There is not “one self”

I believe this is something every crossdresser will deal with very early on, but sometimes it’s hardly obvious, and the implications are tremendous — and very liberating.

Consider a “beginning” crossdresser, who just realizes that he feels great wearing women clothing, and now has to deal with the whole package: it’s morally wrong? Am I insane? Am I homossexual? Am I a freak? Do I need medical treatment? Or do I have a “double personality”? Worse than that: is my personality truly female and I just have been pretending, all these years, that I’m male? So why is my personality not aligned with my body? What’s wrong with me? Who did this to me, and why? Can it be undone?

We all asked these questions to ourselves, over and over again, and one characteristic of all transgendered people is how introspective we are. For some, the answer is obvious: I was never born male in my mind, I just happen to be the unfortunate victim of a terrible birth defect, but it can be corrected. For most the answer is not so obvious. The spectrum between one extreme — a clearly cisgendered person — and the other — a clearly transsexual individual — is huge. Between fetishisms, termporary stress relief, dealing with frustrations and depression, there are so many reasons for feeling like we do that only an expert can try to untangle the whole mess.

What helped to me is to slowly accept a very simple idea, which, however, is very hard to accept as true. There is no intrinsic “self”, blue-printed on our neural network, which is fixed and immutable. This should be obvious for everybody: after all, we don’t think and don’t feel like the person who went through the teens in this body we carry with us. And if we go further back in time, it’s clear that we are not 6-year-olds any more: we think differently, we have accumulated experiences which made us “change our mind” (notice these words carefully), we have adapted to a role in society, we model our thoughts based on education, peer pressure, and social conventions. So clearly we’re not “the same person” as we were 10, 20, 50 years ago. For some, of course, that’s a relief — after all, who wants to be permanently stuck in a hormone-rich brain, full of anxieties and insecurities, like we had during our teens?

Nevertheless, it’s also quite clear that we’re not “a completely different person”. That 6-year-old that started to get used to the idea of an “I” inside the brain (or wherever it’s located) has a strong connection to the insecure and hormone-driven teen, which, in turn, has a connection to whom we are (or think we are) today. This connections is undeniable: after all, we have memories of our “past selves” and know that it was “we” who experienced those memories, in the flesh and blood, in the distant past. So there is this feeling of “something” that gets carried along our whole lives. Spiritualists might call it “soul”, “life-energy”, “anima”, or simply “spirit”, or even, more simply, just “mind”. There is a sense of continuity.

All our options in the past made us crystallize an idea of what our “self” is supposed to be. If we’re successful businesspersons and parents, we imagine ourselves as being that kind of person. We model our own behaviour according to the stereotype we have of how a “businessperson” or a “loving parent” ought to behave. These stereotypes come from role models, books we read, our education, the TV series we watch, the peer pressure we are subject, and so forth — sometimes we copy them because we think that’s how we should behave, sometimes we reject them and create our own image of how those stereotypes — or archetypes! — ought to behave. Whatever the means, the end result is that we project upon ourselves and our behaviour a certain image of how we are supposed to think and act in society, and this, in turn, reinforces our tendencies of thinking and acting in a certain way. For instance, if we have this image we ought to be a loving parent, we think and act in the way we suppose a loving parent ought to think and act. The more we do that, the more familiar with those thought processes we are, and the more “natural” they become. As a result, this reinforces our idea of actually being a loving parent, and the feedback we get from our friends and family — “s/he really is a loving parent!” — will further reinforce that idea. So we equate the “I” with “loving parent”, and adopt the qualities and characteristics of what an archetypical loving parent is expected to possess and exhibit.

But we’re not “just” loving parents. This might be true at home, but we might be ruthless businesspersons at work. So we switch roles when at work. We don’t stop being loving parents at home; but we nevertheless become businesspersons at work. So which one are we? Loving parents or businesspersons? Which of the two is “our real self”?

Each of us gives a different answer to that. Some might say, “I’m actually a loving parent, but, at work, a loving parent has no qualities which are appropriate for work; so I wear the mask of a businessperson instead, because it’s more functional to do so.” And, in fact, a successful businessperson will make a lot of money, bring that home, and enable their family to prosper better — reinforcing the idea that this is what a loving parent should do: provide for their family so that they have a comfortable living. There is no contradiction here.

