by Fay Weldon
‘Get over it,’ said Valerie, and Dr Simmins felt like murmuring that it was a bit late for Tyler/Tayla to worry, but thought it was wiser to say nothing. It was hard, even for the good doctor, to keep up with the world of gender-correctness where definitions changed so fast.
But she did think that through the glass she saw Leda’s shoulders stiffen and her hands tighten on the steering wheel. There was no visible mirror, but in a bullet-proof armoured Mercedes S600 there was probably some camera device which enabled the driver to see what was going on in the backseats. When Dr Simmins drove the vehicle she revelled in its comfort, and ignored all unnecessary gadgets.
Valerie Valeria, the bitch, was wearing her normal Balmain distressed slim-leg biker blue jeans, ivory Moschino t-shirt, and some other notable-label magenta cashmere cardigan, and Tyler’s dress was not only pretty, but looked extravagantly expensive. Valerie and Tyler had been shopping together at Harvey Nichols only the week before, which Valerie had taken care to mention as she hopped aboard today. Tyler had wanted to drive on that occasion, it seemed, but Valerie had insisted on taking Leda in her standard IGP Security uniform of navy blue nylon, paler blue piping and peaked cap to do it, presumably the better to hurt her by canoodling with Tyler in the back seat amongst the shopping bags. Such a subtle sadist, Valerie! Even Dr Simmins, who had seen and heard just about everything, had been taken aback.
At Croydon traffic began to thicken and move slowly. A discussion started about dates, and further surgical procedures. Major gender realignment surgery would be in early October and the more minor cosmetic improvements, labiaplasty or vaginoplasty, would wait until late November.
‘What’s the difference?’ asked Tyler.
‘Labiaplasty is making the outside more attractive and vaginoplasty tightens the inside,’ said Valerie.
‘Which would you chose? I’ve never cared to look.’ Tyler sounded quite anxious.
‘Men – don’t know, don’t care!’ exclaimed Valerie. ‘You know so little about female bodies. Anyway, you can always have both. By New Year’s Day and the World Widdershins Walk, you’ll be fully Tayla, complete at last, working your way up to the very top of the IGP and heir to the She Devil. They do so love you at the IGP! You and Lady Patchett really must process together at last. How the media will love it!’
Yes, and the She Devil’s got to go sometime, thought Dr Simmins, bitterly. Probably in the next couple of years. By which time you’ll be married to your Princess, never have to worry about money again, and can still keep Leda for a bit of fun. Lesbians of the world, rejoice!
Brixton was almost blocked. Valerie seemed anxious to give Tyler all the details of the major surgery, normally a three-hour operation in which the testicles were removed and the skin of the penis used to form a vagina and the sensitive tip of the glans inverted to create a clitoris: ‘Rather like peeling a banana,’ Valerie said, ‘and bending it back. Just being careful it doesn’t snap.’
‘Honestly! Oh Please!’ said Tyler. ‘Valerie! Please! I don’t want the details. I just want to be put under and wake up a girl and still have orgasms.’
Vauxhall Bridge was a nightmare of gridlock. Dr Simmins explained that a labiaplasty was included in the normal GRS, and a vaginoplasty later might be needed but might lead to complications and excessive bleeding but no doubt Dr Patstock would advise.
‘Complications?’ asked Tyler. ‘What complications? Valerie said it was like peeling a banana.’ At which Valerie told Dr Simmins to stop being such a downer and trying to scare Tyler. Dr Simmins was not a surgeon but a hormone specialist so what did she know about any of it anyway? What was three hours out of a lifetime when the result would be so magnificent? To go to sleep as a man and wake up in the delight and sensitivity of womanhood? Dr Simmins should just shut up.
Park Lane was jammed. Dr Simmins refrained from saying that IGP was paying for the three-hour op. If Tyler went to Thailand he could have the six-hour version, and come out of it with even more delightful female sensitivity – if he came out at all. But it would cost double, and presumably IGP funds wouldn’t stretch to the expense. The She Devil must have argued that case, and won. Dr Simmins just shut up.
But when they got to Harley Street with five minutes to spare Valerie did not go in to Dr Patstock’s clinic with Tyler and Dr Simmins but said she would wait outside in the limo with Leda. She didn’t want to interfere with Tyler’s right to choose and knew she might be tempted and so cloud his judgement.
