transretrogurl

Yeah, I’ve been remiss, sic, in writing stuff for the blog lately. It’s been a perfect storm of crap and stress lately, nothing serious in a ‘oh my God, my feet are on fire’ kind of way, but just enough to take the edge off of any form of fun. I had my drab identity stolen online, which involved some scrotes applying for Car Insurance using my name and address details, and other, stolen, credit cards. Thing with that is that you, as the poor addressee, get the threatening letters, of which I’ve had around thirty of the damn things, demanding payment when the stolen cards are refused.

I hate talking to insurance firms anyway, so you can imagine what a bundle of fun it is to sit on hold with terrible music pouring into your ears, just to have to explain, in slow and even tones, that no, the date of birth they are asking for isn’t mine and will be wrong, no I don’t own a 1997 bleedin VW, etc etc.

Chuck in a gravestone, I mean *mile* stone birthday (mid March, feckin 50) and constant IBS since then, some uncertainty about my career (nothing to do with me, the company I work for was snapped up by a bigger company so it’s all a bit up in the air), exhaustion on top of insane exercise (I decided to deal with the IBS, if it is IBS, by exercising it to death – did a 25 mile bike ride last weekend up and down some serious hills, did a twelve mile mountain walk the day after, been going to the gym and seeing how far I can push myself before it hurts, which is currently around 12km of sprint cycling and 3km of run on the treadmill, all completely sane when you are stressed beyond belief), poor sleep patterns and et voila, not a huge amount of time to think about the cuter side of my personality.

Pictured – the cuter side of my personality. In a very cute frock.

As part of some insane exercise today, which involved the usual amount of mad cycling at the gym, mad running on the treadmill followed by 30 lengths of the pool, I found myself draped over a hot stone seat in the relaxation suite, my mind wandering, and I started to think about how on earth this all happened.

But first a little caveat and warning – this can be a little upsetting. Spoiler, I turned out mostly alright and Sarah is me. I’ll stick piccies in as well to lighten the mood 🙂

Not the stress, of course, or the getting old, but more why I am more comfortable and oddly more alive when I’m *completely* immersed in the feminine role. Plus I’d been to my first ever counselling meeting yesterday, as part of the stress reduction regime as imposed by my company who recognised that I was, err, going a little mad. And of course, because it’s completely confidential, I blurted out the gender ambiguity (at the end, after I had dribbled vitriol about my screwed up upbringing and life in general for forty minutes). Telling a complete stranger, albeit a pleasant one trained to listen, about cross dressing is a *hugely* stressful thing to do, but bang, there it was.

Pictured – pretty much the expression I had for the whole session. Except in a hoodie and jeans as opposed to a gorgeous Mumsy frock. And way more facial hair.

And as I sat on the gorgeously comfy stone heated bench, I relaxed and tried to remember just how I got to where I was. Now, I’ve told bits of this story before, much earlier in the lifespan of this blog, but back then I was writing with a touch of panic in my mind; should I be sharing this, will people be offended, will no-one recognise their own experiences in this kind of panicked. Now I’m a lot more in tune with Sarah, even though I still refer to her in the third person as to me in the femm person, but one catastrophic character flaw at a time, dear reader.

And in the light of having to face bits of me that I’m not overly comfortable with, plus looking back forty or so years (hellfire, that even hurts to type nevertheless think about) I can see the origins of how Sarah came to be much more clearly than I have before. And that’s a good thing.

Because, and I know  shouldn’t start a sentence with because, because it’s not good grammur as they say, my mind is full of negatives, and very few positives. I feel guilt, even now, about my tendencies to want to dress as the woman inside, because it’s BAD. When in reality, that definition of bad is based on my, and I hate to say it, ingrained prejudices. In my defence, I didn’t choose to have them, but how and when I grew up just baked them in place. And I know you can change them, but it’s hard, especially after forty years or so (damn, doesn’t get any easier to type either!). Anything I can do to alleviate that negativity, including going back to the very beginning of the whole he/she/him/her/they rollercoaster ride I’ve been on for forty (DAMMIT!) or so years is a good way to redress (always about dressing isn’t it) the balance.

