Sex and Other Changes

by David Nobbs

  He felt nervous as he phoned the surgery. Now that was ridiculous. He wasn’t even going to tell them what he was phoning about.

  He would have to wait until the following Tuesday to see Doctor Rodgerson. ‘Unless it’s an emergency.’

  ‘Er … no, it’s not an emergency.’

  Doctor Humphries could have seen him that morning, but he didn’t want to see Doctor Humphries, nobody did, which was why he could have seen him that morning. He couldn’t say to Doctor Humphries, face to face, ‘I’m going to change sex.’ It would be hard enough even with Doctor Rodgerson.

  The very thought of changing sex made him want to pee. He hurried to the urinals. The cleaning roster hadn’t been signed since 8.12 and it was seven minutes to ten. Oh God. He was running a slack ship.

  How he hated standing up to pee. He loathed urinals, the sodden yellowing fag ends, the ineffective blocks of disinfectant, the shared expulsion of urine. Sometimes people even spoke to him. One man had actually commented only the other day, ‘This is where the big nobs hang out.’ He’d had to laugh, it was said by a big nob, the Mayor of Throdnall.

  All this would change. Everything would change.

  As he sat in the surgery he grew very nervous. He was tempted to give the whole thing up, just go up to the desk and say, ‘I feel better. I’m going home. Sorry.’ He didn’t, of course. He’d spent nearly forty years in the wrong body. He wasn’t going to give up now. But, oh God, if every stage was going to be as daunting as this …

  Doctor Rodgerson was running late, because he was thorough. Nick was surrounded by coughs and sneezes. By the time he left he’d probably have double pneumonia.

  He tried to concentrate on the magazines. ‘Give the marrow a chance,’ he read, and ‘The Walsall nobody knows’ and ‘ “Why don’t we understand apostrophe’s any more?” asks Bethany Sizewell.’ No use. Even those gems didn’t interest him. Sorry, Bethany.

  A revolting child was crying. An ugly girl was coughing. He hated surgeries. He started on a bridge problem and as he did so he thought, Oh God, I’ll have to transfer to the ladies’ team. He began to get into the problem. He thought it must be a question of ruffing three times in the long trump hand. Suddenly he didn’t want his name to be called just yet.

  ‘Nicholas Divot.’

  He didn’t like hearing his name. He found it faintly ridiculous. He almost said, ‘Yes. Sorry.’ He came from a long line of Yorkshire Divots, which made him sound like mass carelessness on a northern golf course.

  His heart was hammering as he walked towards Doctor Rodgerson’s surgery. This was the beginning.

  ‘Good morning, Nick.’

  ‘Morning, doctor.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Er … I want to change sex. I want to become a woman. I want “the operation”.’

  ‘But …’

  Doctor Rodgerson stopped. He didn’t need to say any more. Nick could have finished several sentences for him. But this is Throdnall. But you’re manager of the Cornucopia Hotel. But I’ve sat opposite you at the Collinsons’ dinner table.

  ‘You’re serious about this, I presume,’ he said. ‘You’ve thought it through.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve thought it through.’

  ‘Well you’re very brave, Nick,’ he said. ‘Very brave.’ He sounded quite casual. He could almost have been discussing wine as he said, ‘I haven’t had a case of this before.’ He was thumbing through a book. ‘I … yes, here we are. Yes, this is a bit beyond my scope, Nick. What I think I have to do now is refer you to a gender identity clinic.’

  He asked a few questions and then he stood up and held out his hand.

  ‘Good luck, Nick,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a long haul, I suspect.’

  They shook hands. Was it Nick’s imagination, or did Doctor Rodgerson almost flinch at the touch of his skin? His expression was disturbingly brave. Was it the tiniest harbinger of what he might have to face?

  He had to leave early for his appointment at the gender identity clinic. Alison made him a cooked breakfast. He managed most of it, though he drew the line at the black pudding. Such a masculine thing.

  She drove him to the station. They felt that he might not be fit to drive, his concentration might lapse, and, besides, he’d always been wimpish about car parks. Alison found spaces. He didn’t.

