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Charlotte Sometimes. By Tanya H. From the moment I walked into the shop my eye was caught and held - just a skirt, you might have said if you had seen where I was looking. You've already got plenty. True enough; but not one like that. Kayla Ormond, my secretary - of the long legs and enigmatic smile, had been wearing such a skirt over the summer, I had been very envious, and this wonderfully displayed version was the first of the style I had come across in a shop. One of the volunteers who crewed this particular charity shop had clearly seen it's worth and hung it in a clear space on a wall, then used a length of glitter chord to show the graceful, flared lines and the slightly sassy split running up the front. It was cool black, patterned with uneven constellations of small, white dots and as I edged closer and closer it sang to me; silent, siren songs of how beautiful it would feel, how graceful it would look, how elegant, how feminine I could be if I only I was take it away and put it on. If only I could take it away and wear it outside, where it could swirl and billow like a breeze around my legs, while that bold split gave tantalising teases of my legs and the gleam of their sheer nylon as I walked along, enjoying it without a care in the world. We were in Harrogate, Greg and I - two nights, three days - staying in a nice, ivy clad hotel just to the West of the town centre as part of our ongoing dartboard tour of Great Britain. Essentially we threw a dart at a map and went where it landed. Harrogate was a fairly good result, not as good as Gloucester while Wigan had been the worst - mainly due to the torrential rain that weekend rather than the town. Greg didn't notice the skirt, but he was in his zone and wasn't really an admirer of skirts anyway - even when I wore one. Sometimes he would surface from whatever was occupying him to notice me and my clothes. "When did you buy that skirt?" he might ask. I'd say something like, "Last year in Cardiff, you drip. You were there. I said it was a present for your niece and the shop girl didn't believe me." Then he would frown some more. "Well of course she wouldn't have, silly! I don't have a niece." Greg was a proper professor, tall, fair and angular, but we were happy together and I did love him. In fact I'd loved him for the best part of fifteen years, since way back before being gay was fashionable. We'd first kissed on the edge of a folk music festival, beneath a wide oak tree hung with electric lights and I'd thought then, as I do now, he was the most handsome man in the world. The shop with the notable skirt was a charity shop, the kind of place we often found ourselves in. Greg was endlessly fascinated with the things people cleared from their houses, or from some dead relative's houses, while I, attempting to start a movement of ethical cross-dressing, had recently set myself the challenge of only topping up my lady wardrobe with second hand clothes. This shop appeared to be a target rich environment for both if us - though charity shops in affluent spots like Harrogate usually were - for the staff had taken some trouble with eye-catching window displays while inside it was deliberately airy and spacious. The usual mixture of clothes rails, furniture, books and DVDs were arranged in a quirky, intimate fashion while the air was fresh with a cinnamon touch rather than the mustiness you often experienced. As usual Greg honed in on the bric-a-brac section - he had a good eye for bric-a-brac. From a shelf load of tasteless tat only one move away from landfill he would usually spot some curiosity appealing to his eclectic taste. Where I collected skirts and shoes, Greg loved the unusual - it didn't have to be valuable, quirky would do. We had cabinets of varied objects at home, from Yugoslavian enamelware to Edwardian medicine bottles, Great War uniform buttons to Holland-Amerika Line spoons. All kinds of clutter found places in Greg's warm heart. So while he went off to pick his way through the jugs and egg cups, tumblers and salt pots, I pretended to casually drift absently towards that singing skirt, as though I was really on my way to look at the books. It was a kind of a solitary game I played - to look at the skirt rails without actually appearing to, until I saw some garment of interest when I would sidle up and discreetly pounce. Fully immersed in my game, still pretending to be interested in the general area of a case of vintage maps, I noted that were I to put on the skirt it would likely fall to mid-calf and swirl most gracefully around me. "Lovely isn't it." She startled me from the reverie I was unaware of being rooted in - the lady from behind the counter. I would have said she was