Girl One

I was sixteen when I meet my first girlfriend. Sixteen years old and incredibly annoying. I Knew Myself. I was the working class lesbian who was going to fight against the system, become a lawyer and fight on behalf of the underdog. Whilst the other girls on our dreary Northern council estate were playing truant I won the attendance prize. I was above getting pregnant, stealing cars, smoking pot. I was aiming higher than a council flat and a job in a supermarket. I missed the fact I was luckier than them. I was fortunate enough to have parents who supported me. I was lucky not to be heterosexual, I would never have a boyfriend who pressurised me into sex, no one would ever tell me 'if you loved me you wouldn't want me to use a condom'. I sanctimoniously refused cigarettes and drugs, never got drunk, and gave up shoplifting.

There was one problem, I didn't know any other lesbians. My knowledge of gay culture came from documentaries on Channel Four, from Ellen and Queer as Folk. Every month I would take the two hour bus journey to the next town where there was a shop that sold a lesbian magazine. I would lock myself in my room, studying every word. I read The Well of Loneliness and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit.

Girl One was a friend of a friend who lived in the flats down the road, a living example of the mess I could make of my life if I wasn't careful. Left school at fifteen, in with the wrong crowd at 16, pregnant at 17, married at 19, divorced by 30. I was her baby-sitter.

Of course she'd heard the rumour about my sexuality; nearly everyone had. I'd come out at school, the school her son went to, I thought it was important to give younger gay teenagers role models¹.

One day, after the children had gone to bed, she made me a cup of coffee and asked if it was true. I nervously told her it was true. The books had told me that coming out would lead to prejudice and discrimination: I was expecting to be sacked.

Instead she asked questions. How did I know? Had I got a girlfriend? Did I know any other lesbians? Then she told me that she thought she fancied women as well.

We set out on a Hunt together, a Hunt For Other Lesbians. A rather fruitless Hunt. We lived less than a hours drive from Manchester, but without the money or transport to get there, we could have been a million miles away. We knew there were women out there but in these pre-internet days we had no means of meeting them. We scoured the personal ads in lesbian magazines for women near us, she even placed an ad of her own, but with no response.

Inevitably, we ended up in each others arms.

As I walked home the next day my world fell apart. It was all a lie. I wasn't the Working Class Lesbian Hero any more. I wasn't really working class, my parents were part of the middle class who had hit hard times and ended up on a council estate as a result of the repossessions of the early nineties. I wasn't a hero, I was just good at Maths. And I wasn't entirely sure I was a lesbian either. There was something wrong with the sex. Something missing.

'Don't be such a silly girl' I told myself firmly 'of course you're a lesbian, you find women attractive don't you? and you're a woman aren't you?

But I wasn't altogether sure of that. There was something big that I was avoiding.

I got my three As, went to St Hugh's College, Oxford, got my picture in the local paper. Joined the Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Society, made some gay friends, cut my hair and brought some Doctor Marten boots.

Girl Two

I was nineteen when I meet Girl Two, I was a second year Law student at St Hugh's, she was a slender bisexual vegetarian from St Hilda's. She studied environmental science and wore long tie died skirts. We fancied each other as soon as we meet. Three months later we kissed.

Within weeks we fell into the routine of a university relationship. Nights in our rooms with cheap chardonnay, and drinking together in the College Bars. If the sixteen-year-old me could have know that one day I would not only be studying at Oxford, but would have a girlfriend, I would have thought that I would have been ecstatically happy. Now I had both and there was still a nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right.

We spent nearly every night together, but rarely did more than cuddle, I froze whenever she tried to touch me. On New Year's Eve after alcohol had prompted us to try 'this sex thing' one more time, only leading to one more failure, she started to cry, and demanded to know what was wrong.

Against my better judgement, expecting to be thrown out of bed, I managed to whisper the truth.

I think I'm a man. I mean I know I'm not. But I want to be one.

