Richard O’Brien’s divided self

last updated 8 January 2015

Richard O’Brien thinks of himself as neither a man nor a woman, says Dominic Wells in the London Times. The author of the cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show won’t put himself in any category, including transsexual, because he doesn’t want to change his gender. “I’m in between,” he says. “Or a third sex, I could see myself as quite easily.” In his 67 years, that twilight identity has given him untold suffering, even as he married twice and fathered three children. “To feel you don’t belong … to feel insane … to feel perverted and disgusting … you go f---ing nuts,” O’Brien says, his voice choked with emotion. “Not so long ago, I went completely crackers. I’d been fighting, going to therapy, treating what I was as though it were some kind of illness to be cured. I wanted to get back to normal, but where’s the benchmark of sanity?” He finally confided to his children that he considered himself both male and female. To his relief, their reaction was: “Dad, and your point is?” It was not news to them. “I was talking to my son, and he told me how much he loved me, how he absolutely …” He shakes his head. “It was my children’s love that gave me a center again. They gave me acceptance of myself and allowed me to be myself.”