Alice

INT: Now, if you could just start by just identifying yourself, say where you were born and roughly what…

A: Well, my name’s Alice Denny. I was born in Hertfordshire and moved from Hertfordshire fairly early in adult life, just to get away really from where being nowhere, being in the middle of nowhere, in St Albans, and then I went to university in Devon, fell in love with Devon, thought I’d never leave, but then came to Sussex to work, for a job, to work in Hellingly actually.

INT: What were you working at?

A: Psychiatric nurse, and I absolutely fell in love with Sussex and then about six years ago, I came to Brighton. And the reason we came to Sussex was, because I’ve got a family we had a little girl and I thought it would be a great place to bring her up, I’ve brought up a family. I’ve always known about this ache in me, yearning, but when I was younger there wasn’t a common vernacular of transgender and I didn’t think that what I secretly wanted was in anyway possible, and I found distractions, I found distractions in nursing, I realised the other day that… well, I realised a long while ago really that my nursing was a female distraction, it enabled me to show my female side and it happened accidentally. Having a family was an accident, and I loved that, it helped me distract myself with the feminine side, I think. And then when that started to come to an end that ache became worse and worse, it had been hanging around for a long while, and it got so bad that I was desperate and really desperate, Samaritans desperate and luckily came upon the LGBT switchboard. I then found the Clare Project, then found Brighton, and after about a year of travelling over once or twice a week, I decided to try to move here for a while in order to more easily and more quickly get through with what I then saw was transition.

Yeah, so I came to Brighton, to maintain contact with my friends from the Clare Project and the friends that I had made in Brighton and it was supposed to be a temporary move really, while I got my bearings. And Brighton got under my skin anyway….. as it does. And it’s really only last week, Friday of last week that I finally said I think I’ve completely committed myself to being in Brighton permanently.

INT: Why did it take that long, what…

A: It was just that I’ve still got roots in Hastings, I love Hastings, I’ve got friends in Hastings and although I thought I was trying to find somewhere to live in Brighton, I still held onto that kind of link back there, and I realised… I’ve written a poem recently about, you know, among other things looking back and realised that it wasn’t a good idea to try to revisit the past and remembering what it was like the last time I had to go back to Hastings for just a few months hiatus… that was a really desperate time, almost undid all the good work I’d been doing in Brighton. And it’s not that I can’t live anywhere else, I can’t be anywhere else, I could easily live somewhere else if circumstances were different, If I was offered a job somewhere – not going to happen – or if I moved somewhere with a partner, for example, who needed to move, that would be fine. I’m not scared of being anywhere else, I just feel really comfortable in Brighton, I really, really love my friends in Brighton, they mean more to me than they could imagine, really and…

INT: This, this… the friends you have are they wide-ranging, is it… are there a lot of trans people or…

A: Not many.

INT: No.

A: No, no, a few… there are a few trans people, you know, you just sort of – get to like and just the same as anybody else. It’s not a question of being or feeling that I’m in any sort of ghetto but it’s… Brighton has this sort of inclusive and it gives you encouragement to do things. Brighton’s encouraged me, for example, to perform my poetry rather than just write it and keep it to myself and it gives me avenues for doing the things that I really like doing, spontaneously and not many places can do that, it’s not too big, it’s not anonymous. You walk down the street and people know you – you know that, you’re nodding. [LAUGHS]

INT: Absolutely!

A: And it’s just a really lovely feeling, whereas when I was in Hastings usually the only people that ever collared me and gave me a hug were either my patients or my ex-patients. [LAUGHS]

INT: Why do you think that is? What… it’s only 40 miles away, why is it so different?

A: Well, Hastings is not quite as… Hastings is not quite as openly friendly and demonstratively friendly anyway, but also my circle of friends was relatively small there. It was also partly because I was in another life and I didn’t… I couldn’t, for example, now I have a lot more men friends, male friends – I say “men friends” it sounds as if I’ve gone straight or something – but, you know, I’ve got lots of male friends which I didn’t have before, I found it very hard to relate to men in the way that men do. I had a few really nice friends, but can never quite get into the vibe of being another man with them and I don’t have to do that now.

So, yes, it’s just given me… Brighton’s just given me this whole new outlook on life and I feel it just gives me the chance of expressing the real me. I’ve always felt like this, inside, in fact I’ve been told that when I was very young, this is how I was…

INT: Physically? You looked different?

A: Well, I suppose I looked like a fat baby, I suppose, or a fat kid – and I used to get bullied and stuff for it but…

INT: At school?

A: Yeah… well, yeah, a little bit at school. At school mostly by the headmaster and that’s another story, but in the street, if I was in the street, I’d get bullied, not for being like effeminate or anything to do with being trans, I don’t think, although being a bit of a softy I suppose was… and then I started to get to be not quite a bully but a bit kind of full of – what’s that term – braggadocio…

INT: What, you over-compensated?

A: Yeah, I think I started doing that and then I realised, at one point, that I was kind of following suit, and didn’t feel comfortable with it at all and edited that out of my life really, I hope, I hope mostly.

