did it for comic effect: the pantomime dame or music-hall women singing 'Burlington Bertie' or 'Following in Father's Footsteps'. And Sherlock Holmes sometimes disguised himself as an old woman. Perhaps in London it was known, but not in our genteel northern town. It would be decades before we even heard the word transvestite, and the very idea of homosexuality never crossed our minds.

We were just in disguise, but comfortable in our different roles in society.