A Child's Life - 1. A Child's Life

Joannah had been raised as a staunch Roman Catholic by her parents; that was until they were killed in a car crash when she was twelve. She had never had a problem with the philosophy that contraception, prostitution, and homosexuality were against church doctrine and were sins gravely contrary to chastity, but she’d always had a problem with the ‘no sex before marriage’ bit.

According to local gossip, she had lost her virginity at the age of fourteen. By the time she was eighteen she’d had more screws than the Eiffel Tower, and by the time she was twenty-one she was the most famous ride outside of the fucking Magic Kingdom.

Joannah had celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday with her six closest friends. She was the only one of the seven who was neither married, engaged, nor a mother.

Clarice had married her childhood sweetheart at the age of eighteen, and had had her first child at the age of twenty. Now at the age of twenty-eight she was the mother of five.

Stephanie had married her long-term partner six months ago, following a two year engagement. So far they were childless, and it was not for want of trying.

Elizabeth wasn’t married, but she did have two daughters by her partner. They had been together for nine years, but the topic of marriage had never arisen.

Sandra had married at the age of twenty-three, but was so far childless.

Josephine was engaged. She and her fiancé had been engaged for eight months, but there had been no talk of setting a date.

Jackie had been married twice already, and divorced twice. She had one child by her first husband, and two by her second. She was constantly on the prowl for hubby number three.

Although Joannah saw how much love her friends received from their partners and children, she had absolutely zero aspirations in that direction. She had never wanted kids, nor a husband. As she didn’t want a family, she had never even had a boyfriend. That didn’t mean that she didn’t like men, nor that she was a virgin; it just meant that she had never been in a long-term relationship.

She certainly wasn’t jealous of her friends. In fact, she was as happy as the proverbial pig in muck. She was glad that she didn’t have a husband, or kids for that matter. She could live her life as she pleased, do what she wanted, when she wanted, and only had to worry about herself. That all changed in the summer of 2000.

To celebrate her twenty-sixth birthday, she and her girlfriends had gone on holiday for two weeks of sea, sun, sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll; well maybe not the ‘drugs’ part. They had gone to Rhodes; they drank too much, partied until six o’clock in the morning, and partook of many local delights. Once such delight, an eighteen year old American boy called Thomas, who was hoping for a chance to lose his virginity, gave Joannah more than just a damn good shagging.

After her return home, she suffered an off and on eight week bought of nausea. She attributed it to all the alcohol and foreign foods she had downed. By the time she decided to see a doctor, she was already three and a half months pregnant.

One night in April of 2001 she went into labour, and after six hours of sweating, pushing, screaming, swearing, and cursing all men to have their dicks drop off, she gave birth to a baby boy.

He was six pounds and two ounces of cuteness, and she instantly fell in love. She called him Max, after her father, and the baby was truly the first person she’d ever loved.

Max had an enjoyable childhood. He had friends, he was a polite boy, and he loved school. However, when he was seven years old, Maxine arrived on the scene.

Joannah was entertaining a couple of her friends one Thursday evening, and unbeknownst to them, Max had gotten into her makeup. He applied a thick layer of pale blue eye-shadow to his upper and lower lids, smeared his lips with plum-coloured lipstick, and brushed a layer of mascara on his eyelashes; he’d even gotten one of his mum’s skirts out of the wardrobe. He stared at himself . . . correction . . . herself . . . in the mirror.

The transformation was amazing. Where there used to be an almost-attractive seven year old boy, there now stood an undeniably pretty seven year old girl. Max had had the urge to fully transform into a girl for about four months, but until that night, the furthest he’d gotten was to wrap one of their fuchsia-coloured towels around his waist like a skirt. That October evening, was the day that Maxine was truly born.

Joannah never found out what had happened that night as she entertained Sandra and Elizabeth, drinking a bottle of Merlot in complete blissful ignorance.

That blissful ignorance lasted for another eighteen months, until the day before Max’s ninth birthday.

