chapter three

years of denial

My innocent childhood, with its mixture of happiness and troubled times, was long gone, replaced by mixed-up heady teenage years of excitement, ambition, optimism for the great challenge of the future that lay ahead of me. But my spirit was becoming increasingly stifled by the realization that what my mind was telling me wasn’t what was expected of me in this world; a world where a person was expected to behave the way the majority did, and it was at this time my inner conflict began in earnest although it was very subtle and unconscious at first.

I thoroughly enjoyed becoming a nameless female on the rare occasions when I could escape from my daily life, but the conflict that was slowly building up within me would lead me to try and draw away from my feminine side and begin to do more and more of those things that a young man was expected to do, like going to the pub with my mates, just to fit in. The female part of me would then tug and tug and pull me back, again and again. It was just like the ebb and flow of the tide, and this conflict would continue for the next twenty-eight years, gradually becoming much more dramatic and sometimes even violent.

Towards the end of the 1970s I still hadn’t realized that I might be in some sort of denial. I did decide, though, that the baker’s life wasn’t for me. Very early mornings – a 5 a.m. start on weekdays and 3 a.m. on Saturdays – were not compatible with my life on the road with the various bands I now played in. My male side was telling me that I should be doing something else, and that’s when I got a job working in a quarry. It was totally male dominated except for the girl in the weighbridge office. I did put up with the job for some years because the company was sympathetic to my requests for time off to go and play in the various bands that I was involved with, and the money was brilliant. What I just couldn’t stand was the derogatory way that some of my workmates would talk about their wives or girlfriends and women in general. There was nothing sinister or nasty, but every man bragged about how they dominated their partners and how they could do whatever they liked while their women had to stay at home and pander to their every need. I found these attitudes very hard to deal with and I hated the way they all tried to outdo each other all the time. Dealing with their chauvinistic attitudes would be the trigger for my female side to gain the upper hand again. It was almost like a protest against my male workmates and consequently against any maleness within myself.

For most of the time I worked in the quarry I led a totally double life. If the guys had ever found out what I was doing, my life wouldn’t have been worth living. That said, one of my workmates actually did discover my secret. Luckily for me he was my best friend. I would often go to his house for a drink with him and his wife – we even cycled to work together, and did all the stuff that mates do.

My family and I had recently moved from the hotel to a big house on the edge of town, quite close to the main road, and one weekend I was in the house alone and decided to get made up as a female and go out for the night in Edinburgh. Just as I was getting into my car my friend drove past and immediately spotted me. I just knew by the look on his face that he had put two and two together and that I’d been rumbled for sure. Although I went to Edinburgh as planned, I couldn’t eat, sleep or do anything for the rest of the weekend, worrying about what would await me when I got to work on Monday morning. I fully expected to be ridiculed, or worse, by all the men in the quarry. Surprisingly, this didn’t happen and just like the time Grandad had caught me dressed up in the hotel, James never ever mentioned he’d seen me all dressed up. Although relations were a bit strained between us for a while, they eventually got back to something like normal after a few weeks. But, just like Grandad, I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew he knew.

The tug of war between my male and female sides continued to dominate my life and my doubts about which gender I really was were becoming ever stronger. I would have wild swings one way or the other, and would sometimes feel totally male or totally female for months on end. And during one of my male periods, when I was in the Ancaster pub in Callander with my workmates, I met someone who would completely change my life. Her name was Anne and she was one of the staff there. I got talking to her and we hit it off right away.

She was one of the countless girls who had come from Glasgow to work in the many hotels in the town which catered for the thousands of tourists who flocked to the area every year. We started seeing each other on a regular basis and as the months went on things became much more serious between us. It really was quite a happy time, but eventually my female side started to rise again, causing me to swing back that way once more. This was now even more problematic than before because I had become very fond of Anne – perhaps it may even have become more than that by this time. However, I had led something of a double life since my early teens and I reckoned there was no reason why I couldn’t continue with this, even with Anne on board. I just didn’t want to let her go, so for the first time in my life I was seeing two women at the same time – one was Anne and the other was the still-nameless female that I had become.