Pictured – in 1970s standards this could be described as ‘being somewhat of a poof’. I prefer trans-retro girl myself.

So how on earth did this mad road-trip begin?

In a sentence – not a goddam clue….

All I remember is vague sessions of playing dress-up when visiting my grandmother, which must have been around 1975 (again, forty years, fiftieth birthday, etc etc). I would have been six or so, and I remember getting into her spare cupboard where there were middle-aged dresses of the era, all polyester and rayon, garish prints and massive collars, and trying everything on. And even then, a good five or so years before puberty made it’s confused entrance (we’ll get to that little drama of breast growing in a second, dear readers) I felt *that* feeling.

Unless you have a fetish you won’t know what it is like, but it’s like your entire body is dropped into a hairdryer. It’s a warm and wonderful feeling that goes from your head to the tips of your extremities, and feels unbelievably *right*. I have never felt that feeling in my life, other than when I have put on a dress and, lately, when I have been completely enfemme. There’s nothing like it, it’s like being born again.

Anyway, aside from the hyperbole at the sensual reaction to a frock, I found myself paying a lot more attention to girls or, more correctly, attention to the clothes they wore.

Pictured – and the Mums of course, who were all dressing like this and trying to out-Margo Leadbetter each other.

Of course, the one event that pretty much sealed the deal and, if I’m honest, kind of locked my sexuality into place, was the time I talked about a long while ago in the blog, but I’m going to repeat it post-50 to see if there’s any other part I can remember.

My parents, who were, to be honest, not the best, always hoisted us kids off on our grandmother for Saturday nights. I would sleep on the downstairs sofa in the living room, which meant I got the whole downstairs, assuming I could be quiet, to myself.

I must have been around eleven, and definitely, given my parents hands-off approach to telling me anything that would be useful in my later life, a long way from having ‘that talk’. In fact, back then in 1980, it wasn’t taught in junior schools and you almost absorbed information about the birds and the bees from your schoolfriends, most of which were sadly uninformed. By then I knew I was different, not just in the sexuality side (I had a girlfriend at age ten who, not coincidentally at all, was called Sarah, and it’s from her I took the name) but also in the intellectual side.

I’m a little like Wile E Coyote in that respect, in that I can actually sign ‘Genius’ after my name without a hint of irony or falseness. I measured 176 on the IQ scale when I was tested at age twelve (interestingly because I was disruptive in class so I was either stupid or smart, and drew the smart card).

But in terms of a confused eleven year old on the edge of puberty (again, I’ll mention that little hormonal fiasco in a second) the last thing you want is self-awareness. I convinced myself I was both a girl and a boy because a: I had dangly bits but b: I was drawn to feminine clothing. On the male side, I had (and still have) ZERO interest in male styles, having picked a look in 1984 and now just buy the same stuff. So back then I was convinced I was both.

Anyway, I had surreptitiously gathered together a bag of ‘stuff’ that I would secretly take to my grandmother’s house on a Saturday. This stuff contained a red lipstick I had bought from a shop (and back then that was a huge thing to do), a bra I had found in the loft on our house (where there were boxes and boxes of treasure for the budding transvestite), a 1960s wig from the same place (my mother had a phase during the sixties and this, a scruffy but passable bob hairstyle, was another discarded treasure), a pair of clip-on earrings that I had no idea where I had got them from, and a pair of ill-fitting white sandals with heels. When everyone had gone to sleep (my grandmother was widowed and at the time I had two foster sisters) I would creep upstairs to the empty room where the cupboard was, pick one of the gorgeous, to me at least) rayon 1970s dresses, sneak downstairs, strip naked, put on the bra, pad it with my socks, put on the wig and brush it with my fingers, apply a thick layer of lipstick, which always gave me another one of those fetish thrills because it’s something you can’t wipe off instantly, slip my feet into the shoes, clip on the earrings and then, as part of the solemn process, slip into the dress, fumble the zip right up to the back of my neck, and there I was.

Pictured – still partial to a little 1970s dress wear

I was a slight child, and had yet to get the Valkyrie-like growth spurt that bounced me up over six feet – a slight aside, having just turned 50 (DAMMIT!) I measured my height out of interest and somehow I’ve lost an inch in the last couple of years. Not entirely bothered, it makes me only 6ft6in in 5in heels now, so the more loss the better in the long run. But back then I barely reached 5ft 4in, and with the sandals I could still pass for a girl playing dress-up in her grandmother’s clothes.