But we can stretch the analogy further. With our friends, we might be enthusiastic soccer supporters. The qualities we develop as “loving parents” or “businesspersons” have little in common with what a soccer fan needs to have. So we adopt those qualities and characteristics as well. We don’t “stop being ourselves”; we just wear a different mask. And while we’re with the soccer-loving crowd, we might even say, “I’m truly a soccer fan; but at home I wear the mask of a loving parent, which is what society expects me to do; while at work I have to be the perfect businessperson, or I’ll be without a job”. So, according to necessity, location, environment, and crowd, we just wear different masks.

Some might realize this and say, “during all my life, I just wear different masks, depending on the situation”. A loving parent might get angry — for good reasons, when a kid is playing with a razor, with fire, or putting their fingers inside the electric plug — and suddenly displaying a different mask, one which is more appropriate to deal with that situation. But they don’t “stop” being loving parents. In fact, it’s because they’re loving parents that they wish to protect their children, and, as such, sometimes a different “mask” is required.

The question, of course, is what happens if you discard all masks. What is left?

Now most people worry little about that. They consider the exercise intellectually unchallenging; they just assume that, “deep down there”, in whatever area of the brain that science fashionable decides, there is an unchanging self, somewhere, quite hidden from everything, and that’s the “true self” that decides to wear whatever mask is appropriate. Just because we’re not neurologists or psychiatrists and cannot pinpoint the exact spot of where that unchanging self resides, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. When we open the window and look towards the horizon, we don’t see Australia (unless, of course, you happen to be there), but just because we cannot see it, it doesn’t mean that Australia doesn’t exist. Right?

All this gets questioned when we discover that we’re crossdressers. Where does this come from?

Current science is unable to give a precise answer, even though there are hints that the blood barrier that separates the brain from the rest of the body had misbehaved while we were inside our mother’s womb. For some reason, if we’re MtF transgendered people, the hormones that triggered masculinization in the whole body did a bad job with the brain. Depending on how bad the job has been, we might have a “female brain” but a male body. There seems to be some evidence that this is not only possible, but not that rare, even though it’s the subject of a lot of speculation.

Whatever the reason, it seems to be clear that there are conditions that trigger these “crossdressing urges”. This shouldn’t be very surprising. You might spend the first decades of your life without a clue if you’re a loving parent or not. It’s just when you create your family and have your first kid that this situation triggers the need to consider yourself as a loving parent. People like me, who have no kids and never will have them, will never be subject to that condition, so I will spend all my life without ever thinking about myself as a loving parent. I might still think about myself as a (mostly unsuccessful) businessperson instead, since I had to deal with that situation before, and my “self” adapted to that situation.

The point here is that something triggers the crossdressing urge in us. It can be physical, biological, determined by our genes. It can lay dormant for a few years or decades. The “trigger” might just be the first time, by accident, that we wear our mom’s high heel shoe and feel pleased with the idea — or something that just happens much, much later in our life. Every one of us has a different story to tell, but we usually can pinpoint the moment in our life that triggered these urges, and we all recognize the similar sensations, feelings, and thoughts we have, even though the actual trigger might be quite different for each of us.

The point here is that while our society perfectly accepts that our first job will “trigger” the urge to become a businessperson or the first child that is born to us “triggers” the new mask of becoming a loving parent — or even that the first time we watch a soccer game “triggers” the need to become a soccer fan and behave like one — our society is not comfortable with the idea of having a male “triggering” the behaviour of a woman, be it merely by wearing their clothes, adopting a woman’s role, or even becoming a woman physically. This is outside “expected” behaviour and seen as an anomaly — just because the majority of people, in similar situations, never experience that “trigger”. Putting it in perspective: two brothers might play one day with their mom’s high heels, one of them feels the trigger that says, “this is fun, this is comfortable, this gives me pleasure”, while the other is completely indifferent. So it’s not the high heels by themselves that are the “reason” for the crossdressing. This is actually well established — young boys playing with dolls do not automatically become transgendered or homossexual; and, vice-versa, girls playing with cars and soldiers don’t automatically become car mechanics or Marines. While this certainly happens in a few cases, it’s not that clear-cut. It’s certainly true, however, that social conditioning plays a role in defining how we think about ourselves. Sometimes it’s the rejection of that role that will define us. A typical example: in a very open-minded family, girls and boys might be encouraged to play with the same toys and wear the same clothes, and do the same house chores. Some might reject this, much later, and become homophobic or transphobic; others, by unknown reasons, might “trigger” a latent transgenderity (or homossexuality) which will develop later. But the point is that the vast majority will never be affected at all. They simply don’t react to those triggers.

