[Dressing room in a Working Men's Club. Large Mirror. Table and chair. On the table assorted paraphernalia including an ashtray, a packet of cigarettes, a lighter and a handbag. When the lights come up a man in drag is standing by the chair straightening his stockings.]

always had ambition you know. I desperately wanted to appear in No Sex Please, We're British. "Two hours of non-stop laughter." [Pause]. I never made it. [Pause]. I tried continental. I auditioned for Fassbinder, Lili Marlene. Bur others were there before me. So I'm here - and tonight represents a great step forward for showbusiness. Showbiz. That's what happens when money meets talent. They're all out there waiting for me. The Maestro is here. It's an opening, so to speak. Not much of an opening. A chance. Not much of a chance and a chance I suppose for little, but there you are, a chance nonetheless. You're not impressed? The Maestro, capital M, is the British and European Light Heavyweight Wrestling Champion. No? You don't know him? Or he doesn't appeal to you. Well, I for my part have never gone for the sinewy type. Just listen to the delights in store. Cabaret Tonite! Booze, Bingo, Booze, Wrestling, Booze, and finally, Top of the Bill, run of the mill, end of the line, frigged out transvestite stripper, Moi. [Pause]. Boos. [Pause].

Booze first always, a British tradition, then bingo as the haze builds up, the smog of the fag-fumes, punters missing numbers as they get more pissed, losing losing losing, everything lost as everything blurs, their eyes, their heads, their reality. More drink. The Intermission. Then, The Maestro, deadly with an armlock and a showman to boot, a Toscanini of the Canvas Ring. [Pause]. If he likes me he'll give me a job as his second, a dab hand with a cold wet towel and sponge. Of course I realise it's not quite art, but there you are. It's one way of getting an Equity card, and it's quite an innovation, and Mecca has always been a very innovative company. They used to do Miss World. Which I've thought of entering. Lipstick and Leotard in Lurid Leather First. That was the headline in Stage. [Pause. Lights a cigarette.]

Finally, to end their night in raptures, I come on. And what raptures. Neither first nor fine but most certainly careless, or it was, before…The smoke! The lights! Bright but not unsubtle. And the stench. The breath. It oozes over those footlights like steam from a blown out distillery. All eyes. Silence at first then a titter. I soon have them where I want them. Or at least, I have them where they want me to put them. [Stubs out cigarette. Slight agitation.]

It's always been like that. I light a cigarette, take a few puffs - like the adverts used to say: if you must smoke, take fewer puffs, and take longer breaths between puffs - and then I stub it out. Then very soon I want another one. I believe the psychologists say it has something to do with comfort. The nipple. You might as well say it's the penis. Moi-même, I think it's the nicotine. I'm always relaxed. It's just an addiction. And the odd thing is for an addict, I don't come from a broken home. Minority these days. [From the handbag he takes out a retractable lipstick, which he twists in and out phallically.]

I thought that might amuse you. Hoped. [Softly, he makes a scar-like line down his cheek. Pause. Throws away lipstick with a slight laugh. Pause. Sadly, rising to anger.] I don't need it. I could do without it. If I needed to dress up, I wouldn't do it like this now would I? They need it. They need it. I know they need it. They know they need it. They pay for it. Pay pay pay pay pay. I mean they're not just paying for the bingo, are they? Would you? [Pause]. There are layers below. You see me now, my neckline high, my make-up tasteful. Look closely now, for here is my beginning.[He stands and removes the dress. Underneath he is wearing rugby shirt and shorts. He stands still. Pause.]

The end began at my university. Oh yes, I've had an education. Classics. Decades ago. It was very different then of course. I don’t know how it is now, but however it is it can't be like it was then. How do I know? I can feel it, just feel it. Maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe plus ça change. There are no new neuroses. Social neuroses. Social diseases come and go like the clappers. Boom-boom. Neurosis, old gnosis. I don't know. Agnosis. This anyway is social neurosis as was. I divided my time equally between my academic studies and the rugby field. Most of us did back then. Some sport anyway. The Communist students all played croquet. Our scrum half was a robust fellow, who off the field purported to be angry. What about, nobody knew; but he was an arch defender of Kingsley Amis, whom I hated, and traditional jazz, which I also hated. So we got on famously, somehow. I gave him something to get angry about, with my conventional ways, and he taught me forbearance. People knew who they were back then. They were very sad times.

But then remember the sixties. They were against convention. They were against war. They were against the bomb. Wasn't there anything they were in favour of? And nowadays. Have you noticed how people stare if they see anyone smoking in public? But then they never say anything when they realise it's a spliff.

We were in the habit of calling in on each other unannounced. We were very close friends. I must emphasise nothing sexual. I'm not homosexual, though I believe he might have had latent tendencies. Now that's interesting, isn't it? I feel a need to make a distinction between a transvestite and a homosexual. I might sometimes make a distinction between a homosexual and a transsexual. One crucial distinction lately has been between homosexuals and paedophiles. It's very defensive. I mean surely the point is that we're all normal. Show me somebody quotes normal and I'll show you someone who's becoming extinct. What about the paedophiles? Well personally, dears, I'ld hang them in public. Society needs scapegoats for its collective thingy, so they might as well be scum like the paedophiles.

