Chapter Nine – Pink Pussycats
All good things come to an end and the six-week Reduced Operations Period at HMS Chelmsford ended on 15th January 1974.
The Wrens and Leading Recruits were very busy as that day approached. The Depot needed to be de-winterised and preparations made for the return of the Ship’s Company, the other Recruits, and the Wrens from their leave. Even Petty Officer White sobered up for the last week to oversee things.
Knocker was wary around Leading Recruit Jones and the other lads and ran things from his cabin. The Wrens were very sad that they would once again have to become male grommets and the Leading Recruits were sad that they would be losing their lovers.
There was much discussion in the evenings at the wet canteen about where things should go once normality returned.
Michele and Jason maintained their relationship but things had cooled; there was no infatuation between them, it was just sex and Michele was quite relieved; she’d had enough of Jason’s jealousy.
The other three couples still behaved like lovebirds and were lamenting the day when their relationships would resolve.
As usual, it was left to Michele to provide a solution. On the final evening before they would have to clean and return all of the uniforms and other female paraphernalia they had purloined from the Wrens' block, the subject came up again. The six lovers were stymied as to where to go and what to do; they really wanted their commitment to each other to continue.
“They don’t have to end,” Michele interjected whilst drawing on her ciggie.
“What?” the others chimed in unison.
“Your relationships; they don’t have to end,” she sipped her gin and tonic.
The others looked at her expectantly.
“Of course your days of canoodling on board HMS Chelmsford are gone; but what happens ashore, stays ashore.”
“We all have a five-day furlough coming our way as compensation for being the hook rope party while everyone else was on leave. You add in the weekend, that’s seven days.”
The others nodded.
“I propose this. I’ll take my three protégés ashore and take them shopping for everything we need to crossdress. I’ve taught you girls enough so that once you have what you need, you can do a decent job of femming up on your own.”
The three Wrens nodded and the three Leading Recruits listened eagerly.
“You get cheap lodgings ashore and you can carry on doing your thing for seven days and then every weekend after,” Michele explained.
“You’re fucking brilliant, Michele,” Polly beamed and the others agreed.
“I want one thing in return,” Michele cracked an ice cube between her teeth and the girls and boys saw mischievousness in her eyes.
“What?” they chimed.
“I want a girls' night out at Pink Pussycats,” Michele smiled at her three girlfriends.
“Oh god yes!” Polly came in first.
“Oh yes, please!” Mary followed.
“Really?” As usual, Doris was unsure of herself.
“Fuck me, Doris; I think you’ve lost a stone over the ROP and you know how stunning you looked on New Year’s Eve,” Michele reminded her.
The girls and guys all smiled as they recalled their New Year’s revelry; the party was wilder than their Christmas Party but Michele was disappointed that Lieutenant Winters hadn’t dropped by for a New Year’s shag. When Michele had jokingly brought the subject up on the night, Spike had gone into one of his usual jealous sulks and Michele had to bring him around by paying him undivided attention.
“Great idea!” the lads chimed in.
“Oh fucking no you don’t! It’s a girls' night out! You can shag these three senseless on the other six nights but I’m having my girls-only night!” Michele dictated.
“Sounds great!” The Wrens were excited about being out on the town as girls; even Doris was excited.
“Sounds shit!” the lads lamented.
“Oh fucking grow up, you lot. It’s just sex! We’re four transvestites and you’re four men; what do you think you’re going to do, live happy ever after?” Michele snapped.
The others looked hurt but Michele was right; their days spent as full-time lovers were past. The illusion of the four young men with their four young women would dissolve tomorrow when the Wrens went to cleaning stations on their kit and returned everything back to the Wrenery and the dry canteen.
And so it came to pass, on the morning of Monday 15th January 1974, PO White fell in his hook rope party of four Leading Recruits and four ‘grommet’ new intake recruits. He reported to the OIC of the Recruit Training School who was relieved that the rabble hadn’t burnt the place to the ground.
They were dismissed and allowed to proceed on leave until the following Monday.
The eight Recruits boarded the leave bus and the Leading Recruits made a show of haranguing the grommets, but their heart wasn’t in it. They sat at the back of the bus smoking; they didn’t really want to see their sweethearts in ‘male mode’. They didn’t want Mick, Doc, Brian and Ray; they wanted Michele, Doris, Polly and Mary.
