The wrong trousers

David Thomas’s transgender diary

‘I felt as though my head was saying, “Forget it. You’ll never be anything other than what you are”’

LYING IN BED this morning, I pondered the column I was planning to write, all about spending the past few weeks jumping through more hoops than a mangy old lion at a cruel and demanding circus, just to get a date for my facial surgery.

First there was the simple need to establish that I was fit enough for the procedure. I’m all in favour of that. I don’t want my surgeon or anaesthetist to get any nasty surprises while I’m unconscious on the operating table.

I was sent for tests to prove that my blood would clot satisfactorily. Happily, they were fine. Then I had an electrocardiogram to make sure that my heart wouldn’t give out. But that came back as ‘abnormal’. Not so fine.

So, off I went off to a cardiologist. He looked at the ECG scan, took my pulse (steady) and my blood pressure (low). So far, so good, but then I told him that I had experienced occasional heart flutters and arrhythmia since my early 20s.

The cardiologist thought further investigation was required. He wanted to give me a quick ultrasound scan to make sure my ticker was in good structural condition, and told me to get my top off.

Having warned him that my chest was not quite the usual male shape and texture, I lay down on his examination table. The doc smeared gel all over my upper torso, ran a device around, and concluded that…

1. I have a heart (though I could name a few people who doubt it).

2. It’s in the right place, and … 3. It appears to be working.

So as far as he was concerned, I was good to go. Excellent! Two hoops had been successfully confronted, ducks were in rows – all good. Except for one little thing: I now had to prove I wasn’t just fit enough for surgery, I was sane enough, too.

Now, I don’t have any issue, in principle, with this. Surgery, like marriage, is not to be entered into lightly. Neither is transition.

That makes transition-related surgery a particularly weighty matter. Just to complicate things, there have been patients who demand this surgery, then change their minds afterwards and want to sue.

Doctors, and their lawyers, therefore require an expert psych-report confirming that their patients really understand the implications of what they are doing, and are committed to the transition process. My brilliant, blue-eyed, motorbike-boot-wearing Catholic clergyman/therapist Bernd Leygraf was both willing and qualified to provide such an assessment.

But what with one thing and another, not least my propensity to go to Bernd’s office to talk about one thing and then spend the entire session yakking about something completely different, he couldn’t write his report until he was on holiday in France. He sent it to me as an email, but that wasn’t good enough. A hard copy was also required.

The poor man, by now struck with bronchitis, had to get out of his sickbed to print out the letter on headed paper and then drag himself to the nearest village post office to post it. He too had jumped through hoops. Now I was ready to get that operation date sorted. Until…

I got out of bed this morning. I dragged myself off to the bathroom, pausing only to gaze at the battleshipgrey sky and teeming, monsoon rain. I looked in the mirror. And I despaired.

My electrolysis lady has also been on holiday, so it’s more than a month since our last session. And in the past few weeks, black hairs – the ones I thought had been removed for good by the 30-odd laser sessions I have had over the past three years – have been sprouting all across my face.

This morning they looked particularly numerous. I felt as though my head was saying, ‘Forget it. You’ll never be anything other than what you are.’

My bedraggled, greasy, early-morning hair seemed to mock my attempts to cover up the male-pattern baldness that nature had intended for me. And my croaky morning voice laughed at the very idea of a new, brighter, higher, more feminine mode of speech.

I know, I know. It wasn’t long ago I was being all positive and proud of being trans. But perhaps we can all relate to the feeling of being upbeat and self-confident one minute, and utterly despairing the next.

I suddenly felt very alone and scared. The whole idea of messing with my face and body seemed impossible to handle. I’m sure the feeling will pass. It always does. But seriously, does it all have to be quite so hard?

Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female gender transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman. Each week he chronicles his progress