by Alison Mau
Yours faithfully,
J.L. Wright
Registrar-General
We’d done it!
15
WOMEN’S PRISON
I had learned the hard way back in the early 1960s that a prison sentence is very much what you make of it. I would tell myself I was on a ship and would be at sea, far from land and my normal life, until my release date. This internal dialogue would be useful again more than a decade later.
In the mid 1970s there was a person close to me who was playing fast and loose with his family life. Of course this upset me, particularly as I would often see this person and his mistress together, socialising in the same places I went with my friends. I would tell him he should be home with his wife and children, not out and about with some short, fat hairdresser. He would tell me to fuck off. Needless to say things weren’t exactly cordial between us.
One night in 1975 I was with friends having a convivial drink and a catch-up at the Bush Inn Tavern in Riccarton Road — a great place to gather, especially when they had a band playing. The hairdresser and her married man were there and throughout the night she made a point of walking past our table again and again to drop snide remarks, asking pointedly how many men were at the table:
‘Oh, and of course there’s you, too!’ she said.
I told her not to push it. She came up to the table again, goading me, talking past me to my friends and referring to me as ‘he’.
I’ve never hit anyone in my life, before or afterwards, but I’ll admit that night I snapped altogether. There was a large bourbon bottle on the table, a ‘double’ bottle as I remember. I lifted it above my head and lowered it straight down on her crown like a monarch christening a royal yacht. It cut her a beauty actually, and for one brief moment it gave me the greatest pleasure. Of course all hell broke loose, the police were called, and I was escorted out of the bar, booked and released on bail, and in court the next day at lunchtime.
I knew it was back to jail for me; there was no getting out of this one. As I faced the bench I realised the magistrate’s wife was a weekly client of mine, I’d done her hair that very morning. His Honour fixed me with a look.
‘Well, Miss Roberts, do you have anything to say for yourself?’
‘Just that you’d better tell your wife to find another hairdresser, I won’t be available next Friday.’ I was convicted of common assault.
The sentence was remarkably similar to the one I’d served two years before for impersonating a woman — four and a half months. This time, though, I was able to serve it in Christchurch Women’s Prison. I heard later that when I arrived at the prison, they’d all thought I was a doctor or a welfare officer, with my silver-grey suit and short blonded hair. It was only when I turned up in the line the next day that they realised their mistake.
My ‘situation’ was made crystal clear to everyone from the outset. In fact they all probably knew before I arrived, thanks to the fact that the prison Superintendent was the uncle of a man I’d been dating. I had to report to his office on my arrival, and the first thing he told me was:
‘Now Liz. I want you to promise you won’t get involved in the dolly service while you’re in here.’
I had no idea what on earth he was talking about, and said so.
‘Don’t be silly about this,’ he warned.
‘I make dresses and style people’s hair — I don’t play with dolls.’ Which shows you how innocent of life in a woman’s prison I was: the ‘dolly service’ was the sex trade between the lesbian inmates.
This time around my sentence turned out to be a good thing, a chance to take a breath and separate from my real life, which had been stressful and difficult for a time. I asked if I could work six days a week instead of five and have just Saturdays off, which was the day that Tim would pick my mother up in his car and bring her to see me. I’m not sure they’d ever had anyone ask to work an extra day every week and they were delighted. As I was a good cook, they put me to work in the kitchens.
I tried to keep my head down and work hard from the start, but right from my first day I was hounded by a woman called Joyce, whom I assumed was a prison officer. She was an overbearing, grandmotherly type, who would nag incessantly if you didn’t do things to her exact specifications. After less than a day of that I was driven half crazy, and asked a couple of the other inmates whether ‘that screw ever shuts up’. Both of them immediately fell about laughing. It turns out ‘Officer’ Joyce was an inmate, a former heroin dealer, and they were the screws. With some of the prisoners allowed to wear their own clothes, it was often hard to tell.
The only officers I had trouble with were the ones who liked to watch you break under the mental strain of prison life, and I would not let myself do that. Some were, in fact, just the opposite: quite kind. Mrs Lamb, for example, one of the matrons who was on the Prison Board, took pity on me when I was feeling unwell and sent me to the sick bay for a couple of days’ rest. On my release I was escorted back to the wing by Mrs King, a hard, glamorous type, like an ageing film star. She was known to everyone, staff and inmates, as the ‘Black Widow’ as she’d buried three husbands. Her daughter had been one of the Miss New Zealand contestants I’d made up while working at New Zealand Broadcasting, but when I told her I knew her daughter she was deeply unimpressed, and replied that she doubted very much whether that was true. She told me darkly to ‘beware Greeks bearing gifts’, and I knew she was talking about the kindness Mrs Lamb had shown me but didn’t let on. King quickly grew tired of this charade and put me on report for being obstinate, which meant going before the Board.
Between six days a week in the kitchen and a bit of hair-dressing in the small salon room, I was able to keep my distance from the other inmates most of the time. There were some really nice girls in there who were unfortunate enough to get caught doing things they shouldn’t have been doing. Outside, lesbianism was not really recognised as a reality — a hangover from Victorian attitudes, I guess — but inside the screws knew exactly what was going on. There were fights, too, plenty of them. One day I was coming out of the kitchen and heard a huge uproar. I was almost level with the control room when someone pulled me back.
