We shake hands and I say my goodbyes, but before I leave, he turns back and says something to me I don’t quite understand. ‘Thanks for letting me replay the tape,’ he adds.
‘What do you mean exactly?’ I say.
‘I think grief is like a tape that you replay over and over again until it wears itself out,’ Richard says. ‘So thanks for letting me play it one more time.’
Part Nine
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Nursing Hidden Desires
Cross-dressing service. Hello!!! Genuinely and confidentially I have rendered my services for a long period of time so there’s nothing to worry about. I provide my services in a beautiful, clean, safe, very discreet and a perfect and decent location. At your arrival, after a polite interaction in a conducive environment to develop trust and more friendship, you will be allowed to make your choices from any outfits of your desires in varieties. This includes *Material *Colour *Patterns *Sizes *Designs for any kind of clothes – lingerie, shoes and accessories and even fake breasts and hips you have ever dreamed to wear for complete elegance and perfect match. This will be kept safe for your personal use. If you are the type who is bold enough to go out for a girlie timeout with a dress sense that suits you, then I will gladly go out with you for a day or night to catch some fun, but if it’s the other way round, don’t worry, love, I am not leaving you out because you can also have loads of fun to experience indoors too. This ranges from *Having a bath *Face steaming *Cooking together *A glass of wine *Watching a movie together *Manicure and Pedicure *Interacting together in a full-time girlie chat and so much more ... Let me not forget the fact that I also make sales of shoes, clothes, lingerie and all accessories even jewellery – that’s if you are interested. Trust me when I say this is my speciality and it’s officially a place where you can just relax and be what you have always wanted to be (a beautiful classy girl). I also do a full make-up section and you will be so surprised with the changes and looks xxx DoneDeal, September 2018
This ad is evidence of just how much the world of the personals and classified ads has changed since the move online. There isn’t much that can’t be bought or sold now, and the ads reflect this. Perhaps it’s my geographical bias, but when I think of cross-dressing services, Louth isn’t the first area that comes to mind. If you pressed me, I’d probably say that New York, New Orleans or Notting Hill all come ahead of Louth in my imaginary cross-dressing league table.
Yet here I am on a bracing November morning, turning right out of Dundalk station, with Google Maps telling me that the bar I’m headed for is less than a 10-minute walk away. It’s one of the few open at this time of the morning, and doing a brisk trade in full Irish breakfasts and freshly-baked scones. One of the bartenders kindly allows me to sit in a quieter as yet unopened corner of the lounge, and I settle in waiting for Tiffany to arrive.
I’ve asked for a quiet table, because to be totally honest, I have no idea what to expect, who I’m going to meet, or whether or not they will even turn up. When we messaged by phone days earlier, Tiffany seemed open to talking about the kind of service she offers, but she stressed she would have to keep some details confidential, which I expected. As I butter a steaming hot scone, I’m laughing to myself, because almost as if it had been set up, the music system is playing Whitney Houston’s ‘I’m Every Woman’! It’s so loud that I have to ask would they mind turning it down a bit. Hello and welcome to your forties!
At two minutes past our appointed time, into the frame bounds a forty-something Afro-Caribbean woman with long curly hair and a beaming smile. I pour her tea and during our initial small talk she comes across as a warm and compelling advocate for her services. She is someone I could imagine wowing the investors on Dragons’ Den some day as she rolls out her own brand of prosthetic breasts and killer heels for the modern cross-dresser.
I’m not expecting her to tell me that she’s a trained nurse and came to Ireland to work in one of our hospitals. The cross-dressing service emerged quite casually from something she had been doing for friends, in which she would help them apply make-up or get ready for a night out. Sometimes male friends would ask her to apply make-up for them for a bit of fun.
‘I began to realise that for some men though there is this strong desire inside them,’ Tiffany says. ‘It doesn’t usually happen because they want to do it on a whim – it’s because they are born with a strong feminine side, and they have this fantasy in their mind of feeling feminine outfits against their skin. So I noticed this among my group and people I hung out with and I thought to myself, why not see would there be a desire for a service to help men fulfil this side of themselves, outside of my group, if I advertise it?’
Taking the next step, Tiffany put some ads on a few sites online, and says she was taken aback by the level of interest. The service has become so busy in fact that she’s even ditched the nursing career to focus on her cross-dressing business full-time! So how does it all work, I ask.
‘I think you probably need to experience it to fully understand,’ she says. I interject I’d be happy to try it, once she explains to my wife it is solely for research purposes. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she says. ‘Some of the clients have their wives with them. Some wives are very understanding and you can interact with them. Some of course can’t tell each other what they crave sexually or what they fantasise about. Their partners have this hidden secret inside them that they want to share with someone. In some cases, the wives will phone up and say their husband likes women’s clothes and make-up and stuff like that and they want to book a session with me where they can come along if that’s OK. Some of them are there to take photos of their husbands, and they look more like sisters when they are dressed up. For many of them, it is their fantasy and I have seen people of an older age, in their seventies, and this is what they have been dying to bring out of themselves for a long time.’
