My Dark Side: Ally Taylor's Sexual Odyssey

By Stephen Whitehead

The true story of how one British man chose castration and a new identity as a woman, rather than continue to live his life as a man. But before he eventually submits to the knife, Alan Taylor's life is as a policemen and eventually as a senior manager at Heathrow Airport, is an intense and often lonely sexual odyssey, a journey which includes most every type of sexual practice, many you couldn't imagine, and, not least, true love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Authors
• Release date: Oct 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781785380013

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www.allytaylor.com

Chapter 1

Fantasy and Reality

Secluded private spaces, dark restricted closets, pungent smells, the touch of women’s clothing, a profusion of eroticism. Just five years old and Alan’s sexual odyssey was beginning.

The youngest of three children, Alan was born and raised in Sandhurst, Berkshire. The town, situated close to ancient Bracknell Forest, is archetypically English boasting not just the famous military academy for army officers, but links with the likes of Winston Churchill, David Niven and Alec Waugh. It’s a part of Britain that remains rooted and unchanging at least in location and appearance. In close proximity to London yet in culture and lifestyle a world away, a network of ancient Roman roads and the Thames river valley serve to underline its Englishness. Eton college and Windsor Castle are a few miles to the north, go south and you come to Aldershot military camp while a trek west takes you into the Vale of the White Horse. If you wanted to put your finger on the pulse of England then you would place it somewhere near Sandhurst.

Alan’s parents owned a busy High Street fruit and vegetable shop. They were working class but aspiring socially upwards in a time and place where class position mattered. Though change was in the air. The year of Alan’s birth, 1956, saw Britain emerging from the harsh years of austerity following the end of the 2nd World War. Across the Atlantic, the likes of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Bill Hailey were already heralding the cultural and generational revolution soon to transform Europe, and the world. The social structure that had sustained the United Kingdom for hundreds of years would soon be under dramatic transformation. Though in 1950s Britain all that still seemed distant, remote and unlikely. Men continued to tip their hats at women in a gesture of politeness and respect, while respectable ladies smiled back demurely and with conjured reticence. Men politicians adopted an easy paternalistic, public school tone when they deemed to broadcast to the masses on the radio. Ex-soldiers, crippled and scared during the war, attempted a proud stance when they shopped in Woolworths, even in the face of increasing social indifference and forgetfulness. The first post-war Caribbean families arrived and bravely attempted to assimilate into English culture. Young working class youths left school at 14 anticipating a secure future in the local factory, while young working class girls dreamed only of marriage and children; both would likely be virgins on their wedding night. Over 6 million families were now proud owners of a black and white television, though most of the population continued to get their news from BBC radio, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror. The relatively few Teddy Boy gangs, attempting some menacing stance on British city streets did wear jeans, though their girlfriends were more likely to wear pleated skirts. Homosexuals were imprisoned, single mothers socially penalised, lesbian and transgendered people invisible, placed out of sight by families, friends, and especially themselves. In 1950s Britain, the Ally Taylor to come could not even be conceived in the imagination, let alone in reality.

Alan’s childhood inner world was similarly a mixture of isolation and hesitant new beginnings. His tiny attic bedroom, the smallest room of the family home located above the shop, could barely accommodate a single bed and chest of drawers: no space to play, roam or view; it had no window to the outside world. Daylight never entered, and nor did his father. Alan’s two older sisters, Pam (12) and Jen (16) did interrupt this secluded space, as did his mother, but few others. His father fully occupied with the grocer’s business during the day and the local Masonic association in an evening, rarely ventured up to that top floor box room to spend time with Alan; his youngest child and only son.