Where I’m leading at is that we might actually attribute the “reason” for our transgenderity to specific things that happened to us in our past, or even to our genetic makeup, but that’s not the real “reason” — it was just a trigger and nothing else. The potential for revealing the transgenderity was always there, even without the trigger; it’s just the trigger that makes us face it. And then several things can happen: rejection, which is quite common; frustration or depression, because we now realize we’re a different person than we thought; or an immense sense of relief that things, after all, are “right” this way. Whatever happens, the lesson we all have to learn is that we don’t have a “self” built-in into our genes, neurons, or whatever dualist philosophy tells us where the “self” is. We just create our own selves based on the interaction we have with others, the environment — and the interaction with our own thoughts. So we create a “female self” (if we’re MtF transgendered), like we “create” the mask of a loving parent, a businessperson, or a soccer fan. The difference is mostly that the latter are often socially and educationally conditioned — established roles that work as archetypes in our society — while mentally switching gender is not universally accepted and there are no established archetypes for that. It’s something we decide to do on our own.

I’m not saying that “it’s all in our imagination”. Fortunately, science shows us that this is not the case. As said, the majority of people, when in the presence of a certain trigger, will not suddenly become transgendered. There has to be something pre-existing in us that will allow the trigger to have any effect in us. As said, the current theories think that it can be the way our transgendered brains are wired before we’re even born; we might get better theories in the future, as research develops. Whatever the real reason is, it’s pointless to fret much about the cause. We can only accept that, under certain conditions, our transgenderity is triggered and reveals itself to us. And, as such, we have just to deal with it, like we deal with everything else that happens in our life (our first job; our first family; our first soccer game), and create our own self-image that turns the crossdressing/transgender experience comfortable to us.

Recognizing that there is “nothing wrong” in “switching masks” — because that’s what we do all day long — and that the “self” is nothing “written in stone”, but something that evolves over time anyway (no matter what we do, we cannot “feel” or “think” like we did in our teens — we can just evoke the memories we had), no matter what we do. Or, rather, it evolves because of things that we do. And that just reinforces the way we think about ourselves and what, exactly, this “self” is.

It takes some time to accept it. For me, I think that deep down I never liked to wear the mask of a male guy — it’s incredibly boring to be male. The mask of a female is much more comforting, exciting, and pleasurable. So I’m much more happier defining my self as being female than male, because I have developed aversion of all that makes me male, while I just find pleasurable things in all that makes me female. Naturally enough, I develop an affinity towards anything female, and reject whatever is male. In a sense, this is not much different from someone who feels an affinity of being a loving parent and utterly reject the idea of being a ruthless, cold, angry parent who has no respect for their family.

Naturally enough, the more I reinforce this idea of finding the “female mask” much more interesting and pleasurable than the “male mask”, I “become” more and more attracted to the female side, and reject the male side more and more. This is only natural. We get better and better with training, and I’m training to become more female, because it’s the kind of training that I find very agreeable and pleasurable — while all my training as a male was mostly boring, uninteresting, and, to a degree, painful and frustrating. Not everybody thinks like that, of course. Some enjoy both masks — both facets of one’s self — to the same degree. That shouldn’t be so surprising — it’s like someone who enjoys as much being a businessperson as a soccer fan, and sees no conflict between both (I know of a famous banker in my country who thinks exactly like that!).

