Sex and Other Changes Read Online Free

young.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜They know so little.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜We know too much.’
    â€˜I know. I mean, he’s very nice …
very
nice …’
    â€˜He is very nice. He’s a triumph of the individual over the environment.’
    â€˜You what?’
    â€˜I read in the
Reader’s Digest
– are people more shaped by their environment or their heredity? But there’s no warmth in his family, and yet
he
has warmth. Where does it come from? Not from his environment
or
his heredity. From him. It comes from him. There is nowhere else.’
    â€˜I see what you mean. Oh aye. He’s a triumph of the individual over the environment when you look at it that road. It’s just … we … well … I think there’s summat a bit … a bit odd about it all.’
    â€˜Odd?’
    â€˜Not quite right.’
    â€˜Oh dear. Not quite right in what way?’
    â€˜I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Summat not quite right.’
    â€˜Oh dear. About him?’
    â€˜No, not really.’
    â€˜About Alison?’
    â€˜No, not really. About … them. Him and her together. I hope I’m wrong.’
    â€˜I’m sure you are.’
    â€˜I expect I am. It’s probably that telegram. It’s cast a damper.’

3 A Revelation in a Popular Store
    On her thirteenth wedding anniversary, Alison had a blinding revelation. It didn’t occur on the road to Damascus, but in Marks and Spencer’s, in Throdnall, in the menswear department.
    When she got home, she sat at the dining table and wrote to her sister in Sydney.
    33, Orchard View Close
    Throdnall
    Warwickshire TL2 5XJ
    Dearest Jen,
    I had a revelation this morning, in Marks and Sparks of all places. I decided I needed some shirts, and I walked into the menswear department, and started looking at the shirts, and suddenly I thought, ‘No, Alison. Wrong!’ I’d forgotten, in a dreamy, confused moment, that I was a woman. I just stood there, stunned, among all the dully displayed rows of trousers and jackets (Throdnall isn’t Milan). And I thought, ‘Alison, this is ridiculous. You’ve read about those sex change operations. You can have one. You don’t have to be a woman for ever. You can do something about it.’
    A great excitement swept over me. You remember how fearless I used to be? My spirit’s been rather ground out of me by matrimony and motherhood – but it’s still there.
    An assistant approached me and said, ‘Can I help you, madam?’, which was a little miracle in itself in Throdnall, and I said, ‘Not with what I need, no,’ and went over to the women’s department and bought some sensible blouses for my new job. I start work on Monday as Personal Assistant(do you have that title in Australia?) to the MD of Throdnall Carriage Works, and I’ve been getting nervous. Me, nervous? How far I’ve sunk!
    Now, of course, with the prospect of a far greater change, I don’t feel nervous about my job at all. The old Alison is back – ironically, she’s back because she’s realised that she doesn’t have to be Alison for ever!
    I can hear you thinking,
‘I
know she was always a bit of a tomboy, but sex change?? Why?? What’s she referring to when she says, “I can do something about it”? About what?’
    About my situation, Jen. About my agony. About all the things that I have never mentioned in any of my letters, which have been minor masterpieces of evasion.
    I know that this will all come as an enormous shock to you, Jen, and to Bruce …
    She paused to allow herself a little smile, in which affection was mingled with contempt. It was somehow symbolic of Jen’s lack of originality – she had never had an original thought in her life, as far as Alison knew – that the Australian she had married should be called Bruce.
    â€¦ but I hope in the