  He’d got stuff from the library, and he re-read this on the train. He wanted to give a good account of himself.

  He didn’t get a taxi from the station, because he hadn’t the courage to say, ‘Gender identity clinic, please, guv.’ He walked the streets of the big city, anonymous in the crowds, a tiny insignificant ant but also a very important person beginning a huge drama. As he got near he began to feel nervous, and when he saw the sign ‘Gender Identity Clinic’ on the discreet bland concrete building he panicked and walked straight past. Ridiculous! Nobody he knew could possibly see him here. He forced himself to turn back and enter the clinic proudly, with his head held high.

  ‘Mr Divot to see Doctor Langridge,’ he said, and the receptionist gave him a friendly but not inquisitive smile (very professional, far too good for the Cornucopia; surely if a heart beat under that blouse she must be curious about the kind of patients who went to the clinic?) and invited him to sit down.

  He couldn’t find a magazine with a bridge problem. He began to read an article with the absurd title of ‘Our Changing Attitudes to Faces. Has the ear had its day?’

  Ears were not his problem.

  ‘Mr Divot?’

  Doctor E.F. Langridge, MB ChB FRCPsych FRANZCPsych had a very pleasant, gentle voice. He almost made Nick’s surname sound acceptable.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  No problem so far! Interview going well!

  Doctor Langridge wasn’t tall, and he was quite broad, but he didn’t look fat, it was all muscle. Nick thought he’d probably played rugger in his youth.

  He shook Nick’s hand. Well, it would be more accurate to say that he crushed Nick’s hand. Nick’s eyes watered. Was the handshake a test of his masculinity? How much did he have to read into everything?

  Doctor Langridge’s office was like his voice, not his handshake. They sat, not facing each other across a desk but in leather armchairs. The walls were painted in restful pastel colours. They looked as if the clinic had employed a colour psychology stress reduction consultant.

  There were a few preliminaries about coffee and travel, and then Doctor Langridge changed gear, but gently, and said, ‘Tell me a bit about yourself, and your feelings about your gender.’

  ‘I feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body.’

  Doctor Langridge frowned.

  ‘I hear that phrase a lot,’ he said. ‘They all use it. They’ve got it from the newspapers.’

  ‘Well, it’s hard to put it any other way.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘I … er … I feel humiliated by not feeling right about my … maleness.’

  Doctor Langridge waited patiently. Nick could just hear the muffled roar of the heavy city traffic. It emphasised the silence rather than disturbing it.

  ‘I …’ This was so difficult. ‘I … just don’t feel right about myself and I never have, not for one single day. I feel a fraud as a man. I feel I’m playing a part and playing it badly.’

  ‘Yes. Good. This is all rather generalised, Mr Divot. I have to assess your suitability for this very serious, lengthy and expensive process, which is to all intents and purposes irreversible.’ He laid great emphasis on that last word. ‘I have to assess your needs, the depth of your suffering, the depth of your understanding of what you are proposing to let yourself in for. It’ll be difficult for me to accept you if you can’t illustrate your condition a little more specifically than that.’

  This was all a great surprise to Nick. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he might be rejected.

  ‘You see, Mr Divot, people get books from the library – some even buy them – and read up all about it to impress me.�
��

  ‘Really? Do they really?’

  ‘What I want is some insight into you, Mr Divot.’

  ‘Right. Well, I … there are an awful lot of male activities that I just don’t enjoy.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I can’t stand football. My wife loves it, but I just find it so … so crude. I feel uneasy in pubs. I feel I don’t belong. I like to sip white wine, not gulp great draughts of beer. Oh, and there are all sorts of little things. Too silly to mention really.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘I’m not fascinated by the contents of my nose. I don’t save up wind so as to fart in the bath. I would never pee in a hotel washbasin.’

  ‘Other men do?’

  ‘And boast about it. And they love crapping so much that they take their favourite books in with them so they can make the fun last a bit longer. And I hate smutty stories. I hear them all over the hotel – roars of harsh male laughter at some cruel or dirty joke. I can’t think of any sound less humorous than the group laughter of English men. As a man I am an outcast, Doctor Langridge.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  Nick was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It was rather nice to be forced to talk about oneself.

