There weren't enough seats for everyone who turned up for the first meeting of our support group. An assortment of transgender people trickled into the Rhythm Street café, whilst the wind howled against the thin walls.
Tall women, some manicured and made up to Vogue-like perfection. Guys with faces that belied a pre-medication roundness. Unaccustomed to seeing what lay behind the profiles people projected on social media, there were a few surprises. Some looked thinner. Others seemed quieter than their on-line avatars. I nicked a seat from a woman wearing a blonde wig, when she went to get coffee.
Earlier that evening, an autumnal chill had me cocooned in the living room. It wasn't long after the Christchurch earthquakes, and I didn't want to drive through the pockmarked streets to a bohemian café on the other side of town in the filthy rain. We were three months into Bev's active transition - that mist-filled hinterland where a select few knew her situation. Others had no idea that my six-foot-one 'husband' was actually a sensitive woman with a penchant for spangled bracelets who wrote poetry in her spare time. She persuaded me to accompany her in the end.
Bev and the woman in the blonde wig discovered some common ground, and chatted for much of the evening. I met Pamela, a charming lady from the West Country. She'd emigrated to New Zealand with her family a few years after we had. She was living near our old house in Cashmere, a Christchurch suburb at the foot of the Port Hills. I will have passed her house frequently.
We discussed the quakes (everyone did in those days), family, work, and why we'd left the UK She was interested to hear how I was adapting to my partner becoming openly female, and how that affected our relationship. I told her it had its ups and downs, but knowing Bev's status before we got together in the 1980s meant I hadn't been stymied by shocking revelations.
Pamela's situation was different. Her wife wasn't coping with the change. It had come out of left field for her. Some partners don't deal with it. Others can't. Pamela didn't know how she was going to make her transition work for the family. They had school-aged children. The truth was the majority of couples in our situation struggled to maintain a friendship, let alone anything else.
I poked my finger into the head of foam on my coffee, and thought about getting something to eat. We'd missed tea. Rhythm Street was one of those places with a vibrant quirky atmosphere, but a mediocre menu. Mismatched seats, folk music and poetry readings. The perfect place to meet.
Pamela told me she'd got changed in her car. I imagined that wouldn't have been easy for someone of her stature. We exchanged numbers, and then it was time to go.
"I felt totally at home with those people." I told Bev, slipping my key into the ignition. "What was the person you spoke to like?"
"Rhonda? She's part time..." Bev gave me a brief summary. Rhonda used her male persona in the workplace, but freely expressed her femininity at home, or amongst friends. She was happy that way, and had no intention of making any further changes. I was starting to learn that there were a lot of stops along the highway of gender variance.
"Who were you talking to? She seemed pleasant." I gave Bev a run-down of my evening with Pamela. The swish of windscreen wipers punctuated our words.
I contacted Pamela a few times over the next weeks. We tried to organise a night out. I think she was as glad as we were to have discovered kindred spirits on her doorstep.
It was well into the spring before we managed to fit dinner into our busy schedules. Pamela chose The Rookery, a restaurant in a quaint nineteenth century villa, with a courtyard and sunroom. Cobalt blue leaded lights cast an ethereal gleam of colour. Leaving Bev at the table, I met Pamela in the car park, so she wouldn't have to walk in on her own.
She was vivacious and excited. Her new shoes were a great source of joy. The girls swapped notes on good websites for plus sizes. Bev was going through what I termed her androgyne stage, wearing unisex jeans, and loose flowing tops. At a push, she could generally pass as an effeminate male or hippie. However, that evening she wore something floaty and pretty, and looked nothing like a man. I was conscious of her looking over her shoulder, as if she wasn't quite ready for such a public declaration of her femininity. I'd blagged a fake moustache off someone who'd been raising awareness of prostate cancer for Movember. I'd felt out of place conforming to a gender binary norm. Seeing Bev's discomfiture, I asked Pamela how she felt about the possibility of someone she knew spotting her at The Rookery.
"Oh, they'd never recognise me," her West Country drawl seemed to wrap itself round the words.
Christchurch is a small city. There are only two degrees of separation between most inhabitants. A visit to the gynaecologist could be followed by an embarrassing encounter at a neighbour's barbie, where the same person greets you at the other end of your body, whilst passing you a sausage. So it came as no surprise to discover we had mutual friends.
"You must never tell Leanne and Andrew about me," Pamela implored. I guessed then, that 'Pamela' was probably not destined to last. Bev and I had caught a glimpse of a fleeting phenomenon, a brief expression of something the person inside needed to liberate.
We parted, planning to meet again. "I hope things go well for you, and that your wife will join us next time." I held her hands in mine, and kissed her cheek.
That was over two years ago.
I've never heard from Pamela again.
(Names have been changed).
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