I thought of very little else over the next few days. It became something of an obsession, and I was eager to know literally everything about the panty-dance. Oddly enough, I wasn't prepared to discuss the matter with my parents — talking about girls' underpants was sort of embarrassing — so I knew from the start I'd have to figure it all out on my own.

Natural curiosity spurred me on, at least at first. I wondered if women still did the panty-dance in the present day. I understood that the film's events took place over a hundred years ago (I hadn't been afraid to ask my folks about that), and that life had been much different back then. How did the dance first start; who invented it? Did only pretty girls show off their panties like that? It was genuinely fascinating; new ideas occurred to me almost every waking minute.

Most of all, I wondered how it must have felt, knowing that your lacy, white KNICKERS were on view to all and sundry. That was a question I was most determined to answer. The idea of whirling across a stage with a skirt raised to my chin made my heart race every time it crossed my mind.

Trouble was, there was only one possible way to satisfy my interest.

I knew what I'd have to do, but simply thinking about it made me blush with a kind of breathless, guilty pleasure. What if I got caught? Young though I was, I knew that boys weren't supposed to wear girls' clothing. If anyone found out, I'd absolutely die of shame – and that was the best case scenario.

Despite these misgivings, it took me less than a minute to make my decision. The temptation was too great, the desire too strong to deny. I'd have to be careful, need to sneak around while nobody was looking. At any rate, I really had no other choice: the impulse was virtually irresistible.
I would have to become a girl.

My initial attempts at dressing up were modest improvisations, using anything that resembled a skirt. I started out with one of my Mother's aprons, smuggled out of the kitchen early in the morning while everybody else was asleep. It was an old-fashioned pinafore, reminiscent of 1950s sit-coms, complete with a red gingham pattern. It seemed a natural choice, being so unambiguously feminine. That was how I saw it: only women wore aprons, so putting one on would make me a girl.

Slipping into this makeshift "dress" was incredibly exciting, awakening the same emotions I'd felt in the cinema. It would begin as I removed my pajama bottoms, stripping down to my plain cotton briefs. My pulse quickened with anticipation, raising a fine, pink hue across my features. The fear of discovery added spice to the ritual; I always glanced round to make sure no one was watching.

Wandering about in my little white knicks, I usually shivered from stem to stern. It wasn't just the morning chill, I knew I doing something extremely naughty. Goose flesh swept over my tummy as I walked bare-thighed across the floor. The bedroom was my stage, the panty-dance was about to begin, and I was the star attraction!

Having completed all the necessary preparations, I stepped carefully into the apron, passing the collar over my head and wrapping the draw strings around my waist. Naturally, it only covered my front (leaving my bottom exposed), but that didn't really bother me at the time. Being a child, my imagination was more than capable of filling in the blanks. It was long and frilly and looked like a frock. The transformation was finished: I was a girl.

It's impossible to describe the sheer delight I experienced, sweeping up my dress to exhibit my silky white underthings. Scampering around this phantom stage was a joy beyond anything I'd ever known. I could hear the roar of the crowd, the clash of the cymbals, the wild shrieks of the chorus girls. It was like entering another world, a place of blazing lights, thunderous applause and pure childhood magic.

As the weeks went by, my fantasies became increasingly more elaborate. I developed an impromptu routine which included high kicks, cartwheels and skirt flips, cantering my feet from right to left. My favourite move was the "royal flash" towards the end, where I bent over and revealed my pantied bottom to the audience. This was, of course, the climax of the show, the moment everyone had been waiting for. Inexplicably, the thought of jiggling my bottom-cheeks back and forth seemed almost indescribably wicked.

I also continued experimenting with my costume, graduating from pinafores to mock-frocks and cast-offs. Both of my sisters studied ballet, and I knew where their old hand-me-downs were stored. Most of their outfits were too big for me, but I managed to cobble together a few mismatched items that served my purposes. I didn't bother with the leotards or tutus (neither of which appealed to me), setting my sights on the jazz skirts and sequined tops. The highlight of the act was a pair of fancy-pants covered with tiny lace frills. Heart-stoppingly pretty, they were precisely my size when drawn up to the belly button. I literally couldn't believe my luck when I found them: it was practically too good to be true.

