Grayson Perry: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Girl

by Wendy Jones

  My first inkling of how I looked came when I was walking down Moulsham Street in Chelmsford and a bloke in a Jag shouted at me, ‘Helloooooooo darling!’ as if he knew me.

  I thought, ‘He thinks I’m a prostitute.’

  This man stopped his car asking, ‘Hello! Do I know you?’ then began questioning me: ‘What’s your name? Where do you live?’

  I answered him in a soft voice but inside I was frightened. Perhaps he was another trannie, maybe he thought I was a girl prostitute or a boy prostitute or possibly he really did think I was a woman walking around in a bad wig and a miniskirt. I fantasised afterwards: ‘What would have happened if I’d got in his car?’ It would have been an extremely dangerous thing to do.

  I had to get changed back into my normal clothes in the privacy of a toilet cubicle. I was washing off my make-up with the water from the toilet bowl. It was difficult to remove the mascara. I had blond eyelashes so it would be noticeable if I was darker around the eye. Every time I returned to the house, I had to sneak Maureen-Ann’s clothes back into her wardrobe, which was another risk. Nevertheless, dressing up was an exciting project. It involved the skulking around of the Cadet Force combined with an incredible sexual thrill. I was mainlining on adrenalin. It was like injecting adrenalin as if it were heroin.

  Before long, I found an overgrown toilet in Chelmsford’s municipal cemetery. An old laurel bush had grown over the entrance so that it was hidden, and the Men’s and Women’s were next to each other. It looked like it was hardly ever used so I could take my time. It was ideal for my purposes. I used to spend my Saturday afternoons putting on make-up in the cemetery toilets, then traipsing around the gravestones.

  One Saturday I was wandering around the graveyard in my women’s clothes when I found a lady’s bicycle, so I took it. I stole this bicycle, riding a couple of miles down the lane to another toilet, by which time I was cold, I wanted to change back and I was worried about having a stolen bike. These other toilets were exposed, badly vandalised and the Ladies’ and Gent’s signs had been chiselled off. I walked through one entrance hoping it was the Gent’s, realising, ‘Oh fuck, it’s the Women’s,’ which meant I would have to emerge from the Ladies as a man. No one was around so I thought, ‘I’m not going to go out and go round to the Men’s, I’ll just get changed in here.’

  Tomb Model, 1998

  When I came out a couple of park wardens were sitting in a car nearby. I got on my stolen bike and as I cycled past they shouted, ‘Hey! Mate! Come over here!’ They stated, ‘You’ve just come out of the Ladies.’

  I replied, ‘Yeah, I know, the signs are missing.’

  They said, ‘All right, but don’t do it again,’ so I got away with it but it scared me because I could have been caught for dressing up. The repercussions of being taken home dressed as a woman in Maureen-Ann’s clothes would have been difficult. It would have hurried along the inevitable. That was the last time I dressed up before the shit hit the fan.

  A few weeks later I mentioned to my dad, ‘I’m going to play with the hockey team on Saturday afternoon.’

  He replied, ‘Oh, I’ll think about that.’

  I queried, ‘What do you mean?’

  He said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to let you.’ Then he announced, ‘I want to have a little chat with you.’ He took me upstairs, sat me down on my bed and proclaimed, ‘I’ve found out about your little game.’ At first I thought he meant some kind of petty criminal activity I’d been up to with my friends. He added, ‘You’re dressing up.’

  I went completely numb and depressed. I asked, ‘How did you find out?’

  He muttered ‘Oh, we’ve got ways.’

  What had happened was that Belinda had found my diary, which had a few notes in it about my cross-dressing adventures. I was fervently researching transvestism in Chelmsford Central Library where I was intently reading through all the textbooks on psychology and sexual deviation. I spent a lot of time in the library getting a hard-on reading case studies. The word ‘transvestite’ was written on a page in my diary. Belinda had read my journal then asked her mother, ‘What does “transvestite” mean?’

  Maureen-Ann wanted to know, ‘Where did you read that?’

