Sting in The Tail

There are environmental activists, and there are environmental activists. And then there was Sid Smith. Sid was more of your actual tree hugger. In fact there was one tree deep in the forest that used to be Sid's favourite. That it had a conveniently placed knot hole was quite by the by and no-one's business but Sid's until a nest of wasps took up residence, unbeknown to him. Naturally, they took great exception at this brazen intrusion on their chaste privacy. When, after a few days, the swelling (and the barely controlled hilarity of the A & E Team) had subsided, Sid was a changed man in more ways than one. For instance, the mere sound of buzzing was liable to bring on an incipient attack of the hives and an instinctive shrinkage of the extremities in the nether regions that temporarily lent him the physical attributes of true gender fluidity. Which, for Sid, was an interesting condition given his predilection for the more extreme forms of sexual gratification. Not only that, the whole experience set him on the path to improve the lot of fellow introverted experimenters like himself.

Sid was a single man. That, perhaps, goes without saying. Not that he was without companionship, although the companions he favoured tended themselves to occupy what might be regarded as the slightly curdled fringes of vanilla society. Brenda was a case in point. He was a frequent visitor to Sid's tawdry bedsit, tottering precariously up the steep staircase on his Louboutin heels, as he was in the process of doing now. Brenda's wife, Trevor, also accompanied him on occasion although she had recently diverted much of her marital and social obligations towards a more Sapphic arrangement with her best friend, Daphne (who preferred to be called David at weekends). Brenda didn't mind, since both Trevor and Daphne (sorry, David) often needed the sort of ministrations in their burgeoning relationship that neither was really equipped to provide but Brenda indubitably was, much to his chagrin - or delight if truth be told. It made for an interesting threesome. Sid, however, preferred trees. Or used to.

Brenda flopped down on the sagging armchair and eased the Louboutins off, revealing rather more of his skimpy, bulging, underwear than was absolutely necessary as the slinky red skirt rode up his thighs.. "You would think that nowadays they would make these in a size 12', he complained to a brooding Sid, regarding the Louboutins with displeasure.

Sid looked at him sourly over the top of the computer screen. "What do you expect, Fred? ' he said. "Haute Couture isn't exactly up to spec in the trans scene."

Brenda bridled. "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, I identify as Brenda!"

Sid tossed his head derisively. "And I identify as Gunga Din," he snorted.

Brenda glared. "It's all right for you, but these shoes don't half chafe," he complained, massaging his aching feet.

"That's not all that chafes by the looks of it," Sid said, looking meaningfully at the bright pink thong revealed by the riding skirt as Brenda eased it down. "Fred, you're 6' 4", built like a brick shithouse and with hands like a couple of shovels. What stretch of imagination makes you think you can pass as a woman? Not that I'm against it - all's fair in love and all that, but come on. You could just as well pass me off as normal and I'm about as normal as a five bob note - with a corner torn off. I'll cheerfully admit to it," he said.

"Anyone who goes around poking wasp's nests has certainly got a bit missing," Brenda muttered, finally succeeding in easing his crotch and smoothing the skirt to an acceptable level of indecency. "Anyway, what are you looking at?" Brenda asked, nodding at the screen. "You're not drooling so it can't be anything interesting."

"Nothing, as a matter of fact," Sid replied, swivelling the screen. "I'm setting up a new website."

The information didn't actually surprise Brenda because Sid's prowess with the more intimate areas of the World Wide Web was renowned amongst the sexual diaspora that made up Sid and Brenda's immediate dysmorphic circle.

Sid expanded: "Remember back in the day when it was just car keys on the coffee table and if you didn't end up with a minger it was pure luck, and that's about all there was? Well, nowadays it's all different. Choice is practically limitless. I mean, look at you and Trevor, or do I call her Rita this week? Or has she started identifying as a cross-dressing cabbage yet?"

