Partying at One of the UK’s Oldest Trans Clubs

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

“There were loads of gay guys out cruising in Hyde Park when it was hot the other night,” says Gabriella. Raven-haired, and wearing a glittering sequin dress, she is intimidatingly beautiful.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Until I got my cock out and scared them all off.”

It is 2 AM and we’re sitting outside a pub in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Gabriella is perched on a garden table between Alejandra, a tall blonde with flawless skin, and Paola, who pouts moodily at her Smirnoff Ice. They are trying to ignore a crazed Thai man who sways woozily in front of them, offering them cigarettes and coke.

Gabriella, Alejandra, and Paola are all transsexual women, here to celebrate the twenty-second birthday of London’s WayOut Club, one of the most popular transgender venues in the UK. Gabriella, who is Colombian, comes here to unwind most weekends. I ask her how long she’s lived in London for.

“Five years. When I came here I found out some very good things about myself. And some very bad things.”

Fair enough. The WayOut Club seems like the ideal place to explore both. Founded in 1993 by the charismatic Vicky Lee, it hosts up to 200 trans women, along with their admirers and a sprinkling of drag queens, gay men, female friends. and bewildered-looking people who’ve wandered in off the street by mistake. Vicky, who describes herself as an “inbetweenie”—someone who only dresses as a woman part-time—certainly has staying power. Not only does she run one of the longest-established clubs in London, but she’s also been married to the same (female) partner for 38 years.

To say that the WayOut Club is all-inclusive would be an understatement. The website talks of “every age, race, culture, sexuality, and gender” being present. This is certainly true. When you walk in, the venue—which looks a little like a provincial sports bar—appears to be full of attractive young women in trainers, hot-pants and miniskirts dancing to house remixes of Taylor Swift and Rihanna, surrounded by a bunch of shy heterosexual men of varying ages, from 18 to pushing 80. The guys are, for the most part, pretty laddish, wearing plaid shirts and football tops. One guy who looks a lot like the gangster Dave Courtney, complete with a scar down one cheek, is standing arm-in-arm with a beautiful Israeli girl.

The beautiful Israeli girl is trans. In fact, the majority of girls here are either T-girls, cross-dressers, or post-op. For the uninitiated this can require a rapid mental recalibration, but the atmosphere is so friendly that everyone immediately feels comfortable anyway.

Thanks to Bruce Jenner’s recent interview in which he revealed he is transgender and living as a woman, the issues faced by trans women are receiving perhaps the greatest amount of media attention they ever have. In the Jenner piece, host Diane Swayer went to great lengths to explain the differences between sexuality and gender, suggesting that many viewers were unaware of the difference between identifying as a woman and being attracted to women. While this might seem painfully obvious, it’s a good thing that those who were finding it tricky to grasp these concepts are now being directly addressed by mainstream American media.

Even those who are too young to recall Jenner’s sporting achievements—and have little interest in entirely vapid reality TV shows—must surely find something moving in his courage, honesty, and statement that “this one real true story in the family was the one I was hiding and nobody knew about it.” Last year a trans woman in Carlisle killed herself after being taunted in the street. The Metropolitan police saw crimes against transgender women rise by 44 percent in 2014. Jenner says that his coming out will change the world. Hopefully it will.

He would, of course, be preaching to the converted here at WayOut Club. I get chatting to Steve at the bar, a graphic designer, who comes as frequently as possible to sate his desire for T-girls.

“When you’ve been as miserable in your body as Jenner was, then what else are you going to do?” he says. “Good on him.”

Steve is a good-looking young guy in a designer T-shirt—the type you’d imagine to see in the main room at Fabric for Eats Everything, not listening to Miss Huggy McQuire belting out Rihanna’s “S&M” on the tiny stage while the assembled audience whoop and suck down alcopops.

“I love it here,” he says. “I come as often as I can. Which isn’t much these days.”

He says he’s straight. So does he date trans girls?

“No, not really. Not any more. It’s fair to say I lead a double life. As I say, I can’t get down here as much as I’d like to any more.”

Right.

“You have to be careful of those girls who just want you to fund their night, asking for drinks for them and all their friends,” he warns me. “I’m pretty blatant about it. I just tell them, ‘I’m not trying to sleep with your mates.’”

Paul, a skinny guy down from Essex for the night, shambles over. He recently married a Thai trans girl he met here.

“I’m even more direct than that. I just ask them, ‘Are you gonna fuck me?’ If yes, then you get drinks. If no, then you can do one!”

This leads to talk about trans escorts. In the past, there have been rumors about the “commercial” ambitions of a few of the guests down at the WayOut Club, although I see no evidence of this myself.

“The thing is, a proportion of young t-girls in London get into escorting. Doesn’t mean they’re doing it here. But a few of them come down to party. Her over there—Barbara. She’s an escort,” says Paul, pointing to a tall woman with blonde, shoulder-length 1970s-style hair and huge fake breasts.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen her website,” he says. “She’s the type that charges a grand a night for outcalls.”

Two stunning Asian girls pass by.

“They’re definitely in it for the cash—100 percent,” says Steve.

“Bollocks! The way to pull them, mate?” says Paul. “Give ’em dirty looks. They got guys all over them all night. Look at them shitty, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

“And then what?” asks Steve.

“Then they come to you.”

Steve looks momentarily confused, then staggers off to the smoking area.

On the dance floor I get chatting to Angelika, a delicate-looking girl from Poland in a yellow dress.

“I’m married,” she says. “I like to come down every few weeks, though, just to be with the other girls and dance. My husband has no choice about me going out. We have an arrangement: We’re together, but I have a very high sex drive, so sometimes I need to go out alone and meet people.”

She looks at me fixedly.

“If you’re looking for cock, you’ve come to the wrong girl.”

It’s an interesting conversation, and one that illuminates the myriad micro-negotiations that must have to take place in an environment like this, where desires are varied and people are differently equipped. Steve tells me that he once ended a mini-relationship with a t-girl when she transitioned, as things simply weren’t the same afterwards.

Perhaps the clearest explanation I get of what it’s like to be a straight guy into t-girls comes from Josh from LA. Josh describes himself as “hetero-plus.”

“I find the feminine to be highly erotic,” he says. “But femininity can be achieved in many ways, not all of them natural. A beautiful woman is to be treasured. And if she has a massive penis, all the better.”

It’s nearly 4 AM, and the T-girls and their admirers are still going wild to Calvin Harris. In an age where trans issues are high on the news agenda, not often for the right reasons, it’s great that an event as welcoming and non-discriminatory as WayOut Club exists in the UK’s capital.

Names have been changed.

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