  To which Belinda replied, ‘In Grayson’s diary.’

  Maureen-Ann was incensed that I had used her clothes and I’d been doing what she imagined young transvestites do in women’s clothes, and she was probably right: wanking! She telephoned my mother, my stepfather and my Aunty Mary and Uncle Arthur, telling them all that I had been dressing up in her clothes. She spread the news so that everybody knew. My mother came to visit me demanding to know, ‘What’s this about you dressing up?’ I remember her exclaiming, ‘You went out of our house dressed in my clothes!’

  My stepfather proclaimed, ‘That’s it! You’re never seeing your brothers again.’ He thought that I was some sort of pervert. In a way, I was some sort of pervert, but not the sort of pervert that he thought. I was frightened, sad and depressed, and I was in shock all the time.

  Charlie, the lodger, a happy-go-lucky, chirpy chap who was very tolerant in putting up with all that was going on, sensed something was happening. He came downstairs jesting, ‘What’s going on then? What’s going on then? Grayson in trouble, is he?’

  My dad muttered, ‘Yeah, he is a bit.’

  So Charlie piped up, ‘What’s he done then, got a girl pregnant, has he?’

  My father and Maureen-Ann searched the box room, discovered my suitcase with women’s clothes under the bed and confiscated them. They sent me to the GP, who examined me physically. The GP thought dressing up was to do with being gay, asking me if anyone else was involved. I retorted, ‘No! I just dress up on my own.’ My dad booked me an appointment with the psychiatrist in Chelmsford hospital but I told him, ‘I’m not going. I’m all right. I’m over it.’ And that was it, I got away with it. They believed me, God Almighty! They were all so uncomfortable with it that if it could be swept under the carpet they were happy.

  It was while my transvestism was being revealed that I got into trouble with the police. I thought, ‘This will show them that I’m a real man.’ I was friendly with three local lads and there was talk of us nicking mopeds. One of them said, ‘I saw this moped at the station – it was unlocked.’ So we sauntered round to Chelmsford train station where one of the lads got on the moped, started it up then rode off, but we were quickly forced to dump it because it ran out of petrol. We’d loped off to the park, gone, ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ then decided, ‘We could go back, get the moped and ride it round the fields.’ I was dispatched to cycle past where we had left the bike to check the coast was clear, not thinking I was wearing my very distinctive Army Cadet jumper. However, we’d been seen earlier and now there was a detective waiting. He started to chase me down the road in his police car. He pulled up next to me with a whheeerrrrrre, forcing me to halt, charged out into the road and grabbed hold of me. That was me banged up. I was taken into Chelmsford police station, put into a cell and questioned. I cracked! I spilt the beans – I was petrified – I told them who everybody was although I felt bad letting my friends down. We got off with a caution. My friends forgave me, which was a relief as I was scared that they would hate me for it.

  The detective took me back to my dad’s house in a police car because he needed my father’s permission to fingerprint me and I was so frightened of what my father’s reaction would be that I thought, ‘Oh God! Maybe I can do a runner when the police car stops.’ I was surprised by how relaxed my father’s response was; I put it down to him being so relieved I’d done something boyish. That evening he confided to me that he’d once been in trouble with the law himself.

  In time my life settled down to a certain extent. I took my O levels and was lining up to do my A levels and to go to Sandhurst. I spent many hours in my father’s shed building an elaborate motorboat that never saw the water, I cycled over to visit Aunty Mary and Uncle Arthur and I started doing a paper round in Chelmsford hospital.
I got up early every morning; walked to the newsagent’s nearest the hospital, collected a bag of papers and sold them to the patients. I enjoyed going round the wards with the little old ladies asking me, ‘Can I have a People’s Friend tomorrow?’ so I’d bring them one the next morning. They were very trusting and loving, letting me rummage in their handbags to get the change. There were the private wards, which was where I sold the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph – everybody else bought the Sun or the Mirror. Sometimes I would see spooky things: people dying, the curtains being drawn around them and the family looking grief-stricken. I caught a man wanking once. I used to poke my head through the curtains, probably not the thing to do, and there he was giving it beans.

