Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (11 page)

During the intermission, she asked me go buy her 20 Rothmans and I duly obliged, in spite of having to leave the cinema and go across the road to get them. As I passed the ladies’ toilets I saw her with her sister and her friend giggling and when they saw me they quickly re-entered the toilet and closed the door. It took her ages to return to her seat and when she did, it was obvious that she wasn’t at all interested in the date. I brought her home and when we got to the gate I asked her if she would let me know. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and that was the last date I had with her.

I had much greater success, and was to make a firm friend, with my third date. Small and bubbly, she had joined the Welfare Cadets some months earlier and really seemed to enjoy working with me. She was very enthusiastic and committed. She was also much fancied by many of the guys and they were forever trying to chat her up, but to no avail.

The Peace Corps, who were associated with the Welfare Cadets, were having one of their many nights out bowling in Stillorgan and I invited her along as it would be an opportunity for her to socialise with the Peace Corps, which she was keen to join. We were all waiting at the bus stop outside Trinity College when it started to rain. The bus was at the stop and the driver sat there and wouldn’t let us get on, in spite of the fact that it was pouring rain. I thought that he was being stupid and inconsiderate and so took it upon myself to open the door and let everyone on. The driver refused to allow me to get on so they all left for the bowling without me. She decided to get off the bus too, which surprised me greatly. She said that if I wasn’t going, then neither was she. I was absolutely delighted with myself, as I fancied her like mad. The problem was, I didn’t have any other plan. She suggested we go to the pictures, so we decided to go and see
Saturday Night Fever
in the Savoy. It was wonderful. As we sat there watching the film I plucked up the courage to put my arm around her shoulders. She was very responsive and the feeling was truly electrifying. I was way above the proverbial cloud nine. So much so that I ventured to kiss her, and again she was receptive. I can hardly describe just how completely wonderful she made me feel; words cannot do it justice.

Of course, I had to spoil it by telling her some time later that I loved her. I allowed myself to get completely carried away and scared the living daylights out of her with my
intense feelings. She was, after all, just fifteen and I was just seventeen.

Convincing myself that I wasn’t meant to date girls and that I should once again consider my vocation, I did so over a period of weeks until I finally resolved to apply for the priesthood and went to see the Director of Vocations, Consular Brennan, at Ringsend in April 1978. I spent about two hours with him, going through all the reasons why I thought I had a vocation. He was convinced that I had and so got me to fill in this enormous form. I signed it and, in signing it, agreed to attend the local
VEC
for two years in order to get a formal education, which was absolutely vital if I was to study at Clonliffe College.

Once I had made my decision, I decided to tell my parents. My mother was delighted and said she would do everything she could to help me, including getting a job if necessary. For the first time ever I thought she was proud of me. And why wouldn’t she be, thinking I was eventually going to be the first in the family to join the priesthood, a huge thing in those days. A family’s prestige increased greatly after the ordination of one of its own. Once I had told my family, I felt my resolve grow even stronger and so began preparing myself in every way I could while waiting for the school year to begin.

It was at this time that I told my girlfriend of my decision to train for the priesthood. I could see that she had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand there was an obvious disappointment and on the other, she said that she was pleased for me and would help me in any way she could, and she did. On my eighteenth birthday she bought me a Bible. It was a Roman Catholic Revised Standard Version and carried the
Imprimatur
and
Nihil Obstat.
This was to be crucially important for me later, when confronting some very difficult
discoveries I would make, subsequent to my reading this particular version of the Bible.

These discoveries, to do with celibacy and the grounds for divorce, the Catholic Bible’s version of which I disagreed with, gave me a determination to withdraw my application to Clonliffe College and later still, formally to resign from the Roman Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of my parents, even though they were not practising Catholics themselves. Immensely difficult though the decision may have been, it is one I have never lived to regret.

Hardly had I made the decision not to go ahead and join the priesthood than I met Barbara, my future wife. It was this fateful meeting that was to overshadow my struggle with my gender conflict for the next twenty years.

C
all me an idealist, call me a romantic, call me naïve, but I really do believe in love; so much so that I could never contemplate living without it, or at least the hope of finding it. And this despite the many hurts that loving can bring. The problem was, I was so desperate to find love, or what appeared to be love, that I allowed myself to enter into a disastrous relationship and an even more disastrous marriage.

I met Barbara in the autumn of 1978. I was coming down Ballyfermot Road one evening after a night spent on Peace Corps’ work. I had just made my decision not to go ahead and study for the priesthood and it was only days after my nan had died. I passed two girls by and one of them called after me, saying, ‘Don’t say hello then’. I had met Barbara a couple of times on the street, but had never got further than ‘hello’. That night, I went back to her and we started chatting. She said goodnight to her friend and I walked her to her gate. I plucked up the courage to ask her out on a date. To my amazement, she said yes, so we arranged to meet the following Thursday.

I was like a giddy child going home, hardly able to believe my luck. I spent the next week between a state of delight and utter mortification. Delight at having a date, dread at the fact that I couldn’t actually remember her name. I was hoping that she might answer the door herself — if one of her family answered, then I was going to be in a right pickle. I would have to say something like,
‘
Hi, I’m here to see the girl with the glasses.’ I still get embarrassed thinking about it.

Thankfully, one of Barbara’s friends came to the rescue. I bumped into her on the way to Barbara’s house and, when I told her about my predicament, she very kindly offered to go to the door for me — though not without having a good laugh first.