  ‘I hate my hairiness. Not that I am particularly hairy, but I long to have smooth legs. When I look in the mirror and see my private parts I just think, What are they doing, dangling there? They look absurd.’

  ‘Why do you feel you are as you are?’

  Nick was beginning to realise that the softness of Doctor Langridge’s voice wasn’t natural, it was his style, his professional method. His questions were snakes encircling Nick’s body.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Feeble! ‘Maybe I was just born that way.’ Pathetic! ‘Maybe it’s because I was very close to my mother and my father was away a lot. He was a purser with a cruise line. They both died in a car crash when I was eighteen.’

  ‘Absent father, tactile mother, facile explanation?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ This took him by surprise, Nick could see. One up for me, he thought. ‘And my mother was not tactile. That could be the problem! But, no, I don’t really believe my parents caused it. I believe it began before my birth. I think I was simply born the wrong gender. An accident of nature. I was always a bit of a cissy. I played with dolls. Well, I’m sorry, but I did. I can’t pretend I didn’t.’

  ‘I said nothing.’

  ‘No, but you make me feel as if I’m doling out clichés.’

  ‘Clichés become clichés because they are repeated, Mr Divot, and the reason why they are repeated is that they happen frequently because they are true. Don’t distort the truth by being frightened of clichés.’

  ‘Right. Well, I also collected newts. I pressed wild flowers and ferns. The first time my wife saw me, when I was eight, she actually thought I was a girl. I thought she was a boy, incidentally.’

  ‘And that doesn’t mean she plans to change sex.’

  ‘No!’

  They smiled at the thought.

  ‘Ever dress in women’s clothes?’

  ‘No. Innocent of that cliché.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Oh, except, damn it, we once went to a party in fancy dress. I went as Helen of Troy, Alison went as Achilles, but that was just for a joke. No, actually I always hated dressing up. Ugh!’

  Muffled though it was, they could hear a siren out there in the real world. Police, fire brigade, ambulance, there are sirens all the time in cities these days. ‘The real world.’ The thought struck him as strange. Was this not real? Why could he never quite see himself as real?

  ‘I don’t have to go on the National Health,’ he said. ‘We both work, and I have quite a nice little nest egg from the sale of my parents’ house.’

  Doctor Langridge didn’t like that. Nick had put the Divot foot in it. No surprise there, then.

  ‘You seem to think if you grease my palm I’ll whip you in, whip off your manhood and whip you out,’ said Doctor Langridge slightly frostily, his integrity impugned as Nick now realised. ‘You haven’t come to some shady backstreet operator. We have strict procedures, criticised by some as too strict and causing unnecessary hardship to our patients. I will have to decide if you’re suitable. I’ll seek a second opinion, you’ll receive counselling and regular assessments, and if we find you’re suitable you’ll undergo a lengthy spell of hormone treatment.’

  ‘I see. I must say I thought it would all be much more straightforward, and I know that you have a more than 90 per cent success and satisfaction rate.’

  ‘You’ve read the subject up pretty well. Yes, we have, but there are three points to note about that. One – the follow-up period is pretty short as the process is in its infancy. Two – patients are reluctant to admit to themselves, let alone to anyone else, that they wish they hadn’t had the op on which they’d pinned such hopes. And three – our careful procedures are the main cause of that satisfaction rate.’

  He leant forward. He was balancing his notebook on his lap. Nick noticed how large his knees were. He wondered if he’d find him attractive when he was a woman. Doctor Langridge noticed the look and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes? You were thinking?’ he demanded.

  ‘I was wondering – this is embarrassing – I was wondering if I’d find you attractive when I’m a woman.’

  ‘I see,’ said Doctor Langridge. ‘And? Will you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous.Doctor-patient relationship. Too dangerous for you.’

  ‘Nothing I can project imaginatively leads me to believe that I would be fighting any irresponsible unprofessional desires in your case,’ said Doctor Langridge drily. ‘We guarantee womanhood. We do not guarantee beauty.’