  I got up on my sixteenth birthday but my father hadn’t remembered – nobody had remembered – it was my birthday. When I arrived at school one of my friends asked me, ‘How are you today, Grayson?’

  I said, ‘It’s my birthday,’ and he wished me happy birthday. I mumbled, ‘You’re the first person to say that to me today.’ When I got home, my father had remembered after all; he was a bit sheepish and he gave me three pounds. My mum had forgotten too.

  In the summer of 1976 we went on holiday to a vast caravan park in West Bay, Dorset. My dad, Maureen-Ann, Belinda and I went with Pippa, her husband and their two kids. Pippa was the next-door neighbour and we had caravans next to each other. Her husband had a car with blue-tinted windows and he spent the entire time scraping off the tinting with a razor blade. During the holiday my father and Maureen-Ann had a vicious row, but to me a vicious row was normal. She protested that my father had hit her and put on make-up to make her look like she was bruised. When they had a screaming, violent argument, I thought, ‘Oh well, back to normal.’

  There I was, a testosterone-fuelled boy in a cap-sleeved T-shirt and baggies on a caravan site. Three caravans away there was a girl called Sally who took an interest in me and we began holding hands and quickly paired up. We went for long walks over the clifftops – God knows what drivel I talked as my conversation consisted entirely of me telling endless numbers of very weak jokes by rote – followed by a wet kiss at Sally’s caravan door before we parted. So I got my first girlfriend. And on the last night I got my first sticky finger down her knickers: I managed to cop a feel, as they said in seventies parlance. It was innocent, wet bumbling-fumbling and I enjoyed it. I had broken my duck: I could attract women, I could kiss them and it was OK. Like getting in trouble with the police, it was a boyish vice and it had made me feel more secure.

  I was spending every day with Sally and this annoyed Maureen-Ann mightily: Maureen-Ann wanted me to be gay because that would have fitted in with her worldview. The day before Sally and I paired off, Maureen-Ann had made a remark about me being queer but my dad scoffed, ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Haven’t you seen the way the girls look at him?’ As a man, he had picked up on the vibes and he knew I was getting female attention, so I was obviously giving off the right signals. My dad’s instincts were right: I’ve never thought I was gay.

  On the final day of the holiday it was Maureen-Ann’s fortieth birthday so I thought, ‘I’ll buy Maureen-Ann a birthday card,’ an innocent, well-meaning gesture. I chose a card with a little scraperboard picture of a black pig on it, which I thought was cute. Unbeknownst to me, Maureen-Ann had had a conversation with Pippa the previous evening saying, ‘I always think people show exactly what they think of me with their birthday card.’ Little did I know what she had been brewing while we were on holiday.

  The moment we returned home Maureen-Ann exploded, attacking me for all the crimes I’d done against her, some of which were probably true. ‘You fucking pervert! I don’t want you near my daughter! You hate me; you gave me a birthday card with a black pig on it! Get out of my house now. Don’t ever come back.’

  I got on my bike and pedalled furiously around Chelmsford trying to find refuge. First I headed for some close friends of my dad’s who’d helped me with my Airfix models, but they were out. I cycled over to Aunty Mary’s but she wasn’t in either. I cycled round all day, getting very hungry, eventually ending up with the sympathetic neighbour opposite my father’s house, who had picked up all my belongings, including my suitcase of women’s clothes, when Maureen-Ann had thrown them out on to the doorstep. The neighbour knew about my dressing up because Maureen-Ann had assiduously told everyone. On my first day there my father came over with my O level results and I had passed nine. He didn’t say to come back; perhaps because he wanted an easy life. This was now the second time he’d seen me drift away.

  The next day my mother turned up. She said she had talked to the old man. She said, ‘The old man’s willing to take you back.’

