They say it’s madness to hear voices in your head.
But I think the times I heard these voices have been the sanest moments of my life.
They both came at times of deep crisis: and both guided me to a place of healing.
The all pervasive transphobia that enveloped me in my early life left me blocked as a writer till I was 35.
This is how I began to overcome that blockage.
The story begins when I was 14 years old.
I was a prisoner in a boy’s boarding school in Bristol, England.
I knew I was a writer.
This didn’t make a lot of sense to me and I didn’t really believe I would succeed.
But there it was.
My writing inspiration was Camus, and I identified very strongly with his ‘Outsider’.
I knew he wrote things in notebooks and so, very self-consciously, and when no-one could see me, I used to write things down in notebooks too.
I was also tormented by the desire to wear girls’ clothes.
I can’t say “I was trans” because I didn’t know the word.
I didn’t know any words, and had no means of making any sense of my experience at all.
This was a long time before the internet, and so I had no access to any information and no knowledge of anyone, anywhere, feeling like this.
As far as I could tell, I was completely alone.
My mum was dead, and I had no sisters, and didn’t know any girls, so I had no access to girls’ clothes either.
All I could do was try to ignore these feelings, try to be ‘normal’, and hope the feelings went away.
I felt so frightened and ashamed. I was convinced that if anyone knew about this I would die of shame.
The school I was imprisoned in laid great stress on turning its pupils into men. It enforced manhood through brutal bullying of those who did not conform.
I had already been badly bullied; I knew if my secret came out the bullies would make my life unbearable.
And then, out of nowhere, an older boy asked me if I’d like to play Sylvia Groomkirby in a play called “One Way Pendulum”.
And I thought: if I do this I’ll be able to wear girls’ clothes, and it’ll be alright.
So I said yes.
We rehearsed in the library.
And I loved the read through, and I loved standing and rehearsing on the space that was marked out as the stage…
I felt at home there. I didn’t feel shy any more. I felt I had a place in the world.
And I loved wearing the mini skirt and the false eyelashes and the wig…
And it was the same next year, when I was Lizzie in “Next Time I’ll Sing to You”.
Looking back, it’s clear that I’d just discovered my vocation - as a playwright and performer - but I was too confused and fundamentally still too ashamed to be able to understand and accept the information my body was giving me…
Lizzie wore a purple trouser suit, which I absolutely adored, and I was wearing it during a break from the dress rehearsal when somebody said
You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?
And they said it not at all unkindly, but clearly enough to make me freeze in fear.
And then my dad was coming to see the second performance, and I was terrified he’d see me
And that other people would see my secret too and my life would become unbearable
So I sabotaged my own performance.
And that was the beginning of my being blocked for 40 years as a performer.
Because although I wanted to keep on acting when I went in for male roles I just couldn’t act
Because I wasn’t male, but then just couldn’t see that, because at that time it just couldn’t be seen, and I turned my back on the theatre for ever.
But theatre did not turn its back on me.
Years later I found myself drawn to writing a PhD on a 17th century Spanish play by Calderón called El Medico de su Honra.
In those days (the early seventies) when academics wrote about drama they tended to write about it as if it were a piece of prose; I wanted to write about how the play would have worked in the theatre.
So I read obsessively almost all there was to know about theatre in Madrid in the 1630’s until after about two years it all began to seem utterly pointless.
I couldn’t understand why I was spending my time studying a playwright no-one had heard of to write a thesis no-one would ever read…
And then my research grant ran out.
I gave up my thesis and became a bus conductor.
And then I gave that up and became a student nurse…
I wanted to learn more about real people’s lives. And i wanted to help people.
And I wanted a skill that would enable me to work part time while I continued to fail at being a writer
(Because at the time I was still trying to be a novelist but never succeeding in finishing anything)
And then after about two years the same thing happened again: and nursing began to seem pointless too.
Or at least definitely not for me.
I had a growing sense that I needed to finish my thesis to become a writer.
But that seemed ridiculous.
So I just kept going, getting unhappier and unhappier
Until one day I was working in a medical ward.
It was an awful place.
This was 1978, and bed blocking was an issue back then.
There were many old people in the ward who had been ill, had got better, but were not well enough to cope at home.
And there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to send them.
So our job was to get these unfortunate women out of bed, wash them, put them in clean nighties and dressing gowns and leave them in geriatric chairs.
There was nothing for them to do, and often they’d hammer on their trays and shout “Nurse! Nurse!” just to relieve their appalling boredom…
And there were other, younger people, wandering around in night clothes too;
And I discovered they were people who’d taken an overdose the night before, had had their stomachs pumped out, and were waiting around for their twenty minutes with a psychiatrist.