Now I’m sure that many MtF transsexuals will utterly disagree with me, because they’re so sure that they’re female that the idea of wearing a “male mask” is utterly alien and abhorrent to them. But we’re talking about the same thing, really. In their case, the issue is that the trigger happened very early, and with an intensity that I have never felt, to the point of becoming overwhelming. Because our society is so strongly split between the male/female duality, with little or no overlap, it’s not surprising that the urge to become part of the opposite pole in that duality becomes incredibly strong. I have this strange theory that in a world where there was no duality between the gender roles, clothing, etc. there wouldn’t be any crossdressers or perhaps not even transgendered/transexual people. But I digress.

So, the issue here is that “becoming female” — temporarily or permanently — should not be viewed as something so strange. We’re constantly reinventing our own selves; we do that all the time, even though we give little thought to it. We adapt the way we interact with others depending on the situation. Our experience, education, and interaction shapes us and who we are. While at every moment we have this idea that there is an “inner self” — and the rest are just masks we wear on occasion — the truth is that this inner self is changing all the time. Thus, it shouldn’t be so odd that we change from a male to a female self depending on the clothes we wear; we change our “selves” all the time, when we discard the pyjamas and wear business attire, or drop the suit to wear a soccer fan T-shirt. What is this “inner self” except the will to adopt a particular mask depending on the occasion?

Granted, we favour some masks over the others. And this is where our difference lies: for us, wearing a female mask, even though we’re physically born as males, is as natural (or even more natural) than wearing a business person mask, a loving parent mask, a soccer fan mask. Due to social constraints, this particular mask is not viewed as acceptable (while the others are), but that’s just a social convention. But because we’re so well moulded to fit specific social norms and conventions, we even think of ourselves as being a bit “odd” (not to mention how others view us). That should not really bother us much — masks are just masks, we shouldn’t give so much importance to them, and just wear the masks we’re more comfortable with.

Why isn’t crossdressing an addiction?

Now this topic actually popped up in a discussion with my wife, and, by some strange coincidence, I had been reading about this the week before the vacations. The argument is simple (and we’ll see how it’s flawed): assuming that crossdressing is not a mental disease, then the behaviour of a crossdresser follows the same patterns as an addiction. Consider the following points: we dress because it gives us pleasure. We get adrenaline rushes or orgasms from crossdressing. Seeking pleasure in an obsessive way is a typical hallmark of all addictions. The more we crossdress, the more familiar we are with it, but we need more and more crossdressing to continue to sustain the same levels of pleasure (when tied to the adrenaline rush, of course). This makes us adopt more risky behaviour: from hiding everything in the closet, we “come out” to our beloved ones, we start to crossdress for whole hours at a stretch, we start going out, first by night, then we go to LGBT-friendly spots, then we go out by day, then we even start going to “normal” (i.e. non-LGBT-friendly) places. Then we start changing our bodies and finally we go all the way through surgery, discarding our previous lives, and become full-time women. All these steps trigger the adrenaline rush from going a step further, but once the step is taken, it becomes familiar; when it becomes familiar, it’s not so “exciting” as before, and we need to go further and further in our risk exposure.

Addictions are not only about illegal drug consumption. Parashooting, bungee-jumping, gambling, or any kind of radical sport is all about the adrenaline rush, and they can become addictions as well. Sure, adrenaline is a natural substance and not necessarily a harmful one (its effects don’t last long and the body replenishes the spent adrenaline naturally), but the obsession with the adrenaline rush can become addictive. Similarly, for crossdressers who get orgasmic pleasure while dressing, while obviously feeling and enjoying an orgasm is as natural as feeling an adrenaline rush, the constant obsession with orgasmic pleasure can become addictive as well — there are plenty of sex addicts around. And for some it’s a combination of both things — adrenaline plus orgasm — and it can even be intellectually stimulating. What turns something into an addiction is the constant craving, the obsession, the whole focus placed on the object of desire, and the issue that you need more, push harder, go further away from the zone of comfort, to get the same level of stimulation. When this kind of obsession starts to have a negative effect on our lives — when we forget about loved ones, when we overspend to indulge in the obsessive behaviour, when we get seriously depressed due to the constant craving that never gets away — then all these constitute a form of addiction.

