Feeding the Beast

My pet phrase for managing my dysphoria is "feeding the beast". I've come to believe that the beast will devour you if you lock it away and ignore it. When it breaks free, and it will break free, the beast will destroy everything you value. Calie's blog goes into this a lot, and a recent entry was very timely for me.

Saturday, I was chatting with my good friend Sylvia about my current crisis, and I said something about feeding the beast. Sylvia asked if the beast grows when you feed it. I've always thought of the beast as full-grown, but what if it's not? Could my giving in to the dysphoric urges make it stronger, more threatening? This had never occurred to me previously. I've seen it as a pressure cooker, where steam must escape from time to time, or the whole damn thing will blow.

But maybe Calie has the right idea. Perhaps completely denying that part of yourself, starving the beast, keeping it weak, is the way to go. At least for those of us who endeavor to resist transition. But I know I would never have the fortitude to deny the Leslie in me. She's stronger than she looks! I hope it works for Calie, but I won't be copying her plan.

I came very close to talking dysphoria with the missus tonight. But romance was in the air, and I don't want to kill that (selfish bastard!). We went out for "Italian" at Olive Garden. She wore her new sandals and a new skirt, and looked glorious. She's become much more feminine in the last six months, having dropped fifty pounds. She's wearing eights and nines now, and I think she's loving herself a lot more now. Maybe that's why she seems a little more open about me. When I first revealed my crossdressing to her twenty years ago, one of her fears was that she wasn't feminine enough, that I was compensating for a flaw in her. Ridiculous, of course. She's never been a fufu girly girl, but if she had been it might have made my dysphoria even worse. She is certainly not to blame for my gender issues in any way.

I offered to do some pedicure work on her tonight, to complement her shoes. She kinda slyly looked at my subtly painted toenails, and said she really doesn't like polish. She wasn't hinting or anything. She meant for herself. Well, I offered. Coulda been fun for both of us. Instead, I worked on my own toes, hoping this would feed the beast for awhile. Make the beast sleepy and lethargic, but, I hope, not larger.

Pigs on the Wing

"Any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing"
"Pigs On the Wing, Part II" Pink Floyd

Usually, the dysphoria just appears, and I don't really know what triggered it. This time it was unmistakeable.

Thursday, the wife came home with a couple new pairs of shoes. She bought herself some pretty casual sandals, attractive enough. But she also bought some gorgeous black patent dress sandals, slingback with an ankle strap, 2.75 inch heel. My heart skipped a beat. These are not your father's shoes (not that we know of anyway). I lusted for these shoes. I wanted them.

I'm really trying to be more respectful of her things after years of wearing any and every thing she owned. But what to do about these shoes? They completely sent me off to Gender Dysphoria Land. Maybe I could go to Target and get them in my size. Maybe order them online, but I would need to see how small her size 10s were on my foot. For over 24 hours, I thought again and again how I would manage to try them on.

Eventually, I got my chance and slipped them on. Way small, I'd need a 12 and they only make them to size 11. *sigh* And they look so nice on my big honking feet too.

So, I will not be getting these luscious shoes, and I'm left with the desperate need to acquire something similar. I have to feed the awakened beast.

I think the time has come to have a discussion with the missus. I feel that I'm painted into a corner here. She wants me to take care of these things myself. She considers helping me to be the same as enabling me and condoning the "behavior." Yet, I don't think she wants me shopping for these things in nearby stores, certainly not trying on heels for size. And I'm fed up with buying shoes online. Too many bad purchases. I'm not made of money.

I need to bring up my plan to shop Goodwill with my sister-in-law. Or, perhaps the wife would now be willing to provide assistance in shopping. Or maybe Tina and I need to hit our favorite Payless outlet. But I've got to address these feelings. She's seemed more open minded of late, more casual in her mentions of my sometime girlness.

I just know I'm gonna bust if I have to keep this under wraps for long. I have got to work out some sort of agreement on what is kosher with her, while still meeting my needs. When pigs fly? I hope not.