I’d then sneak around the house, play housewife quietly in the kitchen (at 11 this was pretty much foreshadowing my later lifetime goals) and, if I was feeling brave enough, even slowly, focusing on the noise, unlock the back door or the front door, if I was feeling particularly brave, and go for a walk.

Well, I say walk, but in actuality I’d tiptoe along the lane, in the case of going out the back, or the cul-de-sac in the case of going out the front, until the glorious and delicious fear would overwhelm me and I’d run back as fast as I could in heels, my dress flowing around my legs, to the safety of the house, remembering to enter quietly and click the door closed behind me.

And so it went on for a while until the night in question arrived. Another night at Grandma’s, but this time I’d gone one step further.My mother had some dresses that I was completely obsessed with, a blue and a green 1980s (literally 1980) shirt-dress, very similar to the fashion being worn by Lady Diana (when she was a Sloane-Ranger as opposed to a sad Princess). And for some reason these dresses were something else to me, something about the style, the cut, just made me *need* to try them.

Pictured – this dress is nigh on identical to the one in question and now hangs in my closet for when I want to play at being ‘mom’.

So, taking bravery way further than I had ever before, I stole one, the green one, from my mother’s closet, hoping she wouldn’t miss it for the night I was away, folded it gently into my ‘bag of wonders’ before heading around to my Grandmother’s house, which was literally a quarter of a mile away at most.

I waited for everyone to call it a night and literally my palms were wet. Even now, 39 years later (which is better than 40 and I wish I’d used it instead of 40 for the entire post) I can remember the tightness in my stomach as I waited for everyone to get tired. In fact, if I’d been thinking clearly and understood what the feeling was, the night may have not have gone so spectacularly wrong but as I had yet to a: have sexual intercourse with anyone, and for the record as I’m not proud it was 1991 before I got to have full sex with anyone, by which time my internal settings were set to somewhere between fey and Judy Garland and b: yet to have an, err, ejaculation moment *or* anyone explain to me the mechanics of the damn equipment, the tell-tale signs of sexual maturity were lost on me.

When the lights had gone out, the doors had been closed, and I gave it a good thirty minutes, breathing heavily and sweating profusely for no reason I could determine, I did the whole sequence of fetish as per normal, but it felt different. When it came to putting on the dress I felt something new, a darker yet more rich warmth which, as I pulled the dress over my head and the sock filled training bra, buttoning it up all the way to the collar, then tying the thin belt around it, got more intense.

I sat in the darkness, enfemme, my heart beating and not understanding the feelings I had. I actually thought I was ill, that I had something stomach related, but after a while it settled somewhat, and I decided to sneak out the front door.

Pictured – it gets a little intense now, so just remember I turned out as a completely balanced, normal, fifty year old man. Mmm, err, hmm.

Now, if you are a keen reader, you’d have noticed in my description of the articles of clothing that I didn’t mention panties. This was because I didn’t have any. I couldn’t find any in the boxes of treasure, and it seemed wrong to leave my 1970 style male underwear on under a dress, so I was going female commando, so to say. In the past, when the buzz had been the lighter, not dark one, this wasn’t an issue. I’d had a couple of erections but nothing more, and they had been when waking up as opposed to when dressed.

But there was something about that green dress, the way it hung down slightly flared over my legs, that was different to the rayon and polyester 1970s frocks. And, after I’d sneaked out of the door, remembering to leave it on the latch (hell, it was 1980 and a suburb of Bristol, I’m not exaggerating in saying that you could leave your door unlocked. Mostly) I started to notice an odd reaction that felt wrong. The dress itself was rubbing me in a way that felt, well, different, and as I walked daintily along the moon lit concrete the dress ahifted back and forth over my not-contained 11 year old apparatus.

And I became, well, aroused. Remember, I’d never had this feeling before and now, wearing my mother’s frock, wig, lipstick, bra and a pair of damn heels, I was getting effectively my first hard-on.