INT: You did say that the headmaster was unpleasant…

A: Yeah.

INT: … that sounds quite shocking today. Do you think there wasn’t much sympathy for anyone who was different there?

A: I think he didn’t like my exuberance and my, you know, sort of… because I was like that, I can remember now, I was like I am now, I’d sort of jump into things without thinking really, and make a bit of a fool of myself and not worry, but I was like the motor in the class, a motor-mouth as well [LAUGHTER] you know, I’m talking about 7 years old, or 8 years old, and then he arrived, the headmaster changed. The original headmaster was lovely to me, as was one of my teachers, and headmaster… the new headmaster came, seemed to take an instant dislike to me, and I even met some person at a funeral not long ago, who was at school with me, and I didn’t know very… I didn’t recognise them I just recognised their name and he said “Why did that bloke have it in for you so much? What was it you did wrong?” And I said, “I don’t know, what, did you notice?” He said, “Well, he was always picking on you.” Everyone in the school knew it, but I didn’t know, I thought it was just this open warfare in the end between us. And, and that inhibited me a lot, and it changed my life a lot.

INT: Do you think at that time…

A: I’ll never forgive him for that.

INT: No, no…

A: He’s dead now… I’ll dance on his grave one day, when I find it. [LAUGHTER]

INT: Do you think it, at that time, 7 or 8, you realised anything about your trans self?

A: No, not really, just that I liked… originally I just really liked being with girls, but it wasn’t like that thing that a lot of people say, there weren’t a lot… it wasn’t as if it made a lot of difference until… to me it was just I didn’t want to grow up, because to me the option of growing up was to be a man and that’s what I didn’t want and being a kid was okay, because it’s kind of sexless, you know, It’s not that I didn’t do boys games and stuff, and I wasn’t sort of like a typical, what people seem to describe as a transgender history. I was just always, always, always uncomfortable with myself, always looking a girls, thinking that I wanted to really be like them really wanted to be them, feeling envious of them, feeling envious of like girls that I saw together walking along, chatting, in the way that girls do and boys have to stop doing when they get older. And so… and that just got worse and worse and worse throughout my…

INT: Primary school time.

A: Well, primary school time and then it was always… it was just always there. You distract… I think people… you distract yourself. It’s not like for every transgender person I think, I hope that not every single minute of every day is awful, but you lie awake in bed at night, thinking about women and really wanting to be, you know, even when you get to the point of being aroused by them, wanting to be them as well, and emulating them. I remember I used to emulate the first… I mean the first girl that I ever really… I was 3 years old, it was my cousin, and I told her a few months ago that she bent my finger back because I tried to kiss her, but I really wanted to be her, I mean I just really adored her and she didn’t know that and my first girlfriend at school, at junior school I just really… I learnt to swim because she could swim, she was like the best swimmer in her year and I became determined to learn to swim, because she could swim.

INT: And then, when you went to second…

A: And she broke my heart as well.

INT: Ooooh!

A: [LAUGHS]

INT: When you went to secondary school, did things change, did… do you remember feeling more positive about wanting yourself to join in with what women were doing, or be more feminine yourself?

A: No, no I just, you know, being at… strange because I just didn’t, didn’t like it much at all ever. I quite… I went through periods of doing the same as I did at junior school, which was bunking off, I mean these days my parents would have had (like) school people round or social services, whoever they send round because there were times when I just didn’t, I just bunked off and just left and walked off. It wasn’t so bad at secondary school, but… and I did okay, I did okay with, you know, the first sort of things, but not by A-Levels, I was kind of… I was just lost really, wandering around just investing my energies in football – my only pleasure was… it became football and that was because one day a new sports teacher took a liking to me and said, “Oh you’re good at this, aren’t you? Do you want to be in the football team?” And I’d only played on and off in the football team, because I wasn’t like a popular, like a sporty boy at the time or anything like that, and then I got to be in the school football team and it was like I was getting some ratification from that and some praise and was able to be quite good at something and it was the only thing I used to sort of think sometimes, “I’m not going to school today, oh no it’s football practice, I’ll go to football practice.” and just went on like that… football actually kept me at school. I’m sure.

And then when I left school and meandered…

INT: But you went to university?

A: Not, straight away, no, I just was not doing anything and then got a part time job in a hospital, a psychiatric hospital, while I was there I kind of got on really well with the patients and strangely the one I remember is female patients who I could relate to and felt an empathy with. I remember being up… I was supposed to be changing a light bulb [LAUGHS] and this woman, in a – and it was a big psychiatric ward then, a big hospital – who was, I don’t know what, what sort of interest she had in me but she was at the bottom of this bloody stepladder [LAUGHS] this old boy was trying to hold steady but she was at the bottom of it, shaking it, trying to get me to talk to her or something, because she was distressed about something. But I got, I got hooked on that and then in a way, just that feeling that there were people that needed help and the opportunity came up to be a student nurse, but it was a lot easier then, because I didn’t have the A-Levels and all that stuff, but really quite keen to have me and so I got into nursing and I just thought “I’ll do this for three months” and I’m going to do it for one week longer than the longest job that I ever had so far, so I’ll do it for 13 weeks. But by the time I’d been there two weeks, I knew I wasn’t going to go, because although it was, it was horrible, it was full of smells and poo and piss and degradation really, you could do something to ease that and while I was going to my first ward ever, which was a horrible cesspit of a place really, in retrospect, but, you know, that’s no disrespect to the nursing staff, who were trying, trying to do their best, with 50 patients, the nursing officer said to me “Look, nurse, just… you’re going to go… this is your first ward, don’t forget human dignity,” and that has stuck with me throughout everything in my life now.