A Crack in the Mortar

I say it a lot: Hope springs eternal. I also get told frequently that getting my hopes up is a mistake. I don't for a minute think that my wife is coming around on the whole gender issue. But several recent incidents make me think that she's not feeling so threatened at the moment.

The most notable was during a conversation about my middle child. Details aren't really necessary. Suffice it to say that we were talking about her self-consciousness at the pool and in shorts, and how it might be related to leg hair. And the missus asked me about Nair! I had to confess that I had never used it, but that its reputation is that it's rather harsh. But the crux was that she saw me as a source of info on hair removal, and was unafraid to ask me about it in a casual way. Wow!

She also was making suggestions about bleaching my arm hair in ways other than the cream I use. I guess she doesn't mind that aspect of my androgyny. Or she wants a solution that she perceives as less expensive or time consuming. Either way, she is exhibiting a comfort level that is unprecedented.

It's pretty obvious to me that letting my leg hair grow back in has been a great relief to her. And maybe she's come to a realization that this is a sacrifice that I made entirely for her benefit. She had very kind words for me on Father's Day about what a good husband I am. I'm not convinced of the truth of that sentiment, but I'll allow her to hold onto the illusion. And I'll immodestly add that our intimacy has been very good to both of us lately, and this might have her thinking kinder thoughts about me.

So, I'm allowing myself a little hope that my gender issues are not the deal breaker that they were before. We're getting along well enough that I'm only getting cursory attention in her counseling sessions, or so I'm told. Seeing as how I was the reason she started the counseling, that's got to be a good sign.

Savaged

I had the oddest experience tonight. Many of you may be familiar with Dan Savage of the Savage Love column and podcast. I was listening to an old podcast tonight. Dan is often funny, frequently quite vulgar, and pretty astute (and blunt) about the physical and emotional issues of relationships. The podcast is a good source for laughs, and for keeping my own problems in perspective.

In this podcast, he was talking with a young gay man about coming out to his parents. Dan reminisced about coming out to his mother many years ago. He talked about pacing outside her room, completely speechless, trying to force himself to enter the room and just say it.

And I was blindsided. I didn't see it coming. The tears just hit me in a wave. I don't cry easily, something I've lamented frequently here. I just related so strongly to the inabilty to speak your heart and mind with a loved one. The fear of rejection overriding the need to share your innermost thoughts. I've been there way too often. How can someone, with so many good words at her disposal, freeze up completely? I call it verbal constipation, and that should tell you how I feel about it. A big bowl of brain flakes will loosen things right up.

When I shared my crossdressing secret twenty-some years ago, just forming the words was agonizing. I shared with my counselor first, and sat pretty much speechless for the session, having only said that I had a secret. At the very end, as time pressures were mounting, I just blurted it out. Too late to do much except watch her jaw drop. When I shared with my wife a few weeks later, it took even longer, because I wasn't on the clock.

So Dan Savage brought up some long-buried feelings that I suppose I've never really processed. I'll have to call him up and thank him one day.

Coincidentally, I was talking with my current therapist earlier in the day. I told her that I've been pretty comfortable with my maleness of late. Predictably, eight hours later, I'm crying and having my first serious bout of dysphoria in a couple months. Naturally, I'm three weeks away from getting my head shrunk again. Exquisite timing, as always. It's a pity that's not a marketable talent.

Anger Mismanagement

Anger has become more of a stranger to me over the last year. It was a constant companion over most of my life. It was unpleasant and unwelcome, but I have to say it was frequently the only thing that made me feel alive, made me feel that I wasn't sleepwalking. My emotional range has broadened a great deal of late. Like Keanu Reeves, I run the gamut from A to B.

As I have come to embrace my inner Leslie, the anger has gradually subsided. I no longer feel the need to rail at the world, decrying my circumstances. I have even had a couple of weeks of unadorned bliss back in January. I had never experienced joy for more than a few hours at a time before. This was unprecedented. I began to think it was something I could learn to maintain, but no. Now I can hardly recall how it felt.