This is pretty much what it looks like to an outsider. And, naturally enough, when this gets exposed, what do we do? We deny it. Just like any addict: they will never believe that they have “lost control”, even though all their behaviour shows otherwise. We cannot think of ourselves as “an addict” so we will justify our behaviour with all sorts of excuses. And some will be familiar to you: “I cannot do anything about crossdressing”, “crossdressing cannot be ‘wished away’, it’s something I’ve been born with”, “medical science says that you cannot ‘cure’ crossdressing”, and so forth. Even the attempts to “purge” all clothes and accessories — which we later buy again — is typical of certain addictions: misguided attempts to “do something” about it but which will always fail.

So is my wife right?

Fortunately, we have almost half a century of research in this area which helps us to shed some light on the subject. And the first thing is that we do not become crossdressers because we want to, but because we have been born with the latent potential of revealing ourselves as crossdressers (and for most of us all we need is a trigger). In fact, the mechanism is pretty much the same as the one that conditions our social role. A woman’s brain is genetically modified to act and think in a certain way, but it’s just when it’s exposed to education, society, and introduced to social roles, that a woman starts to act and behave like a woman. Putting it into other words, female babies aren’t born wearing lipstick and heels; they have to learn how to do these things. But on the other hand, even groups of females and males in complete isolation from society will develop different roles among the genders, without being taught to do so. Why? Because the potential for difference is there — for example, due to physical differences, it’s easier for males to hunt and protect the family with the strength of their muscles. While individuals differ — there can certainly be females stronger than some males — in general, the different genetic makeup of males and females will lead to different roles in society.

Thus, it is stupid to say that females are “addicted to female things”. Some may well be — like the famous example of Imelda Marcos and her obsession with shoes — but, in general, and on average, people are not “addicted” to their ways of life. Transgendered people, similarly, due to whatever causes transgenderity, feel a strong attachment to certain roles which they’re more comfortable with, and while this can eventually lead to what seems, from the outside, to be obsessive behaviour, it’s still not an addiction.

Whereas there is no scientific basis for believing that gambling addicts or drug addicts are somehow physically predisposed to become addicts. They might be psychologically predisposed to do so — and the environment they live in, and the education they’ve received (or the rejection of that education and environment — might trigger the addiction. But it’s a completely different phenomenon, at least at the light of what we know today about transgenderity and addiction.

This is also one of the (many) reasons why you may be able to “cure” several types of addictions — because there are psychological factors for the addiction — but you cannot “cure” homosexuality or transgenderity. The best you can do is helping people to accept their condition, and, as such, not suffer due to anxiety, frustration, or depression.

Obviously this is the kind of fine dividing line which is very hard to argue without a profound understanding of the issues and a thorough knowledge of what people think and feel. And the reason for that is that abnormal behaviour — in the sense that it is not exhibited by the majority of people — is hard to understand and accept by that majority. If an external behaviour looks like the compulsory and obsessive behaviour of an addicted, then it surely “must” be addiction (“if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck”). But things are not so obvious like they seem to be. And this is a problem that we crossdressers and transgendered individuals have to face.

I’m not so bold as I thought… specially because women are not meant to be so bold

Now this was an interesting experience that revealed a lot about myself, and one which had a surprising result.

Crossdressers fear being recognized as such — becoming the source not only of laughter (from strangers) but even things that may affect their lives. Being seen in women’s clothing by one of our employers might cost us the job; being seen by neighbours might lead to a lot of problems at home, as they start to shun you and even convey the idea that you’re not welcome any longer. These, however, are fears that can slowly be overcome — being more careful, dressing away from home/workplace, picking hours where nobody is around, and so forth. Dealing with laughter and scorn might take some time getting used to, but eventually you’ll get there as well. In my case, the way I learned to deal with that was by shaving most of my body hair away. I started doing this during the winter, when nobody noticed; when I also did it in the summer, of course I was scorned and laughed at by family members and friends. So what? I just smiled back and continued to do so — I didn’t even justify it besides saying “I do it because I like it; if it bothers you, you don’t need to watch ” After a few years doing that, most of the people who know me pretty much ignore my lack of body hair. Occasionally they still tease me about it, but they see that I’m utterly unaffected by what they might say (no matter how reasonable it often is!).

