Its odd, really. Since about age 5 I have been concious of feminine leanings. My earliest recollection was from school grade 1, where the girls got to do dancing around a maypole in swirling skirts and hair ribbons. I looked on envious, wishing I could join in. However, even at that age, I was acutley aware that "boys don't do that sort of thing" - my family had made that clear in no uncertain terms. So, the denial begins........

 

       Somewhere near the same age, we went to visit a family friend who had 2 daughters - one of whom was about my age. This girl and I went to her bedroom to play, as young children do. She had just gotten an Annie Oakley play outfit, and asked me if I'd like to wear it so we could play. I said yes, I'd love to. The Annie Oakley suit felt so right on me, and we were happily playing innocent child pretend games and having a wonderful time. Then my older sister walked in and made terrible fun of me for wearing the suit. I was embarrased deeply and felt conflicting emotions - the knowledge that playing "girl things" was something I liked doing, and the realisation I would be ostracised severely for admitting to it. That is my earliest memory of feeling ashamed - a situation that continued for the next 36 years.

 

        As time went by, I continued to find myself looking at the girls, and wanting to join in. Like my family, the girls at school made it clear that "boys are not welcome to play with us". Probably as a defense against this, my best (and ONLY) friend and I started a "girl haters club". This of course, was the reverse of how I actually felt, but it seemed to help me keep at least the one friend I had. At home, there was a bag of old clothes in the shed, that Dad had put there to use as rags. There was a nice flowery dress amongst these rags, and I would sometimes sneak in there and try it on. Even then, there was the mixture of euphoria at the feeling that this was how it should be, and the deep sense of shame and fear of being discovered. This was probably where I started to conciously put my true feelings on hold, for the sake of being what was expected of me. At times, this approach worked. I could go weeks without suffering pangs of feminine yearning. But they never really abated for any length of time, even back then. While I joined in with some of the boy games, and was reasonably good at some of them, I  never really was 100% comforatable doing it deep down. Like most of my life, I was simply doing "what was expected of me".

 

        I have a crystal clear recollection of the grade 7 play, where I got the role of a hen pecked husband (a role I took to my actual marriage many years later, interestingly). There was a pretty girl in the class who played the obnoxious wife - she got to wear the flowery dress and the make up - oh, how I wanted so much to do THAT role! I had memorised her lines as well as my own and rehearsed the play doing both roles in my head. I remember feeling the yearning so bad the night of the play, I was privately reduced to tears - but no-one must be allowed to see them..... I felt so alone with it. By that stage the public denial of my feelings was well and truly entrenched in my thinking.

 

         One of my cousins had come out as being homosexual around then, and was an object of family ridicule as a consequence. My recollections of him actually, are that he was the nicest one of that family by a long shot. Its a crying shame he was lost to AIDS in the late 80's. The ridicule though, further enforced my thinking that "no-one must know" about my inner feelings. About that time too, I started to comprehend that the family looked on "gay" and what I was feeling, as one and the same thing. Thus starts the confusion.......

 

         Once at high  school, things were changing. Puberty was imminent, and the stirrings of sexual desires were waking up. Like all my peers, thoughts of having a girlfriend became something we all aspired to. Then, tragedy strikes - the family moves house and I go to a boys only school. On reflection, perhaps this was a good thing in some respects - it kept me from the distractions of my condition during school hours at least. I was able to perform quite well academically, something I may not have done had there been girls in the class too.It was during that stage that I came across a movie on television - it was the Christine Jorgensen story (the first successful re-assignment surgery made public, in the 1960s).,This movie traced her life from early childhood and I remember clearly being mesmerised by what I was watching. It was almost exactly like my experience, just like watching my own life story. The shame and the guilt being portrayed particularly struck chords with me - I probably shed some tears at the memory of it then.So, from that I now had a name for what I was experiencing - the term Transexual enters my private vocabulary. But I was mindful to not talk about such things to anyone - for fear of letting slip my ttrue feelings. Now even at school, the collective grouping of this condition with homosexuals and perverts amongst my peers was happening, giving credence to the earlier family conditioning I had experienced. I would join in the ridicule of these minority groups just like everyone else, but really, my heart was not in it. I was privately thinking I must be gay, but must NOT let anyone know. The absence of lust for men at that point, did not register as significant (that became quite clear later on though). My thoughts were only of girls, and gender yearnings and lust tended to be rather mixed up.

 

         My few social outings then led to one minor experience at about age 14 with a girl - who led me and another "couple" into a storm water drain for a kiss and cuddle session. This was the closest I got to having a heterosexual sexual experience, for some years to come.I found it quite satisfying. Sadly I never got to see her again. A minor trangression at home led to me being grounded, and I lost contact with her.