‘Liz, don’t go any further.’
‘I have to go to the loo!’
‘Well, you’ll have to wait.’ As she spoke, the source of the noise (a huge Maori woman called Wikitoria, who was in for murder) roared into the bathroom, ripped a toilet clean out of the tiled floor and hurled it through the control room window just a few feet from us. They had to send for some male prison officers from Paparoa to subdue her.
I was fortunate that most of the women left me well alone, but I did attract a bit of curiosity, particularly about my medical needs. I was usually transported to St Helen’s Hospital, where I was under the care of Professor Gerald Duff. A sweet and gentle man, he spent a lot of time warding off the medical sister who would escort me from prison, and who appeared quite desperate to know why I needed so many hospital visits. Professor Duff would insist she stay in the waiting room, telling her that our appointments were private. The need to bathe twice a day meant I also had the luxury of using the pristine bath in the medical ward at the prison, and when that was not available, the staff facilities.
One afternoon the local doctor who served the prison inmates decided he wanted to have a good look at me for himself, so I was called upstairs, stripped off and put into stirrups. I waited, and waited; an hour and a half passed and still no appearance from the doctor. Downstairs the inmates had eaten lunch and been returned to their workplaces, and the hunt began for Liz Roberts. The place was in an uproar, with word spreading quickly that I’d escaped somehow, and all the while there I was, reclined with my feet in the air.
When they finally tracked me down I was given an apology of sorts, lunch in the staff room, and returned to work with instructions to keep quiet about my ‘misadventure’. Whe
n the doctor requested a repeat performance the following Tuesday I declined, telling him I was not in the habit of putting my legs in the air for any man and had no intention of doing so again for him. He was not happy.
I’ve always thought one has a responsibility to make the best of things whatever the situation, and my time at Christchurch Women’s did have its highlights. At Easter I asked the prison management for permission to hold a celebration dinner for the inmates. Once given the go-ahead we assembled a team of eight and gathered the kind of ingredients that were not usually available as part of our rations. Parents and even some staff made contributions and the inmates had saved rations of butter; all of these we manipulated over the course of a day into a wonderful buffet spread. We made sponge cakes to be filled with cream and fruit; bacon and egg pies; a curry with rice; meringues and a fresh fruit salad. One of the girls made a tomato sauce to serve with battered fish, and with the chocolate I’d saved from my tuck shop purchases we made peppermint crèmes. One officer even supplied us with coffee, a treat which was not allowed on any normal day.
The meal was a huge success. It may not sound like much, but it made the inmates very happy, and came to be known as The Last Supper. The evening was completed with a showing of the Barbra Streisand movie A Star Is Born.
When it was over, one of the inmates made beautiful cards to thank the staff who had offered help, and we delivered them with a couple of the peppermints in a little cellophane bag. Most of the staff were very pleased with this, but there’s always a bitch in the midst of the good people, isn’t there? The nurse in the medical ward upstairs threw her gift back at us, dubbing it ‘two bits of shit’. We hurried off and opened the bag ourselves, enjoying one last treat.
My mother had kept the news of my arrest and jailing from my father; but she herself never missed a Saturday visit, faithfully delivered by Tim who appeared to think that if he kept in with my parents we would pick up as we’d been before on my release. But the stretch in Christchurch Women’s had given me time to think about where I’d been and what I wanted. I decided I did not have to live an emotional roller-coaster with a man I no longer trusted. The week before my release I was given a brief home leave and returned with my hair coloured, nails done and in proper street clothes rather than the denims and T-shirts I’d been used to inside. I left prison the next day without a trace of bitterness, rested and quite ready to face life on the outside again.
* * *
Against my better judgement, Tim and I did attempt a reconciliation after I was released, but it lasted only a few weeks. The trust had vanished — his behaviour had made it plain he’d neither trusted nor respected me for some time — and now I didn’t have the heart to try. I left Christchurch for a hairdressing position in Cromwell, Otago, driven there with all my stuff by a kind prison officer I’d become friendly with. Cromwell was booming ahead of the construction of the Clyde Dam, but little else happened there unless you hit the pubs at night. I’ve never really been a pub type of girl, but faced with precious little choice I had dinner there, with my kind prison officer friend, on my second night in town. As we looked around the dining room we noticed the place was packed with men, and a most interesting collection they were. One of them caught my eye, smiled and raised his glass. We both nodded acknowledgement and, as we were leaving, he approached us near the door.
Kerry was from Balclutha — dark hair, brown eyes, and white teeth to die for — but also quite a lot younger than both of us. I explained what we were doing in Cromwell and my friend said she was on her way back to Christchurch Prison (‘To work!’ she added hastily when she saw his eyes widen).
About a week later, Kerry walked in to ‘Arthurs’, the salon I was working for, and asked for a haircut. It was a ruse, but a good one. We started seeing each other and gradually developed an enjoyable relationship. It didn’t last, for some rather sad reasons, and I was left with the unshakeable feeling that there was some unfinished business between us. Some years later while working in Sydney I was astonished to see Kerry walk through the door at an evening function I was at. He spotted me and was at my side in a flash, a young woman in tow. When Kerry introduced us, the young woman’s face clouded over.