And it got worse.

As I said, I’d walk to a certain distance away before I lost confidence, then let myself panic run back, which was always a thrill in and of itself in heels. Well, this night I decided to, gasp, go right to the end of the street. The street was a cul-de-sac that opened out at a t’junction onto another road, not a main road but the next thing down, a road that linked to a main road and also, at the far end, linked to another, meaning it was slightly busier than the cul-de-sac. The night was quiet, it was about 1:00am and this was in the time of strict 11:00pm pub closing times, so I was sure I could risk walking to the end of the road without much of a worry.

My only concern was the odd feeling under my dress, or rather my mother’s dress, which was becoming more and more, well, urgent in the way it felt. Dumbly, because of my smarts, I assumed I wanted to go to the toilet.

So, I got to the junction, my heart going nuts, and then it all started to go very wrong. Firstly, a car turned into the road at the main road end, about one hundred metres away from where I was standing, and I instantly froze, an eleven year old boy wearing a dress and heels, albeit with cute hair and lipstick. I only froze for a moment before the fight-or-flight reflex cut in (flight) and I turned and scampered back up the road towards my grandmother’s house.

And then it happened.

There are good times to have your first ever orgasm, and there are bad times. This one? Pretty much a bad one.

I got the rush feeling, a sudden light headedness, and a feeling of warm wetness at my crotch. Under my mother’s dress. With no underwear on.

Pictured – ‘Quickly, distract the appalled reader with some belly-dancing’

I had no idea what was going on, other than I was running as fast as I could in heels, lifting the stained and wet front of the dress off of my crotch, thinking I’d exploded or something which, in an odd turn of phrase, I had.

The car hadn’t, mercifully, turned into the cul-de-sac. And I made it back to the house in a state of panic. I was actually crying, a lot but silently, as I slipped through the door trying desperately to hold the dress away from pumping little unhelpful body part.

Humour aside, if you imagine the damage that does to a gender confused kid. I had no idea what an orgasm was, but now it was equated to wearing a dress and intense panic. Cut a long story slightly less long, I had a terrible couple of days trying to hand clean the residue off the inside of my mother’s dress. The smell was unlike anything I’d smelt and I instantly thought I’d damaged something. I was so terrified of what had happened that I didn’t dress for two years, until after someone had told me what it actually was.

Throw into the mix the fact that shortly after, around my twelfth birthday, my body decided to lay another trick on me and i woke up with budding breasts and et voila, thanks puberty. That’s not confusing at all. My parents, when they found their little annoying precocious genius child was growing breasts as part of his, err, or her puberty sent me straight to the doctor, where my mother tearfully and in her calculated ‘why me’ manner asked what kind of child I actually was. Turns out a lot of boys develop partial breast tissue when they hit puberty. Mine was slightly more than that – if I’d had space to be amused I’d have laughed at the realisation that I was facing having to have my own training bra as opposed to the one I had half-hitched from the boxes of treasure. But an intense course of early 80s sexual fascism (now they would ask the child what they wanted to be after carefully explaining the issues with hormonal triggers and trans-gender options) it was decided a hard course of male hormones would sort the little boy out, leading to a massive growth spurt, uncontrollable hair growth and, sadly, the recession of a perfectly good pair of breasts.

Little confession for you, which is sad but also highlights the effect of this story – I have *never* been able to orgasm since without thinking of being enfemme. Thanks, brain, that really helped with my first marriage. And masculine life in general.

So courtesy of a worst-case scenario introduction to the physicality of male puberty combined with a not that fun period of being trans-sex, which also led to a lot of bullying around me being a ‘poof’ and a ‘girl’, that pretty much is my biologically enhanced origin story. A lot of it I’d pretty much forgotten, but courtesy of the start of counselling and a nice hot stone chair it came flooding back. Although flooding back is a poor choice of words given the subject matter – some part of me will always be that terrified eleven year old running along the street holding her dress up……

Normal service can now be resumed, expect a frock-tale in the next couple of days.

Stay beautiful and be true to the person inside you – at the end of the day they are as much you as the crusty shield you show the world.

Pictured – plus it turned out OK. I can still smile wearing a similar dress without worrying about consequences 🙂