In the meantime, I finally worked up the courage to ask what the dance was called. Once again, I was reluctant to talk to my parents (Dad in particular seemed to have become rather distant in recent months), so I eventually approached my older sister, Rachel. She was only two years my senior and we'd been thick as thieves for as long as I could remember. All the same, I was still a little embarrassed about the whole topic, so I decided to wait until the right moment to broach the subject.

That moment presented itself one cool spring afternoon when we were lounging on the sofa, watching TV in the rumpus room. This was not long past my seventh birthday, and I'd noticed for close on a year that the panty-dance appeared on television at regular intervals (though not as regularly as I might have liked). I'd also come to recognize the tune — apparently quite famous from what I could gather – and figured that Rachel would have to know everything about it, being a ballet student and all.

We were watching some rattling old cowboy flick, a late-forties adventure about a Mississippi gambler shooting his way across the Wild West. Half-way through the movie, the hero ended up in a Silver Dollar casino, and we were confronted by a face-full of flailing petticoats. My eyes automatically widened at the sight of all those frilly silk panties, and I turned to my sister, barely able to conceal my excitement.

"Rachel", I asked, pointing to the screen, "what's that dance called?"
"Huh?" she replied, evidently distracted, then raised her eyebrows as the question registered. "Oh...that's the cancan."

We blinked at each other for a couple of seconds, then stared back at the TV without further comment. It occurred to me that Rachel was just as fascinated as I was, though maybe in a slightly different manner. We watched the spectacle unfold, occasionally casting sidelong glances at one another. The panty shots continued for another two minutes, during which the tension became agonizing. We were kids, a great unspoken mystery had been raised, and there were no grown-ups around. We both wanted to talk about it.

The silence was finally shattered during the commercial break. The cancan hung thick in the air between us, despite having vanished off the screen five minutes before. The conversation was a little awkward for the first thirty seconds, but then we both giggled when I asked why the girls were showing off their knickers (that's one of the best things about living in the United Kingdom: the word "Knickers" is guaranteed to break the ice in any company).

Having found a common ground, we talked through most of the afternoon, nattering away in the loose, careless fashion of childhood. She told me that the cancan was a French dance invented by a guy named Sharks Offinbark at a place called the Moolin Rooge (yes, that was precisely how she pronounced it). According to her ballet teacher, there was a special academy in Paris that taught the cancan, where only the world's greatest dancers could get in.

"What about the chorus girls in the Jekyll and Hyde movie?" I asked. "That was set in London."
Rachel shrugged her shoulders and said that the cancan was popular all over the world. This led on to various stylistic comparisons: France vs Britain, England vs America and so on. After intense speculation, we concluded that the original French version must have been the best (all the others being pale imitations, of course).

It was all terribly intriguing, especially since I had no idea what she was talking about half the time. Rachel knew her subject, and the terminology she employed amounted to a foreign language in my ears. On the other hand, I was utterly mesmerized by the notion of a Cancan school, and most interested in visiting Paris (where every girl in the city was required to learn the dance in primary school, from all accounts).

The conversation invariably returned to the revealing of the girls' knickers, and Rachel was surprisingly candid about the matter. Apparently, the exhibition of the panties was an absolute necessity.

"That's how it's supposed to be danced," Rachel explained in tones of casual authority, "you have to hold up your skirts to do all those high kicks."

It all sounded perfectly reasonable, but personal experience suggested there was considerably more to it than that.

"Do you think they actually like showing off their panties?" This sounded perfectly reasonable: the dance seemed specially designed to display every inch of their underwear.

"No," Rachel replied instantly, then gnawed her lip in evident consternation. Apparently, we were both keeping secrets too mortifying to disclose. An eye-rolling pause later, she lowered her voice and admitted that she and her friends liked to flash their undies when there were no adults around. "It's kind of fun when we do that bottom-wriggle at the end," she added, looking away to hide her pinkening cheeks.

At that second, I came as close to sharing my fantasies with another person as I ever would. Needless to say, I was desperate to know more about Rachel's private cancan troupe, but she flatly refused to say anything else, other than confiding that the last performance took place at Janey North's slumber party). From what she'd just told me, they felt precisely the same way I did, and I would have sold my soul for a chance to join them.

