Field of Dreams, World Series and Crossdressing

In 2004 I spent the entire post-season in a tense, drunken, stoned, and crossdressed frenzy, trying to spark some fan magic to will my beloved Red Sox to the World Series.

What's a Southerner, a Southern Woman, well trans-woman, doing liking a new England Team? Don't you folks like the Braves? Or the Rays?

Well I grew up loving baseball cards. I loved the information, the portraits, the action shots, how owning a baseball card made you notice people, races, beards, mustaches, hair cuts. If you owned the card that player was special. That's how I defined special, plus the media always provided heroes. Carlton Fisk, Eddie Murray, Steve Garvey, Fernando Valenzuela, Jim Rice, and my favorite, George Brett. So by default the Royals were my favorite team, the Red Sox, because of Rice and Fisk, were my second favorite team, and I liked the Braves, the Cubs, and Orioles, just because we had a primitive cable TV plan and all three were regularly broadcast. The game was on in my father's office, his one vice, pipe smoking, making my head fuzzy and warm. He didn't like to be bothered, and we weren't allowed to listen or bother, and the game took on a magical quality. Something adult. Something in the air. And of course, there was the games on the weekends, or summer afternoons, and I'd half pay attention.

When we moved my father's office got more remote, and bigger, and so did my father, and so did sports.

There were brief intense affairs with baseball, the wild Boston Years where I palled around with madmen, drag queens, freaks and literary geeks. And those years saw, not only, media frenzy over the team, but many games in the stands via my wife's job in PR.

I followed, but from a distance.

My femme side exploded and receded in similar fashion. It's a phase, it's nothing, it's no big deal.

It's
a
big
deal.
Your self image.

For me the yearnings and intensity increase with age.

FF

Shortly after I found out I was going to be a father we went over to a friend's house and I played catch with my friend's son, because no one else wanted the chore, which n I would find out...that playing with any three year old child is, a chore. Because you have to run a lot to pick up the stray short armed balls that fly from the kid's arm. You have to do it for the kid. But that was okay. I was in high Daddy euphoria.

I even thought, I remember the thought, that I was finally normal, in other words...non-trans.

Playing catch was fun. My beautiful wife teared up at the sight of us....
And suddenly after that baseball came alive to me again.

Then I was deeply in the closet about my trans issues, so I stood, in 2004, in a comeback against the Yankees, in my wife's mules, in her hose, in her short skirt, and wearing gobs of her eye shadow, in secret, my post pregnant wife passed out upstairs, and I in shaky drag, listening to the radio, the Sox fighting back, absolutely sure my intense desire to dress as a woman, to wake up one day as a woman, were passing phases.

That it was a kind of magic.

And crossdressing is, if anything, a kind of magic.

And so is a good game. And as of this post my son is sleeping, and the Giants are on the verge of their 1st title, and my pearls are hanging from my ears, and I have my bracelets and rings, and right now everything, just about everything seems possible.

Tranny Madness

Tranny madness

I'm never sure how you other sisters process/exist in your trans consciousness. Sometimes I am all woman. Sometimes I am reaffirming myself as a girl, woman, transsexual. Rarely is it far from my mind.

This leads to lots of transflections, all of the many years and hours and days and hearts I have been entangled in a dual state.

Recently I discussed my issues with an old friend who covers the drag scene and is a GLBT activist.

Since I hadn't seen him since college, old memory lane became a happening and suddenly I was back in college hanging out at the gay bars and seedy streets where all the tg/ts hookers hung out. I used to pretend I was a reporter from the college covering sex changes and interviewed/flirted with etc. I was excited by them and excited by the idea of a sex change. I did this about four times. Perhaps five, some of the evenings blur together. I didn't hook up with these women, only hung out with them. Just trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. Am I gay? Am I a tranny chaser? Am I a transsexual?

I already crossdressed, but it was a shameful coal I kept burning. Sometimes I managed to pre-exist it, that is to live with a heart that has never tap danced with gender bending. With femininity, with my secret self.