‘You’re a really good person, Val,’ said Tyler, taking her hand. And he really believed it.
August
An informal meeting of the Board was called for the 23rd and all were invited to attend. Wine and cakes would be served. Venue: canteen. Time: 4 p.m.
All crowded in and there was much excitement and merriment. An engagement between Ms Tayla Patchett and Ms Valerie Valeria was announced. The date of the wedding was to be the 1st of December. The happy couple would lead the Widdershins Walk round the High Tower with the She Devil on New Year’s Day. Tayla and Valerie embraced. Leda from Security walked out. Tayla didn’t even notice. Dr Simmins wondered if perhaps she should switch Leda to one of the newer and more potent SSRIs. The She Devil was the first to toast the happy couple-to-be.
As she was leaving Dr Simmins thought she overheard a rather heated discussion between Ms Bradshap and the Luxuriettes, Ms Sidcup hovering, about today’s cakes being a disappointment. Ginger slices had been served and not the lemon-drizzle and profiteroles ordered. Something about ‘no specials until the bill for the real cream for last December’s éclairs had been met’. Ms Bradshap, Dr Simmins concluded, was not one to give in easily, especially about trivia. Forgiving and forgetting was not her strong point. In some individuals SSRIs could magnify rather than soften an initial temperament.
Dr Simmins was gratified to see that Ms Octavia seemed more cheerful without ropinirole and with estradiol, though still somewhat hyper and impulsive, noisily if vainly demanding that the canteen install a gambling machine to cheer everyone up; ‘Oh, the thrill of the dancing lights,’ she’d cried, ‘the surge of the tumbling coins!’
‘Just fancy,’ she confided to Dr Simmins that evening, snuggling up to her. ‘All this and a dear little baby too!’ Ms Octavia might be confused but at least she was happy.
The very next day the sleepy peace of the High Tower in high summer was broken by a furious ciswoman at the gates demanding to see Tyler Finch Patchett. She screamed and ranted, but had no appointment, so Leda was having to stand four-square in her way. Leda was civil, as High Tower Security was trained to be, but stood firm, as the stranger battered away with little fists into her sturdy flesh.
Others in the Security team watched from the window as their Leda, their leader, coped with the situation and they were proud. ‘Her strength is as the strength of ten because her heart is pure,’ said one, quoting Tennyson’s Sir Galahad – they learned sections of it by heart in their induction classes. Leda was popular. She suffered but was brave. No one in Security liked Valerie, who had caused Leda such pain. They saw Valerie as Elaine, the wicked lily maid of Astolat. They blamed Valerie for their uniform, and the dent in their budget created by the quite unnecessarily expensive armoured Mercedes, the Iron Maiden. Security went down en masse to help Leda.
All this Leda reported later to Dr Simmins.
‘If you mean Tayla,’ Leda was saying, dancing round to avoid the blows, ‘be aware that you’re misnaming her as Tyler. It’s seen as very rude. But I can call through and see if she is receiving guests. What name can I give?’
‘Bullying cow!’ shouted Tyler’s visitor. ‘Irresponsible, sacrilegious bitch! I’m his therapist, Matilda Eavens. His mother was right! You’re keeping him prisoner the same way you kept his grandfather. I’m calling the police!’
While the crew restrained the attacker Leda called through to the Lantern Room to ask if Tyler wanted a visitor named Eavens, and after a short pause and a scuffle and shuffle or two Tyler
said he would prefer not to, not just at the moment: but, ever polite, he asked her to please give Matilda his regards and thank her for visiting. Leda passed on the message but it provoked Matilda to further fury.
Leda had been looking forward to a better future. She assumed that Valerie was there in bed with Tyler, pursuing her elusive orgasm. She had stopped being jealous of Tyler once she realised how much she, Leda, was needed for Valerie’s sexual fulfilment. She would win in the end. The power of the orgasm was great. The realisation that only she, Leda, would do, had given her comfort. That, and possibly the anti-depressants. What Valerie found with Tyler was the satisfaction of aesthetic lust, but what Valerie had with Leda was fleshly and spiritual completeness. Leda could wait. Valerie would come back sadder and wiser. Lesbians should stick to lesbians, and not go wandering. Hasbians were despicable.