  11

  MOONBOW

  MY MOTHER DROVE me back that August afternoon to the caravans in the field on the outskirts of Great Bardfield, a pretty village in north Essex. My mother and stepfather were living in the caravan with the kitchen and we were in the other one. It was snug in our caravan because it had a coal fire and it was good to be back with my sister and brothers. My sister slept at one end and my brothers and I slept in three beds in a row, so it was very cosy and warm but with four children, aged sixteen, fourteen, nine and five, and an open fire it was a death trap. Whether we were aware of it or not, we were all under the tyranny of my stepfather, certainly we knew we had to tread carefully around the sleeping dragon.

  On that first morning back I had the longest conversation I ever had with my stepfather – he was not an articulate man and I was so tense in his company. He took me on my own in his van to do the paper round because he wanted to talk to me about my dressing up. ‘We don’t want any more of that cross-dressing thing,’ he grunted.

  I squeaked, ‘Oh no! Oh no! I’ve given that up, ha ha ha!’ and maybe I thought I had, that I could. I had scant knowledge of what transvestism was.

  My stepfather immediately allocated me a paper round. My round was the entire village and, as there was no longer a newsagent there, everyone had to have their papers delivered. On Friday night and Saturday morning I trudged round the village collecting the paper money, so I learned where everyone lived, what work they did, how many children they had and what they read – which was telling in itself. Most villagers had a tabloid or the Telegraph: it was a resolutely Conservative area with a few Guardian readers sprinkled in. My sister’s boyfriend’s father lived opposite the town hall and on polling day he decorated his whole house with Labour posters as a calculated affront to the local people. Ernie Hockley had huge hollyhocks growing in his garden and I used to say, ‘There’s Ernie Hockley’s hollyhocks.’ Two hippies bought the Lamb, the beautiful but derelict pub: I had to weave around rusting Morris Minors in the pub courtyard to push the Observer through a slot in the brickwork. In the middle of the village there was the doctor’s surgery. Both the doctors committed suicide, first the husband, then the wife. There were also quirky, possibly inbred, slightly bonkers country folk who lived a very rural existence. A lovely old cowman with no roof to his mouth bicycled through Bardfield every morning on his way to milk the cows, a very friendly character who always had a daily paper. I got to know all the housewives and had fantasies about the prettier ones inviting me in for sex. There were a couple of opportunities but I was too young to take advantage of them.

  Within a few months I could say hello to everyone in the village and at Christmas I received a lot of tips, the equivalent of a week’s wages. I was known as the newsagent’s son. My name, then, was Grayson Cousins. My sister had changed her name and my mother was eager for me to adopt my stepfather’s surname because she didn’t want anyone to know that this was her second marriage. She told everyone I was in the army, which was why I hadn’t been there for nine months and then suddenly appeared, though I made no effort to keep up her charade. I wasn’t Grayson Cousins at school or with my friends. My stepfather paid me thirty-five pence an hour, which was eight pounds for a twenty-four-hour week. Perhaps he reasoned he p
aid for my keep, and I was willing to trade on that. I wasn’t in a bargaining position. If the newspapers were printed they had to be distributed so I worked seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-two days a year, getting up at half past five to deliver papers for two hours, but I survived it. I did it. I was very thin, very fit, I was an energetic boy and I was motivated because I was frightened. I learned the round easily, I remembered how much people owed, I could calculate the money in my head, I could handle the cash and I was honest.

  With my sister and brothers, 1974

  I never did my homework nor did I visit Aunty Mary and Uncle Arthur, because I didn’t have the energy. I always fell asleep on the two-hour bus journey to and from school. I fell asleep at school in lessons but never in art lessons – I loved art lessons and did extra art in the lunchtimes. I did an intricate pen drawing of a giant woman in Victorian dress towering over a row of houses, which Mr Shash, the art teacher, liked. He said, ‘I’ll put that up on parents’ night, Grayson.’ Afterwards he remarked, ‘A lot of parents made comments about your drawing.’

  When Mr Shash asked me in my Lower Sixth year, ‘Have you thought of going to art college? I think you’d really like it. You’d do very well,’ a switch was thrown, clunk! And a light bulb popped.