INT: Let’s go just back again, what were we talking about there? You starting…

A: It was getting into nursing.

INT: Yes, starting the nursing.

A: And it was like that gave me an opportunity of… caring and being, you know – I kind of felt an affinity with it…

INT: How old were you then?

A: I was – just left school so I was about 18 coming up to 19, I think and my, my… I think my claim to fame is that I was about the youngest person to qualify aged 21 or 22 then – and the youngest person to be given the Senior Nurses post [LAUGHS] I did love it, although it sort of drove me bonkers in the end, but… so I stuck with that, but then while I was doing that I also went to college in the evenings, to do my A-Levels and got hooked on sociology, so I applied to university to do sociology, went and did that, knowing I was going to come back to nursing though, I didn’t want to do anything else, because originally I’d applied for psychology. I thought nursing wasn’t – it didn’t have the kudos of a clinical psychologist, so I was going to be a psychologist but I swapped to sociology before I went because I thought that had a lot more to say about the human condition, which I’m still convinced it does and I always knew I was going to come back to nursing, that I wasn’t going to do anything else. I couldn’t wait. But in the meantime, we’d had a baby and that was another – for me – a female distraction, in fact I did actually want to not go back to work, I wanted my wife to carry on teaching and for me to stay at home and look after my daughter. I’d much… I did that for a few months during the summer, while she was working, and I loved doing it, I loved being… I could see myself as a house mum, being a kept woman. I’d still like to be a kept woman. [LAUGHS]

INT: Did your partner understand that it was how you felt? Were you able to explain this?

A: No, I said, I said “You stay at work and I’ll…” because I couldn’t get a job at first, in Devon. I tried to get a job, went through the motions because that was what you were supposed to do. There weren’t any jobs going at the time, I said, “Well, look, you’ve got a job, it’s well paid, we can stay here.” We loved being in Devon. And quite understandably she wasn’t having that. So I got a job in, eventually, in Sussex and for two years really had a hankering to go back to Devon, I really felt like that and then… but by then I’d just fallen in love – and she’d fallen in love with Sussex – it seemed a nice place to bring our kids up. So… being a parent, as opposed to a father, and being a nurse was some sort of compensation I think. So, I just had this… just kind of having these… well, I thought they were kind of… well, almost sordid fantasies about being a woman. And like I said to someone the other day, I think, that I used to go, you know, it got to a point at one point I had this big cyst in my neck and I used to have to go into the… like the tunnel to be scanned and I used to dream of just going into the tunnel and coming out as Alice at the other end. I just thought it would be so, you know…

INT: Were you able to communicate this in any way with anyone?

A: No, I tried various times. My ex-wife says she, she didn’t even know and I kept giving her signs like I said “I’m sure you knew when I was… when you saw that I’d been putting your make-up on and when I used to talk to you about how I wanted to look, and when I used to come back having had my haircut in a really feminine style.” I thought everyone knew and I used to buy clothes than were sort of had a slightly feminine thing, I was kind of, I think I was doing that thing, in fact I’m pretty sure, in fact I know I was doing that thing of hoping someone would say something to me or see right through me. Even later on, I remember my sister-in-law saying to me in Marks and Spencer’s, I was supposed to be looking for some clothes for a wedding, a family wedding or something and she was helping me choose something and we were going around and she said, “Oh, well, I’m doing this, you could look at the ladies underwear. I know you want to,” which is… it was true, I did, but not for the reason… as it turns out I thought “she knows!” because she’s always… she is very perceptive, my sister-in-law, that one. I thought “she knows! Because I do”, you know, but not because I’m like doing the kind of getting a stiffie that blokes do when they look at ladies underwear, I was thinking “Oh, I’d just like to wear those.” [LAUGHS]

INT: But, but they didn’t guess, they hadn’t….

A: No one did. No one did, and I said to my brother, you know, when I came out to him eventually, I said “But you knew, you – of course you knew, you always knew that, because I used to think I was weird, you knew I was weird”, I used to think of myself – and I know it’s very derogatory and I don’t want to be abusive to anyone else – but that’s how I thought of myself, I felt almost dirty and small and I had to keep it a secret and it was some sort of aberration, I couldn’t tell anyone. It was never going to happen and I was going to die wrong and then…

INT: Do you think this was because people really just didn’t even know anything about it, they just couldn’t, couldn’t imagine it? I mean at the time gayness was just about becoming sort of an accepted topic of understanding and there were programmes on it, and journalism articles…

A: I used to wish I was gay.