My old friend had figured himself out early. I know because he was my first experience. Period. And for a while I wanted him to be my boyfriend, and then predictably denied it till the experience was someone else's life.

Crazy. But not so much. The memory when compartmentalized can be a powerful consciousness.

A fabulous Crossdressing read

The Late Mr. Shakespeare is all about Shakespeare.

It also happens to be about crossdressing and a major theme is gender blurring.

The narrator, Pickleherring, once played all the female roles in Shakespeare's plays, and in his late years is writing a biography of his former master. In it is a lot of interesting stuff about Shakespeare, real or imagined, and a great deal about sexuality, wearing stockings, pretending to be a woman, and men and women pretending to be the opposite sex during sex, etc.

Now it isn't pornography, by the writer has a pornographer's heart. He suggests that Mr. Shakespeare's powers originated in the heart of a gender bending relationship he had with his dark mistress.

If you don't like Shakespeare, skim around. The major crossdressing chapters are easy to pick out, but there is plenty scattered throughout.

Dear me, in the closet again?

For me crossdressing has always been a dark pull, like a gravity, or wet jeans that suck and tease me down, down, down. I don't mean to paint it darkly, but darkly it often feels, for because I am a secondary, or latent transperson, it is cognitively difficult at times to strip away hiding and lying patterns of defenses that I have employed over the years.

When I came out to my spouse, it was one of the most awful psychic rippings I've taken in my 35+ years on the planet. And for the better part of a year I have not had those darkly thoughts, those defensive maneuverings.

It's like I'm out of the closet, but I'm in a bigger closet.

Me spouse is right to hold me fast to being secret in the big woody south. Still, sometimes I feel like she doesn't want me to express my true self at all, unless we're shopping.

It's bizarre. I'm getting mixed signals.

I feel like a child whose mother is disapproving of the friends I have chosen.

Only my friends live in my heart and head and want to come over more often.

Sigh.

What's a gal to do?

The above pic is Candy Darling, pure genius.

long time gone

Hey all, I've been following you and remaining silent for these last few weeks. Things have been great and things have been...well drab. Wifie and I have shopped, and bonded over girlie things and she has been encouraging me to develop a female personae, however as a private venture only.

Believe me, as a 6'4 200 lb t-girl I get that without radical, possibly unhealthy dieting and hormone regiments I'm not very passable. It does get me down, but I get back up...

At the small community college where I work a student of mine is getting breast reduction surgery to become more androgynous. We have the same trans issues, and chat about them freely. Each is privately freaked out about transitioning but yet cannot let the idea go...

anyway... if you haven't seen Wonder Boys, check it out. There is a gorgeous tall brunette cd/tg transwoman in the first half...the rest of the movie is brilliant.

I wish you all well

Cass

Whew...domestic bliss

Thank god.

This week has been like a whip snap mop attack, my nerves stretched thin, my exhaustion complete. Thanks work. Thanks job, I couldn't have done it without you...

Plus, I haven't femulated in sooo long.

(in my mind I'm tapping my fingernails, red, long, self-manicured, along the kitchen counter)

Until tonight.

Interesting behavorial observation:

During the last twelve days (I get to go all out one night a week, and my general, subtle feminine ways are allowable during the rest of the week. Putting it that way sounds bad, but what it really amounts to is baby steps. My wife is allowing this to grow, but prefers an organic, slower process--I'm down. I prefer it quick and fast) perhaps out of conditioning, perhaps from my heart, I have found myself mentally skipping from male dominated energies to female dominated energies at an hourly pace. Most of my life the female urges have been dominated by waves, to borrow the metaphor from Petra but now I find my energies switching more frequently.

It's nice. I will monitor. I will report, report, report.

But I digress...so finding myself alone for an extra two hours this afternoon and gasp...went outside to take the trash to the bin, in 5 inch heels, boi jeans and a gyrl tee, allowing my feminine steps to enlarge at the hips and shorten at the knee. It feels natural that way, and cautious too, for I am not gliding in 5 inch heels, 3 yes, in 5 I'm more than competent, but my grace fades at times from lack of experience.