(Max’s diary entry)

Dear Dairy,

Tomorrow is my ninth birthday.

I don’t understand. I’m a boy. All I need to do is look down, and I see a penis to know that I’m a boy. But the thing that makes me a boy is the thing that . . . I don’t know . . . doesn’t quite feel like a part of me.

I feel something inside me that is growing. I’ve been playing around with Mum’s make-up and dresses for a couple of years and I don’t know why. I do know that I don’t feel like I should.

I look at the other boys in my class, and I know that I feel things that they don’t. At school, it is almost a rule that the boys play with the boys and that the girls play with the girls, but I prefer playing with the girls.

I really don’t understand, and I’m not sure I ever will.

“Mummy, can I talk to you?”

Joannah made some space next to her on the sofa, and patted one of the plush blue cushions. “Of course, Honey. What’s on your mind?”

Max sat down, curled up his legs and leaned into her. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I don’t know where to start.”

“Just start at the beginning, Sweetheart.”

That’s just what Max did. He told his mum about his earliest memories of wanting to know what it was like to be a girl. However, he couldn’t tell her that he sometimes played dress-up and had used her make-up.

“Honey, lots of boys wonder what it’s like being a girl.” She had no idea if that was true or not, but she didn’t want to make him feel like he was freak or something. “I guess it has something to do with seeing girls in pretty colours, or wearing sparkly and glittery things, or doing intricate things with their hair.”

Max thought about telling her that he wanted to be a girl, but he couldn’t. After all, if he didn’t fully understand it himself, if he couldn’t explain it to himself, then he had no hope of getting his mum to fully understand it. He did have one chance of getting to live out his dream of being a girl out in public, and it was a chance that perhaps might not freak out his mother.

“I may have a chance to see what it’s like.”

“How is that Max?” Joannah didn’t notice her son’s reaction to being called ‘Max’. He withdrew slightly from her, rolled his eyes, and uttered a barely audible tutting noise.

Max had long since stopped thinking of himself as ‘Max’; he had thought of himself as ‘Maxine’ for nearly eleven months now. “June 19^th is the day of our class play.”

“I thought you weren’t in the play, Honey?”

It was true; he wasn’t in the class play. The play had been announced back around Easter time, and the class had quickly been assigned their roles. The play that had been picked was Sleeping Beauty, and as the class was skewed in favour of the number of boys (out of a class of nineteen, there were eleven boys and eight girls), there were three boys who were left without a part to play.

Max, David Lally, and Jeremy Firkin had all been told that although there were no parts left in the class play, they could be in the play being done by either the year above or the year below. The year above were doing Peter Pan, which held no interest for Max (unless he could have played Tinker Bell, but that role had gone to Nadine Chalmers), and the year below were doing Aladdin. David ended up as one of the Lost Boys and Jeremy was one of Ali Baba’s thieves.

“Well, the girl who was supposed to be playing Merryweather can’t. She’s come down with chicken pox, and won’t be back to school before the play.”

“You mean you want to be one of the fairy godmothers?” The idea was not that unusual in Joannah’s eyes. She and her friend Elizabeth both worked in the theatre, and so were accustomed to seeing males playing female roles and vice versa, so why should this be any different?

“Yes, I do, Mum. It will mean that I’ll be able to dress up like a girl, and wear make-up and sparkles and stuff. Plus, I’ll be in the class play.”

“Well, if you are all right with the idea Honey, then so am I.”

Little did Joannah realise that now her son was heading closer and closer to becoming Maxine. She thought that she was merely humouring some silly wish of her son’s, when she was actually helping him to fulfil his heart’s deepest desire.

For three weeks, Joannah showed Max different ways to apply make-up, and how he looked wearing different colours. She also showed him what he looked like doing different things with his hair, which was both long enough and bushy enough to plait, knot up in a bun, or tie up in angel wings. She had even bought him a lovely little multi-coloured butterfly hairclip to wear on the big night.