Alan’s father had an unchanging approach to life that was basically to hide from it while appearing to be in control of it. He managed this by being stoical, distant, polite, and never revealing his feelings. He was not inclined to emotional display, or even much conversation. He said what he needed to say and that was enough. He had his routine and he kept by it. Routine protected him. His habits gave his life structure and him a sense of security. Plus he knew his place as the male breadwinner and head of the household. He believed in duty, responsibility and doing what was right. He was a man who needed to keep up appearances if he was to make his family into something better. You wouldn’t catch him kissing or even hugging his wife and children. ‘That sort of thing’ was not for others to see. And if his quiet and acquiescent wife did sometimes yearn for her husband to be more relaxed, less rigid in his habits and lifestyle, more demonstrably loving, then she’d long ago learned not to show it and forgive him his inflexiblity. It was what it was and nothing could change him, or their life, now.

The family was not, however, untypical of upwardly mobile working class families in 1950s Britain. Father, mother, three children, self-sufficient, proud, clean, pillars of the community, aware and respectful of their place in the world but aspiring for something better. All protected by the assuredness of the dominant, unquestioned gender political order.

By the time Alan started school in 1961, he had come to know, and trust, only women. It was women who gave him warmth, affection, friendship and intimacy. Females were the ones who wanted to be with him. Men were strange, unknowable, removed, cold and authoritarian - just like his father. But the attraction of the female was becoming more than simply sisterly friendship and motherly love.

I remember going one day with Pam to visit two female friend of hers who lived above a hair salon a couple of doors down from us. I was about six. The three girls played with me in their bedroom, capturing and wrapping me up in scarves and soft female material. It was delightful and so pleasurable. The smell of the girl’s bedroom with the hair salon aroma permeating it also excited me. Two weeks later I was back to that salon with Pam and while there I had the opportunity to steal some of that same material and take it back my secret place which was my tiny bedroom.

This is Alan’s earliest memory of what was to become an obsession in his life; smell, clothing, touch, private spaces and sensual secrecy. The material that Alan took that day was to be added to over the coming months and years. The collection grew and grew, especially women’s stockings which were his very special treasure. After a while some items would be discarded; only to be replaced by new ones. Owning these intimate bits of clothing made him feel good; their touch and smell, their feel against his young skin, and the recognition that they came from women. This was his secret treasure; generating within him a deep eroticism that eventually would surface, full-blooded and potent, into adulthood.

Alan spent days at a time on his own. His two older sisters loved him but they had their own friends and interests. His mother was busy working full-time in the family grocers shop, while father was delivering to customers, buying produce and in the evening enjoying the company of his Masonic Lodge male friends.

Left mostly to own devices, the world that young Alan was creating was a surrogate womb; his own secluded space, reclusive and entirely female, totally removed, a space never to be penetrated by paternal masculinity. This space was both physical and psychological. It protected him from a world that seemed harsh, potentially exciting but also very confusing.

I had a recurring nightmare as a child and youth. It was about tunnels and it started when I was about five years old. It was like being within blood vessels and this nightmare came back many times. I also associated it with a sense of being lifted out of the bed, of being attached to something else beyond me. When I awoke I realised that I was looking at myself from the outside but at the same time I was in the tunnel. It was scary but it was also mysterious. I didn’t have a fear of tunnels I just had a sense of weirdness about it all. I was going through these tunnels that enveloped me. And I could see myself in the bed. So both within the tunnel and outside of it at the same time. Another nightmare I had was about vomiting shit. This also started around the age of five. And it felt so real. In fact it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I finally realised I couldn’t physically vomit shit - it was just a nightmare I’d had all these years.

At that age the females who came most frequently into Alan’s private inner world were his two sisters. While Jen rarely played with Alan, Pam was more loving and affectionate. And he was beginning to enjoy the physical connection of being close to an older female. When Pam played rough and tumble with Alan, wrestling him to the ground, trapping him between her legs, straddling him, he discovered new feelings.

When I physically played with Pam I carried on remembering the positions we got into. Around the age of 16 Pam was still comfortable with us sitting together on the floor, watching television. I could just play with her legs, touching her, and I started to realise that what I felt inside was a very pleasant but strange feeling. Pam didn’t have to know anything about it.