So, anyway, I was a bit unnerved this week to be revisiting my anger. The catalyst was Calie's blog about wives of TG friends. The subject itself was provocative, but not provoking. But the comments soon got ugly, and mine as ugly as any of them. I don't regret anything I said there, but I hate that I was overcome with a need to say it. It got the better of me. Calie is one of my best friends and runs a very respectable establishment. I went out of bounds, I think.

I know that anger is a completely legitimate emotion for male and female alike. Heaven knows I have dealt with the anger of females a lot the last two years (one person in particular). You'd think that I could be angry and feel like Leslie simultaneously. I found that I could not. My many years as an angry male have made me feel that my anger is a male emotion. They are tightly bound to one another. So, I got pissed and felt that the male was taking over. Yuck! I'm male 95% of the time, at least outwardly. I don't want that maleness impinging on my girl world, however imaginary and superficial it may be. So anger needs to stay off limits in here, at least till I can learn a way to incorporate it in the ongoing Leslie development project.

Where the Hell is My Muse?

Ya know, I feel like I've lost my sense of humor, at least in my formal writing. I've become as dour as Gordon Brown, even when I'm not writing about heavy things. This...must...end! I was re-reading some of my first posts, and I still laugh out loud at some of them, in a good way. Where did this delightful girl wander off to, and who is this dull fishwife who replaced her? I'll try to let my hair down some, without taking it off.

Had a support meeting Saturday night. A sedate blast, as usual. I hung with Sylvia, and exchanged books with her. I lent her The Lazy Crossdresser by Charles Anders, a light book of tips for presenting as a better and more confident female. Sylvia handed me a big, beautiful book of makeup tips, and Alice in Genderland by Richard Novic.

Our group discussed the need to begin asking for dues, in order to organize events and meet the growing needs of our very diverse group. We will have to be granted non-profit status, a situation not aided by our current lack of an attorney in the group. We'll just have to muddle through.

I thought that we could just raise money with a kissing booth at the fair. But I think that the marketing of a TG kissing booth might prove difficult. Apparently, the general public wants more assurance than a pretty face when locking lips with a transgendered person. Who knew? I'll just keep coming up with great ideas so the sceptics will have something to shoot down.

Oh, the "contract" came up this week. (Note: see October 2008) It seems that my wife's counselor is very concerned that a divorce is imminent, and inquired about the contract. The missus asked me to remind her how long a term we had signed up for.
Me (brightly): It expired on April 10th.
She: Oooh........Do I need to be concerned about anything?

Well, y'all know that if I were doing anything fun like meeting up with strangers for sex, I'd be unable to resist writing about it here. Gawd knows, I could use some fresh material! While there are a host of stresses on our daily lives, I feel like the marriage is pretty solid right now. But, who knows what the wife might be saying to her counselor. I am certain that I will not be re-upping our little contract in its current form. There will be some real give and take this time. One thing I would insist on is shopping priviledges with my sister-in-law. I need to be free to acquire new pieces for my wardrobe with a willing and talented aide.

Well, that proved to be hilarious, hmmm?

Languid and Bittersweet

"I'm staying here, inside my greatest mistakes" --Barenaked Ladies--

I've seen a lot of blog material of late regarding childhood experiences, and it's had me thinking extensively about my own (childhood, not blog). I skirted the issue (sorry!) in my bio pieces in March '08, but I want to delve further. Consider yourself warned.

I don't have a lot of memories before age six. I vividly recall watching my mother dress when I was probably four. And I remember being fascinated as my grandmother did her makeup. I loved to sit at her vanity. All those wonderful smells, bottles and tubes, powders and perfumes. But I was not a little girl in my head. I don't think it was something I ever thought about.

Memories really kick in when I started school. In first grade, I have my first memory of wishing I was a girl. I was a shy child, and I liked girls a lot, but I was scared to approach them. They seemed so different. I wish now that I had had a sister; I would've understood that girls are people too. I came to believe that women have all the power in the boy/girl mix, and for me they truly did. I always had one or two girls in every grade that I would watch obsessively, wanting to be close to them, often to the point of wanting to be them. I remember them all: Tami, Leslie(!), Melissa, Kelli, Hallie, Jill, Amanda...