Max’s teacher, Mrs Knox, had a similar attitude to his mother’s. She had a background in theatre as well, and was probably too artsy for her own good.

Max’s classmates thought it was all a bit odd, but nothing negative was said about it; probably a consequence of how well-liked he was. Actually during the dress rehearsals, the girls who were playing the other fairy godmothers realised that Max, once transformed into Merryweather, was prettier than they were.

The night of the play went off without a hitch, and many of the parents were surprised to realise that one of the fairies was actually Max. Most of the parents knew Max, as he was friendly with all of the other kids in his class, and was about the only kid to be invited to everyone’s birthday party, even the girls’.

Joannah assumed that now the school play was over that Max had gotten the whole ‘wondering what it was like to be a girl’ thing out of his system.

Max was only nine years old, but he couldn’t deny what he felt. He hated playing football, and basketball, and games with the other boys. He spent more and more time playing netball, and skipping with girls. After the school play had finished, Max drifted away from the boys in his class and gravitated towards the girls. By sharing in their girly world, he felt that he was at least part-girl, and could openly live his fantasy.

When school finished for the year and the summer holiday began, Max asked his mum if they could dress him up as a fairy again. Max said that he had liked being dressed up, and thought that he might want to go into acting, so he might have to play female roles. He might have only been nine years old, but he knew exactly how to pull Mummy’s strings. He knew that Joannah hoped that he would follow in her footsteps when he was older, and decided he’d let her think that that was his motivation.

Joannah decided that if they were going to do this, then they were going to do it properly. She went to the local fancy dress shop and bought a fairy outfit in Max’s size. She then stopped off in the pharmacy and bought a selection of make-up. Joannah did this as she had a sneaking suspicion that Max had been using her make-up for a while, as she seemed to go through an inordinate amount of the stuff for a woman who scarcely went out once a month.

She wondered where this whole fantasy of Max’s had come from, and just how deep this idea of being a girl actually ran.

Maybe it was just the lack of a strong male role model in his life.

Maybe it was the fact he was an only child being raised by a single mother.

Maybe he was overly exposed to a girly world. All of her friends were female, and she had never really befriended any of their partners. The both of them really did live in a world that would probably benefit from a dash of testosterone every now and again.

However, as another year passed, Max wanted to play dress-up more and more frequently, and Joannah was finally forced to accept that it was more than just simple curiosity or a passing phase on her son’s part.

It was in the run up to Easter when Joannah finally decided to have a frank and honest conversation with her son. He was nearly ten years old, and had now taken to dressing up like a girl nearly every day. She’d also had a few of the other parents say things to her of late that had forced her to need to deal with the dressing up issue sooner than she would have liked.

Eloise’s dad had commented how often Max seemed girly when the two of them played together. It was nothing her dad could really put a finger on; it was just that Max seemed unusually interested in playing with Eloise’s toys and he giggled even more than she did.

Kylie’s dad had had the shock of his life three weeks earlier, when he found Max in one of his daughter’s dresses, and Kylie was French-plaiting his hair as though it was something completely normal. Max had gorgeous blond locks that were a shade of blond that made most girls envious; it was a shade that women paid hairdressers over a hundred pounds to get from a bottle. The shoulder length golden locks were the only thing of Max that survived the transition into Maxine. Max loved his hair; it was actually the only part of ‘Max’ that he did love. He begrudgingly allowed his hair to be trimmed, but never seriously cut. He had always had longer hair than was traditionally acceptable for a boy, but it was the beginning of Maxine.

Karla’s mum had decided that she could no longer leave the two of them to play alone. Karla had used a goodly portion of her mum’s make up and one of her own dresses turning Max into a girl. Karla had even allowed Max to spray himself with some of her perfume.

That last told Joannah that this was going far beyond curiosity; this was verging on a way of life.

(Max’s diary entry)

Dear Diary,

It’s been too long since my last entry, but now I finally get it.

It’s taken me a while to get it, but I finally do.

My best friend is a girl. What’s up with that?

