Chapter 4: The Catsuit and the Crash

I arrived at university. Correction: I arrived twice. I bailed on maths the first time around and had to reroute my life to try again. Thanks to the glorious Louise Ellman, then head of West Lancs District Council, I was somehow awarded a full maintenance grant again. This was in the days where fees were also paid. So, another free university course.

On my second-degree course, I found my “stride” pretty quickly, I started well but by month 3 I descended. I drank too much, spent way more than I had, and lived permanently overdrawn, I was worse than most students. In fact, my account was so overdrawn, I used to have to go and see the student banking advisor in the branch, and she would write a little yellow note that said I could have some more money. I would then present it to the cashier, who would glance up to check before handing over the little extra cash. It was quite funny; she used to make me justify what I was spending it on. But I was such a cheeky chappy I used to get away with it every single time with a smile and a wink.

Whole days were then spent in the pub “the Leo Sayer” (all dayer), drinking beer and ordering filet mignon, or some other dish that there was no way a student could afford. This was funded by handwritten cheques that “might” cash, and endless excursions to buy records and second-hand vintage clothes.

Although, I did work hard at first, too. Some of the early projects were genuinely impressive. But by the end of the first year, the head of the course sat me down and told me they were considering kicking me off. Three others were being turfed out. I was only spared because I’d shown such clear promise at the start.

By each term end I was living on dried pasta and tomato ketchup, after the glorious five-week pub binges had left me absolutely broke and unable to secure any more overdraft. So broke I was hitchhiking back to my mother’s house for holidays.

At the start of second year, I realised I needed to tether my ludicrous spending habits. I picked up a bar job four evenings a week. And I started to clean up my act. I pulled my finger out and began to achieve academically too. By the end of third year, I had the top grades on my course, which surprised the fuck out of all the nerds.

My crowning glory came in my third year: I designed a smart turbo trainer for bikes. This was the early 90s. You’d connect your bike to it and ride a virtual course, watching a little stickman move across a line representing terrain. I wrote all the code, built the electronic circuit boards, and did all the physical engineering myself. It was fucking brilliant, honestly. I demonstrated it in front of the entire course, and they were gobsmacked. One of the lecturers made a sarky joke about marking me down because it was so noisy. The rest of the class, tragically, thought he meant it. I got an A++. My project was way better than anything else. This set a pattern for my life, “go big or go home”. More grandiose ideas and bigger dreams.

The bar job was at the Royal Concert Hall and Theatre bar in Nottingham, not just a student dive, but a proper venue. Great job. We’d start at 6 p.m., serve a burst of drinks before the show, prep a few for the interval, maybe hang back for a trickle of post-show punters… and by 9:30 we were done. Out the side door, down the street, and off to the pub.

Once I was through the door, Peter “Pez” Johnson was through the door too. Peter was my soulmate, my twin. He was styled just like me but better looking. We were both cut from a different cloth to the rest of our course—black 501s, black jackets, like some gang from Grease. And Peter really did look like John Travolta. Together, we were inseparable.

Oh lord, did we get up to some terrible, terrible things in that bar. Things I probably can't discuss to this day for fear of being arrested. We’d have drinking races. We’d point to the optics, whiskey, gin, vodka, rum. Each take turns picking five different spirits, then go: one, two, three… and smash the lot down.

There was a guy called Clive who worked there too. Couldn’t roll a spliff to save his life. Constantly handed me the gear to do it for him. And I, of course, rolled him fake joints and stole the good stuff, smoked it myself later down the pub with Peter and Amanda.

Amanda worked at the same bar. That’s where I met her. She was a little older, already graduated. Studied fashion. One of the funniest girls I’d ever met. Sharp, quick, wicked sense of humour—she actually had her own catchphrases. But also, fragile. Very fragile about her appearance. She’d sit for hours sketching silhouettes of women, drawing clothes, stitching bits together, making outfits from scratch. Bleach-blonde hair, a pretty-ish face. But in my heart, if I’m being truthful, I didn’t find her as beautiful as my first girlfriend, Katy.

When I met Amanda in the bar, she was actually my second choice of bar staff. I’d already tried it on with another girl called Helen. I’d managed to get myself back to Helen’s house, and a little bit of a snog, when I spotted in the corner a massive pile of albums—all the same album—in boxes that had been sealed but opened. And I looked at the albums and said, “They’re all the same.” And she said, “Yes. My boyfriend—”

And then I sighed, “Oh God, you’ve a boyfriend.”