At the age of 10 Alan was moved to Pam and Jen’s old bedroom. The sisters had both left home, Jen to get married, Pam to travel with some gypsies. Neither seemed saddened to say goodbye to their parents, especially their father. Now it was just Alan, his father and mother. His new bedroom was very different to the tiny attic box room. It was spacious and to Alan’s delight it had large windows that looked out across fields to woods beyond. Alan’s fantasies simply expanded along with this new horizon.

I took my private life out to this open space. I would walk for miles and miles, just enjoying the feeling of openness, hearing the sounds of the countryside. Often I would just lay down on the grass, away from anyone and anything. This open space became my world and I took my private life out there. I would take my fetishes with me on my walks, pieces of material, the items of women’s clothing, stockings and tights that I’d accumulated. I wore them under my shirt or around my waist. Sometimes I just carried them in a bag. The important thing was to have them with me.

With the attic box room now used as storage space, the back bedroom became Alan’s delightful inner sanctum. School days drifted one into another being of no particular significance other than offering him more moments of secrecy. If the mood took him, Alan would sometimes carry one of his fetishes to school, perhaps a pair of women’s tights secreted in his holdall or on his person. During break times he might sneak a visit to the boy’s toilets to look at his treasure and smell its feminine aroma. He shared this passion with no one. Especially not his father and mother.

Like any growing boy, Alan had his friendship group, a mix of boys and girls his age, though his real pleasures were to be found in the countryside around his home. Fields of grass with animals grazing provided rural tranquillity; quiet country lanes to cycle along at weekends and after school offered freedom and joy; the hidden glades in Bracknell Forest within which he could just play alone, lay alone, were a special delight.

My happiest times were when I was riding my bike or being close to earth, grass, leaves, crawling through undergrowth in the countryside, on my own. Finding sanctuary in peace and nature.

But delightfully remote and welcoming as the countryside was for Alan, it also offered new and very different sensations.

By the age of 12 I was feeling more attracted to smells. And strong smells became a big thing for me, especially horse smells. I liked being around horses; touching them, looking at them grazing or cantering. I just loved the smell of horses, and of horse manure especially. There were some stables not far from my home and I started taking riding lessons. When I wasn’t having lessons I would just go along to the stables to help out, do some cleaning. It felt good to just be around the horses, and to be close to the riders themselves, especially the women riders.

What I found myself being engrossed in was the sight of women riding horses. Women dressed in leather, with the whips, the boots, the sheer control that they exerted over this powerful, beautiful animal. That attracted me. I didn’t notice the men riders at all, just the women. Their age didn’t matter to me. So long as they were women who were doing the riding. The horse itself was erotic, especially the rump. I could just look at them for ages. I was never afraid of the horses, in fact many times I just wished I could be that horse, being ridden by the woman.

The countryside, the stables, the women riders, the horses, these sights, sounds and smells offered Alan not just an expansion of his secret and increasingly eroticised world, but also a setting for the exhibition of classic feminine dominance, something which Alan soaked up. Alan looked at the women riders and the horses they controlled, and felt comforted and pleasured. Here were women in control, powerful. And they were controlling a very masculine, if feminine looking, animal. How different Alan thought, to the situation of his mother; a quiet passive and subdued woman, a woman of love and warmth but who exerted no power over anything or anyone.

Of course, at this young age Alan had little idea what it he was actually feeling, and he could not have imagined where this erotic imagination would eventually take him. He was 12, soon to be a teenager. He didn’t think too much about it, he just enjoyed the sensations, and anyway, it was too powerful to be ignored.

Sandhurst is not a big town and like all such communities it is fairly close-knit. Alan’s parents were by now quite well known; they had a small but thriving business; Alan’s father had become a prominent local Mason; and he had recently been elected to the local council. He was respectable and respected. Mother was an enthusiastic member of the local Women’s Institute. The family, now demonstrably middle class, was making its way in the world. And what a world it had become; JFK, the cold war, the Beatles, package holidays to Spain, the Ford Cortina and LSD. It felt like the Swinging Sixties might really bring about a flower-powered global revolution: Young men wore long hair, frilly shirts and Cuban-heeled boots; young women wore mini-skirts, cropped hair and hot-pants.

