A certain sensitivity, a certain ability to live in fantasy games, a softness and gentleness, but beyond those, nothing marked me out than being anything other than the boy I appeared to be. Not very forceful or aggressive and good at picking up social clues and being loving and caring, but, no, pretty much a boy. Mud and dirt covered endlessly playing war games, playing cowboys and Indians, playing chase and tag, playing football and cricket, damning streams to make waterfall, seeing how conquers could be made stronger (vinegar was a help there, or so I think we believed).
It was at the beginning of my teenage years that something must have been detectably different, perhaps some mannerisms, some way of being, something that was not quite male. Then began a time of periods of exclusion, of occasional ridicule for the way I stood or moved, of times of isolation. Not man-becoming enough to be included, but not emerging-gay enough to be shunned, or be be find solace in the company of those who were. Just a little odd, just a puzzle, as if no-one quite knew what box to put me in.
As a young man I was very knotted up and unhappy, socially incompetent, shy , introverted. I did have a few friends, both male and female, and felt very strongly attracted to the female ones, endlessly wanting romance, but, but, far too locked up in my shell to be brave enough to connect – and it was romance, not sex that I wanted most.
Of course I wanted sex, desperately at times – the hormone drive was full on – and it was girls that I craved, but to be bowled over by some young woman who would make me hers, not merely to be laid. Not that I knew that clearly at the time – just confusions, uncertainties, longings. I wanted, more than anything else, to fall in love and to be loved. I wanted endless hours of holding hands under stars, of gazing into eyes, of giggling and chatting and wishing upon the moon.
As some of the more discerning of you may have realised, that pattern is so much more typical of the female than of the male; but as a young man I did not realise that I was a young woman as well, that these longings were hers, that she was shaping how I was as a person as much as the man in me was. That shock of discovery lay not long ahead.
It came in the first weeks of marriage. Oh yes, marriage. An older woman found me and did make me hers. I fell gratefully into her arms and into her life, well, into her life – she was not so interested in my falling into her arms. There was love, and that was what was important to me - to be loved. And there were already children, a ready-made family, and that felt good too. I took to being a parent and a family man quite naturally,as if it had always been meant to be so. I found a very naturally nurturing side in me.
Just with all of this new beginning, came the shock of discovery. In the very first weeks of marriage. My wife was older, experienced - she'd had many lovers. She noted that her new husband was responsive in ways that all of those other men were not. And there were many other men, so she knew that this was odd.
She was curious to know what it was that made her new husband sensitive to being touched in ways that the other man were not. My extreme sensitivity where breasts would be if I were a woman. My ways to being so softly responsive, yieldingly so, and, even more perplexing, my sensitivity to being touched over the pubic mound. When she investigated she found what looked like a small, but real, dip where a virginal entry would be on a woman. This she explored and found it to be an entrance, thickly covered with skin, not like the thin skin of a hyman, thicker, but an entrance none the less. One with those oh so familiar muscles around that she knew so well from herself. One that responded by opening and closing in just the same ways. Her suspicions aroused she set to and touched me as one would touch a woman, letting her fingers play on me just as she let them play on herself. My responses were extreme and exactly those of a woman touched in that way, even to the point of orgasm.
My cries frightened and confused her, so very clearly female - but the reasons for them frightened and confused her even more. Her husband, her man, who was quite clearly a man, and who was soon to be the father of her next child, was also a woman. It made no sense. It was too shocking.
I was absolutely and completely disorientated. My body had for a time become another body, mine, but not as I had ever known it. Responding, feeling, moving, breathing, wanting, experiencing quite differently. My identity was shattered. It lay in pieces and with it lay the illusion that I was normal.
I was not one person, a man as I had thought, as I had been brought up to be, as everyone, even doctors, had counted me as being, but two, interwoven in the same body, sharing the same consciousness, sharing the same flesh and bone. One, the man I thought I was, the other, a woman, hidden, secret, almost undetectable, almost unobservable, but there physically, so very much there.