From that day forward, the cancan became a recurring topic of conversation between the two of us. In many respects, Rachel was amazingly patient with my prodding inquiries. I think part of it was that she enjoyed playing the expert, imparting wisdom to the less fortunate. I was her kid brother, it made her feel important when I came to her for advice. She probably suspected the source of my interest (possibly even knew about the borrowed knickers), but was considerate enough never to let on about it.

Our ongoing discussions opened a great many doors doors for me, solving many of the conundrums that had haunted me since that night at the cinema. Sensing the depth of my fascination, Rachel suggested I join her ballet class — Chamberlain Dance Academy was desperately short on male students, and there was always the chance that the senior class would put on a Moolin Rooge number for Bass-steal Day (again, that was precisely how she pronounced it).

Although predictably reluctant at first, my curiosity got the better of me, and Rachel eventually convinced me to tag along one afternoon. Within a week, I was learning my first steps under the rigorous gaze of Ms Evelyne Deane, struggling to arch my spine and avoid tripping up the ballerinas. I was the only boy taking classes at the time, for which reason Ms Deane quietly tolerated my stumbling antics. I was never as graceful as my siblings, but I persevered long enough to learn the basics. Over the next two years, I gained sufficient confidence to appear on stage, first with Rachel, then with an ever-expanding range of partners. Following my third recital, even Ms Deane appeared satisfied with my progress, telling Rachel that I'd graduated from being a lump of lard to a block of wood. Coming from a woman fundamentally incapable of uttering a good word about anything, this was high praise indeed.

Equally pleased with this state of affairs was my Mother, who now had all three of her children pursuing careers in the arts. She was supportive above and beyond the call of duty, devoting endless hours to sewing costumes and applying makeup, clucking and fussing over the tiniest details during rehearsals. She was a whirlwind of activity behind the curtains, her enthusiasm stunning even the most diehard of stage-moms.

Not quite so enthusiastic was my Father, who had grown increasingly distant over the past two years. Spending most of his weekends parked on the sofa in front of a football game, he showed little concern for any of us, viewing his offspring with the kind of indifference common to males of his generation. Having married in his early thirties, middle age struck him with near-lethal force on his fortieth birthday. I guess it might have been worse; lesser men would have spiraled down into heavy drinking or domestic violence. Fortunately, Dad was inclined to neither, and we gradually adjusted to his mute apathy.

For close on a year, I wondered if I were to blame for his impassive moods. Maybe he'd found out about my early morning dress-up games. I could only surmise how shocked he'd be that his own son was one of them (whatever "they" were; I was slightly too young to fully understand the concept). Perhaps he'd disowned all three of us on my account, refusing to even acknowledge our existence.

It wasn't until much later I realized that Mom and Dad had stopped talking altogether around the time I entered elementary school. Their marriage started disintegrating long before I was born; by the time I turned nine they were little more than two house-bound strangers working double shifts to pay an unwanted mortgage. Mom did her best to smooth the rough patches over for us, but she was more-or-less postponing the inevitable.

Dad moved out not long afterwards. He'd met a younger woman through a workmate, and his bags were packed within a month of their first date. Just like that, our father was gone. Rachel cried a little when he said goodbye, Mom and Kate just stood to one side staring after him with a kind of weary contempt. He barely spared me a glance as he lugged his bags out the front door, even after I raised my hand to signal farewell. At the end of the day, I'd become the most alien of his children, and he had nothing to say to me.

Not that it mattered, one way or another. Given the circumstances, there wasn't much to talk about anyway.

Fortunately, the world didn't end that afternoon.

We each recovered from our individual losses, and life trundled slowly along its rocky slope once more. Mom took an administrative position at the local council, earning enough money to pay off the house. Kate grew up to marry a well-established barrister, settling down in one of the more affluent suburbs of London. Rachel graduated high school and managed to get into RADA, majoring in Voice and Movement with a bit of modeling on the side. Evelyn Deane cast me in a couple of Christmas pantomimes, evidently to prove that even a block of wood has its uses. There was some talk of scholarships and academic auditions, though nothing much came of it. I was a good student, but I wasn't a great dancer. As Evelyn eventually told me — not without some regret - my true skills lay elsewhere.