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, I articulate the fact that I find it incredible that someone who spent years studying for a nursing career, and moved halfway round the world to pursue it in Ireland, was able to leave it behind so soon and find such an unusual alternative, albeit one that is presumably more lucrative. Or is she just putting a positive spin on it for me?
‘I know! It’s almost hard to believe,’ she says. ‘But if we want to talk about the money, I have different packages. They vary from €250, which is the lowest package, to a top package of €2,500. The lowest €250 package has to do with make-up and an outfit. Then there is a €500 package and that includes make-up, five outfits, lots of wigs and different heels. There’s one I have where you can go out to a club or pub or cinema. And then the €2,500 package has to do with unlimited outfits to choose from, overnight stay, any kind of lingerie you want, and I supply prosthetic boobs and fake ass.’
At this point – and maybe I’m being unfair here – but I’m imagining her meeting her grey-haired, golf-playing bank manager when she’s looking for capital investment to scale up the business. And in case anyone gets the wrong idea, Tiffany is quick to dispel the suspicion that the service is a sexual one. It isn’t, and the most clients can expect from her is a friendly hug. So more a cuddly than a happy ending then.
She gives me a rundown of the itinerary of the €2,500 overnight package. When clients arrive first she always starts with a nice chat and then they’ll either cook something, or she will run a bath with lots of bubbles. From there she will offer different skin treatments that help relax the client’s face and neck. She then helps to dress her clients in a fluffy pink dressing gown, which will be hanging in their specially-decorated pink bedroom. This is a room in her home decorated solely for the business. I suppose it’s a good way to make use of the box room.
After she has moisturised her client’s face, she can help them shave if they want and then it’s on to make-up, manicures and a pedicure. She says all of this can be removed afterwards, so that when the client lea
ves there is no trace of the session and their femininity can once again be suppressed if they so wish.
‘The transformation is just temporary,’ she adds. ‘It’s a time when you can forget about everything in your life. And then when you go back home, you can be a man again and leave the women’s clothes behind.’
After the make-up and manicure session is complete, clients choose a wig and pick from a large selection of outfits. Then she and the client and maybe some friends of hers will go for a night out, generally in Dublin, either to a club or the cinema. After that they come back and have a glass of wine together and watch a movie – more Breakfast At Tiffany’s than Predator, I’m guessing. She says they will have ‘girlie chats’ and then get into nice pink pyjamas. Before bed, she will assist them to take off their make-up at their pink dressing table, and then the client will sleep in their pink bedroom.
She’s selling a service which involves a lot of acting and role playing and fantasy, but also a huge amount of trust. She’s such a warm and familiar person, I can see how someone who has long harboured a fantasy like this could be totally at ease in her presence. Until now, Tiffany has been remarkably open about the process and what it entails. It’s only when I ask her what kind of people her clients are, where they work and would she mind giving me a sense of their backgrounds that she retreats a little.
‘Jesus Christ, oh my dear, you would be so surprised to know who they are!’ she says, tantalisingly. ‘The most important people have this fantasy, people you would admire or know publicly have it. I have to keep it very confidential though. It is between me and my clients. But they are top people – married men, business people – it would really surprise you the kind of people who come for it.’
Never one to take no comment for an answer, I try to narrow it down by listing a range of professions, but Tiffany is not falling for it. She won’t break under questioning. ‘All I’ll say is that it’s not the kind of people you might expect,’ she says, cryptically. ‘Some of them told me this has been with them since they were children and they couldn’t tell their parents, and then they held it from their wives. It’s not a sickness or disease or anything like that, which some uneducated people will often say this is. From my experience, it is just something that people are born with and the part that’s not normal is having to keep it secret and hidden from everyone, including those closest to them.
‘So many of them tell me about when they were children and their parents left the house, and they went through their mum’s wardrobe and their sister’s wardrobe and tried to dress up and look in the mirror and feel OK with themselves. For some not telling anyone leads to problems in later life.’
There’s a real sadness to all this, of course. Some of the men who come to Tiffany tell her it’s the most relaxed and sexually liberated they’ve ever felt in their lives and also the most free. The feel of cotton or satin on their skin gives them inner peace when they’re with her, and she has had clients who travel from all over Ireland to use the service. ‘I do meet men who are trapped in a life that is not the one they want,’ she says. ‘Gender lines are so blurred these days. Some of the men will keep their collection of women’s clothes at my house and have stuff they order online sent to me. They pay me a weekly charge to keep the items for them.’
I remark in jest that she’s following the Ryanair model of add-on charges. ‘It’s all part of the service,’ she says. Tiffany sees her role as part therapy, part fantasy enabler. Again, she repeats the point that I wouldn’t believe the kind of people who want to play out this fantasy and that they are from all walks of life.