The visitor continued to hammer and shout in an unrecon-structed way, so Leda felt it sensible to call Dr Simmins to come down and deal with her. Dr Simmins, known as Dr Pill Popper, and popular with all down at the security gate, came at once. At the sight of her Matilda calmed down and became quite reasonable. Dr Simmins was able to lead her to 3CC/4 without incident, where she made a nice cup of tea for both of them. Nothing stronger was needed.
‘You have to make a fuss with these people,’ the therapist said. ‘Violence and noisy objection are the only language Security ever responds to. And the women are worse than the bloody men.’
As it happened, the good doctor knew Matilda Eavens quite well. Eleven years back Matilda had set up shop as a psychotherapist in St Rumbold’s. She and Dr Simmins had frequently exchanged patients. Dr Simmins saw Matilda as a bright and intuitive healthcare assistant, while doubting her qualifications. Anyone can put up a brass plate, claim to be a therapist, and stand or fall by the results. At the same time she knew that Matilda had written a rather good book on the Narcissistic Mother Syndrome. It had sold well: these days everyone who was anyone claimed to have had one, a selfish mother on whom they could blame all inadequacies, failures, addictions, poor self-esteem leading to sexual excesses and so on. ‘Narcissistic mother’ was fast climbing up the blame stakes, along with ‘bullied at school’ and ‘mental health issues’.
For her part Matilda saw Dr Simmins as a totally irresponsible if licensed purveyor of psychoactive substances. St Rumbold’s had not perhaps been the best place for either of them to start practices – the villagers on the whole being pre-Freudian feelers and thinkers, and suspicious of anyone who tried to interfere with their bodies let alone with their minds. They were not much prey to self-examination.
‘So it’s you,’ said Matilda as she sipped tea in Dr Simmins’ smart new clinic. ‘You disappeared. I thought you must have been struck off. What’s all this about Tyler changing sex? He’s as male as Mike Tyson, only nicer.’
Dr Simmins said mildly that Tyler thought he’d do better in life as a woman.
‘Take no notice! He’s a drama queen. Tyler loves attention. He has a narcissistic mother. That’s all that’s wrong with him – and those sisters! I suppose the wicked old grandma got her hooks into him? It’s what they do.’
Dr Simmins said it was not quite like that, and might be a bit late to worry. The op was in a couple of months and pretty much an optional extra anyway. Tyler was indeed on his way to Tayla, under proper medical care. At this information Matilda switched to shrieking mode and beat upon the wall – she had a very unstable personality, Dr Simmins thought.
‘Proper? You? Proper?’ Now Matilda was laughing hysterically. Between gasps and gulps Matilda told Dr Simmins she was disgraceful and that Tyler was totally frivolous. Tyler liking to wear his sister’s nightie and a spot of impotence was no justification for gender reassignment. She would call the police. Dr Simmins said calmly she would call the High Tower Security and they would get there first.
Matilda responded well to that, as to a slap on the cheek. She became more reasonable, and said she had treated lots of genuine trans people and it was a really painful affliction; it disrupted people’s whole lives, it destroyed them. It often ended in suicide. To live with the mind of a woman in the body of a man, and vice versa, was social and personal hell. To change gender because you wanted a new dress was an insult to seriously suffering people. Tyler had never shown signs of being worried by his sexuality, indeed he could be accused of rampant heterosexuality as a rebellion against the narcissistic mother. So much had become evident to her in their weekly family therapy sessions, on which she had been basing much of her book, The Pain of Malehood and the Mother, already commissioned by her publisher.
She was speaking more and more quickly, as if afflicted by glossolalia. Dr Simmins wondered if Matilda herself was not the daughter of a narcissistic mother: speaking but not listening, the better to drown what she heard as the Mother’s voice. Yes, bipolar. And probably too much Ritalin.
‘I’ve moved in with her,’ Matilda chatted on. ‘I should know. I’m able to record most of it. The whole family make such excellent copy.’
Though Dr Simmins often thought she was beyond surprise she again found she was not. Tyler and his mother and sisters bled emotionally dry just to furnish a book!
Matilda had set herself up in Nicci’s front room and was already seeing clients. The new housing estate was a much richer source of neuroses than St Rumbold’s had ever been. It was working out really well at Nicci’s. Bed and board and all for free!