And I have begun the evening with casual attire. Sandals, jeans, cheap Big Lots blouse (bland but serviceable in a variety of outfits), and a 70s orange headband

And after a break a black pencil skirt, pink blouse, hose.

And after and after and after....

Come As You Are

Nirvana broke when little ole me was a freshman in college. I remember wearing hose under my jeans to a party the week Nevermind exploded. If memory serves I humiliated myself by telling my secret to two hot girls who got kicks out of my drunken twin gender ramblings.

Everytime Kurt appeared in a dress it felt right. Nevermind him passing, the fact he allowed his energies and essences to mix was what was important.

Creative Non-fiction part one

Correcting My Walk

I.

The boy stares in the mirror: the posters on the ceiling stretch back behind him like tall oversexed flowers whose elongated backward faces pull his eyes away from his fists, which pump at his side.

“You should practice,” his mother had said after they finished their walk. She offered him water, he wanted soda. “Make you fat,” she sighed as she pulled the glass from the cabinet and gave it to him to fill, as if to say make your choice.

She had made the suggestion as they had walked round the highway at the back end of the hospital, the oaks fat with serum, and plump crows. “Pump your arms, or your fists, and don’t put your feet in front of each other.”

The boy had only blinked back. He couldn’t see what she was talking about, as if what he was looking for was just out of his line of sight, as if it floated under him like a jellyfish under a boat.

“And don’t put your feet in front of each other,” She added, working extra hard, walking extra fast, looking back over her shoulder as if to say, hurry up.

He nodded and trusted his mother, and stared off at the line of crows.

That night he tried to relearn how to walk.

He detested staring at his doughy pale skin. He wished he had a sunburn at least, and instead looked to the ceiling lacquered with posters. And as usual the boy looked beyond the movie posters, beyond the drywall, into the bones of old sleep, in where he once dreamed of being small, lost on a rolling wave of mud, and debris; a wall that eventually overtook him. He looked into the dream as it wormholed into other old bones of his childhood, the first time he was mistaken for a girl, the way the cat had fallen asleep in his arms, the afternoon his mother was so sick she collapsed on the floor, and being so young all he could think to do was run to the door and call for Daddy.

When he looked down his hands were white, his knuckles like eight wrinkled stones.

The boy returned his eye to the mirror, the ceiling above him, and pumped his fists and marched, careful not to alternate his steps, to not move with his hips as his mother had coached.




II.

Sharp spring sunlight arcs through the warm air of my mother’s bedroom
where one by one
the costume pieces slipped, clipped and rolled
in my palms like toy dice.
The Halloween wig upon my head,
the pale red lipstick I stole from the downtown drugstore,
smacked and dabbed on tissues
as my mother and grandmother had done so many Sundays
on their way out the door.

Sun & heat floated the air.

At that moment, in my mother’s nightgown and heels,
the world became a hot wine glass, refracting light
and warming skin and voice like balm.

From then on when my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up
I would say anything

But would think only this:
Transforming, existing in sunlight, my skin bristling under fabric and disguises,
the small matters of attending to beauty cluttered about me like dime-store treasure.



III

When spring nights were not so humid and my mother did not have schoolwork to accomplish she bullied me from the basement couch to walk up and down Farmville’s hilly neighborhoods of magnolia lined homes, the sloping green of Longwood’s campus below us like a pool of green felt. And on these walks she began to press upon me the most awkward of talks: sex, girls, pot, self-esteem, the future, all of which was as fuzzy to me as the haze that shimmered upon the blacktop.

“I’d rather you smoke pot, than have sex before marriage.”

She was adamant about this. I didn’t get it because I had done neither, and they had not exacted their gravity upon me yet. If her talks were the sun, I was Pluto. Not paying attention.

And it was upon these walks my mother would try to correct me.

“You swing your arms too much. Don’t walk with one foot in front of the other.”

“What?” I was never listening, usually thinking about Tina Dimocalli, the Filipino girl in my class, whose photo I kissed every night before bed. As if that would make her love me.