sixty, maybe sixty five; willowy, tall and silver, her hair wound into two plaits that were, in turn, coiled into two buns, cornered high and wide on the back of her head. Clear blue eyes glittered behind Harry Potter glasses and her mouth was quirked into a gentle smile. She was the most beautiful woman I had seen for some days; beautiful in an aesthetic sense as women, beautiful or not, did not excite anything more than envy from me. "I suppose it is," I said, off-hand, as though I had hardly noticed the skirt. Her smile never faltered, nor did she move and I wished that she would for I dearly wanted that skirt, but the more interest she showed in me and it, the less likely it was I would walk out with it. "I could get it down and you could try it on." Her voice was light, untroubled by the local, Yorkshire accent and I found it difficult to meet her eyes after that very generous offer. In reality I would have liked nothing more than to have tried on the skirt, but in the privacy of my own bedroom - Greg and I had our own, though only rarely did we sleep apart. There I could match it with some suitable stockings then try it properly around the house, attempting - with my heels' feminine taps - to distract Greg from marking whatever his undergraduates had produced that week. But try it on in the shop! In here, where there were people and cameras and... "Who would know?" she said. I met her eyes, part of my routine: I must look into the eye of the person selling me whatever item of womenswear I was intent on at that moment. She smiled again, with such warmth, such compassion and empathy I wondered if she were transgendered too. Only once before had I been open about who I was buying for - while purchasing a pair of black, stiletto heeled court shoes that took my eye in a Southampton department store maybe six years ago. The sales assistant, a plain girl of about seventeen, had said, as she handed me the bag containing the shoes, "I hope you enjoy them." I could have convinced myself she meant my pleasure at seeing my wife or girlfriend wearing them, but at that moment the deceit didn't seem worth it. I thanked her and assured her I would. There and then, in that very upmarket charity shop in a very pleasant Yorkshire tourist town I knew I would never see this woman again, that her certainty of my transvestism would not impact my life one little bit. And even if it did? I was already out and proud at work - nobody cared. I was sure that had my transgendered status ever been exposed they would have quickly moved on to other gossip. "I don't think I would do the skirt justice, but thank you." She considered this a moment, head still inclined and it was as though her bright blue eyes could see right into me: like they could see the boy who had worn his sister's and his mother's clothes, who had danced in ballet tights and a leotard on an imagined stage before an audience of none; the youth who had for a woman's body, not a female lover and then the man who had forced her true identity down and tried a life in the Army - as though gender dysphoria was something that could be shouted or sweated or warred out of my female mind. "I think you're mistaken. I'm going to get it down and then you can take it in there and try it on." She nodded towards the curtained cubicle at the back of the shop. "I really don't think that's a good idea." Greg was no help. He was looking intently through a box of dog-eared vinyl records, there were two or three laid on the floor beside him, meaning my expensive sound system would be silent for the next couple of nights while we listened to whatever crackling LPs had caught his eye. When I had first told him I liked to wear women's clothes he had pulled the kind of expression that wondered why I was bothering him with such a revelation. The first time I had built the courage to wear a skirt, blouse, heels and nylons before him he had nodded so absently and murmured such a vague compliment I'd felt a pleasant solidarity with any one of the millions of frustrated women through the ages who had tried to get their man to show any interest in their appearance. "I'm Cassie," she said, holding out her hand. I surprised myself by accepting it - thin, warm and dry. "Charlie." "Look at it, Charlie - it's a beautiful skirt, who wouldn't want to wear it?" I'm not sure how it happened, I am a decisive sort of individual who is still entitled to put Captain before my name, as long as I add 'retired' after it - though I never do, but I found myself standing at that changing room with Cassie beside me, her hand in the small of my back, and that skirt waiting on the chair inside the cubicle. There had been little sensation of going from one side of the shop to the other, or indeed of Cassie having brought