Brenda wriggled on the armchair, fished out his foam rubber breasts and had a good scratch. "Trevor will do just fine," he bridled. "You know, for someone who goes around shagging trees, you've got a very unsympathetic view of other people's preferences. "

"Ah, that's where you're wrong!" Sid said triumphantly. "That's what this website is all about." He swivelled the screen to reveal images of as large a selection of sexual deviants as you could shake a large dildo at: bearded blokes in dresses, buxom tattooed women in ragged denim and nose rings, shifty-looking individuals for whom 'camp' probably extended an awful lot further than the term was intended, with particular reference to Lord Baden Powell's brain child - perish the thought.

Brenda surveyed the display with a connoisseur's eye.

Sid watched the quickening interest with quiet satisfaction. "It's like Tinder," he explained. Only this is for, shall we say, the more adventurous? I call it "Well, Hello There!"

Brenda slipped his wig off and scratched his head. "So, a shagging site for deviants?"

"Since you put your finger on it so distastefully, I suppose so," Sid said. "But I like to think it's so much more than that. It's a lifeline for the lonely. It's all right for you lot who are already out there. What about the poor sods who are still in whatever sort of closet they're trapped in."

Brenda looked dubious. "I dunno. Telephone numbers scratched on toilet doors always worked for me."

"And probably would have had the Vice Squad breathing down your neck if they weren't too busy chasing down some over-enthusiastic Twitter user," Sid snorted. "Not that Twitter was invented back then".

"I'll have you know some of the best contacts were members of the constabulary," Brenda retorted. "Anyway, all that's in the past now since I embraced my inner self." He ran appreciative hands down his body, now replete with fake boobs again; although one had slipped a lot lower than the other. He adjusted it awkwardly. "And met up with Trevor, of course. I wasn't actually out then, you know," he continued conversationally. "I really thought she was a bloke at first. It came as a bit of a shock when we went for the clinch down a back alley. Turned out she’d guessed I was not only batting for the other side but coming at it from left field with a curve ball as well, as it were. A bit like her, only the other way round. Happy days." Brenda sighed.

"Touching as that reminiscence might be," Sid said, "it only serves to prove my point. If 'Well, Hello There! ' had been around then you wouldn't have had to find out with a clumsy fumble down a dark alley. Everything would have been laid out bare - as it were - so you could have made an informed choice to start with.

"Look," he continued pointing at a heavily bearded image on the screen, "I've got a bloke here, with a womb, who's keen to get pregnant by a cross dressing transvestite who's already in a straight relationship with a vicar. Strange request, but what are the odds on the two of them meeting up by chance? But with 'Well, Hello There!', It's as simple as swiping ... well, I haven't worked out yet whether it's left, right, up and down or in and out but the end result is likely to be a fulfilled liaison with no-one the loser." He paused. "Except the vicar, perhaps," he added as an afterthought. "Poor cow" He ruminated for a moment: "but there's always the choir boys, I suppose, " he said making a quick adjustment to the search algorithm.

"You'll have to be careful not to upset the Snowflake generation," Brenda cautioned.

"What, that drip-dry, irony-free wet blanket crowd? It'll be difficult not to. You can upset them just by breathing. Anyway, most of them are fully signed-up members of the all-inclusive diversity brigade so far as I can see. I'm just surprised they don't scream 'cultural appropriation' at all the cross-dressing that goes on in their own ranks. Hypocrisy's got nothing on it."

"Mind you, the ethnic thing could be a bit of a problem if you think about it. Wouldn't want to upset them. They're big buggers some of them. Can I say 'black' or 'brown' or should I stick to 'of colour', or might that be seen as too non-inclusive and culturally insensitive? Perhaps it's best just to refer to a specific hue on the Pantone Chart. That can't offend anyone, can it? I mean, it's right there in black and white - as it were"

Brenda surreptitiously eased the thong from his bum crack. "Strikes me you're making a rod for your own back," he said. "But I suppose you'll have an option for that sort of thing as well. Can't say it's ever appealed to me, but each to their own. There's no accounting for taste."

Sid clicked his fingers in sudden inspiration at Brenda's remark. "Taste! You could have a whole sub-menu on that. Thanks Fred. But don't think you're getting in on the rake-off through one chance remark. "

Brenda huffed. "Talking about buggers, what exactly is the term you use to describe what you get up to? 'Forestry' doesn't seem to strike the right note somehow."

