Meet Jayne - or Mike, depending on her mood. Jayne is a 46-year-old
transvestite from Poplar, east London. She has been diagnosed HIV positive for
15 years, and has probably had it for much longer. Laurence
Gibson met her
[photos: nikki kastner]
I describe myself as bi-gender," states Jayne, with her glitzy gold earrings dangling beside an unshaven face. "We thought long and hard about it once and decided that it was the best term to use.
"I
am not a transsexual, and have no ambition to change my sex. I am happy when I
am 'Mick the Geezer' but I am happy being Jayne, too."
But it hasn't always been like this. Until the age of 40, Jayne never existed. Before then, Mike Young was a regular run-of-the-mill gay man, living in the wilds of Hertfordshire.
"I really was just the bloke next door.
"The first picture of me in a frock is aged five in my aunt's back garden," she says proudly. "And when I turned 16 and started going out on the scene I just got dressed up for special occasions - I guess I was a drag queen then. You know, kind of fancy dress."
But it wasn't until he had turned 40, and a 65-year-old 'maid' suggested that he might try dressing up for 'work' purposes, that the idea really stuck. "That's when I started getting into it a bit more. I found out about clubs like 'Way Out' and 'Ron Storms' and started dressing up every day."
Now, some five years later, Jayne is one of the top-dog transvestites on the east London trannie scene. She manages and owns an underground club called 'Stunners,' and is - consequently - the central figure in the whole community.
"Stunners originally opened as a trannie massage parlour. We had a few girls working out of there at the beginning. But it wasn't great. The men that frequented it were generally quite secretive types, you know, married, with children... so it always had that against it.
"So we re-thought our plans and reckoned that, as there wasn't much going on for trannies on Friday nights, we would open a club.
"To start with we were just serving drinks from behind a dodgy office desk, with a little portable CD player on, under an arch in Shoreditch, with a little playroom out back."
But 'Stunners' soon developed from its humble beginnings. Originally, the venue was specifically a trannie club on Friday nights, then - after four months of growth - they opened up Wednesday and Saturday as a fetish club, to which trannies were welcome.
However, the 'Stunners' scene gradually transformed into a bit of a free-for-all, becoming, according to Jayne, "the church of the open-minded."
"At Stunners anyone can be whatever they want to be. Do whoever they want to do. And be into anything sexually."
"Stunners has become a real community. Everyone that likes it, really likes it."
It was back in 1988 that Mike was diagnosed as HIV positive. "I had probably had it for years by then," she explains. "I think I probably got it in 82 or 83. You do that, you know - try and figure out exactly when you caught it."
His life partner, Stephen, had been diagnosed with bronchitis, which was refusing to get any better. "Eventually he just collapsed in casualty and was diagnosed as having PCP. That's when we knew he had it.
"I was tested straight after - and that came back as positive, too."
Stephen's doctors told him that he only had a handful of years left. Eight years later - in 1996 - Stephen died in Mike's arms.
"You try to prepare yourself for it. But you never really can. I wandered around like a lost soul for eighteen months after his death.
"Any little illness that I've had since his death was always 'is this it?' - I always had to prepare for the worst. I cancelled all my pensions and everything."
Now,
however, some 15 years after the initial diagnosis, Jayne remains fighting fit.
What is more astonishing to know is that she has never taken any anti-HIV medication.
"Well, I decided that it wasn't my time to go. I thought 'I am not going to let this thing beat me till I'm ready'. And that's that."
In fact, on her last visit to the doctor Jayne was diagnosed as a long-term non-progressor. This means she is one of less than four per cent of the HIV population who has had a CD4 count over 500 for more than five years and requires no treatment. More importantly, it now looks like her future is now one that does not involve an Aids-related illness.
"I knew I shouldn't have cancelled those pensions!" she exclaims. "I am just going to have to continue living my life as I always have done - as normally as possible."
For more information on Stunners please visit the website : www.stunners.tv
