Memoirs of a Variety Artiste Pt. 01

Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.

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My birth name was Daniel Terris. I have a cousin of exactly the same age called Jimmy Terris. Our fathers, after whom we were named, were brothers. They married two sisters, the Joyce sisters. Both families were, near enough, Variety royalty. My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides trod the boards. They never topped the bill in London but they often had second billing. When my parents and Jimmy's parents got together and became the Terris Quartet they sometimes actually topped the bill on provincial tours.

Jimmy's and my paternal grandparents had died before we were born and Grandpa Joyce had also died; he had a heart attack after the second show at the Leeds City Varieties. Grandma Joyce had saved a fair amount of money. She had always thought she would like to live in the country and she bought a cottage in Chalfont St Giles. It lasted all of two months.

'I thought I was going mad,' she said to us many years later. 'All that quiet and nowhere to go and nobody to talk about the business with. All right if you like that sort of thing (said with a sniff) but a bloody dead and alive hole of you don't.'

She sold up and bought a theatrical lodging house ('only really nice people, dear') on Haverstock Hill, near enough to Camden and the Bedford Music Hall for her to entertain her old mates from the stage and feed them good dinners after the last show ('you need to keep your strength up').

Our parents tried to incorporate us into their act at the beginning but there wasn't really room for children in what was essentially, at that stage, a song and dance act about virginal young love. So we were left with grandma. She didn't particularly see the point of schooling but we learnt to read and write and tot up the week's takings in the boarding house ('private hotel, dear'). However, grandma did insist that we learnt the really important things, so we had elocution and singing and dancing lessons. By the time we were six years old we were performing for the guests at home, after their shows, with grandma at the piano and, because our treble voices couldn't cope with the men's songs, we sang the women's hits. Grandma had costumes made for us and we loved dressing in our girly outfits.

Jimmy and I shared a room and a bed. As we grew older we began to treat each other as sisters. We looked very much like twins; both about five feet six, both blond, both with trim but not very muscular figures. We grew our hair and experimented with makeup and clothes. When our voices broke we were relieved to find that we could still manage to sing soprano. We often chose to dress as girls throughout the day and we would wait on tables in the dining room and sometimes, when we were fourteen or fifteen, a guest who didn't know we were boys, would try to catch our eye or chat us up and we, and the guests in the know, would make a joke of it. One day, when we were sixteen, we decided to find out if we could pass in the outside world. We dressed in our prettiest clothes, got on one of the horse-drawn omnibuses which operated in those days, and went to the West End, where we had tea in a posh café. And nobody knew we weren't exactly what we seemed to be. From here on we decided we were going to be girls all the time. Grandma's reaction was 'If it makes you happy.'

I became Dora and Jimmy became Janey. At night we would kiss and cuddle and we loved to suck each other's nipples and then, one night, Janey sank lower down the bed and took my tiny little cock (only two inches) between her lips. In no time at all I was squirting my milk into her mouth and it felt so good to both of us I did the same for her, but her cock was four inches. We learnt to give each other pleasure by licking our fingers and circling each other's rosebud pucker with a finger and just pushing the tip into the opening. We learnt to call our special places by their fem names so our cocks and balls became our clities and our bum holes became our pussies or our cunts.

Within a matter of months our girliness became a family asset. Our parents arrived at grandma's after their autumn tour and Jimmy and I dressed as boys so as not to give them too much of a surprise when they walked through the door. Our parents had something to tell us, they said. They made an announcement. At least, our mothers made the announcement and grandma reported it to us. As soon as they started grandma sent us out of the room, so that she would feel free to tell her daughters exactly what she thought of them. They were tired of touring and they were tired of the business. Our fathers had pooled their resources and had bought a private hotel in Eastbourne, which our mothers would manage. Our fathers were trying to find replacements for them in the act.

Grandma was furious. 'I've raised a couple of bloody snobs,' she shouted to us. What she said to our mothers I don't know but they left in a huff before grandma gave us the full account of their perfidy. They wanted nothing to do with the theatre any more. Their hotel was to be for 'nice' people i.e. non-theatricals.

We heard grandma yell at them 'All my people are nice.' Then we heard her add, just to be fair, 'Except for that man who wanted to keep his python in the bath and felt up Mrs Carmody in the kitchen but he was an amateur, if ever I've seen one.'

Her parting shot to them was, 'You do know you married men, don't you, not plaster saints? Don't be surprised if they get more than stage partners and it'll be your own bloody fault.'

Day after day dad and Uncle Jimmy auditioned for replacements. They needed women who could be made up to look alike, with the same build, because one of their most popular routines involved them appearing to be a couple dancing before a mirror, which turned out to be one couple exactly mimicking the movements of the other. Day after day they came home disappointed; the women weren't sufficiently alike or, if they were, they couldn't dance or their singing voices were wrong. The men became more and more morose. Then grandma dropped her bombshell.