INT: … but there was nothing about… yes.

A: I’ve said before to people, lots of times, I used to wish I was gay, I used to think, you know, I just – there’s something I’m not – I don’t know what it is but it feels like I’m gay, but I’m not and then I used to be quite envious of gay men and androgynous men as well, I mean David Bowie was a kind of a little hint, but it wasn’t quite me, and most of the things that have helped other people, I kind of knew it wasn’t me to be what people used to call effeminate, you know, I know… I wanted to feel it inside more than outside. And yeah, so…

INT: That was the seventies really was it?

A: That would have been the seventies, I suppose.

INT: And I suppose in the eighties, when the New Romantic movement came along, that was another way in which…

A: Didn’t like that, I didn’t like that at all, it just seemed like caricature to me, just going… it’s very complicated really, I just used to dream of being, you know – I wanted to be me, you know, I’m kind of really happy being me now. This is what I think I felt I wanted to be but didn’t know. It feels like this is it. This is okay, with all my warts and faults and things that I have to carry on worrying about, just like all other women I suppose, this is how I was meant to be, and I think, I really actually think, if I could not have done any sort of transitioning and come out safely, when I was younger – I couldn’t have done, I’d have been wired up to the mains and zapped – that is what would have happened. I know, because I actually ended up doing it [ECT] … I know what the current thinking was at the time, and unless you were a very, very strong person, which I wasn’t – there were lots of strong people, really brave people that we owe loads to who came out and I didn’t really know about at all…

INT: Who are you thinking of?

A: I’m thinking of, you know, icons of, you know, transgender past…

INT: April Ashley?

A: Yeah, and I vaguely, vaguely knew about April Ashley, and it was a bit like there… people would refer to a bloke having changed into a woman. Although I ached for it, I remember reading when I was a kid about somebody who had been a big sports star in America who had decided to be a woman, that’s how it was sort of put, and feeling really, really envious and thinking but that… I can’t do that, how can I do that, I’m not in America, I’m not famous, I’m not, you know, how… you know, I’m just little and nobody and…

INT: At what point did you start to take steps which actually did move you towards what you really wanted to do?

A: Well, what happened… it was weird really. There was a programme on the telly… it was getting really bad, I was really depressed, more and more depressed and there was a programme on the telly about Paddington Green, and there was a girl on there called Jackie, who I had a huge empathy with and I found afterwards, lots of other people, people in the general population had a great empathy and sympathy for, and at the same time, programmes I think a bit like 10 Years Younger came out where there was something about you could get rid of facial hair – that was a big thing. I had thought “I’m never going to succeed – you know, if I do anything, I’d be a bearded woman and… that’s not what I want… I’ll feel wrong.” But then they showed this laser treatment thing and I thought “Oh, maybe…” it was just these little chinks of hopes that you could do something about yourself. 10 Years Younger and those other sort of programmes are about being able to so something, you know, about things that you don’t… you know, you can’t stand about yourself.

So, I started going to get laser treatment for my facial hair, then there was a big hiatus when my ex got ill, so I looked after her for a long while and I had to hide it all again, so I couldn’t go… and then it got too much and I did go and carry on with the treatment, not that it bloody worked. I thought it was working, and I just got more and more desperate because I wasn’t able to move and luckily the internet, that’s the other thing, the internet you can look on the internet and you find out there’s such things as people who are transgender and you find that there are organisations, I tried several who were useless, Beaumont Society – useless…

INT: Did you travel to London to go…

A: No, I tried phoning up people and I tried the internet, well, I’m not very good on the internet even now, everyone knows that, bog things up, but eventually I got the phone number of the Switchboard in Brighton, it was the only place… and that’s how I end up in Brighton really. Switchboard, Clare Project, coming over to that…

INT: Were you there in the early days of the Clare Project?

A: I don’t know… not really, I think it had been going about – at the church – probably a couple of years at the church by the time I’d got there, I think…

INT: I just wondered, not particularly on with the Clare Project, but other things in Brighton, whether you sense a change between when you first arrived and the way it’s run or it feels or the sort of attitudes you get among people you meet.

A: I think people have always been okay, but slightly guarded, I think, but that might have been just me. I talked before about the day that I actually finally decided that, whatever I was, I was just going to present myself as Alice and be Alice and live the way I felt inside, honestly. And I think then there was some quite guarded looks from people but not often hostile and the hostile looks have more or less stopped I think, not that I would notice them anyway, now. But…

INT: But among the people you meet, who are trans, do you think there is any change in their outlook or attitude from when you first arrived?