After which they’d be given their clothes back and sent home.
No-one was being properly looked after, and I became very concerned about an old man half way down the ward who looked extremely ill.
A quiet man, who never complained, and I became more and more convinced that he needed to see a doctor.
But doctors seemed to stay away from that ward, and i couldn’t find one…
And when later on in the morning I was able to stop for a moment to look at him I discovered he was dead.
In that busy ward, he’d been left in pain and anguish until he died. Alone.
I was very distressed. But there was no time to be distressed; me and another nurse had to prepare him for the mortuary.
So we put screens round the bed, washed the body down, stuffed his orifices with cotton wool, closed his eyes and tied his jaw shut with a bandage.
The next thing was to put him into a shroud.
But we couldn’t find any.
We turned the linen cupboard upside down until right at the bottom at the very back we found a grotesque purple fringed garment.
My colleague said
“I wouldn’t be seen dead in it”
But we put him into it anyway and then phoned for the porters.
I had ten minutes before my lunch break.
The ward was on the fifth floor of a tower block and I could look out over the Firth of Forth.
I was sunk in misery.
And then I heard the voice.
It said, very clearly:
“You will work till the end of your shift. You will take off your uniform, empty your locker,
And never come back to work here again”.
There was no denying it, somehow. So that’s what I had to do.
And because I couldn’t think of anything else, I went back to my thesis.
And because I couldn’t remember the play that I was studying, I decided to translate it.
My partner Susie knew someone at work who’d studied drama at Glasgow, had heard of Calderón and was interested in him.
So she showed him my translation.
And he read it and said: “You can write dialogue”.
That was complete news to me. I was still trying to write novels.
And then it so happened that his aunt died and left him some money
And then it so happened that he wanted to spend the money putting on a show in the Edinburgh Fringe.
And we thought what we’d do is put on one of Calderón's comedies
So I translated “A House With Two Doors” and in 1980 I found myself in a secondary school hall watching my very first play.
I was carrying our first daughter in a sling, and was so proud of her.
So proud of the play too, though I couldn’t claim it was a big success.
In fact hardly anyone came; but the ones who did laughed at my jokes.
And the minute I heard that laughter I knew what kind of writer I was.
And that’s how I became a playwright.
Thank you, as always, for reading this.
Below I’ve posted an account of how this story came about for my paying subsribers.
Dear paying subscribers: I worry i don’t do nearlt enough to look after you.
Which is a shame, when you mean so much to me.
If you’re not paying, and would like to, click on the button below.
Lots of love to everybody…
I wrote this story because about a fortnight ago a friend dropped me a text out of nowhere.
His name is Turan Ali, and he runs a regular event at the Scottish Storytelling Centre called Queer Folks’ Tales.
There’s queer him and three queer guests each telling two 7-8 minute stories about real things.
it’s a lovely thing I’ve enjoyed doing in the past; but I wasn’t expecting to be called on a Wednesday morning and asked if I’d be kind enough to step in the next day for a guest who’d fallen ill with Covid.
I thought no and then said yes.
And then I had to think what to tell.
By the end of Wednesday this one had taken shape in my head; and by the next day so had the one I’ll write up next week.
My life is the source of just about everything I write about. But I rarely write about it directly.
“Facebook is not your friend” I firmly told myself some years ago, and have been telling myself ever since.
Because it’s important to keep one’s privacy.
To the extent that’s at all possible…
But it seemed important to tell the stories then; and it’s important to write them down and tell them now.
Only don’t ask me why…
Writing this has brought back many many more memories; and i could double the length of this telling.
But there’s no time really.
Strange to be remembering my struggles with my PhD when there’s a lovely man from Brazil, Rodolfo Godoi, writing a PhD about Queen jesus, coming round to see me this afternoon.
And I’m preparing a new piece for the fringe; and getting ready to learn Queen jesus for the USA; and preoccupied with a new poem I’ve written for the opening of the TILDE Festival in Melbourne.
And there’s this. And there’s you: thank you for being here.
You mean more than I can say.
Hope you have a lovely day….
I enjoyed reading this Jo. Indeed found it fascinating and in a way helpful. You mentioned recently you still thought of me as Chipper and by corollary my mental image of you is mostly as I remember from first meeting you at Lathockar and incidental things I picked up from Susie. This piece has allowed me to feel I know you much more fully as an old friend. All my best and thanks.