I like Kylie, and I feel so close to her. The only other kids I play with these days are Eloise and Karla. All I seem to do when I play with them is to want to be one of the girls.

All this . . . fascination I think is the right word . . . with dressing up like a girl, with playing with the girls and wearing make-up, I AM A GIRL.

God, did I really just write that?

It feels like the truth, but I’m only ten years old.

I know how people treat those who are different, but I am different.

It’s taken me nearly three years to understand what I’m feeling. Now I just have to explain it all to Mum. I just hope that it doesn’t take her three years to get it.

Joannah finally sat down with her son on Easter Monday. She had spent nearly a week thinking how she was going to handle this. She had gone through numerous scenarios, and thought of ways to handle each of them if they came up. The last thing she wanted to do was to approach this talk either emotionally or without at least half a plan.

“What’s going on, Max?” The flinch at the sound of his own name had become more pronounced over the months, and this time did not go unnoticed by Joannah. “Honey, is there something wrong with your name?”

“My name is not Max, Mum. It’s Maxine.”

Complete silence reigned for nearly a minute. Joannah hadn’t expected Max . . . Maxine . . . no, Max . . . to vocalise what was happening so bluntly. She had her suspicions that Max was far more than just curious, but she had no idea that her son had gone so far as to develop a girl persona.

“Mum, you must have guessed that I don’t feel like I’m . . . like I’m a boy.”

Joannah blinked as she tried to hold back the tears that threatened. “I had, honey. I was just hoping that this was all a playing dress up phase that you were going through.”

“Mum, I’ve been putting on your make up since I was seven. This is far from a phase.”

Joannah wasn’t surprised at Max’s statement. She had had her suspicions, but to have them confirmed should have been more of a shock for her. Perhaps she had simply accepted the inevitable and not realised it. “Some of your friends’ parents have been commenting about certain things they’ve seen.”

“Let me guess. Kylie’s dad and Karla’s mum?”

Joannah nodded. “Amongst others. But what made you think of those two in particular?”

“I’ve been dressing up with Kylie and Karla for a while now. It all started off with me pretending to be curious about girlie stuff. It went from simply allowing me to put on a dress, to putting on make-up, to fully becoming Maxine. Neither of them suspected my real reasons, but I guess their parents did.”

“Honey­­—” the deliberate lack of calling him ‘Max’ felt strange, but she couldn’t bear seeing that flinch again “—what makes you think that you’re a girl?”

“I don’t know Mum.” Joannah unconsciously rolled her eyes, an action that Max caught immediately.

“That’s the honest truth, Mum.” It was the truth. Although Max had finally accepted who and what he was, he still struggled to explain it to himself at times.

“I never wanted to talk to you about this until I understood it better. How am I supposed to tell you what’s happening, or why I feel like I’m a girl, when I can’t even explain it to myself?”

Mother and son . . . daughter . . . son . . . fuck it! Mother and child discussed it as best they could for near enough the entire day. Although Max felt as though he was rambling and going round and round in circles at times, Joannah was actually beginning to understand. She wasn’t quite at the truly accepting stage yet, but she felt that she could understand.

Joannah understood that Maxine held a strong allure for her child. The girl persona allowed him to experience some things that few boys ever do. She was a window into another world. However, Joannah was also coming to understand that Maxine might be who her son was destined to become.

Although she knew that ultimately her actions could lead to her son ceasing to be her son, she bought him a selection of dresses, hair clips, perfumes, and the like. Joannah did however make it clear that he could only be Maxine at home; at school, he had to be Max. It was an unwelcomed stipulation, but one that he agreed to, even though it meant denying who he was half of the time.

Max’s last year at primary school was relatively uneventful. However, as more and more parents became aware of the existence of Maxine, Max found himself with fewer and fewer friends, even Kylie was no longer part of his life. For the final three months of school, he was practically a loner. He had gone from one of the most popular boys in school, to being as welcome as a ham sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah.