As time went on Anne and I became ever closer, and although I had thought this would never happen to me in my complicated life, I realized that I was head over heels in love, and that Anne was in love with me too. Deep down, though, I knew our relationship would just make life all the more complicated for me, and, sadly, for Anne too. Trying to lead my double life and have a girlfriend at the same time, I knew it was inevitable that I would be caught out sooner or later.

When Anne worked evening shifts at the hotel I had time to go out as the female I had become. Around this time, too, I was also becoming increasingly busy playing in bands, and although Anne didn’t always know exactly what I was doing at nights, she always wanted to see me when I got back home and she often commented that I looked different – even after I had washed all the makeup off my face.

After a while she realised that something was up and asked me what was going on. To begin with I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about, but after a few weeks of her constant questioning, I decided to tell her everything. I thought, well she’ll either stay with me or she’ll just leave. As it turned out, she stayed. I suppose she must have loved me very much, but although she put up with what I was doing, she didn’t want to know any details and she turned a blind eye to behaviour that must have seemed out of place to her. Thinking about it now, I realise that I was extremely selfish thinking I could have the best of both worlds and get away with it indefinitely.

Something that I could never have foreseen did come of my telling Anne my secret. I remember she was getting ready to go to work one night, soon after I had bared my soul to her, and she asked me what I was doing that night.

I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know’, and she replied, ‘I suppose you’re going out with Julie.’

I said, ‘Who?’ and she said, ‘You know who I mean. Julie.’

From that moment on the nameless female within me had a name. My name was Julie and I just loved it.

I did have the best of both worlds for years, but Anne’s acceptance would wax and wane and we fell out over my double life many times. I suppose I knew deep down that this situation could not go on for ever, but it would be many years before things would come to a head.

Peculiarly, around that time, after so many years of not knowing what these feelings were that seemed to be consuming my whole life, I was soon to hear about a strange-sounding condition that seemed to be exactly what I was suffering from. I was watching television on my own one night and a Michael Caine movie began. I’m pretty sure it was one of the Harry Palmer series, although unfortunately I have so far been unable to track down the specific episode.

Michael Caine played a private investigator and in this one he followed some guy around Europe on trains to different cities, staying in different hotels. He had to search the guy’s room, including his suitcase, which turned out to be full of women’s clothes, wigs and everything else that a female impersonator might have. At this point Michael says, ‘I’ve been had! This guy’s a fake, a transvestite!’

Wow, I had never even heard this word before and it shocked me to the core. I went straight over to the bookcase and looked it up in the dictionary. I just couldn’t get the word out of my head for weeks, and I went on for many years after that thinking that this is what I was – a transvestite. As time went on I would find out that I was not a transvestite, but something much more complicated than that. However, at that time I thought I had some sort of an answer to who, or what, I was.

I was still working in the quarry and had joined a new band. It was what I can only describe as a mid-Atlantic country rock band, playing a mixture of country rock and pop music from both sides of the Atlantic with a little bit of Scottish music thrown in. The band was called Merlin’s Dream, and it was one of the most successful bands I had played in – both creatively and financially. We were making a bundle and securing so many bookings that it was putting a strain on other aspects of my life, such as my day job and my relationship with Anne – as well as, of course, with the other woman in my life, now named Julie. The gigs were coming in so fast that we decided to embark on a world tour – although our world only extended from Inverness in the north to Dumfries in the south! But it felt like the world to us; we played to many nationalities: Scandinavian oil workers in the north east, American navy personnel at the Clyde Naval bases, and European forces personnel at the NATO base at Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre, as well as playing the working men’s clubs in towns all over Scotland.

The training I had received in the early days when I played in the Scottish dance band was now paying off – I was a good musician and knew how to perform on stage, and I also knew how to socialize after the gigs. All those stories about sex, drugs and rock and roll are definitely true! For myself, I can say truthfully that I didn’t do the sex or the drugs, but I did do a lot of drinking and got into all kinds of crazy carryings on – I was a drummer, after all. I think there’s a wee bit of Keith Moon in many drummers – there certainly was in me at the time.