A: I think people are more likely to accept… I think more quickly accept themselves as normal. This IS normal, it is okay. I hope so anyway. Because those questions are still going on. I was telling you earlier about the poem, you know, about normality and about the questions that you know people are going to ask you or they either do ask you or they’re asking themselves and it’s about whether they’re just going to accept you as Alice and not as some facsimile of an Alice. And I don’t… I try and not to trouble myself with that thought too much, because if I do, in terms of some people, it’s too painful, even now. But I think people realise that there are a lot of us about really and not only is society able- this society – able to sort tolerate us – which is a horrible sort of thing, or even accept us, but that we actually add to the community. We actually… I just heard someone saying the other day – it was no-one to do with the trans community – “Trans Pride is just the best, best thing of the year in Brighton.”

INT: That’s a great compliment.

A: Yeah. And I, I just… and it was just I got into a conversation where Trans Pride came up.

INT: Do you think it’s true that people do tend to think of trans people as all sort of homogeneous, they’re all the same, but there’s an enormous range of ways of having got to the point where, you know, you do say your trans, and even what trans means to people?

A: Yes, and that, that can be a big, a big problem for some people, including me, because, you know I feel my personal security is where I am as a woman, which is nothing to do with being trans any more, and yet, and yet I wouldn’t want to deny my history, if you like, or my condition, you know – not condition – my status of being a trans woman and feeling… I mean it’s not an achievement. It’s not something you wish on someone, it’s not something that you… that has any fringe benefits, it’s not something you’d wish on your own kids. But it’s something that you can now say “Hey, it’s not too bad if it is one of my kids, and their life can be enormously rewarding, more rewarding than if they were to stay like Alice was for all those years, locked inside herself.” And that’s not to say that all that life to do with nursing, being a partner to someone – in my case, a husband – and being… having children, which allow you to love and express yourself, that that isn’t the most enormously satisfying and fulfilling life. Just as, you know, we wouldn’t wish that away for anyone. But I’m talking about the private moments of self worth.

I actually wrote to my sister the other day, trying to explain some things to her and [LAUGHS] – the tape can’t see that.

INT: Just as well.

A: And I did say… I said to her that I was kind of, for the first time in my life, I was enjoying the feeling of being liked and being able to say to myself and say to her, I am a likeable person. I never, ever thought I… I just felt “I always have to prove that all the time, to do things for people, I have to, to be liked,” you know. But the fact is that I now like myself and that’s the difference. Probably, probably the main, the main difference with me now that… so, that’s how I got to be in Brighton, it helped me get to that point and whatever happens now, I’ve had two years of – and it’s not just two years – but just over two years of exquisite joy in being me. And it feels wrong to say it’s two years, because it started… it probably started about five years ago, when the shackles of self-doubt and embarrassment fell away.

INT: Why?

A: I think mainly because… well there’s a lot to do with the sort of support and encouragement I had from people and friends, and not just trans friends by any means, really lovely people, and they’ll know who they are, but it was that thing of just saying “Look, I know I’m not perfect, I’m not where I want to be in all sorts of way, but I’m not going to delay my life any longer. I am just going to, as best I can, be the best Alice I can be, that’s all I can do” and that’s all I’m still doing, is being the best Alice that I can be. And that was just a really, you know, such a relief.

INT: Do you think in the end family and friends respect that?

A: Eventually, older friends, past friends and family, some do, some still have some difficulties, some still struggling, but I think they kind of respect the fact – I hope they do anyway – they seem to – of me being able to say that this is me, I’m not making concessions about being me, you know, I can put up with… I was talking about this yesterday, I can accept when someone makes an odd slip in mis-gendering me, it hurts, I have to tell people, it bloody hurts and I bite my tongue, and blink my eyes to stop the tears coming out but I accept it’s a mistake, but don’t make it that often, please. I accept that. But, you know, some people just make a thing of “Oh I can’t… I can’t get used to this” you know. “Yes, you can. Yes you can get used to this”.

INT: “Just try”.

A: Yeah. [LAUGHS] And, and so I think there’s a bit of that with some members of the public and maybe family too. I had some lovely reaction from family that I didn’t really expect to have such a positive, loving reaction from. People who just said – and friends, you know, really the kind of people I thought were real dyed-in-the-wool blokey blokes – like in Australia, I thought I’d get “Oh Gees……you’re gonna be Sheila?” you know… that was in my imagination. But I just got this most loving, warm, accepting…

INT: Was there an intake of breath first and then “Okay…”

A: I don’t know because it happened on… most of it happened on… by post or by text and emails and stuff. But I got lovely heartfelt letters from people and from cousins as well, because I had to come out by letter to some people, just because of necessity really.

INT: In the past few years you’ve become a poet and a performer…

A: The performer more… yeah, the poet… poetry was kind of there but the performing bit has…

INT: Has that made a difference to your life?

A: Yeah, a big one. A big…

INT: And has it allowed you to express things about, you know, what trans people go through and what you feel personally about life? You know, has it been a positive thing?

