Eccentric Flower:200001/The Game of Boy and Girl

The odd thing is that Iain-Padraic knew. I didn't tell him, but he knew. Although he and I discussed the connection between transgendered people and gay people and risk of hate crimes last night, that was discussed primarily in the context of homosexuality, and he knew that it would develop into a mouth organ item, if anything.

He sent me URLs with relevance to that today. But he also sent me this Chicago Tribune article, and he had no way of knowing its peculiar relevance to the entry I've been waiting to write all day, the entry that began to form in my head shortly after I left for work this morning.

This morning I left the house dressed about as femme as I have ever been outside the house, except for special occasions and wild midnight experiments. I shall itemize exactly what I wore, so you know what that means:
1. My black tights were invisible to the world, concealed entirely by
2. Black, tight-fitting stretch pants, the bottoms of which were tucked into and below
3. My new boots I've been raving about to anyone who'll stand still - they're black leather, have heels a little less than two inches high, zippers all the way up the inside, they fit snugly, come to just below my knee, and I've been wearing them as much as my feet will bear for a week.
4. Above the waist, I wore a purplish blue, tight-fitting scoopnecked top with very short sleeves. Looks good in the neck and chest, bad at the shoulders and waist, but that's okay because I concealed the problem areas with
5. A loose-fitting raw silk dress shirt, very dark blue, sleeves rolled to above the elbow, bottom two buttons buttoned.
6. On my face, I had subtle eyeliner and even subtler shadow, only enough concealer/foundation to even out my complexion, just enough powder to set the concealer, and my new love, the red-brown Paramount lipstick, not heavy but definitely visible. Oh, yes, and
7. silver drop earrings with little blue and purple stones.
8. Outerwear: My more discreet women's coat, the big loose salt-and-pepper black one, not the tight one with the fur collar, a blue chenille scarf, blue chenille gloves, and my black purse.

This is how I went to work this morning. The stretch pants were a little extreme for the workplace, but I wanted to show off the boots and I'm so tired of jeans.

The boss commented, "That's quite an outfit," but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a criticism. Given his sexual orientation, it may have been an appreciation.

Later in the day, I left work a little early and went to go do a little shopping. I was looking for a hat, but mostly I wanted to wander around and browse. I rode a lot of subway trains today, wandered a lot of sidewalks, and walked through a lot of stores - sometimes in the women's departments. And along the way I collected reactions.

See, today was the first day since the ill-fated skirt experiment that I have been out in public dressed in a way that cannot be pigeonholed. While I was obviously a male, for once it was obvious that I was trying to dress in a female way. It was obvious that I was wearing makeup. Even though I think it was pretty subtle makeup, the lipstick alone - which I applied several times in view of other humans - would have given it away. (I have a compact mirror in my purse now - Judy's suggestion - which tickled Marc no end when I had to use it after dinner.)

Several people have commented to me, and I agree, that what makes people most nervous is not being able to file you into a pigeonhole. That's the acid test. You never really know if they're going to accept you until they're forced to really look at you and classify you. If they can let you slip by and not think about it too hard, they will.

I didn't intend for the day to become my own personal sociology experiment, but it was a good one.

I found myself keeping two mental lists: People who noticed me and thought, "What a freak," and people who noticed me and thought, "Hmm, cool." The vast majority of people, of course, either didn't notice me at all or showed no reaction I could detect.

Of the two lists, women were more inclined to think "cool" and men "freak," but there were plenty of exceptions. Older men and older women are more likely to freak, of course. Very young boys, as always, are a problem - they have zero tact. A group of ten- or eleven-year-old boys were one of the two times I was snickered at openly. Sadly, the other time was a pair of college-age hackers at the Kendall (MIT) subway station - how disappointing!

The important thing is that I got a lot more "hmm, cool," reactions than I expected, including some which passed over the line into "hmm, sexy." There were several women and one man who definitely were into lust territory - how flattering! - although it's hard to tell exactly. When someone looks at me and smiles every time they see me, I can usually tell if the smile means, "how utterly ridiculous, it's all I can do not to burst out laughing at the sight." That looks different. But "I'm smiling because I like seeing someone assert their individuality that way - good on you!" and "I'm smiling because you make me happy" and "I'm smiling because I'm mentally undressing you" look a lot alike.

Fortunately all those reactions are fine with me, so there's no point killing myself trying to tell them apart.

