Not Changed

You’ve not changed!!!
I mean what are folk like?
Don’t start me.
Obviously not everybody is, but…
It takes all kinds, it does, you don’t…
Well, you do, but you shouldn’t.
You try to tell yourself most folk’s attitude is it takes all kinds, live and let live, no skin off my nose, nine times out of ten course they’re curious, but, you’re right, they’re not actually…
One way or the other.

Course some are.
So cruel. Can be.
Straight out and bought this packet of fags. Came in here to the Ladies and first time in donkeys here’s me ripping off the cellophane… Says No Smoking right left and centre but I think we can take the so called ‘smoke detectors are fitted’ notice with a pinch of salt.
Not going to smoke it but. I’m not.
Who needs them?
Ach, you know you really don’t want it, so don’t, OK?

Michele Quigley!
I mean one minute I’m quite the thing swanning around Markses thinking I’ll treat myself to a new forty two B because they’ve got some really pretty stuff in since they’ve bounced back, even in the bigger sizes. Next thing I’m in the middle of Per Una in floods.
Because I coped at the time. Acquitted myself. You generally do, don’t you, but how I got myself down that escalator to ground God knows.
What the hell Michele Quigley had to be doing on the till at the lingerie…
Of all the gin thingwies…
As well it was empty! Not a soul but a wee wummin way over miles away rummaging about among the Secret Supports so she’ll have heard nothing.
Does Michele not just have to go and go: Michael! Michael Manson! My God, I’d have known you anywhere. You’ve not changed.
Felt like saying couldn’t say the same for you darling. Fifteen stone if she was an ounce. Twice the size. All that blubber and in there, underneath…the old Michele. I’d have known her anywhere anall.
Turns out she’s been here best part of twenty years. Came down with the ex when the weans were wee, not been back much and nothing to take her now her auld mother and faither are away. Goes: not lost the accent but! You can take the girl out of Glasgow but you can’t take the Glasgow out of the girl.

This bloody fag. Och I shouldn’t. I mustn’t. I’m not going to.

Michele goes: Oh Michael.
I says it’s Michele Michele
She says No Michael I’m Michele.
I says: I’m Michele.
She goes no I’m Spartacus and starts laughing. She says no, no I’m sorry, it’s just what is it with yous..? You know, how come you don’t change your name totally, how come all the Johns become Jo-annes and the Matts Matilda and the Phils Phyllis? Why go to all that bother just for a little feminine appendage? How do you not go from like Boab Smith to… like… Lolita Angelica Lopez or something? How is it just goodbye Sam hello Samantha and the same old surname?
I says: I’M STILL THE SAME PERSON.
She says unless you called yourself after me?
Sorry. I’m like: Nope, it’s just my old name. In a feminine form. Simple as that.
She said: You’re not though.
I says: I’m not what?
She says: The same person.

And thing is that was where she was wrong. See, I could go out that door right now and look at myself in that mirror and know exactly who I see. Not everybody can do that. Can you?
Total self acceptance. I told her that was the reason I had to go to all this length to change everything.

I said do you know what I really miss? The fags. Because conditional on me getting the op, obviously, is going one full year fag-free. Surgeons insist on it. Anaesthetists.
That and living and dressing as a woman full time.

She says: and passing?

I says well Michele I can’t say I’ve never clocked the odd funny look in a too slow moving queue in the ladies (and aren’t they all, that has been a revelation) but, you know, short of me getting desperate hiking up ma skirt to ma neck and pishing in the sink people basically tend to be pretty polite and just zip their lips.

Because I do realise I’ll never be a pretty woman. I mean I look at someone like Michele and she’s been both. She’s been one of the young and very visible ones – a stoater – and now she’s one of the invisible ones and she sees me stepping — voluntarily — on to the moving wheel at this stage of the game, the downer, post-menopausal (not that that exactly applies to me, but…) and she just doesn’t get it. At all.

She said – bitterly – sounded so bitter so she did. Goes: You couldn’t get enough of my tits.
I said no Michele I couldn’t.

Telling you she was gorgeous. And now oh my god the arse on her. How are the mighty fallen…

Bitter but. That’s the bit I don’t get. When my wife can – twenty four year in! — find it in her heart to uproot, relocate down here, live with me as my sister and… ach… come out Mother of the Bride outfit shopping with me last week for something for me to put on at our son’s wedding — and Michele Quigley I went out with for about six weeks max in nineteen seventy nine couldn’t look at me? Couldn’t give me her blessing by getting her mouth around my name.
Not going to smoke it but. Yes, right in this bin, now, the whole packet. Great!
Who needs them?

Liz Lochhead, 2006

Not Changed began life as a dramatic monologue performed in a cubicle in the Ladies Toilets of the Arches Theatre as one of eight pieces commissioned by artistic director Andy Arnold for his one-to-one audience-and-actor project Spend A Penny in October 2006. It was performed by Grant Smeaton.

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