I didn’t do the sex because my confusion over my gender just wouldn’t let me. If I did hook up with a girl I would get to the point of jumping into bed with her and then suddenly think, this is not right. It wasn’t right because in my head I saw myself as being the same as her, and I just couldn’t go through with it, not ever. The lads in the band would say to me, ‘You had it handed to you on a plate, what’s wrong with you?’ and I would make the excuse that I was being loyal to my girlfriend. In a way I was – and they would all laugh at me. I think they would probably have laughed a lot louder had they known the real reason for my celibacy. Although I had started a relationship with Anne for all the right reasons, at a period when my male side was more dominant than my female side, I always found our sexual relationship very difficult and would make up all sorts of excuses to avoid sex. I did make a few half-hearted attempts, especially in the early days, but I felt it was just wrong, as even then I saw the real me as a heterosexual female. Consequently, Anne was starved of sex for most of the time that we were together.

I didn’t do drugs either, although only after giving it a go; being in the band I was expected to try it. It was nothing heavy – the others were smoking grass, so I tried it in the van on the way to a gig in Prestwick one day. It really didn’t do much for me and I was never tempted to try it again. The lads laughed at me again, but I just said, ‘I’ll stick to the booze – that does plenty for me.’

When they smoked the stuff they would giggle like schoolchildren in the back of the van. They would even smoke during our breaks in the middle of gigs – they said it made them play better; I wasn’t so sure about that. And of course this would continue wherever we were staying for the night. The guys used to do this weird thing that they called a nose blast – one of them would inhale a huge amount from a joint, and then exhale up the nose of the guy next to him. I had never seen anything like it in my life. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now – the whole drugs thing will forever be a mystery to me.

I should make it clear that the lads in the band weren’t a load of junkies – they all had day jobs and families, and just took drugs recreationally. I don’t even think they indulged during the week, and I suppose that’s why they went a bit mad on the weekends when we were away with the band. I still don’t get it though.

What with work, the band, a girlfriend and living this double life where I had to get my fix of being female, I had loads of friends and acquaintances. But apart from my girlfriend, I didn’t really have a friend I could share my secret with at this point. I wasn’t interested in football and the like and often didn’t join my mates so eventually they involved me less and less in their activities. This made me stronger and much more determined to listen to what my mind was telling me and to persevere with what I wanted to do, not what others thought I should do. My determination increased in leaps and bounds, along with my belief in who and what I was, and for the very first time I was starting to look at my dilemma in a subtly different way. I was tentatively beginning to think I had the wrong body, as it was in total conflict with what was going through my mind. Externally I was a man, but everything inside me was saying woman.

My frequent trips, as Julie, to the cities in the central belt of Scotland continued and were great; I could walk along a busy high street or into a big shopping mall with thousands of people and just be anonymous – one of the crowd, shopping like any other female. All I wanted to be was an ordinary woman, nothing fancy, nothing sexy, I just wanted to fit in.

It was during such a trip, in one of the various nightspots that I used to go to in Edinburgh as Julie, that I would meet someone who would again change my life significantly. On this particular night I was in a bar down near Leith docks, dressed as Julie of course, and I was sitting near a table of about five or six people. Seeing I was on my own, they asked me if I’d like to join them. I hesitantly said yes, in my best female voice, and duly joined them. Over the course of the evening we hit it off and all bought each other drinks. I ended up getting on very well with one girl in particular, called Sue.

As the night went on she snuggled up to me and said quietly, ‘Are you a tranny?’

I said, ‘Tranny, what’s that?’

She then repeated the question, saying, ‘Are you a transvestite?’

I hesitated slightly and said nervously, ‘Oh, yes, I suppose I am’, and thought to myself, oh well, that will be the end of this friendship then.

Far from it – from that moment on she took me under her wing. We became close friends and would meet up every time Julie went to Edinburgh. Sue taught me much about the ways of being a modern city chick. It was a very exciting time and made me feel so confident. Over the next few years we became ever closer girlfriends and I was totally accepted by everyone in Sue’s circle of friends. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was to leave me a wonderful life-changing legacy many years later, in early 2004.