A: Really positive, personally in terms of my own self esteem and, because, if you say something it makes it more real to you. You can go round with a feeling about – it doesn’t have to be anything to do with being trans, it could be about being yourself, what’s in your heart, what you feel about some problem. The moment you speak it, it becomes more concrete and more tangible and real, and you own it more and I found that. But I thought, well, just writing poetry’s enough. I can just every now and again do a few lines when I feel like it. It’s stopped being like that now, it’s become a real kind of, almost a demon, really, I wrote a poem actually called “I Blame Dean Atta For This” and it was him. I Blame Dean Atta for This, I Blame Deanna and Spliff. I blame Kate Tempest – because they just kind of turned me onto thinking that performing poems, performing words is something different and it’s really reaching out to people and saying “Hey, look this is Alice, you know, this is me, this is…”

INT: Do you think you would have done it in the past, a long time ago, or would it have been… would you have been rather afraid of getting up and…?

A: No, I’ve said to people before, the only time I really performed any poetry was quite a long while again in Hastings, and I was in something called an international poetry weekend, festival, it was really good actually. And I took some poems to the first day of it and they let me read some, and I thought “I’ve never done this before, but I’ll do this”, and it was okay, they went down quite well. They were sort of a little bit like the sort of stuff I do now, sort of slightly political some of them and emotional stuff and the lady who was running it, afterwards, said to me “Oh, that was nice, will you come back tomorrow and do some more?” So I thought, “Oh great, yeah. I’ve been invited back. I was thinking of coming back and just listening.” So anyway I went, and I came the next day and I got to the sort of entrance, the back entrance, I got… I remember getting to the door with my little clutch of poems in my hands, and I just thought “I can’t do this, I can’t do this… that place is full of poets, you know, I can’t do the…” and I went home [LAUGHS] I was so, you see that’s the old scaredy-cat I was, I couldn’t – and I feel like that sometimes now…

INT: Still.

A: But it feels real, it… actually I feel more honest now. I actually do feel it’s okay to stand there because it’s me and there is a difference and I didn’t realise I was speaking out for trans people particularly but I guess just by being there, I am saying I’ve got this. I saw Verity perform at the Komedia in Slam, the Poetry vs MC slam, a few years ago and was enormously in awe of her doing that and I was really warmed by the reaction of the audience to her when one of the rapper people made a caustic remark about her and the whole place, including all the sort of rapper fans and everyone, young people, old people, men, women, gay people, were just heart-warmingly on Verity’s side, that’s a big difference. So, and I’d never, I’d never even thought I’d perform poetry then, really, but it was just that geezer Dean Atta, that said to me “Why don’t you do a couple of your poems here, you know, now and again.”

INT: I’ve noticed that… I’m just going to ask you a question I’ve got from here, so… but struggle seems to be somewhat of a theme in your poetry. Do you recognise that and do you think life is a struggle?

A: It’s not for me, in a way. I mean the whole business of coming out and I suppose, in retrospect… It was bloody painful. It was. I went through days, weeks of agony. I was quite lucky the Clare Project always had a good counsellor there, Lynn Lennox was there before and she spotted what I was going through and was very nurturing and I have a huge amount to thank her for, I wish I knew where she was so I could thank her now. Anyone knows please let me know. [LAUGHS] And, yeah, the… but you kind of forget pain, don’t you? You forget the sort of… no I haven’t forgotten it…

INT: You sort of edit it out.

A: You kind of mute it a bit, but if I talk about it and I have talked about it to people, it is, you know, and it was enormously painful. It’s enormously painful to be among friends and family thinking you’re persona non grata. Knowing that people are whispering about you behind your back; knowing that people’s attitude towards you has changed slightly because you’ve not actually come out, so can they say anything? Knowing that some people possibly mock you or… so that’s why coming out and then thinking, well, go on, go ahead then, do it, you know, but at least it’ll be me you’re mocking.

INT: Do you think there’s, to some extent, a fear that that’s going to happen, whereas the truth isn’t quite so bad?

A: Yes. Yeah, the truth, the truth is that most people… I’ve got this faith, I mean it’s human nature, I think the people in Russia are only behaving like arseholes because of what they’re told, their upbringing, I think given the chance of being nice people, they’d find straight away, “Oh I feel much more comfortable with this,” it would be nice. I suppose people get into a groove of being arseholes – shouldn’t swear on the tape should I? – but and there are.. unremittingly bad, but very few… I don’t think kids are born bad, I think they’re born okay, and if they’re treated with love and respect and so on they’ll just get on with it. I was playing football in the park with my grandsons. There was the kid who joined us and was playing. And after a little while, there was me in my summer dress sort of kicking the ball around, charging around the usual, like a big elephant, amongst the kids, and this kid – and I don’t know the gender of the kid – the kid was a really good footballer, about 11, a friend of my grandson, very young, and had a, as it happened, a not very… a kind of androgynous name, one of those sort of non-gender-specific names, said “Excuse me, can I ask you how you know…” and pointed at my grandson and I said “Oh, he’s my grandson.” And the kid went “Oh, okay” and just got on with it. And they, you know, they had some inkling that I was slightly different from their mum, or something, but I think kids are… given their own opportunities, without being pushed by grown ups telling them things, are accepting. I think grown ups allowed to grow up, people who are allowed to grow up are much happier being accepting and just getting on with things.