I would go to sleep at night praying to wake up a girl, with a closet full of dresses and knee socks. There is Appalachian folklore that if you kiss your elbow, you will change genders. Try it, you can't do it. But, oh, I tried. I always made a mental note, too, that if I ever broke my upper arm, I needed to make a point of kissing that elbow while I have the chance. At night, I would untuck my blanket and wrap it around myself as tightly as I could. As I lay there swaddled, I imagined myself in tight gowns or foundation garments. What a weird and lonely kid.

By third grade, I'd started to be more comfortable interacting with some of the girls. I played a lot with Kelli and her friends at recess, boyish things like tag. And I grew to love the square dancing unit in music class. I was one of the few boys that actively chose a partner for dancing. Most just lined up and accepted their fate. 3rd, 4th, 5th grades, I was very outgoing when dance time came around, quite a spectacle, and unlike the person seen the rest of the time.

By 5th grade, I was really at ease with the girls. Dark clouds started to roll in, though, in 6th and 7th grade. Certain girls decided that I didn't meet their standards, and they acted accordingly. I was ridiculed and rejected. When square dancing, these girls would refuse to have contact with me, to hold my hand as they were supposed to. Rather, they would blatantly hold their hands out in the empty air, pulling them away if I attempted to touch them. It sounds like a small thing as I write it, but it's a vivid and painful memory for me, one that haunted my relations with women for a long time.

Puberty, of course, was cruel. I know that is universal, but... My hair became amazingly oily, my skin broke out, and I acquired my first, and very unflattering, set of glasses. My self-esteem was crushed over the next couple years. And, at the same time, I became a latchkey kid, with the run of the house for nearly two hours before Dad got home. And so began the crossdressing. If I couldn't figure out how to be with the girls, I guess I could be one myself.

From age 12 to 18, I was crossdressing in my mother's things. Never got truly busted, but if Mom didn't suspect something, she was in denial. Once, I left a pair of heels outside her closet, and my brother and I got grilled until I said that I'd been looking for hidden Christmas gifts. She accepted that, though I didn't look her in the eye when I said it. It was an obvious lie, but maybe she just needed to hear something that would allow her to back off. Another time, I had a pair of pantyhose that I kept hidden in my room. I don't remember where I got them, maybe found on the walk home from school (ewwww!), or maybe stolen from a friend's mother (slightly smaller ewww). But my pantyhose disappeared from their hiding place one Saturday during housecleaning. Mom never mentioned it, but I'm sure she disposed of them. If I ever come out to her, I want to ask her about those years.

I was positively timid in middle and high school. I felt like damaged goods. I was terrified of the fairer sex, always placing them on a pedestal, objectifying them. I don't know whether this fear fed the crossdressing, or the dressing fed the fear, but I was a mess. I considered myself an inferior being, not worthy of the attention of females. Looking back, there were one or two girls who I now realize were flirting with me. But in my warped view, they had to be setting me up for some cruel prank. No girl would have any interest in me.

The crushes were long-lasting, and increasingly creepy on my part. I fell hard for a girl in high school, and managed to stalk her around the campus, even drove by her home a few times. I was becoming Mark David Chapman, I think. Wanting to be with her, and wanting to be her. In two years, I never spoke to her. But I watched constantly.

Thank heavens, my future wife showed up in my senior year. She was persistent enough that I finally realized that her interest was genuine. I was a school disc jockey as a senior, and one day a week, I'd be lugging a stack of LPs around all day. My eclectic, and somewhat esoteric, musical tastes were the initial fascination for her, and it grew from there. She grew to like my mind, something no other girl ever got close enough to really see. Despite my awkward gawkiness, she saw something worthwhile. I hate to think where I'd've wound up without meeting her.

Okay. You're getting sleepy, I'm getting sleepy. Let's call it a night.