When the bus hit Cheltenham High Street the grommets got off and Mick Nyland led his cohorts through a maze of backstreets to a nearby lodging house that was only a few doors down from Pink Pussycats. Michele had found the place advertised in the phone book and called ahead and the lady who answered professed that the place was ‘tranny friendly’.
“Oh, we get em’ all 'ere, luv. Trannys, crossdressers, tranny chasers, homos, queers, sailors, the lot! I don’t care what they get up to as long as they keep the noise down and they pay for their lodgings up front,” she sniffed.
“Perfect,” Michele replied and booked four rooms.
They checked into their dodgy lodgings, stowed their kit bags and met in the lounge which sported an old black and white TV, two stained and ripped overstuffed couches with matching lounge chairs, a cigarette-burned coffee table with out-of-date magazines on it, and a fly-specked window draped with greying net curtains. It smelt of stale cigarette smoke, stale beer, old farts and mould.
“What a fucking dump!” Polly lamented.
“It’s perfect! And it’s cheap,” Mick replied and they all grinned.
“Right, let’s get cracking, lads; we’ve some shopping to do.” Michele led them out the front door.
The first stop was an Oxfam shop where they bought cheap second-hand jeans and shirts; they could get away with their navy-issue black shoes but as Michele explained, they couldn’t go shopping for women’s clothes in their navy uniforms, could they? They would stand out like the proverbial dog's balls.
They went back to their digs and changed into their cheap civvies and went back to Oxfam. Mick helped the self-conscious lads pick out some nice female attire and even went into the fitting rooms with them to help them try them on.
“I’m so nervous; those old biddies are watching us,” Doc Holliday whined.
“So long as we pay for everything they won’t care, Doc. It’s Monday afternoon and no one’s out shopping so they’ve got nothing else to do,” Mick explained.
“I’m scared too,” Ray Maine whined.
Mick walked over to the counter and addressed a lady who looked to be in her sixties; she had a blue rinse in her hair.
“Excuse me. My friends and I are crossdressers and were looking for nice outfits to wear to Pink Pussycats."
The other three young sailors baulked, their faces crimson with embarrassment.
“Of course you are, dear; I could tell. We get your type in here all the time. Now let me help you. Come on, Velma; let's help these young fellows choose some nice dresses.”
Velma went to the door and flicked the sign over to ‘Closed’ and locked it.
“There, now have some privacy; let’s get your lot sorted,” she beamed.
The four ‘girls’ and the two old biddies had a great time trying on various dresses, blouses and skirts. They tried on shoes too. The good thing about the demographic that uses Oxfam is that they are often larger-sized ladies and the girls managed to get two pairs of high heels each. They also scored slips, brassieres, and nightwear. They even got a clutch-purse each.
For about twenty pounds, they each had three outfits each and foundation garments. They had kept the wigs they’d purloined from hairdressers on board HMS Chelmsford, now they needed makeup and a few other purchases.
Having dropped off their bargains at their lodging they made their way to Debenhams on the High Street. Emboldened by their victory at Oxfam, the four sailors did not hesitate and went straight to the lingerie section and purchased knickers, suspender belts and stockings - lots of stockings. Stockings seemed to get laddered and snagged quite easily during their canoodling sessions.
They allowed Mick to select their cosmetics because as ‘Michele’, he was the expert when it came to selecting and applying makeup. They stopped at the costume jewellery counter and bought accessories.
It helped that being Monday, Debenhams wasn’t particularly crowded so they breezed through, selecting their purchases and paying for them at the counters.
The four were very excited as they walked back to their digs.
“I’ll say one thing; it’s fucking expensive being a crossdresser.” Mary Maine was known to be a spendthrift.
“Maybe you can sell your arse at Pink Pussycats to make back some money,” Polly Perkins joked.
They stopped off at an off-licence and bought lager, gin, and bottles of Brit Vic tonic water.
Back at their digs, they crowded into Mick’s room, excited at the forthcoming evening’s entertainment.
“Okay, you grommets. Someone pour me a G and T and light me a ciggy and sit down here one at a time so I can do your makeup.” Michele pulled her room’s only other chair in front of her, the makeup laid out on the side table.
Two hours later, Mick, Doc, Brian and Ray had transformed into Michele, Doris, Polly and Mary. The girls preened, giggled and nattered, drank and smoked, waiting for day to become night and for Pink Pussycats to open.