To hopefully avoid a lot of problems with the transitions to secondary school, Joannah decided to move away. Max was initially apprehensive about it, until he was told that he could be Maxine all of the time if he so wished. So move away they did.

Max was enrolled at Baxter Street School, a mixed school, as Maxine. The school were made aware of the circumstances and Joannah was assured that it would not be an issue. The school had an explicitly clear sexual equality and anti-bullying policies, although the headmaster did admit that it would be the first time that the policies would be tested.

September 5^th 2012 was Maxine’s first real day at school. Max had always enjoyed the transformation process, but today he was being unusually fastidious about it.

Max had always possessed an innate attractiveness, even as a boy. Now that he was older, he had started watching a number of television programmes on transsexuals and transvestites. He was amazed at the time, effort, and the layers of make-up some them had to employ to pass as female. Usually all Max needed to do was don a dress and he could pass, unless someone got close, like kissing close.

In his school skirt and blouse, he already looked as pretty as any eleven year old girl on her first day at secondary school. However, today was not about passing as a girl, today was about becoming a girl. It was about embracing Maxine, and making her a part of his heart and his soul.

With her school outfit complete, the next step was the make-up. A thin layering of mascara, a pale blue eye shadow, and a subtle pink lip gloss completed that step. A light spray of perfume, a dragonfly hair clip, and a floral neckerchief completed Maxine. She slipped on a pair of patent leather shoes, and the transformation from simply passing as a girl to a heavenly beauty that would turn the head of any eleven year old boy was complete.

Joannah’s first glimpse of Maxine was heart wrenching. There was absolutely nothing of her son there; even the hair that always survived the transformation was somehow subdued and not as obvious as it usually was. As hard as it was for her to believe, what stood before her was one hundred percent femininity; well ninety five percent, there wasn’t much that could be done about the one obvious give away at this stage.

Maxine entered the school building with a sense of confidence she had never known before. The feeling of being herself. The feeling of being free. The feeling of being . . . hell, of just simply being.

Her first three weeks at school passed without incident, or almost without incident.

When you put a girl as attractive as Maxine into a class with thirteen boys who are on the verge of entering puberty, the inevitable was bound to happen. Several of the boys fell hard and fast in love with her, at least as close to in love as any eleven year old boy gets with a girl he’s known for all of three weeks.

Maxine carried herself with a grace and a butt wiggle that was the envy of the other girls in her class, and was a source of attraction for the boys. It was unknown whether Maxine was aware of the effect she was having, but if she had been more aware of herself and her appeal, then perhaps what happened might not have come to pass.

September 28^th, about four weeks into the school term, was the day that not only shook Maxine, it shook the whole school. It was the first time the full horror of human stupidity and ignorance reared its ugly head at Baxter Street School.

Maxine was in the girl’s toilet when she suddenly heard a shriek. “She’s a boy!”

Those three small words signalled that her secret was no longer a secret. It only took three hours for the entire school to find out about Maxine. She spent the rest of the school day being stared at, being whispered about, and viewed as a freak.

Once the school day was over, she trudged home. She was lost in her thoughts as she wondered just how the other kids were going to react to her once the initial shock had settled. She had lived and loved Maxine for about a month, and it appeared as though that was all she was going to get.

One kid on their own can be kind, understanding, and perhaps even accepting. Kids on the other hand, can be cruel, mean, and bullying. Maxine hoped, at the very least, that she would be allowed to live in peace, even if she had to endure school friendless.

As she turned a corner, she felt a fist hit her. She was tackled to the ground, and was punched, kicked and spat on. The attack scarcely lasted thirty seconds, but its effect was devastating.

Maxine remained unconscious in the hospital for three days. She had two cracked ribs, internal bleeding, and the swelling on her brain was slowly going down.

Joannah had spent those three days in complete turmoil.

She had been told by the school’s headmistress that it had gotten out that Maxine was really a boy. Even though there were school policies covering sexual equality, tolerance, and anti-bullying, none of that apparently meant shit since the assault had occurred off school property.