So, while on my short vacations, I expected to be pretty much immune to both these things. Nobody from my circle of friends, family, and acquaintances would be around — no need to worry about that. And if I needed to interact with others, and get laughed at, so what? I’m now used to it. So I could enjoy my crossdressing fully.

There was, however, a catch, which I didn’t quite foresee, even though I should have been able to look at the tell-tale signs: I’m afraid of males in the middle of the night, specially in small groups, but even isolated individuals scare me.

It’s reasonable to ask “why?”

Let’s put things in perspective. Except for some “darker” areas, most of Portugal has relatively little crime, compared to, say, São Paulo in Brazil or Los Angeles in the US. This means that there is a certain amount of safety, even in the middle of the night. On the other hand, as a male, I’m 1.78m tall, which is pretty much the average. I’m not too old, and definitely not skinny, and, of course, except during high summer, when I wear T-shirts, the lack of body muscles does not show. What this means is that as a potential target for muggers I’m definitely low-risk; I don’t even look rich, any common robber will see that all my clothes are a decade old. Obviously this never stopped gangs from stopping people in the streets, but let’s be honest here — I’m not the “typical” victim. They’re far better off by picking someone else; they would need to be very desperate to select me as a victim.

Obviously, when I walk around in the middle of the night as a male, I also don’t pick any fights, nor attract attention, or that I’m careless. I remain inconspicuous and fade into the background, but without any kind of fear. I just project this “don’t bother with me, because I don’t bother with you” attitude. Just a regular, normal guy, who is probably too poor to be worth the risk anyway — specially when they see the wreck I drive.

Now all this changes when I’m crossdressed.

I still am 1.78m tall — or taller, in my heels. I’m still not skinny, nor look too old. And, in fact, I even look like a male. So, in theory, I should be “as safe” wearing women’s clothes as when I wear male ones. Right? I’m still the same person, of course.

Well, the devil is in the details, as the saying goes. First, it’s impossible to be inconspicuous, as my wife so well pointed out to me. I cannot avoid attracting attention, even if I do an effort to do so — there is simply no way that a big-framed, tall redhead is able to walk around without turning a few heads. Specially, of course, when it turns out that this redhead is not really a female.

So during my vacations I had to face this new dilemma: I do, in fact, attract attention, but for the completely wrong reasons. Instead of fading into the background, I stand out. Instead of being ignored by passers-by, I get people to come out of bars and their houses and watch me with a defiant look. And the more rowdy and mean-looking they are, the more likely they are to stop in their tracks, turn to me, and, in some cases, step purposefully towards me.

Now women — specially women walking alone in the middle of the night — are obviously used to that kind of unwanted attention, and have learned to cope with that (for example, by not going out alone, but walk in groups, specially groups containing a few males). I’m not used to that. I’m not even used to “fear” people when I’m on the street by myself. This is a novel experience to me — the idea that, as a female, I’m weak, I’m a target, I attract attention which I don’t want, and have to cope with it. Namely, by turning back to the car and walk away. It’s not exactly something which I consider fun. Well, there is this fun aspect of “feeling fear from male strangers with evil intentions, just like a woman”. It means that I’m dealing with a new aspect of “walking like a female” — it means I’m now subject to the same threats as genetic women are. Worse than that: since it’s easy to spot that I’m not female, this can trigger a strong transphobic streak in some types. Not all will simply stop and laugh. Rather, by feeling “cheated”, they might become furious — furious at themselves for “feeling” something towards this redhead in heels, furious with me for “cheating” them, making them believe that I’m a woman when clearly I’m not, and then furious in general against all kinds of freaks who pass as women. This might make them become violent and aggressive, while in different circumstances — e.g. when watching a genetic female walking by — they might just make a joke, whistle, or simply observe with a smile but basically do nothing. Getting a crossdresser instead might switch their mood to a more violent one. I simply have no idea what to expect.

