Chapter 5: A Head bag, a Corset and Ecstasy

After about eighteen months, Amanda and I were crumbling.

Not a big fight. No betrayal. Just the kind of slow-motion slide where you realise you’re sharing space, not a life.

Two years in, she left.

By that point, though, I’d done something I’d never done before — built momentum. Gone from being a straggler, constantly in trouble on my course, to actually top of the class. I’d learned that, when it came to projects, I could work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours straight. Obsessive. It’s a streak that’s never left me. I’ve fallen asleep at my desk more times than I can count, even now, coding for days without stopping.

But before Amanda walked out for good, she caught me.

Really caught me.

She was meant to be in Leicester for the weekend with her friend Katrina. However, they changed their plans for some reason or other and decided to come back to Nottingham. She flung the door open, the pair of them stood there and looked at me.

“Hello, ladies?” I said. Not much else I could do, really.

It was the only time in my life I’ve ever been caught like that. And I should’ve been terrified. But I wasn’t. Maybe I wanted her gone, and this was the price to be paid.

She left not long after that. But she didn’t take everything.

She left her sewing machine.

And that, as it would turn out, was dangerous.

After Amanda, I somehow blagged my way into a swanky two-bedroom apartment. Proper little scam, too. Lied through my teeth, told the Victoria Flats management board I was a full-time worker now and not a student, handed over a bar pay slip like it proved anything. They bought it.

The bank even got so pleased with my “responsible” finances that, before I’d even graduated, the student adviser took me to lunch and offered me a loan. Unbelievable. I took it, of course. I furnished the flat like I was a young executive instead of a broke student — “Laura Ashley” naff 1980s sofa, stereo system, and houseplants I had no idea how to keep alive.

And for a while, I tried to stop dressing. Clean slate. Fresh start.

When I moved in, my legs were shaved smooth. I was hoping they’d grow back fast enough so I could wear shorts soon like a normal lad. I remember meticulously decorating that flat while R.E.M’s Greatest Hits played in the background. That album still takes me straight back to that time.

I felt calm. I felt like a grown-up. I felt middle class. I had nice things — and for a boy from Skelmersdale, that felt important.

I thought I’d buried Stevie again.

It didn’t last.

A couple of months in, my obsessive cross-dressing resumed. I’m not even sure what the trigger was.

But now I had full privacy and could escape for days into my fantasy world.

With no Amanda to share tights with, no bras or makeup to pinch — I had to start getting my own.

The shopping was terrifying. Buying shoes in size nine felt like standing on a stage holding a neon sign that screamed TRANNY. But I had a trick. I’d write myself a shopping list in wobbly handwriting, linger by the tights, scratch my head like a clueless boyfriend:

“Sorry, my girlfriend sent me in here — no idea what denier means.”

Same with makeup. Scribbled notes. Feigned confusion. Oscar-worthy performances.

And then the sewing started.

I taught myself the machine Amanda left behind. Got good, too. I started turning anything I could find into clothes — bed linen, old curtains. Nothing was safe. The pillowcase that used to be hers became a pencil skirt.

My crowning glory? A corset made from an old Head sports bag. The fabric was thick as armour, but I stitched panels, reused the zip, and when I pulled it tight, it actually worked. I had a snatched little waist. From a sports bag.

There wasn’t much in that flat that didn’t get gender-flipped and stitched into something I could wear.

My days ran like clockwork — code, project, fantasise, dress. Eat something. Repeat.

Meanwhile, Pez had thrown himself even deeper into club culture. He’d bought Technics decks, turned into a proper DJ — really good, too — and was living for ecstasy-fuelled raves. At the time, it was just his scene, not mine.

But sometime later — not immediately, but down the line — he told me something that floored me.

He was exactly like me.

Same secret. Same ache. Same years of silent shame.

We’d grown up in separate northern working-class towns, thinking we were alone — and all that time, we’d both been cross-dressing kids in hiding. Now here we were in our early twenties, still carrying it, still trying to work out what the hell to do with it.

It’s mad to think about now. All that time. All that closeness. And this invisible bond we couldn’t even name until later.

One night, he invited me out. Proper clubbing. My modus operandi used to be to attend the pub part of the evening and then go home and become Stevie.

But on this occasion, I said yes.

He handed me ecstasy. I said yes to that, too.

And that night, everything shifted.