She hugged me, and told me it was all right. She was bisexual after all, and a transsexual was the perfect solution for her. I was ecstatic, through some miracle I'd found the only girl in the world who would be ok with me the way I wanted to be.

The next day² I went to see my GP. Whilst I was on the waiting list to see someone on the NHS I got impatient, I found a psychiatrist who had a reputation for signing anyone off.

Girl Two and I went down to London to see him. I was worried, he would say no. I was only nineteen, you were meant to be twenty one, I hadn't even lived as a man at all. I wasn't sure how I could with my curves. Nevertheless he wrote the letter anyway, in exchange for £150 he started me on hormones and referred me to a plastic surgeon.

As there was hardly going to be Another One, she must be The One, so I fell in love with her. We began to plan our futures, our children's names, where we wanted to live, the car we wanted to buy together.

She dumped me. I was never sure why. Perhaps she was scared of commitment. Perhaps it was because the sex was still dreadful.

I'd expecting life as a heterosexual man with a fiancée, instead I got life as a single transsexual.

Interlude

I had the operation, took the hormones, threw a large party to say good bye to my breasts. Shaving my face went from being a novelty to a daily chore, I learnt to stand with my shoulders back and legs apart. I got so used to being called 'sir' by shop assistants that it stopped being a novelty. I got friends who could never imagine that I was ever female.

Being male was good, I felt myself for the first time. At ease socially. I could stop trying to be someone else, stop pretending.

But no more girls. I didn't know where to find them. Once I looked male I didn't get chatted up by women in gay clubs. I was too scared to talk to girls in straight clubs. And what was the point? They would only run once they knew. After two years it was a distant memory. I began to think of sex in the same way I thought of cheap cider, something I tried in my teens, but would never have again.

Girl Three.

When I met girl Three I was a twenty two year old man doing a legal practice course, memories of another existence rapidly fading into the background. I was running the university flying club, trying to get a pilot's license. Now I was less miserable, law was more interesting, so I worked harder, cared more. I was doing what I'd always wanted to do with my life.

I didn't go on the internet to look for sex. At least I didn't go onto that particular website to look for sex. I didn't even go there to look for friends. I was there to write. Girl Three was an old-timer, who wrote elegantly and eloquently. Gradually a friendship built up, via message boards and instant messenger. When I threw a party I asked her to join us. My flatmate was shocked that I'd asked someone to come to our party without knowing her age or seeing a photo. I knew she was female, but not much else, I suspected from the tone of her postings she was in her early thirties. I had no idea what she looked like. It didn't matter, she was a friend and that was that.

We all got on splendidly. My flatmate thought she was marvellous and felt rather guilty for thinking she would be 'an internet weirdo'. We started to see each other more often, she took myself and my flatmate for walks in the countryside, whilst we took her to our favourite gay clubs. To outsiders we must have made an unlikely threesome, a gay musician, a transsexual lawyer, both in our early twenties, and a property developer of a certain age. It worked. We debated politics, classics, philosophy, gigs we had been to or wanted to go to, and the nature of good wine.

Once, after we returned from a yomp around the Chilterns, I confided in my flatmate, 'I think I'm starting to find her attractive'. He gave me a look. 'But she's straight! You're not going to ruin things by asking her out or any thing silly are you?'. I laughed, and told him that I wouldn't dream of it, and put the entire matter to the back of my mind.

Another occasion, months later, he couldn't make a planned rendezvous, I ended up visiting her by myself.

We ended up in bed.

This time was different. This time was, well, fun.

As we lay there afterwards, I knew there would a Girl Four and probably a Girl Five and Girl Six. I could play this game too.

The experiences and thoughts of 'Girl Three' were written as a partner to this entry and can be found at A3988416.

Related BBC Links

• 
  If you have any wonders, ponders or vague interest in the different ways that sexuality is viewed, check out A543818 for links and explanations to various sexual labels and the ways they have changed throughout history.

• 
  For information specifically about transsexuality, look no further than A830413 which will hopefully answer all your questions.