'Why you're bothering with auditions when you've got the answer at home, I don't know,' she said to her sons-in -law.

They looked at her as though she had taken leave of her senses.

'What are you on about, ma?' asked Uncle Jimmy.

'I'll show you,' she said. Then turning to us she said, 'Girls, put on your 'Daisy Bell' outfits. Light make-up will do. It's just to show your dads what they've got.'

As we went out I heard my father ask, 'Girls?' and my grandma answering, 'Wait and see.'

She must have explained a bit about our deciding to live as girls because our fathers seemed rather flustered when we returned.

They goggled at us and turned us round and scrutinised us very carefully before Uncle Jimmy said, 'Well, I'm convinced and so will the customers be. Let's see you dance and hear you sing.'

Grandma played the piano and we went through half a dozen pieces from our repertory, then dad took me in his arms and Uncle Jimmy took Janie in his and they taught us the steps for one of their numbers. It felt so right to me to have my father's arms around me, holding me tight and guiding me, that I automatically snuggled up to him closer and he tightened his grip around my waist. I looked up into his eyes and smiled and he smiled back at me and I felt a delicious tingling in my clitie.

When we stopped dancing, Uncle Jimmy asked grandma, 'Do we tell the management that they're our sons?'

'Don't be bloody daft,' she said. 'You're not a drag act. Tell them they're your cousin's girls you've been training up to take over the work when your wives decided to retire.'

And that is what he did. We became Dora and Janie Terris, another generation of the famous Terris Variety dynasty, half of the New Terris Quartet. The atmosphere had changed somewhat in the act, in that Janie and I were sixteen and so, in theatre terms, ingenues, whereas mum and auntie had been the same age as their husbands. Dad and Uncle Jimmy were forty and thirty-nine respectively and the age difference between them and us added a spice to the implicit sexual content of the act, but we were careful to keep the surface very demure so as not to offend those who didn't want to acknowledge the sexual nature of the dances.

We got top billing on several tours and continued to enjoy second billing in London, where the stars liked us because we posed no threat to them but had a solid following of our own and our work complemented theirs. For two years we did very good business and we enjoyed ourselves but by the time we were eighteen Janie and I knew we needed more sexually.

We were on tour and one of the other acts was a pair of weightlifting Italian brothers, the Great Guillielmos. They looked wonderful. Their chests, their arms and legs were massive and it looked as though they had a fire hose apiece down the front of their tights. Janie and I watched their act from the wings whenever we could and the boys would flex their muscles specially for us. One night as they came off Franco, the elder brother, put his arm around me and gave me a peck on the cheek and my father saw it. He was furious. He told the Guillielmos to keep their hands off his nieces and he and Uncle Jimmy watched Janie and me all the time from then on.

Janie and I realised that our fathers were jealous and it made us think of them as specifically sexual beings. They were both well-built men, with taut bodies, muscled and toned even if not massive like out weightlifters, and they were handsome men. Suddenly I wondered why they hadn't taken mistresses. They had certainly had plenty of chances on our tours, where, it was clear, some of our fellow artistes would gladly have shared a bed with them.

Soon after the Guillielmo incident dad and Uncle Jimmy started to treat us differently. The only way I can put it is that they started to court us, as though we were girls they wanted to impress and, probably, girls they wanted to make love to. I started to call dad 'Daddy' and he liked it. I also started to fantasise about his making love to me. Janie and I enjoyed the attention and I noticed the lump which formed in the front of my Daddy's pants sometimes when I 'accidentally' brushed up against him.

One night Daddy and Uncle Jimmy told us that they were going to take us out to dinner after the show. They told us to put on the new evening dresses we had had made for a moonlight and roses number; they were silver silk and quite beautiful. Janie and I padded our breasts and Daddy gave me some lovely pearl earrings. He had booked a private dining room at a late-night performance up West. It was one of those red velvet affairs where you keep the curtains open to watch the stage and then close the curtains to do whatever you want in private. Daddy and Uncle Jimmy were in white tie and tails.

We watched the show for a few minutes, but we were ravenous after our own show, and we sat down to a very good meal. Daddy ordered a bottle of champagne. Janie and I rarely drank alcohol and soon I was leaning against my Daddy's chest and he had his arm around me. Then he kissed me but it wasn't a fatherly kiss. His tongue entered my mouth and found my tongue and I found that I wanted more. I placed my hand on the bulge in his trousers and squeezed lightly. Daddy pulled back, surprised and said, 'Baby girl. Do you know what you're doing?'

I felt confused and embarrassed. Janie and her father stopped what they were doing and looked at us.