Yeah, so I think the reality is a lot nicer than the fear and especially the beginning, so, I mean when the pain is real, when other people are hurting too, when loved ones are surprised and confused and hurt and they see your coming out as some sort of reflection on them, that you wished you were a woman way back when, so that means you didn’t actually want to have me, or, if you’ve got a partner, or an ex-partner, does that make (them) a sort of surrogate lesbian and, you know, it’s very difficult for people to get whether you really loved them and of course you did. You loved them but maybe more completely because you loved them and you wanted to be them as well, you wanted to in that kind of complete – I’m talking complete garbage now, but it’s so…

INT: No, I can see this identification with – over-identification really with something that’s not yours, or it was yours…

A: Well, no, I don’t know if it’s over-identification, it’s just that when I’m… I was attracted to a woman and I, you know, and even now, I’m attracted to women, all the time, and there’s an element of admiration and reverence and…

INT: I’m not sure whether that’s very comforting…

A: No, there’s…

INT: … to hear that…

A: No, no…

INT: … if you were on the other side.

A: No, well, maybe…. But now I can just have that admiration and reverence, separately from fancying someone. I like them a lot without fancying them and I don’t have to… I don’t feel I want to be them. I didn’t want to be them before, I just wanted to be like them…to just relate to the world in the way that person does.

So, it might not be very comforting to people…

INT: It’s that transitional part that is so difficult, isn’t it? Once you have made the choice and you’ve, you finally sort of gone for what you want then life sort of becomes more clear and easier.

A: Well, it does for me, or it does… but sometimes I wonder if it really does for other people. It seems to, at least they know where they stand, or they know where you stand, so… but it is so complicated, but it’s so rewarding and so vibrant as well and…

INT: Having experienced what you’ve experienced, been through what you’ve been through, for people who are in the position of wondering about their gender identity, what advice would you now give?

A: Don’t listen to anyone’s advice, especially mine! People give you such conflicting advice and sometimes people say things as if they’re in the know, I mean there are some people, quite famous people who have written books and stuff, that I find quite insulting to transgender people and they speak for transgender people and they don’t blooming speak for me and never did. But the advice I would give is be true to yourself as much as you can, as soon as you can and that line – it’s become corny now, I keep using it, but I love it – “Don’t be afraid and don’t be ashamed to make your own world.” One of my big bug-bears is people who feel, like I said before, who lock themselves inside their own little cell of a flat or something, until such time as they feel that they’ve achieved something, some condition, some goal that they can then go out in the world and I don’t really think works like that. One of the things that Lynn helped me discover, was that you do make your own world, you go out and you see people, you speak to them, you get feedback, it helps you develop your own reflexive self. You know, how can you put your make up on if you don’t look in the mirror? How can you know how to be a woman if you don’t speak to the people in the shops and stuff? You know, it’s no good staying at home and putting the clothes on and feeling afraid to show yourself, so…

INT: It’s just an image then, it’s not a person is it?

A: It becomes, that becomes some sort of… perhaps some solace, I don’t know, I’m not speaking for anyone, I’m just trying to be encouraging to people to not be afraid to express yourself, and you find so often the world is far nicer and better. I’ve seen people react, someone’s made a comment about them walking down the street, and they get angry and react to it and I’ve had comments, when I’ve not got angry. I’ve said “Excuse me, did you say something?” and found they’ve said something really, really nice. Like a chap said to me, something to me the other day, sort of sideways, as if he was making – as someone might be making a snidey remark – and I sort of trotted up and caught up with him, and said “Excuse me, I didn’t catch that?” and he said “Oh, I was just saying, I love your shoes” and it was true, he was, and we walked along having a conversation about shoes and he was a lovely man. Now, I could have gone away thinking “Oh, it’s just another one of those…” but I never do now, unless someone’s very, very specifically, obviously making a derogatory remark. I hope I don’t allow myself to go anywhere near becoming the victim because the world doesn’t want me to be a victim either, doesn’t want anyone to be a victim.

INT: Do you think trans people are more prone to feel, to fear that they… or just to have the idea that they are victims and therefore be over-sensitive and look…

A: Possibly, but then I can’t speak for everyone, it’s just… I mean I don’t, I don’t even know how I react to people, and sometimes I think too strong a reaction creates the reality rather than saying… even if someone is unpleasant, saying “Why do you think that? What makes you, you know, what makes you say that?” And…

INT: We’ve got roughly five minutes left, so we can, we can just break… we can just talk… well, we can just talk about anything we like now, because I think we’ve done quite a comprehensive… we’ve covered a lot of topics. Is there anything you feel that you’d like to say that we haven’t touched on?

