My Girdle Is Killing Me!

Chapter 8: Say Hello, Wave Goodbyes

By the time I was in my mid-twenties I was starting to head toward some psychological stability. It had been over ten years since that awful day I'd been ambushed on my way to school, and over five years since my near breakdown at university. But I'd somehow found a way out of the depths of despair and was on my way to becoming the person I would be for the rest of my life. It would not be the person I would have been if none of this insanity had occurred, though. That guy had been consigned to oblivion the moment a crying 14 year old boy had pulled on a tight panty girdle.

My recovery had started when I finally accepted one thing – this was how I needed to dress, and there was no shame in that. A few attempts to stop over the years had seen the panic attacks return in style. For the first time I seriously thought about a psychiatrist, but I had been wearing corsetry for so long that I had to admit I'd got completely used to it. My underwear drawer now contained few items of men's clothing – enough to cover doctor's appointments or occasional visits to my parents. The bulk of it was definitely not intended for the male body.

The damage that had been done over the years was permanent, and the only way I'd been able to achieve some mental stability was to accept that this was how things now had to be. I'd had to get over how it had all started, consign the resentment and self-hatred to the past, and acknowledge the shocking truth that I now felt comfortable dressing like this. On the occasions I had to wear male underwear, it felt...odd, strange, something not quite right. I felt uneasy until I could get back into corsetry. That now did feel right, and it took me a long, long time to admit that to myself. For the record, there was no pleasure involved – there never had been and never would be. It simply felt normal now, and dressing any other way now felt weird. The only concession I had to make in day-to-day life was not wearing a bra in the company of others, as I didn't need a rerun of the Captain Playtex circus.

I'd often wonder if this meant I'd beaten the bullies or they'd beaten me, but it didn't matter any more. After a decade of turmoil, I was starting to know peace of mind, and I was content doing what I had to do to preserve it. But there was a price to pay.

Erica, my first serious girlfriend, was the first casualty. I had met her at a party when I was 26 and we'd hit it off immediately. There was an element of opposites attracting – I was still the quiet type while she was an extrovert and had a fiery temper. When we had arguments, by Christ we had doozies! Maybe it was never going to work in the long term, but my “peccadillo” would be the thing to finish it.

We'd been together almost a year and things had gone far enough that I knew I had to tell her. The problem was I had no idea how. The decision was taken out of my hands when we were at a restaurant one evening, she put her hand on my leg under the table...and felt a suspender bump.

“What the hell...?”

She stared at me across the table as I started to redden.

“What ARE you wearing, Dave?”

I whispered back to her, trying not to cause a scene.

“Can we talk about this later?”

“No we damn well can't talk about it later. Are you wearing a suspender belt?”

“No I'm not. For God's sake keep your voice down.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“It's a girdle.”

“Excuse me?”

“A girdle – I'm wearing a girdle. I was going to tell you. Can we please talk about this later?”

“Oh sure! Let's talk about it later! I suppose for the next couple of hours we can sit here and talk about the bloody weather instead! Or politics! Or sport! Or the price of tea in China and the price of sodding coffee in Brazil! Jesus Christ!”

And with that she was out of there, leaving me sitting alone looking a fool in front of the other diners. That was the end of the meal and, after a furious row afterwards, the end of the relationship.

When I was in my early thirties things started getting serious with a work colleague called Jayne. Mindful of the earlier fiasco, I decided to tell her a lot earlier in the relationship. We'd been seeing each other for around six months when I decided the time was right. We'd had a meal at my flat and were sitting on the sofa when I told her there was something she needed to know about me. As she sat in a stunned silence, I recounted the events of my school days, the dark period of my student days and how I had managed to get back on an even keel...and the choices I'd had to make to get there. When I finished we sat in silence for a good few minutes. I had nothing else to say and she hadn't the first idea what to say. Eventually she spoke.

“So you...um...you've been wearing this stuff for years?”

I nodded.

“And you say you don't get a kick out of it? It's just something you need to do?”

Another nod.

“And you're never going to stop?”

“I don't think I can anymore”

Silence.

“Can I see you in it?”

“Jayne...I'm not sure that's a good idea.”

“I've got to know if I can handle it, Dave. Are you wearing it now?”