While she may see herself as providing a therapeutic service, I mention that the men who come to her and don’t tell their wives are surely on one level not being faithful? ‘Coming to me, they know that it’s never going to be physical,’ she says. ‘They know that and no matter what happens or how much they get to play out their fantasy, they have to leave my house and go back to their wife and family. Some can’t talk to their wives; they feel afraid they will be judged and thought less of as a man and so I aid them with that. If I was to give any advice to married couples, especially new ones, it is that they should open up and not be afraid to be totally honest with each other.’
Essentially though, many of the clients are strangers who Tiffany invites into her home the first time she meets them in person. She says her safety is a big concern and she has some male and female friends who help her with the sessions. Sometimes clients don’t want anyone else around and are very shy and she’s happy to facilitate that, but only after she has thoroughly vetted them first. She says she provides the service safe in the knowledge that sex is never on the cards and that’s made clear to her clients from the outset. ‘There’s no sex. I am very strict about that,’ she says. ‘It’s just a place you can be a girl and relax. It doesn’t have to do with any sexual intercourse whatsoever.’
As a former nurse, Tiffany thinks the seeds of her new profession were sown in hospital wards many years earlier. ‘When I was working as a nurse, I met lots of patients and I am very outgoing and chatty,’ she explains. ‘I have a way of allowing people to tell me their secrets. I’m an open person and I can keep a secret even with a gun pointed to my head! I also have a lot of empathy.’
Tiffany loved nursing but when she moved to Ireland, the long hours meant she had little time for herself. She has always had more male than female friends, ever since she was a child, and has always been fascinated by make-up and fashion. So when one male friend asked if she would do his make-up, she didn’t think it hugely out of the ordinary. And from there the business took off. In the four or five years since, it has become her main source of income and she says it is going from strength to strength. She’s not the only one offering this service online I discovered when I did a search, but she does seem the most open and professional.
I’m curious to know whether her parents are supportive of what she does. ‘I was a very honest child, so my parents know what I do,’ she says. ‘I relate to my mother a lot. I told her I do dress and make-up for men. I told them they just like it for fun and they come with their wives also. They support me. They know I am discreet and that my home is discreet also and they see me being happy, which is all they care about.’
When I ask Tiffany about her own life, she gives a loud infectious laugh. ‘I am married to a man,’ she says. ‘An Irish man. My husband loves it. He supports me in everything, and he loves the fact I enjoy what I’m doing and he respects me for that.’
The bar we are in is filling up now and the little section we had to ourselves is busy with a group of elderly women in one corner and some men in hi-vis vests sitting in another. I’ve a train to catch, and she tells me she has a client coming later that afternoon so needs to prepare. We’ve spent maybe an hour and a half in each other’s company and she’s very easy to be around. Before we leave, I ask whether she ever puts her skills to use on her husband.
‘It’s not his thing,’ she says. ‘In general, there are some men who say they are a “man’s man” and you’ll often hear that. I think, though, a real man is not afraid of that side of them, but some I have met are afraid of their partners and of the reaction of their family.’
As we’re walking out, she tells me that having done this for several years now, she believes that some people are destined to never be sexually content in their lives. ‘They end up with depression,’ she says. ‘They are so happy when they are with me. It changes them. They become vibrant and you can almost see the anxiety and worry disappear. You can see lines going away on their faces with each touch of the make-up brush against their skin.’
Cut-Price Counselling
Relationship advice for a low cost. If you have experienced abuse in past or present relationships, I would like to offer insight, advice and a friendly outlet to anyone who has or who may still be suffering. I have an understanding of behavioural psychology and the dynamic
s of an abusive relationship, and so am keen to use my experience to help others. I want to offer my services more as a workshop than an actual job, and so I would accept donations of €10 per hour in order to get things up and running. If you want advice, or even just someone to listen, I am more than happy to hear you. DoneDeal, January 2019
I’m not sure what kind of person I had in mind as the poster of this advert. It’s a pretty unusual one, buried in the Other Services section of DoneDeal, which I glance at from time to time to find items that don’t quite fit anywhere else. Possibly I was thinking that Joan was someone in her late forties; maybe she had been through some difficult personal experiences, and along the way she’d done an evening course in counselling and wanted to gain some practical experience and a few bob.
The ad was curious also because it’s a not-for-profit enterprise. There are hints that the person behind it has experienced some of the issues they expect to deal with. So after a couple of failed attempts and rescheduled meetings, one unusually mild January morning, I found myself sitting in the back corner of a Costa Coffee cafe in a suburb of Cork, waiting for the would-be counsellor.
I’m a bit taken back when a young, waif-like woman with long dark hair and chocolate brown eyes walks in. She’s wearing a leopard print coat, and there’s a hint of Amy Winehouse glamour about her. She bounds over to my corner table with a burst of energy and mischief. Apart from her appearance, the first thing I notice is that she has an incredibly strong Cork accent, and she apologises in advance for the amount of cursing she says she’s likely to do during our chat. She doesn’t drink coffee – it makes her too hyper, she says – and so has tea instead. She is an absolute bundle of energy so I cannot imagine what a hyper version would be like.
The Personals Page 15