The only way those responsible for the attack would be punished, was if Maxine were to report it and could identify her assailants. Everyone in school knew who was responsible, but the wall of silence had gone up, and the little bastards were going to get away with it.

It was the first time something truly negative had happened with regards to Maxine, but Joannah couldn’t help but think what might come round the corner next. If a group of eleven year olds could be the source of such brutality, then what could happen when Maxine turned thirteen . . . sixteen . . . or twenty-one even?

Joannah had never really had a problem with Maxine, until that day. Even seeing her child lying in the hospital bed, it was impossible for her to deny that there was far more of Maxine than of Max there.

She looked down at the unconscious form of her only child and wept. She knew in her heart of hearts that her child was now Maxine, but she also couldn’t deny that Maxine was the source of this hospital stay.

Maxine was finally discharged from the hospital six days after she had regained consciousness, but was told to remain off school for at least another week to allow time to heal properly. Maxine was looking forward to sleeping in her own room, in her own bed, surrounded by her own things, but when she entered her bedroom, her heart shattered.

Gone were the pink curtains.

Gone were the stuffed animals that lived on her bed.

Gone were her pretty bedsheets with the unicorns.

She pulled open her wardrobes only to find that gone were her dresses, gone were her skirts and gone were her blouses.

Her curtains were now a dark shade of blue.

Her bedsheets were covered in pictures of Formula One racing cars.

Her wardrobes were now filled with trousers and shirts.

The final straw was seeing that her make-up case was gone.

“Mum?”

“Max, I’m sorry. This fantasy of yours is over. You were attacked because of it. It’s time for you to live you Max.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“You are my son, Max. You were born a boy, and a boy you’ll always be.”

Maxine lay down on her bed . . . no! Not her bed! Some fucking imitation of her bed! . . . and she wept. She wept as she had never wept before.

Her mourning when her friend Kylie’s younger brother died when she was nine didn’t approach this.

Her sorrow when their pet cocker was run over when she was six didn’t approach this.

This was more than just simple sadness. Maxine’s pain and grief was overwhelming. She had been betrayed by the one person in the whole universe who was supposed to love her without condition. She had been stabbed through the heart by the one person who was supposed to be there for her, come what may.

Joannah had not even had the courage to do this to her face! Her mother had taken advantage of the fact that she had been beaten unconscious and was hooked up to machines in a hospital to ruin her childhood.

A week passed and not one word was exchanged between mother and child. Maxine had stayed in her room, and she completely ignored her mother’s presence. The physical presence of Maxine may have been removed, but the emotional presence was still there. Joannah had no idea that in her child’s dreams, Maxine was very much alive and well. She had no idea that Maxine was more than just dresses, and make-up and glitter.

One afternoon Joannah was tidying her son’s room . . . her son’s, praise God, her son’s room . . . when she discovered something that caused her to finally snap completely. She found a floral neckerchief under Max’s bed. Whether Max had recently purchased it, or she’d simply missed it during ‘The Great Clean-Up’ she didn’t know. She had hoped that if she eliminated all of the glitz and the glamour then that would be enough. However, she now knew that drastic action was called for.

That evening she crushed up several of the sleeping pills that the hospital had provided her following Maxine’s attack, and mixed them into Max’s bedtime glass of milk. A few hours later, her child was in a deep state of slumber.

At the tender mercy of his mother, Max slept through his mother committing the ultimate sacrilege. She shaved off his long blond locks, the only part of Max that had always survived the transition into Maxine.

For six long months, Joannah forced her son to be a boy.

For six long months, not one word was spoken between child and mother.

For six long months, Maxine was not granted a physical presence.

Although Joannah got to spend those six months with her son, the sparkle of life had long since left his emerald green eyes.

Joannah failed to understand that Maxine had become such a powerful entity over the years, that she had completely replaced Max as the soul of her child.

With no Maxine, Max’s body had nothing left to live for.

Max was deep in mourning for the death of Maxine.

His life.

His heart.

His soul.