“You walk like a dork. Your arms, swinging as they do.” I remember rolling my eyes at her emphasis of “dork.” She continued, breaking into a weird cacophony of elbows and hips and feet that was supposed to be me.

“It’s how everyone else walks.” I said. So she was saying I walked like a spas?

“No it isn’t.”

And so I would try, modeling her graceless gait, only to eventually step back into my own stride, which now memory only rewinds to awkward: lanky, with the light sway of the hips, like a girl, like I was excited to be going somewhere.

New fab thrift store finds

My mother and all the hip 70s women (read housewives) had something like this...

I am a curious orange...so the color I adore

Also a new faceless pic...(I'm beginning to get a virtual complex about not presenting my full body, lol. God knows why I feel the need to do so, but oh well. As an aside since I have agreed to not post face pics...I cartooned the image. Inspired by the Crossdresser's Girlfriend profile pic, which I find fetching. Anyhow I love the scarf...$1.00 at my local thrift. Also...the pose...inspired by the Femulator herself...Staci Lana...whom always takes consistent photos)

These are a few of my favorite things

Sonic Youth. Marilyn Monroe. Crossdressing.

Ah, pop a top. Kick heels, toss back the darkness!

A few words about gender dysphoria

Dysphoria (from Greek δύσφορος (dysphoros), from δυσ-, difficult, and φέρω, to bear)

The opposite of euphoria (Dysphoria, Wikipedia.com)

Sisters, misters, those who not know who you are when I began to realize that perhaps my femme feelings and desires were other, I searched high and low for descriptions of gender dypshoria, hoping that to name the thing would be to tame it.

Hoping in my heart that I wouldn’t have it. For to have it is to face looking at the same face in the mirror and wonder, hope and yearn to be other, softer, made of light. Made of goodness.

See I always thought it meant you felt trapped in a woman’s body.

Which I have not felt.

Or that one hated their genitals.

Which I definitely did not. Let me assure you.

But dysphoria manifests itself in anxiety. Once while at work I looked down at my fingers typing and at once they were bathed in light and became the hands of a woman. Nails, polish, hairless, and pretty.

Like porcelain.

Like the very sunlight itself.

The hallucination/vision lasted only seconds, but the impression remains with me to this day.

Once I stared at a girl’s painted toes as she played with her mule. The mall noise became river water over stones. And for a second I felt her skin, as if my skin had somehow become the vehicle for her sensation.

Oh, to allow your consciousness to spread beyond the male body is holiness.

Is sex.

Is a painted lady.

Is a sculpture.

Home from work early

And you know what that means...

sporting my new shoes (fab)

and my two fav skirts

along with my fav sweater.

Oh yes, guitar, and singing


The blue gypsy skirt cost me 2.50 at the thrift store and the shoes 25.99 during the big Amazon Women's Shoe Sale a bit back. It's hard to find size 15 in the Goodwill.

The pearls were a freebie from the thrift store. The cashier smiled at me when I oohed and ahhed over the baubles. She winked and tossed them in. Sometimes it's great being T

Musings...and go George Mason for electing a Drag Queen to Homecoming Queen

Sisters, I have been actively crossdressing since I was 11. Yet, it has only been in the last few months I've done so with no psychic plaque and ego crushing guilt and shame. The last time I felt this free with dressing was when I was a tween.

Thank God!

Exactly one year ago I contemplated a gruesome Faulknerian suicide just so I wouldn't think about all this T-stuff. I couldn't deal.

So I went to therapy.

I hate to loose.

And friends, mister sisters, gals, and ladies...it took me a while to open up to my counselor. I went in every session thinking "this is it. I'm telling her today." And eventually I came out.

And it snowballed.

I was dressing the whole time, in fits and starts, hoping I could manage it myself. But I couldn't. The husband-father-friend guilt sucked me down into a hole.

Somtimes it wasn't so bad, but most of the time...

I can't explain the phenomenon of crossdressing any better than anyone else, but doing so without the ugh! of deceit and fear is frakking liberating.

My spouse is supportive to a point, and that's tre cool with this gal.

