|
Bobby and I and what happened. Chapter 2: Women's Commune |
|
|
I had been invited for coffee in one of the women’s communes, and when I arrived I was shown to the basement flat while coffee was made in the kitchen on the ground floor. And there she was. My name
 is Bobby, she said, what sexual orientation are you? and to seem liberated (I was sitting in a lesbian household) I said bisexual. I’m heterosexual, she said, and I would like to sleep with you. This was the kind of directness that was common in the seventies. I didn’t know what to say, because I had lied and I didn’t know what lesbians did in bed, and here was this beautiful heterosexual woman wanting to sleep with me. I can’t have sex now though, she said, I’m transsexual, and my obvious expression must have told her that I didn’t know what the word meant. I’m on hormones, she said, and I have breasts, but I can’t have an erection, but I’ve decided to go into hospital and have everything reversed and I’ll look you up in a few months. Then someone called me and I went up to the kitchen, had my coffee and went off. This was my first visit to this house and I did feel awkward. Bobby was not asked if she wanted coffee, but then again I thought perhaps she lives here. Recently I have been told that Bobby had a raw deal with the political lesbians in the seventies and that she was rejected by them. I can’t imagine how she must have felt, knowing that she felt like a woman and wanted to be with women, and this she thought was her chance to be in a place where she always wanted to be, and again she was not wanted.
Chapter 3: Striptease |
| Picture: Golborne Road, W10. The commune (now demolished) was behind this street, on the right. |
| Contents How I found out. 1 London W11 in the 70s. 1 |
| Home page |