'I thought that was what you wanted,' I said, almost in tears. Had I somehow misunderstood what my Daddy was leading up to?

'Oh, it is and much, much more but you're not used to drink and I'm not going to take advantage of you. You know that I can't marry you officially because you are my son and I have a wife. I don't want to take you here like a whore. I want you,' and he knelt before me and took my hand, 'to do me the honour, my darling girl, of becoming my wife in fact, though not in law. Can you bear to do that?'

I sat stunned. He misunderstood my silence, sat down heavily, put his head in his hands and muttered, 'I am a stupid old man. I have ruined everything. Of course, you don't want me; you want a man your own age.' A tear ran down his cheek and I found my voice.

'Darling Daddy. Of course I shall marry you. Don't be silly. I've wanted you ever since you came to grandmas and we did our Daisy Bell song for you. Please take me and make me your wife and be my husband.'

Janie and Uncle Jimmy applauded, then went very serious. Uncle Jimmy knelt and asked Janie the same question. She said, 'Idiot. You know the answer. I told you a moment ago I would before the others got all dramatic.'

She drew him to her. They kissed and I think he must have put his hand into her panties and fingered her pussy because I heard such a gasp of surprised delight from her that I can think of no other explanation. We made out but neither Daddy nor Uncle Jimmy went any further. They took us back to our hotel and we girls went to our shared bed and discussed our prospective husbands and what we hoped they would do to us.

The next day Daddy and Uncle Jimmy took us to a jewellers and we chose wedding rings. When we moved to our next date on the tour Daddy booked us into our new hotel as Mr and Mrs Daniel Terris and Mr and Mrs James Terris. I decided that Grandma must be a witch when, a few days later, a letter arrived from her for my Daddy, which he showed me. It simply said, 'I hope you've remembered to give my granddaughters wedding rings. These things matter to a girl.'

I was, therefore, not surprised, when we next stayed with Grandma, that she treated us like two married couples.

'Aren't you shocked?' I asked.

'No, dear, I know men and I know girls. And it's not as though you're going to have babies. Then I shouldn't stand for it in case they came out doo-lally. Does Daniel treat you right? I always liked Daniel. He was such a polite boy. But he does have an eye for the women and the women like him. How about you and him?'

I assured grandma that Daddy treated me very well and that there was no question of any other women.

'I'm glad,' she said. 'Keep it all in the family.'

And Daddy did. That first year of our 'marriage' he was insatiable. He would take me between each show and sometimes we did three shows a night and then after the show we would eat quickly and he would have me back in our bed ramming home his eight inches in my cunt or deep in my throat. I came to love the sight of his hairy buttocks moving up and down in the mirror in our dressing room in the theatre as he took me between shows and I became addicted to his cock, adoring to draw out of it every last drop of his cum and rolling it round on my tongue before swallowing.

I genuinely felt that I was my Daddy's wife and he was my husband and I know that Jenny felt the same about Uncle Jimmy. We almost managed to forget that we had ever been male except, of course, that we still had a cock and a pair of balls each. Our darling daddies treated us entirely as the delicate, loving girls they wanted us to be and, certainly, my Daddy called me his wife again and again in our love-making.

Grandma accepted us completely as girls. She had several words of wisdom to impart to us. The one I remember best was, 'Most men are much simpler creatures than we are. Take care of their cocks and their stomachs for them and you'll have them for life, dear.'

When war broke out in 1914 we put on shows for the troops as well as continuing with our touring but, of course, we added some patriotic numbers. In 1916 Janie and I received our call up papers under our male names. We were thirty-two years old and all men up to the age of forty were liable to conscription. We went along to the recruitment office in our stage dresses and said we were female impersonators. They took one look at us and declared us unfit for service.

Touring in wartime was hard but was a picnic compared with what millions were suffering at the front and in occupied lands. We got on with it and tried not to grumble. By 1918 Daddy was fifty- eight. He was still strong and fucked me almost every day. Uncle Jimmy was a year younger and Jenny used to tell me that she was astonished by his stamina. Then in 1918, just as the war came to an end, the influenza pandemic started and our husbands sickened and died within a month. Grandma, at the age of eighty, was poorly but recovered. We three women moved in together. Then, a few months after our husbands' funerals, a letter arrived addressed to Janie and me. It was from the Guillielmo brothers, offering us their condolences, having seen the notice of our husbands' deaths in the trade papers, and asking if they might call and see us to talk about old times. Grandma perked up immediately and demanded to know all about them. When we told her the little there was to tell she gave us an old-fashioned look, let out a distinctly earthy laugh and said, 'Keep your hands on your attributes, girls.'

Janie and I pretended to be scandalised but once we were alone Janie said to me, 'I wonder if they still keep the fire hoses in their pants,' and we both laughed for the first time in many months.

(to be continued)