the skirt down from its display. A frown may have crossed my face at the dislocation, but it soon passed as I faced the enormity of an empty shop, but for the vinyl focussed Greg, me and the lovely Cassie. Why shouldn't I try on the skirt? "Can you manage?" "I'm well practised." Cassie smiled encouragement. "I'll be over by the counter if you need anything else." Two steps took me into the cubicle; it contained an old, battered dining- room chair, a crooked hat stand and a full length mirror while a heavy striped curtain hung between the shop and my privacy. Of course, you could have peeped around it - if you'd had a mind to, but surely Cassie would discourage that. Maybe there were hidden cameras - the notion made me look suspiciously into the corners and at the light fittings. Perhaps it was a one-way mirror and there were people watching from behind and Cassie's warm support was nothing more than a cynical trap for a load of blackmailing bastards! Like I was a likely target for that kind of enterprise! Get a grip, Charles. You're the quality control engineer for a heavy plant manufacturer, not a spy, not a film star, politician or celebrity. Even the seediest tabloid would be hard-pressed to get any mileage out of a middle-aged nobody wearing a skirt in a charity shop! So I shrugged off my jacket, hung it gingerly on the hat stand, unlaced my boots then removed my socks and placed them carefully atop the boots - like the skirt would look any better without them! Are you actually going to do this? I asked myself. Looking at me from the mirror at was a relatively tall, mostly athletic man with loosely cut dirty-blonde hair and still not quite middle-aged features. I was 36 at the time and gave no sign I harboured woman envy; no clue I dreamt, fantasised and imagined myself a woman. An accomplished mistress of disguise, nobody would ever know I was only masquerading as male. Until I put that skirt on. Though I had dressed as a woman in public before - for a charity event in my regiment's officers' mess raising funds for a cancer charity instigated by one of the Majors whose husband had been taken by prostate cancer. By agreeing to have our bodies waxed and then attending a dinner in the mess as women, you can imagine the ribaldry that accompanied our presence, I and seven of my colleagues had raised almost ?1,500. I'd spent the evening hating it, pretending to be a man dressed as a woman rather than a woman dressed as a woman - do you see the difference? Watching my six drag queen colleagues, actually we were mostly more ladylike than that, I did wonder if any of the others were feeling the bittersweet mixtures of emotions I was going through. Ours is a secretive burden, isn't it? With jeans removed and neatly folded atop the chair I contemplated the skirt a moment then pulled it on. It fitted perfectly around my tidy waist, though loosely over my narrow hips, and did fall elegantly to mid shin. I gave a subtle hip sway so its light fabric whispered wonderfully around my legs, the split opened slightly and I wished for something sheer to improve my legs' lines. That would have to wait until I was home, for now it was enough the skirt fit me. It was a good as mine. About to unzip it a hot gust blew into the cubicle. I turned in fright, like somebody must have thrown back the curtain for I was reminded, uncomfortably, of Iraq - when the door to our air-conditioned ops room was opened briefly allowing the desert to forcefully remind it still surrounded us. The skirt flared as I twisted, but the curtain hung heavy and still. Sweat prickled my armpits and I stood perfectly quiet, trying to understand what had happened. Nothing. I shook my head, to dispel the paranoia and made the skirt twirl again as I faced the mirror to see a woman looking from it. I froze staring at a tall, slender woman with dirty blonde hair draping her shoulders, tight, round breasts outlined by her t-shirt and hips flaring away from her narrow waist to shape that lovely skirt better than my male body ever could. Her bare feet and slim ankles looked perfect under its gently swaying hem. Her expression looked stiff with shock; she lifted a hand to cover her mouth at the moment I did. As I shoulder checked who might be witnessing this trickery so did she and her hair fanned away gracefully from her face. Still alone. Looking down, I was still male. I didn't share her lovely breasts, her smooth woman's features, though she was the twin sister I'd never had - the same straight nose, full lips and wide, brown eyes women had been falling for even when I didn't want them to. To escape her I almost pushed my way from the cubicle, preferring to take my chances with the shop's occupants dressed like this than face my female reflection