In he walked one day, without bothering to knock - why should he? - and [Sings] there was I parading in my finery. I think he was shocked. He said he was. When he regained consciousness. I believed him. What I know is that he told. Yes. The authorities. For the first time in my, admittedly brief, adult life, my respectable life, I was confronted with the Authorities. I was made to feel like a schoolchild. And we are, aren't we? We're all accounted for in the register. We're budgeted for, allocated resources. But some of us are expelled. I was not only sent down from my college. In effect I was exiled from society. And all because: I found this man, Sir, who was my friend, Sir, in his room, sir, wearing frilly underwear. Women's frilly underwear.

I couldn't go home. The shame was too great. Don't laugh. I was ten years too early. I had known who I was. Now thanks to the Authorities I knew no longer. I went everywhere. Looking for my Self. It must be somewhere. It must have just wandered off on its own. I found it very hard, having my sense of self taken away. It was a long time before I realised: it doesn't matter. When you're no-one you can be whatever it is honest for you to be. Anything can happen. I found myself performing. Any sort of performing. I was once a performing dolphin in a bright Hawaiian shirt. I played a hurdy gurdy and a blue violin. I was in the original Oh! Calcutta. I think I was. It was the sixties. I was a pyrotechnician for a display of auto-destructive art in the garden of the Tate Gallery. That was a very short term contract. None of it provided regular income. And now I'm doing this. And why not put two and two together to make a few bob?

Then there's love, a difficult business and is it worth it? I used to wonder not only is it worth the aggravation, but is it right even to want it. Ought one to expect that someone should love one? Is it not better to seek nothing of the world, not even, especially not, love? "Happy are they and sorrowless That have no loved one in the world. Who seeks the sorrowless dispassion Should have no loved one in the world." And of course the corollary is that you should wish no one to love you, if you wish them happy and sorrowless. In short, to be consistent, you have to believe that there should be no love in the world at all. What sort of sick psycho says this stuff? Actually, it was the Buddha. So perhaps he meant something else. Like: love the entire Universe, realise that everything in it is intermingled, love not one being, but everything. Which is all very well, but it's not top of the list of Things I Want From This Relationship. Everyone needs to love. Everyone needs to be loved. Even me.

But what if there's just not enough to go round? It's an old joke, isn't it, that there might be fixed quantities of abstract stuff like happiness or pleasure or sanity. Even if there aren't fixed quantities, we still have the subliminal idea that such things are somehow notionally measurable. We apply unconsidered utilitarian criteria almost every time we do or say anything. It's not a joke. We don't think a person is being funny if they decide that for the greater happiness of the greater number they themselves will act selflessly. We admire them. Then why not so with love? Will you call me sad, or pathetic? Should you not say, he is not lonely, and he is not alone: rather he is filled with love because he abjures love, that we might know more of its comforts and ecstasies? Give him an OBE.

Let me be frank. I am pathetic. I lack courage. I joined the struggle - I tried. I tried to play the formal game. The whole casual sex thing, well it never happened to me. I can't believe there is such a thing. Everyone seemed to be doing it, though, but not me. I had to try and do things more conventionally. What is cross-dressing? It only has meaning for a conventional mind. But even though I am conventional I never had the courage to ask anyone "Would you like to stay for breakfast?" How else to proceed? I couldn't think. The phrases weren't there. How do you talk to people? I don't mean like an audience. I mean people like proper people, people like persons. Goodnight kisses. Revolting business. Kisses are for mornings, when one has to consider only the tangible horrors of the day. And there's no one there in the morning. Not in my mornings. Mornings are a long time arriving. Sleep is no laughing matter for the Unloved Person. [Pause].

Look again. Now that the love-that-never-was is no longer, and only the footlights remain, I suppose a little peek or preview won't harm my professional standing. Or my personal feelings, such as they are. [He removes the rugby gear and is revealed wearing bra, knickers, suspenders.]

Now, yes, it's all over. We were on a carpet. Something cracked. I lost my temper. You think a person understands. You reveal yourself to them, expose yourself to the mercy of their understanding. You seethe and rage inside. No physical manifestation. You know no one is normal. You hurl imaginary objects and abuse, but you sit or lie there silently. I lost my temper. I didn't become violent. Everything was silent. I shook, got up, and left. It wasn't even anything she said. There was just something in the way she touched me that seemed to say Be Normal. Die. You are no exemplar. Let there be no exemplar. Do more than die. Become extinct.

For the future there are towels, make-up, chalk exposure. A steady income. Some lives are filled with peccadilloes, regarded as such by the peccadillatories themselves. Others only with guilt. Some can not avoid freakishness, which it seems to me inheres not in their actions or their ways, but in their Others, in their Everybodyelses, in the frenzy of those who consume feelings like booze or bingo prizes or glittering prizes, in all the voracity that plastic stuffed wallets confer. I step out tonight, pose and joke and titillate and get paid. It's all balls. The dum-dum ball with the exploding head. Ball boys, bow belles, beau monde. Then when I face my bed unloved, grim in the old-fashioned lamplight till dawn, I shall remember the question: [He picks up the rugby shirt and shorts and stuffs them into his bra cups] who is going to make love to me now?

[Slow fade]

© Nigel Tasane