  Doctor Langridge smiled for the second time.

  ‘At the end of a thorough process of psychology and counselling,’ he continued, ‘I would hope that we would be in a position to allow you to start your Real Life Test.’

  Nick knew about that, of course, but he’d hoped that it was all exaggerated, that it could be circumvented, that he could be fast-tracked to femininity.

  ‘You will have to live as a woman in society for two years before your operation.’

  Two years! Two years turning up at the Cornucopia dressed as a woman, but not a woman. And then he began to think of Head Office. They weren’t going to stand for it, were they? Not the Cornucopia way. Clashes with our Corporate Code. He could imagine it, and in imagining it and being terrified by the prospect, he failed to listen to Doctor Langridge.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he admitted. ‘I wandered a bit there. I was thinking, the Real Life Test, it could be a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Are you getting cold feet?’

  ‘Very much so, but I don’t intend to pull out. I haven’t any choice, you see.’

  Doctor Langridge nodded. That seemed to please him.

  ‘Your wife will have to sign a letter agreeing to your hormone treatment and witnessed by a solicitor. She’ll be told that you’ll experience loss of sexual drive …’

  ‘Not much to lose.’

  ‘Ah. Loss of the capacity for penile erection.’

  ‘Ditto.’

  ‘Ah. And side effects that may include depression, deep vein thrombosis, liver damage and, conceivably, death.’

  Doctor Langridge smiled for the third time, and more broadly than before. The effect was very disconcerting.

  ‘I’m prepared to take that risk,’ said Nick rather pompously. ‘The dangers don’t sound much worse than the list given out with the average packet of pills.’

  ‘But is your wife prepared to take that risk?’ asked Doctor Langridge.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Nick. ‘I believe so. She’s a truly wonderful woman.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Doctor Langridge’s voice, while still soft, became grave, ominously so, like a newsreader beginning a new and tragic subject after something amusing. ‘Now, the operation itself
. You are going to have to be prepared to experience great pain and be laid up for a considerable period.’

  ‘Talking of periods …’

  ‘No. No womb. No ovaries. We can give you what we call a new vagina, or neo-vagina, but not childbirth.’

  ‘A new vagina, but no new labour.’

  Doctor Langridge didn’t smile at that. He didn’t look remotely like smiling.

  ‘I welcome humour if it helps relieve the tension,’ he said.

  He took Nick through the details of the operation. They were gruesome. Nick gripped the arms of his chair as fiercely as he did when having root canal work done at the dentist’s. He feared that he might pass out. There were droplets of sweat on his forehead, and his hair grew lank with perspiration.

  ‘There are two things I must emphasise in conclusion,’ said Doctor Langridge. ‘There are those who will say that you can never truly be a woman, because you have male chromosomes and we cannot give you female chromosomes.’

  ‘What do you think about that?’

  ‘I think that one can use words to argue any point that one fancies. I think it all depends ultimately on you. I am only the conduit for your ambitions. You will have a vagina and, we hope, a mini-clitoris. You will pee sitting down. You won’t even need to think about your chromosomes if you don’t want to. It really is entirely up to you.’

  ‘And the second thing?’

  ‘One last reminder – which I cannot make too emphatic – that the whole process is going to involve a great deal of pain,’ said Doctor Langridge. ‘Are you truly prepared to undergo this pain?’

  Nick swallowed. He had to summon up all the Divot grit, that bottom line that stopped the Divots from giving in, however wimpish they might seem.

  ‘I am prepared.’

  He asked if Nick had any other questions. Well, there was one he just had to ask.

  ‘Will I … that is … how will my sexual feelings be? How much … er … sexual feeling will I … well … feel … sexually?’

  ‘That one’s impossible to call,’ said Doctor Langridge. ‘Intercourse could – perhaps should – be possible, though there is no written guarantee! In a few cases pain and bleeding render it … er … less than pleasant. Some people do tell us that they have experienced orgasm. Others most certainly do not. Nervous systems vary enormously.’ He paused, and looked at Nick very solemnly, even sternly. ‘Do you still wish to proceed at this stage?’