again. Instead I calmly took off the skirt and, without glancing into the disturbing mirror again, I bolstered my man disguise, laced my boots and stepped into the shop as if nothing untoward had happened. Greg was off to one side, by a dark, Welsh dresser. He had found a shoebox full of photographs and was looking through them with such obvious delight I smiled to see him so happy. Cassie looked up from the till and arched her eyebrows. "Any good?" With a frown clenching my brow I glanced back into the cubicle, as though that unlikely woman might have jumped from the mirror and followed me out. When I turned away I flinched to find Cassie stood right next to me. "I..." "Yes?" Another frown. "I'm sure you looked lovely." With some effort I forced down the disquiet and shook my head. "The skirt is, I'll admit." "And?" She raised her eyebrows. "What do you mean?" "You looked, didn't you? I can see from your eyes that you did. You saw her didn't you? Think of how you would feel, to be yourself. After all this time, Charlotte you could be you." She tapped the white, Armed Forces Veteran badge on my lapel. "You've done enough for everyone else." "I'm not sure I follow you," I said, but something in the way she was speaking... And she had called me, Charlotte - much more me than Charles or Charlie; my inner name. If only the whole world could have known me as Charlotte. "If you buy the skirt, Lottie..." She inclined her head towards the cubicle and the mirror. Lottie! That lovely diminutive made me tremble, but only inside. Uncertainty and a vague unease almost made me turn and walk away. Curiosity, maybe some deep, unfulfilled longing helped me stay. "Still not following you." Cassie laughed. It was such a lovely sound even Greg looked over from the pictures and pushed up his glasses onto his head. "What did I miss?" he asked. You would need a long time to go through all the things Greg missed when he was zoned into some fascination, but Cassie cut straight to the point. "I'm offering Charley the chance to realise her dream and be a woman." For a moment I became glass, ready to shatter, then heat filled my face and my eyes went wide. "Oh. Good stuff." He lowered his glasses and turned back to the photos. "You're talking the impossible." "Of course I am. Buy the skirt, it's a bargain - nearly new." Reaching out she turned over the price tag so I could see it would only cost me ?4.99. "What have you got to lose?" Screwing up my face in concentration, and disbelief I nodded to Greg. "Him." "Do you love him?" Her wide, open eyes drew truth from me. "With all my heart." "And he loves you?" "In his own way." "We'll see. Greg? Would you mind, can I just?" He ambled over with an amiable, vaguely curious expression. We'd met at the university where he lectured and where I had been delivering an Engineering in the Army session for a group of engineering students. I'd only gone at the last minute, covering for sickness. Over a coffee we'd ended up discussing Tolkein, Middle Earth and the war on terror. He'd surprised the shit out of me when he'd asked me for dinner, to continue the discussion further. A mismatched pair we might have been, a university lecturer and an Army engineer, but he was so uniquely different to anybody else I'd ever kissed I couldn't help but fall for him. And he was loveable, in his own way. "Something wrong? Been shoplifting has he?" "Greg," she said, directly - as if I wasn't there. "If Charlie was able to live her life as she's always dreamed, as a woman, would you still love her?" "Of course," he said, looking directly at me, oblivious to my overt discomfort at being the centre of attention - though to be associated with feminine pronouns was new and very welcome. Greg's eyes went from me to Cassie then back to me. He sometimes enjoyed a conversation on some abstract subject - what if the Nazis had invaded Britain in 1940, what if Luke Skywalker had sided with the Empire and the dark side, what is his boyfriend wanted to be a woman. "Does he want to be a woman?" he wondered, innocently. "Very much," said Cassie, before I could speak. "He never said, did you? Did I miss that? I'm so sorry. He's always dressing up, but that's not the same, isn't it? I don't much keep up with these modern things." "Oh you lovely pudding. But you don't like women, Gregory," I said. " You're not attracted to women!" Plonking his heap of treasure awkwardly onto Cassie's counter, he took my free hand, raised it to him lips and kissed it in such an unusually public display of affection my cheeks warmed again. "You're not women, you wouldn't be women, you're Charley. You'd still be Charley. I'd love you if... if... if you were a disembodied brain... in a clear perspex tank filled with nutrients and electrodes and, and, and