“A girdle, yes. I don't wear my bra in public.”

“Show me.”

I went into the bedroom, undressed, put on a bra and returned. On seeing me, the tears started to run down her cheeks as she stared in horror at the sight. She asked for some time apart to process things and took a couple of weeks holiday that she was due. At the end of those two weeks, the final verdict came in via a phone call.

“I'm sorry, Dave – I can't handle it. I won't ever tell anyone, but we can't see each other anymore.”

And that was that. A few weeks later she transferred to another office and by that time it was a relief to see her go. Trying to act naturally around each other in the workplace had become a major strain.

Perhaps in some parallel universe a different Dave Ryan had settled down with Erica, or Jayne or someone else he had encountered while leading a normal life. But, in this world, I was on my own and on my own is how I'd stay.

The only female in my life who ever knew my secret and didn't have a problem with it – well...not at first anyway – was my beloved younger sister, Donna. She had been “on message” right from the get-go on discovering what I was being forced to do, and had never made the slightest effort to conceal her delight at my suffering. Nor had she been slow to show her disgust when, as a student, I'd shown her where it had led. But when I'd raised it with her years later, the sheer intensity of her contempt had shocked me. I was weak for having put the damn girdle on at all, never mind having worn it for four years at school. And my behaviour at university confirmed the suspicion she'd had all along – that I was getting off on wearing women's underwear. Thank God I never told her I was still dressing that way, though no doubt she suspected. It would have triggered another “I knew you liked it!” outburst. In her eyes, my journey from adolescent to adult had been a transition from “weakling” to “pervert”.

Our relationship deteriorated to the point where we were only being civil to each other for the benefit of our ageing parents. A few years back I cut off all contact with her apart from these brief meetings at Christmas and our parents' anniversaries. She is now effectively dead to me. As and when our parents are gone, she will be gone from my life as well – permanently – and I'll be glad to see the back of her.

There's one more stop I want to make on this wander down Memory Lane. About ten years ago I bumped into Graham on a train journey. I recognised him immediately and would have ignored him, but he saw me and sat beside me. To my surprise he was perfectly affable. He talked about our school days and treated what happened back then it as if it were youthful high jinks. Not only did he show no remorse, it clearly never crossed his mind that there was anything to be remorseful about in the first place.

“Remember that time we made you wear ladies underwear? Jesus, what were we like?”

The way he just casually dismissed four years of psychological torture as if it were a one-off prank, a harmless piece of ‘boys will be boys’ mischief, something to look back on and laugh about, actually shocked me. And he wasn’t gloating or being malicious - it was the genuine laughter of someone reminiscing about the good old days. I think he half-expected me to join in.

My initial urge was to scream at him: “It was a girdle! I was just a kid and you made me spend four years in a fucking panty girdle!”, but he’d have accused me of over-reacting and having no sense of humour. I’d have preferred it if he’d picked up where he left off and rubbed it in – it was the unthinking trivialisation of my suffering that riled me. As it had been back then, it was all a big laugh to him. As he had been back then, Graham was a cretin. But it was the next thing he said that floored me. I’d asked him about the pictures they’d taken and what had happened to them.

“Oh those? That weird guy – thin face, fair hair – Ian was it? – never much liked him – anyway he had them. Seemed to get a kick out of looking at them. Anyway, he had a stash of porn. His mum found it and binned it, and the photos went out with that.”

I’d worn that bloody girdle for all those years at school and the pricks had lost the photos they were using to blackmail me. That’s why they had never come to light as a last minute act of vindictiveness when I’d left school. But the sickener was that it meant I could have stopped anytime. All that discomfort, all that humiliation, all that shame and all that fear...and I could have stopped any damn time without facing any consequences.

And so the final part of my journey back to a mental even keel has been to lay these ghosts to rest and start living in the present. Erica and Jayne are might-have-beens that turned out to be never-weres. It's time to let them go. As for those éminences grises who have had so much unwanted direct and indirect influence on my life – Pete, Graham, Ian and soon to be Donna – I believe I've finally managed to put a metaphorical stake through their not in the least bit metaphorical black hearts and give them the long overdue burial they deserved. It's taken me far too long, but at last I'm out of their shadow.