My kids, very young, call me Mommy, or Dadme, or Momde... For Halloween my oldest proclaimed I should be a witch. They can tell, I think, on some level.

Interesting note: in a recent study, psychologists noted that people who used fake avatars, pics, and identities on-line experienced confidence boosts. This age of gaming where boys can play as girls, and vice-versa, could be the foundation of the future culture where the barriers of gender are stripped further down to the bones.

George Mason, a fine southern middle of the road Academic institution elected a gay crossdresser for homecomming queen.

The Crossdresser and TG as maverick, as artist

The Crossdresser/Transgendered as Maverick. As artist.
What does it mean to be T?: Day to day living.


Closet Fashionista? Like a Cylon switched on
to stare down the lady in my head that runs the controls.

What is this waking life? This fiddle faddle illusion?

Often I am shocked at myself. A grown man, at least clearly presenting as a man, masculine in most regards except
for flourishes, finishes of the wrist, of foot, or in vocal tones
and pitches, something like a note stuck between
registers.

The older I get the more feminine I feel. Often
The more masculine too.

**

Day to day working loving managing family being a husband/wife spouse
I try not to think about being T,
Or presenting as such and such and so and so.

What it means, if anything, is empowerment to bridge roles
and if you are transitioning, biology.

It’s special if you allow it. Because in the span of fifteen minutes can
Split firewood with masculine strength and tender caress my wife
With more sensitivity than I did since I came out of the closet
And just admitted to myself that my spirit
Had one leg in each world.

**

For us married T people our spouses are an ever presence of strength,
Inspiration and anxiety.

My wife is stylish, and though she wishes not to see me presenting as woman

I cannot blame her. After all would you want your spouse to present masculine?

Probably not. Maybe so, in any regards one must respect her wish.

So to say I am completely worry free in w/r/t my marriage,

I do worry that sometimes she sees me as less
That in being honest with myself

I have not grown, in her eyes,

But shrunk.

And sometimes I am surprise. For Valentine’s Day she gave me a hand-bag.

Flirty, simple, cotton, girly, and masculine. Perfect for jeans, my 3 inch sandals, and a cute top, or a floral skirt, which I favor.

**

As a teenager I rejected materialism, but embraced a femmy style, long hair, long nails, lots of hippie jewelry and colors. I often wore more jewelry than my gfs.

No one questioned me then.

But in the work grown up money and suit world of adulthood

For a grown man to wear pearls is weakness.

**

Unfortunately

For most of us being T on a daily basis is stealth

Is a black bag of tricks,
Is a warm spot in the belly
Is a secret written on the page in a room of illiterates
Is paint mixing on the palette
A song in the air, the wine warm, the weather holding.

**

It’s interesting. And I allowed myself to block these memories and experiences. Repress them.

Stress hormones help create complex and strong neural networks for memories to be stored; which is why repressed memories can come back strong and visceral, despite having happened decades ago.

**

I always felt like a phony around my male friends.
Especially when conversation switched onto an Alpha male line
And like a tramp, I began to fade to the back of the car
As more and more citizens jumped on board.

With the women I feel like an outsider.
Wanting them, and wanting to be them,
and knowing that if I was one of them,
I would not be welcomed in their arms.

**

Sometimes it is the sound of bells
The caress of a fine dress
That swirls the motes into the air

Freedom, o free, o pulsing heart

Response to anmti-trans rant/s

Like most T girls and T guys surfing can dredge up a plethora of tg/ts/cd rants, raves, porn, tips, advice, blogs, and fun. It’s all interesting, despite any hate.

I read somewhere an angry rant written by a young man who was offended that so many T people were so in his virtual face about it. I wish I had bookmarked the rant, for I feel compelled to respond to it, some weeks later.

Go figure. I’m late to the party no matter what I wear.

Wedo feel comfortable in virtual space. Get over it. Surf on super straight man, surf on.

Response:

stealth

Is a black bag of tricks,
Is a warm spot in the belly
Is a secret written on the page in a room of illiterates
Is paint mixing on the palette
A song in the air, the wine warm, the weather holding.