Sid scowled and turned the screen round again. "That was an isolated incident," he snapped. "Nearly. At least the wasps were."

Brenda raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Anyway, when are you thinking of rolling this out? You're going to need a dummy run aren't you?"

"Already had one," Sid admitted, reluctantly. "Still needs the rough edges refining"

"Not too successful then?" Brenda ventured. "Dare I ask? "

"Gloria." Sid said, succinctly.

"Our Gloria? The Gloria who got banged up last week for propositioning that Kennels owner? "

"Simple programming error," Sid said. "I blame predictive text, although how 'big dog' got itself translated to 'boarding kennels' I can't get to the bottom of. "

"I expect that Kennels owner thought the same. No-one ever ran so fast is what I heard. "

"No lasting harm done. She got off with a caution in the end. Good job the arresting officer was Rupert."

"Ah! " said Brenda knowingly. "Good old Rupe, with his big truncheon. I didn't think they were still service issue."

"They're not," Sid replied. "When you see him next, ask him about his Taser. That'll really bring tears to your eyes."

Both sat silent for a moment, digesting that thought. A 'ding' from the computer broke the reverie.

"Here we go," said Sid. "Didn't take long for the word to spread." he opened the message that had just come in and read it quickly. "That is just sick!" he said, at last.

Brenda's ears pricked up.

"I mean, you've got to draw the line somewhere. Look at this. I've got a bloke here wants to meet sixteen others of like mind, male, female, indeterminate, or not particularly bothered, with a view to forming a human centipede. Admittedly, without any surgery involved but I've seen the film. Even I was sick for a week afterwards." Sid heaved.

"Not for me either," Brenda agreed. "You don't get to dress up for one thing and I've got a wardrobe full of stuff I've not even tried on yet."

"The thing is," Sid said, " if I put it through, odds are that he'd be happily crawling around with his new friends in a couple of days. It'd be good money. Seventeen fees for one hit but you've got to have standards. Anyway," he said, looking closer at the details, "looks like he's foreign, so that'll be the bin straight away. Strange bed fellows your Johnny Foreigner."

"Not prejudiced at all, then?" Brenda commented.

"Pragmatic, Fred. Pragmatic is all. You don't want your foreign thinking - I mean, some of it's in bleedin' hieroglyphics! You can't get consenting adults consenting to what they can't understand. Get all sorts of perversions cropping up. And law suits as well, I shouldn't wonder."

"Isn't that what it's all about?" said Brenda. "Perversion, I mean, not law suits. "

"Within reason, Fred. This is not Dark Web we're talking about here. It's all open and just about above board. You can go too far. I should know." He shifted uncomfortably on his seat.

"Anyway," said Brenda, preparing to leave. " Reason I came round. There's a drop in at ours at the weekend if you're interested. Trevor and Daphne - no, sorry, David being the weekend - are doing a special so it should be something worth watching judging by the amount of tackle she's bought in. I'll even file down the knot holes in the back fence. Wouldn't want you doing yourself another mischief."

Sid scowled. "Only if Gloria's not there. I still owe her a big dog don't forget."

Brenda tottered to his feet. "I think she's laying low after last week, but the Phillips quads are coming. Jonathon's as gay as anyone has a legal right to be, Cynthia's so butch you could bounce off her but she'll do anything for - and to – anybody I’ve heard, and Cyril swings both ways, quite often both at once. It's only Virginia who's straight, but she's not too fussed by all accounts, and the name certainly doesn't suit her. When the four of them get together it's a sight to behold I can tell you - no holds barred and sibling taboos right out of the window. And I did hear they're bringing their Rover too. You know Virginia runs a Donkey Sanctuary? Word is she might bring Dobbin as well. Pity Gloria won't be there." He gave a gay wave and clattered downstairs.

Alone in his room again, Sid glared at Brenda's retreating back, then glared at his computer screen and venomously pressed 'delete'.