‘I can’t stand the sound of your name!’ she hissed. ‘All I’ve ever heard from Kerry is that I couldn’t possibly hold a candle to Liz.’
She lost her cool completely and flew at me, shouting, and was eventually removed by security guards. After watching her being hauled away, I was surprised to find that Kerry was not with her; he was still standing right beside me. I suppose it was inevitable that we caught up on some things we’d both missed that night, and although Kerry was living and working in Cairns and I had my business in Sydney, we often talked about living together. I did not have the means to lease a place in Sydney large enough for us both, and although Kerry often tried to insist he could easily pay all costs, I could not agree to be kept. I was flattered by his generosity and kind heart, but could never quite shake the vision of that much younger woman (who would have been the same age as Kerry) and her animosity.
Kerry died young and I never learned the cause of his death. A mystery as he did not take drugs and drank very little, and very sad as he was a truly beautiful person. He knew of my surgery and all of my past, and these things did not faze him one little bit. Kerry lives in my memory as a missed opportunity in my life — I think we could have been very happy together, for as long as the universe and his health allowed it.
16
FURTHER SURGERY, 1970S–90S
If you are squeamish, best skip this chapter. It contains the really gory details of my twenty-year surgical journey from man to woman. Trust me, it’s not a pretty tale.
Letter from Dr John Dobson to Mr Duncan Simon, plastic surgeon, 12 January 1973
Mr. Duncan Simon,
110 Fendalton Rd.,
CHRISTCHURCH, 1
Dear Mr Simon,
Re Mrs Elizabeth Anne Trask, — 29 years
Mrs Trask tells me that you are prepared to consider constructing a vagina for her.
I’m not sure whether you have my letter to Brian Jones of 13 June ’69 which summarises her long and complicated history.
The important items are, I believe, the desire to be female from childhood, her demonstrated ability to maintain a satisfactory female role, adequate duration of chemical castration and absence of psychosis or severely disabling personality traits. At that time Mr Milliken was prepared only to remove her external genitalia and not fashion a vagina. Elizabeth understood this and was satisfied by the result.
Subsequently she obtained an alteration of her birth certificate (this is unique and will not be repeated in New Zealand until the Law is changed) and she contracted a marriage with Tim Trask in Sydney in November 1969. Seen 10/1/73 with her husband, they agreed that their relationship had been satisfactory until April 1972 when following their move to Wellington Tim became involved with a married woman. Since then the question of Elizabeth’s anatomical adequacy for coitus has been an important issue. She expresses a desire to have a vagina fashioned and they both agree that a successful operation should be an important stabilising factor for their marriage relationship.
I strongly recommend that this procedure be carried through. I can think of no psychological disadvantages to this procedure.
Yours sincerely,
J.R.E. Dobson
Psychiatric Physician
As any adult woman will know, a trip to the gynaecologist is not what you’d pop on your list of must-dos for a perfect day. Much like the dreaded latex-glove prostate check for men, having someone carry out an exploratory poke and wiggle down there is something most of us avoid until we can’t ignore the GP’s reminder letters any more. Spreading my legs for a stranger has never been my thing anyway, even in a ‘romantic’ sense. In the medical context — sterile décor, cold metal tools of the trade, multiple person
nel all taking the opportunity for a good gander up your nether regions — well, I just can’t imagine anyone but the very kinky finding it enjoyable.
There’s a difference, though, between liking it and lumping it. I fall into the latter camp. You might find it strange, uncomfortable, embarrassing even, but I’m a Platinum Status Frequent Flyer in the stirrups. Frankly, I’ve had so many people poking around over the years, so many operations, so many post-op care regimes, so many drugs, that it’s become second nature.
I have never, ever thought that I should have made a different choice all those years ago. I have never looked back and thought, why have I done this to myself? No one twisted my arm to do this. Nobody forced me and there was no gun to my head. I chose it, so it’s got to sit in my lap.
I put a lot of faith in the medical world. I saw no other option really but to place myself in the hands of these surgical wizards. Once I’d started the long walk down this road there was nothing for it but to push on, and in the forty-five years since that first operation, there have been huge developments in the science of gender change.
Being a pioneer in any field of endeavour cuts both ways, of course. You get to be first; but you don’t get the benefit of the years of practice, and the refinement of the procedure that comes much later. What you get is the first, stumbling baby steps.
After my first operation in 1969, John Dobson would often ask me to come and be interviewed by roomfuls of student doctors.
Understandably I suppose, these bright young things were bursting with questions and would look at me as though I were a very tasty curiosity indeed.
The first time I faced such a group I was astounded to find in the front row one of my old hairdressing clients from Christchurch. On another occasion a male doctor, Dr Andrews if I remember correctly, said in a very high-pitched, squeaky tone, ‘Oh, haven’t you got a deep voice for a lady!’
‘Perhaps you should have a listen to yourself,’ I replied.