So of course in cyber space, where no one can hear you scream, we shout, kick darkness and sing!

Sorry, if our self-love/affirmations offend.

Perhaps you have some issues of your own you’d like to address.

There’s probably a 1-800 number you can call for that.

Happy Valentine's Day: Give it up for your sweetie!, Oh, and new shoes

Happy Valentine's Day!

I plan on kicking back and putting these tired dogs up. After a Friday of being Mr. Mom all day and planning and cooking for a V-Day party last night, I need a cup of hot tea and a copy of Lucky magazine to cruise me through today.

I felt as though I should remind crossdressers and tg wives out there to pay special attention to the biological wife of the marriage/relationship. Even if they have trouble accepting your femme side, the heart swells at the notion of romance today, and one should be willing to give to their sweethearts all the attention and flattery she deserves.

Romance is double edged. Whether it's roses or new sexy boots (my gift to her)stroke your realtionship. Take extra time to kiss longer. Hold hands. Caress.

My Story

I suppose I have to tell my story 'cause that's important. Trans people all have one and if you have found my virtual porch in a search for yourself, well, stay a while. I'll make some tea.

We can share a smoke and smell the manure as it lifts over the fields and into my yard like a ghost.

I live in the rural south. All my life I knew I was different, but not necessarily trans. Being tall and healthy I looked masculine but felt like a phony around my peers. Hell, I still feel phony around my peers.

Around the age of 11 it was mother's high heels, satin slips, and make-up. Lipstick, rings, lots of fantasy space reserved for wishing I was a girl.

I used to pray that I'd wake up a girl. Everything would be so much easier.

Now as you can imagine this led me to think I was gay.

And I had my share...and it was fun. But I could not, cannot relate to men emotionally, and therefore could never fall in love with a man.

But women. Ah...

Not only did I want them, I wanted to be like them.

In high school I could stare through a girl's jeans and tell, just know, what kind of panties they were sportin'. I knew because sometimes I'd wear them too!

Now it came and went. I like the way Petra says it on her blog, like a tide, like an ocean.

Because I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I have to go far and wide for fashion. Still its an adventure.

I'm in therapy and I am not seeking SRS. I'm happily married and one night a week get to be myself.

For some of you that's a lot, or a little.

So far I can deal.

Though, good God do I think about it a lot.

That's enough. More to come. Plus pics of my new pumps!

Warm days

The mercury hit 70 today and little miss thing shook it in the sunshine.

Plus! Accessories: two new scarves, an edgy black leather belt with cute studs (yes, cute) A great light pink empire blouse and a cool blue gypsy skirt.

Pumps arrive tomorrow

So does my new wig!

My little tranny head is going to explode! Wee!

New Dress. Thrift Store Bargin. 4.99

Love thrifting. Love it.

And honey, in my town there are three thrift stores and one cheap, cheap, cheap, broke-ass Big Lots-type department store (which is bargain hunters dream/hell...sometimes you can find a killer denim skirt, or a nice sweater dress, and then nothing...

for months.

Which means you troll the thrift stores, like some clothes junkie, your heart rate jacked, as you thumb through the stale fashions.

But let me digress...

Thrifting rule number one: shop for basics, and timeless looks/fabrics: i.e. wool skirts, shrifts, scarves, sweaters, cardigans, turtlenecks, and the like.

Crossdresser's guilty pleasure: floral print dresses, skirts, tops.

God,I swoon. All the girls I loved before wore a variation of such wispy femininity.

So this dress was a boon.

One size too big for me, but it is a comfortable fit. I am a tall large shouldered, but slender man, and sport an 18. This, alas is a 20w. Still it fits well it the arms, but makes my already shapeless, hipless (oh for an hourglass!) self seem even more so shapeless and hipless. Needs taking up. Or padded panties, and a upgrade in the bra and tissue department. A summer project.

For the price, nice.

For the memory/sensory associations, priceless.

Pics that make my girly heart flutter!

Southern Crossdressing