a speaker so you could read me stories. Like you do. I love you." He looked surprised when, despite my turmoil and years of social conditioning, I pulled him forward and kissed his mouth. "Buy the skirt," said Cassie. "But, what about Monday? I have work... Why am I even having this conversation, I'm not going to be a woman." "Look at me," said Cassie and her voice turned thicker, deeper, older. I looked. She smiled as she spoke, but her eyes went dark, darker and darker. "I am going to infect you with a magical virus and everything you touch, everything and everyone you have contact with, in this world and the virtual world you're connected to through your phone, will have their perceptions of you changed. Through your driving licence the virus will get into the government's computers, through your work ID it will be into your human resources and payroll, by way of you blood donor's card it will find its way into the NHS even. By Monday there will only ever have been Charlotte Andrews." Her eyes brightened. "Only three people will know what has happened to you; I will be one, as I am making it happen; Greg will be another, for the love you share is too strong, and your mother, Charlie, she will know you've become a woman for she grew you." "You're, you are some kind of wizard?" I couldn't believe I was even saying it, but when I looked at her, when I heard her, when I recalled the impossible reflection in the changing room I knew I was in the presence that nothing in my engineering experience or Greg's academia could explain. She laughed, a high tinkling girlish laugh of such delight even I smiled along, until she went silent as though a switch had been thrown. "Yes. I am." "Why do this for me?" "Why not. Because I can. Because it makes me happy." She waved elegantly around the myriad contents of the charity shop. "Because I raise money for a good cause. Because you deserve it, Charlotte. Buy the skirt, money must change hands." "I'll do it," said Greg, his voice was brisk - excited, as if he could sense he was stepping from his cloistered, cobwebbed world into something wild. "Thank you, but no. Charlie must pay." My hands trembled as I reached into my back pocket for my wallet, nail tips I wasn't used to brushed the leather as I pulled out a ?10 note. As though I was facing missiles and destruction again, I felt my balls tighten and shrink in their sack. She took the note from me, my fingers touched the skin on her palm and I half expected there to be some high-voltage crack from the contact, but I felt nothing. Then cried out as a wash of heat rolled over me. Perhaps I would have stumbled, but Greg's arms were around me, pulling me close to his chest. Soothing waves of warm, then cool alternated through me, butterflies moved in my belly, then swarmed lower - a million tiny wings pushed from the inside, bones creaked and shifted. Another gasp, was I scared? It was only my pelvis spreading. Only! My hips were growing wider! And the heat under my nipples! As the warmth grew so my chest expanded. Greg would have been able to feel it as I relentlessly padded out between us. For a moment I believed my jeans were shrinking - I was being so wonderfully overwhelmed by the competing, alien sensations in my body - before I realised it was me making them tighter; my thighs were swelling, my bum was rounding out in proportion to those wider hips. A woman! I was being made into a woman! My balls squirmed and I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed that if this is a dream please don't let me wake until it's done. Until I felt the heat run from me and saw Greg staring - eyes wide and sparkling, lips parted. He rarely looked at me with such intensity, I had once gone a full eighteen hours with a blacked eye and cut lip following an accident at work before he'd noticed. He reached to push something pale away from my cheek - hair, long dirty- blonde hair. Then he smiled. "Charlie? Charlie! It's you, oh goodness - look at you." I didn't need to look, I could feel. With my eyes closed again I could send my awareness down, past my racing heatr, between my heaving lungs and feel the beautiful weights on my chest, the close caress of my t-shirt as it rose over my breasts; my breasts! I had breasts! Going lower, past the butterflies still tingling to the place at the top of my thighs - nothing! The jeans' seam ran between my legs, cupped me tight and there was nothing male there to bulge and dangle and swing. Another tight sob. Tears ran down my cheeks, Greg pulled me in again, squashing my breasts between us. I pressed my face to his shoulder, grinning, laughing, sobbing, shaking. I was a woman! A little voice intruded. "Daddy, that lady is crying." A child, voicing her observations with direct intensity