‘And sexual services?’ asked Dr Simmins.
‘Of course not!’ cried Matilda, indignantly. ‘What do you think I am? I’m a professional in an unequal power relationship, I couldn’t possibly. Rent in exchange for therapy, that’s all. Anything else is in Tyler’s imagination.’
Dr Simmins said Tyler had seemed disturbed by his understanding of the fact that his mother and his therapist were in a sexual relationship. Matilda said that was absurd, but typical of a reverse transference, and only to be expected from one of today’s lost young white males. Tyler was borderline paranoiac, insecure in his own sexuality and overcompensating. Tyler’s mother Nicci, as it happened, was in a fulfilling and permanent relationship with a property developer who had bought her a four-bed detached house in the best part of a fancy new estate, but was not averse to letting her children imagine she was a deviant. It kept her young and radical in their eyes. Not that one used the word ‘deviant’ these days. Delete, delete. Just part of Matilda’s research – a longitudinal case study into an intergenerational narcissist trope – which was bearing theory out very nicely.
It was with triumph that Matilda declared that Tyler’s grandfather on the paternal side, Bobbo (the one whom the grandmother had been keeping locked up and hidden away, and then buried in the garden to boot – typical!), had also had a narcissistic mother who had made the little family live in hotels. Dr Simmins pointed out that if it was a matter of epigenetics, a change in phenotype without a change in genotype, surely a single generation would do to prove what she wanted? Matilda ignored her.
‘So that was what it was,’ said Matilda in a quiet moment. ‘The reverse transference! Tyler driving off into the night over a little thing like that! He couldn’t take a joke. Men are so bad at jokes, don’t you think?’
‘Depends on the joke,’ said Dr Simmins, sourly.
‘And then poor Tyler falls straight into the trap of the grandmother. No wonder – it’s the kind of terrible thing that happens!’ cried Matilda. ‘It’s always, always the grandmother! The She Devil loses her own child so she goes for the child’s child. And she wants a daughter rather than a son and will stop at nothing to get it. Nothing. Can’t you do something?’
‘Too late,’ said Dr Simmins briskly. ‘The process is under way.’
Matilda switched again. Her position of rest became that of a concerned adult speaking to a recalcitrant child. Matilda Eavens said Tyler had really let her down by missing so many sessions and then springing this sex change thingy on her when frankly she hadn’t anticipated it
. Perhaps he’d see his way to repairing the damage he had done? She could already see a sequel. Brother or Sister? The Doubt of the Mother. She’d put it to her publisher. Provisional title, of course. And by the by, Tyler should know that the woman at the Jobcentre was really fed up. Miss Swanson, one of Matilda’s clients too, was finding it difficult to make any decisions. Tyler was in real danger of being sanctioned if he didn’t turn up soon. Miss Swanson said she could cover for him so long, but only so far. Could Dr Simmins let Tyler know?
‘Of course,’ said Dr Simmins, and added: ‘But I don’t believe for one moment Tyler is changing his gender to please a narcissistic mother, monstrous though she may be. He’s doing it because he knows he’ll have a better life as a woman than a man.’
Matilda peered at her sharply, as if hearing her for the first time, and, what was more, looked suddenly sane.
‘You’re all so convinced,’ Matilda said, ‘that you’re not just equal to men but better than them! I see it now. You’re radicalised, the lot of you. You’re religious extremists. There’s no getting through to you.’
Dr Simmins, exhausted, saw Matilda to the gate and got her through Security without further incident. What could the girl be on? Ritalin, almost certainly. Bipolar, yes, and far too heavy a dose. But not her responsibility, thank God.
Dr Simmins found the strength to look in on Tyler to see how he was getting on. Valerie had just left the Lantern Room and Tyler was putting on some kind of helmet to play a computer game, presumably joining a world in which his avatar was the heroine; and from the occasional loving deep male growl she guessed the game must involve Tayla with a romantic hero. She looked at the box. Blade & Bliss, an MMO. Massively Multiplayer Online, she supposed, a role playing game.
Oestrogen warred with testosterone. The sound track, though also interrupted by gunfire and explosions, was unmistakeably David Bowie’s Heroes. Something about a king and a queen? Taylor must identify with the queen. Probably after the wedding, the handsome man would go and there would be two beautiful girl partners on screen.