Free Sex and Other Changes by David Nobbs

stand football. My wife loves it, but I just find it so … so crude. I feel uneasy in pubs. I feel I don’t belong. I like to sip white wine, not gulp great draughts of beer. Oh, and there are all sorts of little things. Too silly to mention really.’
    â€˜Let me be the judge of that.’
    â€˜I’m not fascinated by the contents of my nose. I don’t save up wind so as to fart in the bath. I would never pee in a hotel washbasin.’
    â€˜Other men do?’
    â€˜And boast about it. And they love crapping so much that they take their favourite books in with them so they can make the fun last a bit longer. And I hate smutty stories. I hear them all over the hotel – roars of harsh male laughter at some cruel or dirty joke. I can’t think of any sound less humorous than the group laughter of English men. As a man I am an outcast, Doctor Langridge.’
    â€˜I see. Thank you.’
    Nick was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It was rather nice to be forced to talk about oneself.
    â€˜I hate my hairiness. Not that I am particularly hairy, but I long to have smooth legs. When I look in the mirror and see myprivate parts I just think, What are they doing, dangling there? They look absurd.’
    â€˜Why do you feel you are as you are?’
    Nick was beginning to realise that the softness of Doctor Langridge’s voice wasn’t natural, it was his style, his professional method. His questions were snakes encircling Nick’s body.
    â€˜I don’t know.’ Feeble! ‘Maybe I was just born that way.’ Pathetic! ‘Maybe it’s because I was very close to my mother and my father was away a lot. He was a purser with a cruise line. They both died in a car crash when I was eighteen.’
    â€˜Absent father, tactile mother, facile explanation?’
    â€˜Absolutely!’ This took him by surprise, Nick could see. One up for me, he thought. ‘And my mother was not tactile. That could be the problem! But, no, I don’t really believe my parents caused it. I believe it began before my birth. I think I was simply born the wrong gender. An accident of nature. I was always a bit of a cissy. I played with dolls. Well, I’m sorry, but I did. I can’t pretend I didn’t.’
    â€˜I said nothing.’
    â€˜No, but you make me feel as if I’m doling out clichés.’
    â€˜Clichés become clichés because they are repeated, Mr Divot, and the reason why they are repeated is that they happen frequently because they are true. Don’t distort the truth by being frightened of clichés.’
    â€˜Right. Well, I also collected newts. I pressed wild flowers and ferns. The first time my wife saw me, when I was eight, she actually thought I was a girl. I thought she was a boy, incidentally.’
    â€˜And that doesn’t mean she plans to change sex.’
    â€˜No!’
    They smiled at the thought.
    â€˜Ever dress in women’s clothes?’
    â€˜No. Innocent of that cliché.’
    â€˜Good.’
    â€˜Oh, except, damn it, we once went to a party in fancy dress. I went as Helen of Troy, Alison went as Achilles, but that was just for a joke. No, actually I always hated dressing up. Ugh!’
    Muffled though it was, they could hear a siren out there in the real world. Police, fire brigade, ambulance, there are sirens all the time in cities these days. ‘The real world.’ The thought struck him as strange. Was this not real? Why could he never quite see himself as real?
    â€˜I don’t have to go on the National Health,’ he said. ‘We both work, and I have quite a nice little nest egg from the sale of my parents’ house.’
    Doctor Langridge didn’t like that. Nick had put the Divot foot in it. No surprise there, then.
    â€˜You seem to think if you grease my palm I’ll whip you in, whip off your manhood and whip you out,’ said Doctor Langridge slightly frostily, his