that lifted another blush. I shouldn't be crying, I had never felt happier. "She's just had some very good news," said Cassie. A thin hand squeezed my shoulder. "She's really very happy." "Aren't you?" said Greg. I nodded into his embrace, took a deep breath and made myself look. A little girl, maybe five years old, in jeans and a bright red coat was looking at me with concern shining from her face. A girl like me. There was Cassie, eyes twinkling behind her glasses - a woman like me - and there was me, standing away from Greg slightly so I could smile at the girl, beam at them all, look down and see my t-shirt outlining the round, high shape of the impossible, beautiful, heavy breasts that were mine. "I'm okay, thank you. Really okay." My voice was tight and silky - no Adam's apple, no stubble on my cheeks; my shaving would be confined to legs and armpits from now. Aftershocks of the transformation shivered me. I was a woman. Cassie grinned. She dropped the ?10 into her till, presented me with change. I shook my head; my wallet was still on the counter. I should have given her it's contents, my debit card and pin number, the keys to my BMW, my share of the house - everything for what she had just given me, but she pressed the change into my hand. "It's not enough," I said. "Looking at you right now is more than enough," said Cassie. "I'm very, very old, Charlotte and moments like this are worth much, much more than anything else you could give me." She pushed the skirt over the counter towards me. "I think you should wear it out, don't you?" A perfect idea. Greg smiled, nodded and I started across the shop towards the cubicle again, gasping and glancing down at the sudden sway the movement lifted into my breasts. I'd need a bra, whatever size I was. There was a Marks and Spencers around the corner, I could discover my bra size there; I didn't need to be shy about buying women's clothes any more! With the curtain closed I laughed with joy at my reflection then had an unfamiliar fumble with my jeans before realising the button was on the wrong side. I grinned; no, the button was exactly on the right side for women's trousers. Pushing them down there were my plain black pants changed into plain black panties and under them the unmistakable curves of a woman's sex. My mound, my vulva. Of course I had a peep inside the panties, wouldn't you have done? All was as it should be, as I had dreamed of over the years. "Knock knock," said Greg, just outside the curtain. I started guiltily, let the panties' waistband snap against me. "Cassie said these will fit. And she let me pay for them." His arm came around the curtain with a powder blue, underwired bra hanging from his fingers. It was probably the first time he'd ever handled a bra, I dearly hoped it wouldn't be the last. When I took it from him he passed me a packet of tights, black opaque ones. "Don't be long, there's another couple of shops I want to go through and I bet you'll be needing a cup of tea." Uncaring of the people who might still be in the shop I snatched the tights, grabbed his hand and pulled him inside. At first surprise kept my kiss fully one sided, but he soon loosened up and even put his arms around me - nobody would care of we kissed in public or held hands now. Then, blushing furiously, he excused himself and, muttering about something, hurried around the curtain to the shop's sanctuary. The bra's label said 34C and comparing its cups to my chest seemed to suggest Cassie's eye was in. Stripping away the t-shirt I saw myself unadorned by nothing more than panties and a dazzling smile. Impossible, you say, but I was impossibly female. I treated myself to a little bounce, purely for research you understand, and had to practically chew on a fist to stifle the delight at the way my breasts moved. So I needed a bit more practice with the bra's tangle of straps and arm- twisting clip! So it took me a while to get it on; I was looking forward to the rest of my life to practice. Tights were easy, the T went back on and then I was ready for the skirt. My wider hips made all the difference; any cross-dresser will tell you that skirts never hang right on a straight pelvis and now mine were modified for child bearing that wonderful skirt looked perfect. I could hardly tie my boot laces for the excitement trembling my fingers. Like some kind if shy debutante I peeped around the curtain to check the coast was clear. Greg was deep in conversation with Cassie, they were leaning over the glass-topped counter like conspirators while that little girl and her dad were reading about the Gruffalo on a big cushion by the children's books. Cassie noticed my appearance, looked up and smiled. She beckoned me away from the cubicle, but before I could move the