It was 1968 and culturally the UK was fast thawing out from the thin and bitter 1950s. And If Alan’s parents had not exactly thawed out themselves, at least they could be satisfied at having now reached a middle rung on Sandhurst’s slippery social ladder.

Mother and father worked in the shop every day and Alan helped out also. It was a family business, though Alan had no interest in it. What he did have interest in and which frequently took his attention was the way his father acted around the more attractive women customers to the shop.

I could see my father change his attitude, his language around attractive women usually women in their late 30s and 40s. I noticed that he’d pay more attention to them, spend longer chatting to them than was actually necessary, and often ignoring other customers so as to serve the young women first. I could see my father change his patter with the young women, asking them very sweetly ‘how can I help you today?’ I could see this was the chat, selecting the conversation to get these women’s interest. I was seeing my father being very respectful of these women, more so than he ever was with my mother. In my mind he was confirming they were sexually desirable. They were attractive for him. I didn’t associate it with sex at that time, I still didn’t know what sex actually was, I just observed that my father wasn’t like this in the family, with my mother. His whole language and manner were totally different with certain women who came in the shop.

Customers would come into the shop to be served and perhaps at times there might be ten or twelve people in a queue. My parents were serving. But if any of those customers happened to be pretty attractive women then you would see this queue being maneuvered or manipulated if you like and mum accepting that maneuvering so that dad, rather than her, could serve a particular woman. I would see that happening because often I would be helping in the shop. You’d witness this going on in the shop. Mum moving out the way, saying if you’d like to serve Mrs whatever’. She was compliant in it."

Many of these young women customers were the same young women who went riding the same horses that I saw at the stables. I knew their names. I would have seen them in our shop many times. And later, perhaps that weekend, seen them controlling these powerful, beautiful beasts. I’d seen these same women that my father was making up to now astride the horses, controlling them. I knew something was connecting with me but at that age I couldn’t name it or understand it. But here were these attractive young women, whom my father clearly had an interest in, but they were actually coming alive, for me at least, astride these magnificent animals. The whole horse thing became a big part of my emotional world. Not the actual riding of horses. I probably only had about 20 lessons. It was not a big attraction for me. But being close to them and women riders.

This was not the first time Alan had noticed his father’s interest in attractive 30-something women. From the age of around nine years old, Alan had accompanied his father in their small van to deliver groceries to homes in Sandhurst. Often his father would tell Alan to stay in the van while he personally carried the box of groceries to the front door. Alan could stay alone for over an hour, waiting in the van for his father to return.

In later life, Alan would reflect on the intimacies that were generated for him as a young boy around horses and the horsey, upper-middle class women of Sandhurst. Such women represented the English ‘county-set’; culturally powerful, socially connected, monied and assured in their social position. The tight fitting jodhpurs that the women riders wore, their strong legs straddling the panting, muscular horse, the constraint, controlled skill and power being exerted by attractive, confident females; women that his father had confirmed time and again but indirectly to Alan, were sexual and to be desired.

I could see their long blonde and auburn hair, the way they dressed and talked. These were older women, mostly in their late 30s early 40s, that my father was clearly attracted to. He was acting differently around them. He wasn’t like this with my mother. Looking back I can see that these women were posher than my father and mother. They were effortlessly middle class and that was important. I was mixing with them at the riding stables and recognising their eroticism. These were the women my father was attracted to. And I was also.

Masturbation

At the age of 13 the steady build up of sexual feelings and sense of eroticism within Alan emerged in its most natural form as masturbation.

"I remember the first time. One day I went with a friend of mine to his house, not far from my own. He was a year older than I. We were in his garden, standing by a tree and he just got his penis out and started masturbating. I’d never seen this before. I am thinking, well, this is weird.