At nine o’clock the four attractive transvestites sauntered into Pink Pussycats. There had been some trepidation about going out dressed but the four ‘girls’ had had plenty of practice walking in high-heels, developing a womanly gait. No one paid much attention to them except for a group of lads outside a pub on the corner who gave them a wolf-whistle.
The trannies all giggled.
“Show us yer knickers, love!” one of the young revellers yelled.
Polly obliged and turned to face them and lifted the front of her dress and gave them a panty flash.
“Fuck me, boys; she’s a stunner!” one of them gasped.
While the rest of the lads preened, joked and strutted, one of the group eyed the four girls intently.
“Four trannies off to Pick Pussycats,” the dark-eyed, longhaired, brooding young man pronounced.
“You think?” one his cohorts challenged.
“I think,” he replied and finished his pint and licked his lips.
Pink Pussycats was a dive. The club was situated on the second floor over a dodgy souvlaki restaurant serviced by a rickety staircase. Shag carpet stained an indiscriminate colour after years of spilled beer, ground in cigarette ash, and god knows what else. It never really dried and sucked at the patrons' shoes like quicksand. The yellow nicotine-stained walls were lit by sconces, every second bulb blown; the ceiling was supposed to be white but it had long ago turned yellow; the plastic chandeliers were cobweb riddled. Mirror balls hung from the ceiling, reflecting the coloured lights from various spotlights; the bar was long, dirty and had suffered thousands of cigarette burns. There was a line of booths along one wall and low tables attended by tatty couches and armchairs scattered around the room and a small dancefloor of polished wood with a discotheque booth at one end. It smelled of stale beer, cheap spirits, disinfectant and perfume.
“It’s perfect!” Michele beamed.
Michele’s Uncle Bill had taken her out a couple times to clubs just like this during their torrid one-year affair. Michele knew that these were the sort of clubs frequented by transvestites, lesbians, gays, and their admirers and other ‘perverts’ ostracised by society in the 1970s.
Nine o’clock was early for Pink Pussycats; most of the trannies and punters didn’t roll in until around eleven o’clock, but the small contingent gathered at the bar all swivelled around to watch the four stunning trannies strut to the bar.
Michele ordered gin and tonics for all of them and they clinked glasses.
“To our girls' night out,” Michele toasted.
The others repeated the toast and beamed. They were very comfortable here and were glad that they had listened to Michele. Once again their mentor had been right.
The girls took a table with a couple of couches pulled up to it; they drank, smoked and chatted. As the evening progressed, more crossdressers and admirers arrived. Some trannies and admirers paired off but most of the trannies stayed together in small groups and chatted and danced together, eyed off by the as yet timid admirers.
“The admirers are working up Dutch courage so they can talk to the girls,” Michele explained.
After a few drinks the girls danced as a group and then some of the other girls came over and they danced with them. It was exciting for Doris, Polly, and Mary whose only crossdressing experience had been during the ROP at HMS Chelmsford. Michele too was enjoying herself, particularly now that her charges were spreading their wings and confident enough to do their own thing without her needing to constantly guide them.
Most of the male admirers had drunk enough now so that they were able to leave their perches at the bar and approach the girls and dance or chat with them. Some had paired off already and were chatting or smooching in the dark corners of the club.
Michele’s girls were dancing with a small group of other transvestites and male admirers, taking a break now and then to get a drink and to chat. The night was getting late and the music had changed from the unce, unce, unce, of the disco beat to the ballads of Roxy Music and David Bowie.
Polly, Doris and Mary were dancing with three admirers; the girls were having fun but it was obvious from their body language that all the admirers were going to get was a dance. Every attempt at a bum squeeze or a kiss was gently rebuffed by the girls. They were having fun but still infatuated with their sailor beaus and intended to remain faithful.
Michele had retired to a booth where she sat on her own watching her charges.
“Grommets!” she giggled to herself.
She was more drunk than sober, but still had control of her faculties.
She lit a cigarette and drained the last of her gin and tonic and was about to get up and go to the bar when suddenly a fresh gin and tonic appeared before her.
A man slid into the booth and seated himself across from her. Michele recognised the longhaired broody young man from outside the pub.
“Cheers,” he raised his scotch and dry ginger to her and took a sip.
Michele looked at him warily. He dug in his pockets and produced a packet of menthol cigarettes and lit two, offering one to Michele.