curtain slid aside all by itself leaving me exposed, in public, in a skirt. How often had I dreamed of this? "You look lovely,' she said as I took an experimental step, then another. The skirt moved around me in all the ways it had sung when first I'd seen it, back then when I'd still been a man. My breasts shifted, warmly, comfortably - nicely supported now. "What do you think?" I asked, Greg not her. This was the test - Greg who had claimed never to have kissed a woman who wasn't his mother or sister. "Cassie says the Oxfam shop up the road has some really interesting, old Agatha Christie editions," he said and his voice was quick with excitement. "Then we can get a cup of tea. And cake." "He likes it,' said Cassie. "What?" "The skirt." "Oh yes, it suits you." For one moment, an aching time of disappointment, I thought whatever it was that was going to make Charlotte the norm had overcome Greg too; that his love for me wasn't as strong as Cassie had hinted. His eyes kept flickering to the pile of treasure he'd found, now bagged up at his feet, then the door and the footpath that would take us to the excitement of old Miss Marple books. When I'd come home on the momentous Friday eight years ago, my last day in the Army, he had barely looked up from his work to acknowledge I was home and then wondered, the following Sunday, why I wasn't going back to the regiment. He was adorably rubbish at humanity. "Does the bra fit?" he asked out of the blue, staring pointedly at my breasts. "Or did Cassie make your bosom to fit the bra?" He held out his hand, rapidly - like he was going to jab it into my tummy. "I thought you might like these, a memento." There were earrings on his palm, dangly ones with a neat Yingying design. I wasn't sure when he'd last bought me a present. Probably Christmas last year, for he'd forgotten my last birthday. "They're lovely. Thank you. I'll be able to get my ears pierced now!" He frowned, genuinely surprised - as though he'd believed all women were born ready for earrings. In an ideal world, every man or woman forced to endure as the biological opposite to what they know themselves to be should have the opportunity to properly present themselves to the world - as they should be. When that happens there should be some kind of fanfare, a letter from the Queen - a party packed with their nearest and dearest, family and work colleagues; a gender realisation party! The world should celebrate - like a wedding, or a birth, or a graduation - that a human being doesn't have to hide away any more, doesn't have to pretend. Instead we have to endure scepticism, accusations of perversion, of being a freak, of being somehow dirty or less than the biological occupants of the gender we aspire to. My moment, after my unconventional transition, was to step into the sunshine, among the passing pedestrians outside Cassie's shop with her kiss still moist on my cheek and her best wishes echoing in my mind. No bubbly was popped, nobody cheered, nobody shook my hand or even looked. Why would they? A woman had just stepped from a charity shop with a shopping bag in her hand. Nothing to see here, move on. Hear that? That's the world still turning. The breeze stirred that skirt around my legs, hair blew before my eyes. Greg took my hand and squeezed it. I laughed. The sheer delight of standing there, on a pavement busy with weekend shoppers as the woman I had always known myself to be was brilliant. Two women, office smart and hurrying past in a clatter of heels and waft of perfume, exchanged quizzical looks then giggled intimately as they turned the corner. Some moustached gentleman, dignified atop a very old-fashioned bike, gave me a look suggesting disapproval of such public, female, emotional displays. Which made me laugh a little more. "It must have been very good news," said the little girl to her Dad as they edged out behind us and turned towards the town centre. She turned and waved. Greg looked mildly uncomfortable, maybe he thought that now I was overtly female I might fall victim of the vapours, of fainting, or some other feminine ailment he might have heard of. "Are you okay?" he murmured, leaning close. "Greg, I"m a woman! A woman! Look." "Well, I know. But it's not like it... it... It's been done before!" "You plank." I kissed his cheek. "Of course it has, but not by me! Where's this Oxfam shop?" As concern was washed from his face by the excitement of old Agatha Christie's, I slipped my arm through his and, commendably keeping my eyes away from boobs dancing in my shirt - though I was happily enjoying them, off I went. Ahead was the promise of another charity shop, more excitement for Greg then a cup of tea - Earl Grey and hopefully some cake. After that? It was going to be fantastic finding out.