Until I was six, I lived in Liverpool. A small house with too many adults. Me, my mum, my dad, my nana (on his side), and his sister.
There was a girl next door Helen, I think. I must’ve been four, maybe five. Helen had long, tidy hair and wore a padded Alice band. I remember watching her with a kind of hunger I didn’t have words for. I didn’t want to kiss her. I just wanted what she had: the right to wear that Alice band like it was nothing.
At this stage I was an only child. And looking back, I always got the sense that me and my mum were a slightly more… delicate breed, shall we say, than the people around us. This was Liverpool in the 1970s, rows of red brick houses, makeshift Liverpool or Everton kits and everyone shouting from doorsteps. But we felt a bit separate. Not posh, exactly just a little more refined. The others always seemed louder, rougher, more rooted in something I never quite connected with.
I spent most of my time with my teddies. I was obsessed with them. There was a huge soft Humpty my mum had made she was brilliant at sewing, always making things from scratch. Then there was Big Ted and Little Ted. And a knitted thing that looked a bit like a Clanger. But my favourite by miles was Sue. Sue was a bear. And she had a full wardrobe: little dresses, hair bows, all hand-stitched by my mother. I adored her. Dressing Sue, carrying her around it was the purest happiness I knew.
But don’t get me wrong I wasn’t only into soft toys. I loved my Action Man. And I mean really loved him. I had the full Deep Sea Diver kit, a First World War kit, and bizarrely, and in hindsight somewhat disturbingly an SS officer’s uniform. They genuinely used to sell that. I had no idea what it meant. To me, it was just another outfit. Just this little figure and his jodhpurs. Strange, by today’s standards.
I also loved my bike. I absolutely loved my bike. I got my first one around this time, bright red, stabilisers, that sense of freedom. That’ll be a theme that runs for the rest of my life. Bikes and cycling.
I think even then, on some level, I knew something was slightly off. Not in a dramatic way. Just… quietly. A gentle sense of being out of step.
On the whole, though, I lived the normal life of a normal little boy. Or close enough. I do remember once taking all of my teddies to the park this must have been before I’d even started primary school and placing each one on a different swing. I thought it was perfect. But then a group of older boys turned up, laughing, and kicked them all off. "Puff" or words to that effect, one of them shouted. I didn’t even know what it meant.
However, the next part of my childhood is unambiguous. At least to me, this is where my cross-dressing started.
Each evening, after I was put to bed and read my stories, always Peter Pan, I’d wait. Just ten minutes. Then I’d sneak out, careful not to creak the floorboards, and slip into my parents’ bedroom. I knew exactly where everything was my mother’s clothes were like a coded map I’d learned by heart. She kept them all in an elongated 1970s teak-style dressing table slash chest of drawers. I recall there being four drawers. I could tell you exactly where every single item of clothing was stored, how they were folded, how to put them back, everything. I didn’t just rummage. I curated.
How many nights did I do this? I couldn’t tell you. Dozens? It felt endless.
Sometimes I got away with it.
Other times, I didn’t.
More than once, my mum pulled back the sheets and found me there. Fully dressed. Her clothes draped over this tiny body that didn’t match. I must have looked ridiculous, but it didn’t matter. Because in those moments, I felt right. And that was the start of a feeling that never really changed. A feeling that felt right, but without ever being able to say why. To this day, that’s still how I feel. Why does this need to be? I have no idea.
But God, the shame. Even as a child, I knew it was wrong not wrong in my bones, but wrong in theirs. I knew it made the grown-ups angry. I remember my parents losing it once because I’d been given a toy iron and an ironing board. They were convinced that was the reason I was behaving this way. As if some plastic ironing board had flipped a switch and turned me into a little pufter. As if I needed a toy for that.
Still, I kept doing it. I couldn’t not.
Looking back, I used to think my mum knew. She must have known what I was. She caught me not just once but several times during that period, and later too. Not in person always, but she definitely found the clothes. I took it as a given: she knew I was a cross-dresser or trans, even if we never said the words.
But then, much later, after I came out to her, I actually asked her. And to my surprise, she said, “No, I didn’t know you were.” She said she’d just assumed it might have been a phase. A very very long phase I thought!!!
That floored me. For all those years I’d carried around the weight of being known but not loved for it. Turns out, maybe I wasn’t even known.
Not long after this period, we left Liverpool. Moved to Skelmersdale a shimmering New Town about 14 miles inland, built on post-war dreams: open green spaces, modern homes, fresh starts. 50,000 Scousers dumped in the Lancashire countryside. And that’s exactly what it was meant to be for my family. A break. A chance to get away from my mother’s in-laws and give her a proper home for the first time in her life.
My dad, by then, was already displaying signs of serious instability. He drank. He gambled. He did unpredictable things. I think he had been hospitalised several times already. The psychiatrists were already circling.
So, this move was meant to be a reset for all of us.
And maybe it’s worth saying this now the name Stevie? That’s what I was called when I was little. Back in the days of Sue the bear and my mum’s dressing table. It’s what my family called me before the world got complicated. So, when the time came to choose, I went with that. It felt right. Familiar, but new. And let’s be honest it’s not that far from Steve, which makes things less jarring for people. Gives them a way to self-correct halfway through if they slip up. “How are you doing, Steve…”
Pause. Add an "e". There you go. Try again. Steve-e
⚡ Lightning Rebirth — Read in order