“Yes,” she said, “my boyfriend is the UK manager for an up-and-coming new band. They’re going to be massive.”

“Oh right,” I said. “What are they called?”

“Nirvana,” she said.

At the beginning of my second year at university, a new panic crept in. Subtle at first. A small change in the mirror. Then not so small.

My hairline was receding.

Not by much but enough that I knew. And this was 1989, long before bald men were sexy or shaven heads were normal. Bald meant loser. Bald meant desperation. Bald meant greasy comb-over men.

I wasn’t exactly at home in my own skin to begin with.

But bald and male?

That was a bridge too far.

It felt like another theft. Like the universe was removing options one strand at a time. I couldn’t name it then, but now I see it clearly: I wasn’t mourning the loss of hair, I was mourning the loss of feminine potential. That line at the front of my head was the line between possibility and despair.

Crossdressing… for that first year, and then the first three months of my second year, I held steady. I did not cross-dress at all. There'd been quite the gap. I hadn't really actively done that much of it in 3 or 4 years.

I thought maybe I’d outrun it again. I’d done it before with Katy, and now here I was, cohabiting with Amanda and living in the world.

Then came the catsuit.

She made it herself, sleek, black, very 1960s. I remember the exact texture. I remember the night she tried it on and twirled in front of the mirror, and my entire brain combusted.

It was over.

The flood came back, all at once. The urge. The ache. The Knowing. My resistance evaporated.

I didn’t just want to wear it. I wanted to disappear inside it. I just wanted to be a fucking girl.

And so normal service was resumed.

At that point, my hair was still longish on top. I’d tie it into a little man-bun ponytail. Thinning at the front, yes but I could cheat it with an Alice band. Still disguise the damage. Still hold onto the illusion.

But this wasn’t like before, when dressing was a little more sporadic, a kind of secret pressure valve. Now it was obsessive. Constant. I was wearing women’s clothes beneath my own during the day, stripping them off in a panic before she got home. I knew exactly which of Amanda’s items fit me. And I was meticulous. Careful not to damage anything.

We lived in a tiny flat, basically a bedsit. After a few months, I was getting braver at shopping. I remember pulling off the baseboards beneath the kitchen units and hiding newly purchased clothes and shoes there. A whole stash, tucked behind laminate and woodchip. I lived in constant fear that one of those boards would come loose.

The bedsit was directly above a shoe shop. And for some reason, God knows why, I actually went and bought shoes in there. Size 9. I have no idea why I didn’t go further afield. Maybe I wanted to get caught. Maybe I didn’t care anymore.

But more than anything I was doing, it was the thinking I couldn’t escape. The ache of it. The obsession. It consumed me not just the hiding, not just the dressing, but the unspoken truth underneath it. A truth I couldn’t name. A shape I didn’t recognise. The shape of me that didn’t fit.

Amanda used to buy Cosmopolitan magazine every month without fail. We had this giant pile of them under the coffee table. She wouldn’t miss an issue. This was the early ’90s, before the internet, before Reddit threads and YouTube channels, before anyone talked openly about any of this. The only knowledge I had of people like me came from the occasional TV documentary, which usually left me feeling more horrified than hopeful.

Then one day, I picked up one of Amanda’s Cosmos, and there it was a feature about three transgender women. I remember it like it was yesterday. The first story opened with a line that stayed with me for decades: “Jeremy was an unhappy woman. Then again, he was an unhappy man.” That line hit me like a punch to the chest. It was mocking, dismissive, designed to get a sneer out of the reader.

The third and final story ended on something even crueller. The journalist had just left the home of a woman in her sixties. As she got into a taxi, the driver asked, “Was that a man or a woman?” And the journalist closed the article with the words: “I don’t know. You tell me.”

That was the tone of the whole piece. Not empathy. Not curiosity. Just ridicule. It’s hard to describe how it made me feel. It was like a confirmation that this was a terrible thing. That these people were freaks. And that if I ever did this, I would be a freak too.

I think I knew, even then, what I was and what I secretly wanted and longed for. I just didn’t think I’d ever do anything about it. I thought I would eventually bury it.

I just thought I’d live out my life as an obsessive, unhappy cross-dresser

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⚡ Lightning Rebirth — Read in order
Introduction | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 (coming soon)