A: Yes, I think, just from a personal point of view – and I think it’s from other people as well. What transition hasn’t prepared me for – and it’s not necessarily a bad thing and I think other people might be prepared – is that it doesn’t prepare you for quite a lot of things that you’re going to have to adjust to pretty quickly. And some people seem to get on really well with it, so I’m sure (for them) it might just happen naturally. But the confusion of relationships, the confusion of how your body should work and, you know, it’s a new… like a new body, and it’s got lots of surprises [LAUGHS] And from my point of view if there was – and I’ve still got it – if there’s a kind of an anxiety about relationships, how people actually see me, is this mirror distorted? How do I go about making relationships that are more than friendships or colleagues or whatever? And it’s just… it was just something that I’m going to try to talk about more, because I honestly don’t think that all the counselling that we get, or supposedly get, supposed to get, actually does prepare us for that. It’s more about gate-keeping in the NHS, I think. I haven’t gone through that. And kind of protecting people from making mistakes, you know, medical mistakes which is not going to happen much because I guess if someone wants to convince anyone of anything they can do that, but…

INT: Do you think your perspective on the world has changed from before, before you knew what you wanted to be, but it couldn’t happen, then it became a reality and there is so much to go… you’re in such a fortunate position in a way of having seen things from different perspectives which most people in their lives haven’t had any opportunity to do that, they’re stuck in the one thing from beginning to end and maybe they don’t question it, maybe that’s their lucky thing that they, you know, they’re absolutely sure of who they were from the start to the finish, but do you think it gives some… does it give an advantage? Can you sort of articulate anything about how it… how you’re feeling about the world and the way you see it in relationships compared to before? Sorry, that was a huge question.

A: I don’t know, it’s… I think the world’s different to me now, because it’s kind of… it’s brighter, it’s, to me it’s more vibrant now, it’s less threatening. I wake up every morning glad to be awake and if anyone’s ever – and I think a lot of transgender people spend quite a bit of time, or quite big chunks of their lives waking up wishing they hadn’t woken up, because that can happen. Don’t give into that, I’d say to people, though that’s advice again, but don’t give in to it, because that’s a very, very thin line that we tread and I kind of, you know, I’ve not been shy about saying I… got really near to falling off that edge a couple of times. And what happens if you don’t is pretty wonderful, so I’d say don’t do that. But then that’s… how dare I give people that sort of advice?

INT: Well, what about from your point of view, your experience, do you feel life is now more interesting, more complicated? Has it surprised you?

A: I think it’s more interesting, it’s more interesting. It’s more simple. I feel like… I feel as if I understand people better, I feel as if I understand the world better, I feel I have a bigger – not capacity for warmth and loving people – but more confidence in sharing how I really feel, because I think my feelings, without wanting to stereotype – and I know I’m doing that – … my feelings have always been more feminine than masculine. For example, I saw two guys talking about something across the street, a few weeks ago. And they’re doing that “’Ere, you know… you gonna be at the match on Saturday?” “Yeah, yeah!” “I’ll see you there then,” doing like the kind of matey, “Oh yeah, how’s your father”, “apples and pears” all that stuff, and I… and I looked at them, and I thought “What a weird conversation this is” but they kind of seemed really comfortable with it, and I just thought to myself why, I actually did think “Why, why is it that that I just could never…” I can’t feel comfortable with that. I know I tried to do that sort of stuff at times and I know, I just never… it just didn’t work.

INT: But I think there are some men who wouldn’t feel that way too, don’t you?

A: Of course, oh yeah, and that’s why I said I was stereotyping, because…. they were a very sort of gross stereotype of that sort of behaviour but I’ve kind of learned, actually I don’t know if I learned anything, but I do certainly feel the world is a lovely place. I suppose I always did but I used to… I’ve talked about that before, just feeling totally overwhelmed and swamped and I had no place in it, I was invisible. Now I do feel visible and it’s okay being visible, it’s even okay… no it’s not okay people throwing Coke cans at me, but for me I can live with that.

INT: Yeah, it’s like I know I’ve got my feet on the world now. I was just sort of slightly floating around in it…

A: Yeah.

INT: … and I’m actually planted…

A: Swishing!

INT: … now..

A: Yeah, you know that thing of – have you ever get in the sea when it’s a rough day and all of a sudden you get into a situation where you can’t, you’ve got absolutely no control, the waves are sloshing you around and you feel very thankful that you suddenly find that you’ve got your feet on the beach. The whole of life was a bit like that, now I feel as if I’ve got my feet on the beach, it’s quite a good way of putting it. No….. it’s just the world’s a, you know, seems a vastly different place and I’d never, ever…

I actually said this exact thing to someone yesterday, I never ever really imagined I was going to get here, I had no idea. I had no idea it was going to be this good, no idea that, you know, the feelings would be so rewarding and friendships were going to be so rewarding. I don’t know what I hoped for – it was desperation, really, I was just… I was just gonna accept whatever comes, because “nothing… nothing is worse than this” really, that was what, you know, nothing was worse… but this is more than just better than worse, it’s fantastic, it bloody is glorious. I can’t say that enough! [LAUGHTER]

INT: I think that’s a good place to end.