The first date amounted to nothing more than going for a walk, chatting and a kiss goodnight. We arranged to meet and go to the pictures the following Sunday. I arrived for our date only to find Barbara house-sitting, looking after her grandparents. Both her parents were out, as were her three sisters and two brothers. When her grandparents eventually left, we sat and looked at the
Muppet Show
, amongst other things. About 10.30 p.m. her father came in. We were sitting in the dark, so he couldn’t see me. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Is that that long bastard?’ I was shocked and rooted to the sofa, but Barbara was quick to reassure me that her father was not referring to me, but instead to her ex-boyfriend. Needless to say, his arrival and abrupt tone put an early end to proceedings.

Barbara gave me my first, and very nearly my last, Christmas present some weeks later, a silver chain and medallion with my name engraved on it. No sooner did she hand it to me, then she told me she was calling it off. I was devastated and didn’t know what to do. I cried my eyes out. I
was distraught. She was shocked by my reaction. I pleaded with her to tell me why. She said that she did not think it would work out. I told her I loved her and that I didn’t want to finish with her. Then, as cool as you like she said, ‘Actually, I was just testing you.’ I was too relieved to be annoyed. This was to prove the first of many
tests
she was to put me through.

Nonetheless, as I was desperate for love and support, I stuck with it.

We began to see each other virtually every night. She brought me to stay with her sister Lily and her family in Tallaght after just two weeks. While there I met Lily’s two children, Aaron and Linda. We went to the Waldorf in the city centre for some drinks and dancing. When we came back we were given the sofa bed to share. We stayed up most of the night, and around three in the morning, I proposed to her, and to my surprise and delight, she accepted. I was astonished because I never really believed that anyone would actually love me, never mind marry me. So I took the first chance I got. How foolish and immature I was.

Being brutally honest about it, I have always felt much more comfortable having women as friends rather than lovers. I have loved them but more as companions than as prospective wives and, though I’d asked Barbara to marry me, I was still extremely uncomfortable with taking the initiative, especially when it came to matters sexual, but that is what I was expected to do and I had enough problems without people thinking I might be gay. The great issue for me was one of surviving my family and my relationship with Barbara had all the promise of delivering me from them and bringing me to a place where I would feel loved for the first time ever.

I didn’t tell mother until after I was engaged, knowing that she would never approve. My mother was against everything
I did, except house cleaning and giving her most of my hard-earned wages, which at that time was more than eighty per cent of what I earned, including overtime. But now that I was engaged, that situation would have to change. I attempted to placate her by buying her a box of chocolates and trying to reason with her as to the rightness of my decision. She was unmoved, but I remained equally steadfast. As bad as our relationship was up to this point, (and it was bad) it was about to get much worse.

On a very cold and icy January day, just two months after our decision to get engaged, I went to Gerard Bradley, who ran the savings club in Weavex, and asked him if I could get my club payment earlier as I wanted to buy an engagement ring for my girlfriend. I felt so fantastic at the prospect of surprising Barbara with an engagement ring. The following Friday night we went to the pictures. I couldn’t concentrate on the film because I was bursting to tell her the news that I was buying her engagement ring the next day. Suddenly, I blurted out, ‘We’re getting engaged tomorrow’. She never heard me and the moment was lost.

The following day, Saturday, we went to visit her sister Mary in Bluebell. I told her I had to go to the city on some important business and off I went to the jewellers in Henry Street. I found a beautiful and unusual ring, a set of six rubies with a diamond mounted above them. I just felt it was the perfect ring for her. The woman serving me was amazed that I even knew her finger size.

I returned to Bluebell with the ring, with no small degree of excitement, so much so that I was fit to burst. When I entered the house I asked Mary if I could have a minute with Barbara on my own as I had something special to give her. I
went into the sitting room where Barbara was sitting by the fire. I knelt in front of her and handed her the ring box. She opened the box, looked at the ring and said, ‘Oh, that’s lovely. Who’s it for?’

I was gobsmacked and deeply embarrassed at the same time. ‘It’s for you,’ I replied.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she answered, and put the ring on her finger. She then called Mary in to show her the ring. Mary congratulated her and made us a cup of tea. I felt totally deflated: it felt like an empty and meaningless experience after such an emotional build-up. This was to be a sign of things to come.

Over the next two-and-a-half years Barbara was to call it off with me on numerous occasions. Each time, she would tell me that she was testing me, while on other occasions she said I was being too possessive. I
was
possessive, because I couldn’t handle the idea of her being with anyone but me. I never realised just how terribly insecure I was and how desperate. I don’t beat myself up over it, because I know that I was incompetent when it came to relationships. In fact, the psychiatrist who would later carry out an assessment of me described me as being ‘socially inept’ at the time. I must admit to having felt aggrieved at this, but in actual fact he was absolutely correct, and I think to myself, how could I have been otherwise? It was as if I was more the girl and Barbara more the boy when it came to expressing our feelings in this relationship — and the relationship was always far more important to me than to Barbara, I felt.

Barbara and I went to see our local priest, Father Hughes, in March 1979 with a view to getting married, but when I told my mother, she said it would be over her dead body. She
resented the fact that I had chosen someone myself and was making my own decisions in life and, when we tried to discuss the matter with Father Hughes, he simply stonewalled us, telling us that he was not going to marry us. It transpired that my mother had been to see him, expressing her dissatisfaction at our plans: I was dumbfounded and very angry towards both of them for what they had done to us. I was nineteen at the time and it was to be another year and a half before we finally married.

Over the coming months, my relationship with my mother would deteriorate. I came in from work one evening and found nothing but hostility towards me because I had gone to see Father Michael Cleary to get some advice on how to deal with the situation. I mentioned to him my mother’s opposition to my marrying Barbara, and he told me I was very mature and had given him excellent reasons for getting married. He promised he would talk to my mother and try and get her to see sense, but that is not how things transpired; at least not according to my mother. She told me that Father Cleary told her I was nothing but a troublemaker. I think she was lying. Either way, that really was the beginning of the end in terms of my relationship with her, if one could call it a relationship.