There was another reaction, one which didn't fit either of my two categories. Only women had this reaction, and it happened a number of times. It's best described as "what a freak, but I wish I could wear those clothes," or perhaps "what a freak, but I'd like to knock him out and steal his boots."

And there was one poor young man who clearly could not decide whether he wanted to spit on me in disgust or ask me out to dinner.

So I got some positive reactions, which reinforced my feelings of joy that started from the moment I left my house this morning - the joy at being able to look the way I wanted. The joy of having achieved a goal. I mean, this was it. Aside from skirt experiments, the makeup I was wearing and the clothing I was wearing were all I desired for everyday use. I was satisfied with my appearance, whether freakish or not, and that is a rare commodity.

And because I was satisfied with my appearance, my secondary personality came out of hiding, where she has been for practically all of the past six years. You see, I've known for a while that my personality changes when I'm happy with the way I look. My confidence triples and this femme personality comes out. She's not a diva exactly - she'd never be that pushy - but she refuses to be intimidated by the Staring Confronters, the people who give evil looks and try to function by intimidation. Many sales clerks, sadly, become Staring Confronters after a few years on the job. I can't decide whether it's self-defense or because they get worn down.

But my other self will not be put aside. She will not flinch when the salesgirls see her and their jaws obviously drop; they're just jealous of her sheer nerve, if not her looks. She will not slink into the Gucci section with her head bowed, even though she knows full well she won't buy any of it. No indeed! It is her right to be there, by god, and she will look all she pleases. She will ask the saleswoman questions. She will take her time and go where she likes. And maybe, just maybe - if the weather is right and the mood is good - she will admit that she is shopping for herself. Which happened at least once today. In the Fluevog store. Where I did not buy the Grand National boots I lust for but would not be able to wear anywhere but a fetish party. Even my reckless other self has not completely taken leave of her senses.

I need to find a way to let that other self out more often. But to do it, I must not have even a smidgen of self-recrimination. I must be thoroughly happy with my appearance. Then she appears, like magic.

You may wonder why any of this has special relevance to the Chicago Tribune article I linked at the top. Well, it's like this. The article is about a man who thought he was just a cross-dresser for some forty years, then one day realized that really, he wanted to be a woman. So he became a woman. And lived more or less happily ever after.

Whereas I thought, as I was walking through the snow toward my morning coffee, "I think I need to reclaim 'transvestite' for myself."

I've always been leery of the word "transvestite." To me it connotes a mere fetishist, someone who masturbates while wearing his wife's stockings every now and then. It didn't seem to apply to me - since I no longer get feelings of overt sexuality from wearing women's clothing, and haven't since about age nineteen. That is, while wearing women's clothes often makes me feel sexy, desirable to others, it doesn't arouse me.
So I didn't think I should call myself a transvestite.

But now I think I am being unfair to the word. It's all in the roots - a transsexual wants to change sex, but a transvestite just wants a change of clothes. And - I am coming to believe - it is all about the clothes. And the makeup, and earrings. The trappings. The appearance. I just want to dress the way I want to dress.

I cannot - 'scuse my bluntness, but if you got this far surely you're ready for anything - recall more than two or three times in twenty years when I actually wanted to have the other set of genitals. I have never had a problem dealing with the fact that my body has a penis. Nor have I really envied the process of being female. Oh, sure, if I had breasts and hips my chosen clothes would fit better. Or maybe not. Nonelvis keeps insisting that I'm exactly the sort of figure that Express is designing for - tall, skinny, and linear. Wearing a filled bra in public has never been especially high on my wish list, anyway.

I am often female in my dreams, and I am almost always female in my fantasies, but I think that the latter is a learned habit and the former may be leftovers from that - since, not to put to fine a point on it, I am generally fantasizing most heavily right before I go to sleep. My fantasies hinge more on submissive behavior and my gender in them is almost irrelevant, except for fantasizing about being (ahem) vaginally penetrated ... which I admit I'm curious about, but I bet that most men have wondered about it a few times also.

In short, I have reached a conclusion exactly opposite from the gentleman in the article (although it took me two decades fewer to get there): I am much more of a transvestite than a transsexual.

Maybe I should invent a new term, for a transvestite who wouldn't mind being female, but because it would simplify his life in a lot of important ways ... not because he hates being a male.

Am I making any sense at all?