In the meantime, I coped with the usual complexities of adolescence. I rowed with my Mom, squabbled with my teachers and learnt how to deal with schoolyard bullies. Like any boy hitting puberty, I developed crushes on girls who never noticed my existence and willfully ignored the ones who did. Of course, my situation was perhaps slightly more complicated than most. While I was exclusively attracted to girls my age, I also constantly fantasized about being one.

Inevitably, this led to many sleepless nights, pondering the paradox of my identity. I'd come to understand the meanings of words such as transvestite, trangender and transsexual, but they had a sterile, clinical sound. They couldn't describe the overwhelming delight I felt whenever I dressed up, the sense that I'd somehow morphed into my true self. Even now, I suspect there are no terms which express the deep, insatiable longing people like myself experience. Such notions are - by definition - inexpressible.

All I knew was that I was different. It was obvious to me, obvious to everyone around me, especially my classmates. They weren't openly cruel or belligerent, but they made it clear that I would never fit in. It wasn't simply my feminine personality. It was everything: my appearance, my posture, my manner of speaking. Much as I tried to conceal it beneath a veneer of faux masculinity, it was always present.

Entering my early teens, I learnt to accept the good with the bad. I was small and delicately built, with the lithe figure conferred by years of choreography. This occasionally made me the target of playground taunts, but it also allowed me to pass as my preferred gender. Looking considerably younger than my years, I was constantly mistaken for a girl of twelve, particularly when I went shopping with my Mother (at first, she used to correct people on this matter, but decided to let it slide when she noticed it didn't bother me).

It was around my fifteenth year that I started volunteering at the Red Shield store down in Waverly Avenue. Initially, it was part of my school's work experience programme, but I soon discovered I was perfectly suited to the position. Having spent half my life filching my sisters' hand-me-downs, I had an affinity for second-hand clothing. Mom was extremely proud of my charitable commitment - Friday afternoons and most Saturday mornings - but she never realized that my actions weren't totally altruistic.

You see, the store's manager, (Grace Oakland, by name) allowed me first choice of anything that came in. She'd sussed me out during my first week on the job, and we quickly sealed a mutually beneficial agreement. Apparently, I wasn't the first cross-dresser to walk in through the front door, but I was the only one who'd been willing to work behind the counter. Grace kept my secrets and rewarded me well for my services. By the end of three months I had collected a huge stash of bras, skirts, knickers and frocks, many items in pristine condition. Barely a week went by when some flimsy, girlish thing turned up in my size; Grace would hand it to me with a wink and a nod, brokering the latest deal.

I got on well with all the staff, most of them silver-haired Grannies with wide, open hearts and families in the midlands. If they knew anything about my extra-curricular activities, they never mentioned it. I don't think they would have cared anyway - I was quiet, polite and hard-working, and that was all that mattered to them.

All the same, it wasn't a perfect life by any means. Far from it; there were months of utter despair, when anguish and confusion overrode every other emotion. I wasn't just different - I was a freak, an abnormality, some loathsome thing without a name or purpose. There was always a feeling of loss and rejection at the back of my mind. I'd never forgiven Dad for ditching us so callously, and since Rachel had gone to RADA, I'd felt more isolated than ever before.

However, the worst thing of all was the doubt. In many ways, it was worse than the shame, worse than the self-loathing. What was wrong with me, why was I so bent, twisted and sick? Maybe the school yard rumours were right, maybe I deserved to be alone, pushed aside and cast out like a worthless pile of refuse. I had no idea who I was, what I truly wanted.
But then again, what teenager ever does?

Then, quite suddenly, I was sixteen.

It was the summer break, the final respite before my senior year. Mom was planning to visit Grandma up on the coast, Kate had long since moved to Edinburgh, and Rachel was touring Europe with her boyfriend. The house would be empty; I'd elected to stay behind to play homemaker. Mom wasn't too happy about leaving me alone, but I convinced her that I had to prepare for my upcoming matriculation. The pantry was stocked, the neighbours could keep an eye on me, and I was smart enough not to open the door to undesirables.

Mom capitulated after a half-hearted attempt to dissuade me; worry though she might, she knew deep down I'd be OK. This minor triumph raised my spirits considerably: this was recognition of my maturity, my need for privacy. Being alone didn't seem so bad at all. I'd have the place all to myself, an entire weekend to read, relax and just be myself.

Most importantly, I finally knew what I wanted.