Well, in a sense, I suppose this “comes with the package”: if I wish to look and behave like a girl, I will also have to suffer the consequences of doing so. This also recalls something else that my wife is always saying, and which I also have read elsewhere from fellow crossdresser blogs. As a crossdresser, I exaggerate all positive and pleasurable attributes of women (or at least of looking like one), while at the same time ignoring all negative aspects of being a woman — and thinking that the negative aspects of being a male far outweigh them. It’s these kinds of experiences that put things in perspective. Yes, dressing, walking, feeling like a woman is great, there is no question about it, but there is a bad side to it. Women are weak, they’re easy targets, they’re prey to the more rowdy types, and they’re not so bold about it — they run away first in order to talk later about it, and will only fight when cornered (just like cats!). So perhaps this was good for my bloated ego and excessive self-confidence. After all, I have picked a new female trait which I didn’t even mean to get: now I’m not so bold as I thought I would be.

And of course this will limit my excitement and enjoyment of going out on my own. Just like any other girl, in fact.

Interaction

Another lesson learned — or, rather, confirmed — is that there is nothing to “fear” from business interactions. On my previous post I talked about how I engaged gas station attendants, bar owners, and even a hotel attendant doubling as security. In all those cases the interaction went smoothly. Obviously I was “read” — even on a dark night with little lighting (and it wasn’t quite the case, all those places were well lit), there is still my voice that will betray me. Even though, as said, I can pretty much sound very different from my usual deep bass, and do that effortlessly. I will still not sound very female-ish — just different.

All transgendered people need voice lessons during transition, because voice is the kind of thing that hormones and surgery will not change. You can “shave” the Adam’s Apple, and even stretch the vocal cords with surgery, but that’s not enough: you will still learn to “speak like a woman”, or as closely possible as you can, using techniques like the ones presented by candiFLA. The important thing here to understand is that no kind of falsetto will ever sound right; it’s good for TV comedies, but not for passing. Instead, one should realize that males actually have a huge advantage in terms of voice over females. What makes the male voice “deep” is mostly resonance from many harmonics; this comes from having the sound of one’s voice resonate in the chest, the tummy, the head, nose, and so forth, all together — but mostly from the chest. We might not grow boobs, but we grow large chests, with plenty of space for all those harmonics to resonate. So turning one’s male voice into a more feminine one is simple (in theory): stop letting your voice resonate in the chest. Just use the head for that. It’s a much, much smaller space, and, as such, there will be far fewer harmonics resonating. Sure, it will sound more metallic; but it will also sound “less male”. It might sound more feminine (like candiFLA does!). Then you can add a lot of tricks — like inflection, and the sing-song pronunciation which all women pick naturally, as well as the choice of words, the more precise pronunciation, and so forth — to improve on that. The result can be quite passable. And there is nothing wrong with a husky voice, which is considered to be very sexy; you don’t need to sound like a 16-year-old Valley Girl with permanent hysterics just to “pass”!

While it’s quite obvious that I’m light-years away from any transgendered girl like candiFLA, the best I can say about my own voice training is that probably most people wouldn’t recognize my voice as being “mine”. Most would be pretty sure it belongs to a guy. A very few might have some doubts.

However, common to all my interactions so far, it seems that people doing business simply don’t care. They just want to make a sale. It helps to be polite, of course, but I never felt any negativity or even reticence — all these people just wanted to make sure I got the best service for my money. I even noticed that they didn’t pay attention to my cleavage They looked me in the eyes, smiled, remained polite all the way through, and treated me exactly as any other customer. That was an amazing experience, and one that continues to reinforce my idea that the future of fighting transphobia is simply to shop!

Naturally, this has built up my confidence. Granted, the place where I was most at ease was at the Heaven Club, since it’s a LGBT-friendly spot — I wasn’t expecting anything else, obviously. I might have enjoyed a nice chat, but that was asking too much for a nightclub playing loud music, even though I was the only customer there. But the gas attendants were perfectly professional all the way through, and I’m sure that they don’t have that many crossdressers around.

Or maybe this was just a local experience. As said, the Algarve is used to all kinds of people; they might be more willing to deal with crossdressers and transgendered people over there, since it’s a highly-developed tourist destination, and so long you’re willing to spend money there and not disturbe the peace, they couldn’t care less about how you look or what kind of things you enjoy to wear. There is only one way of testing this out: going out in the Lisbon area and see if my experience is similar!

No outfit looks good on me!

On my return, when packing things back to where they usually are in the closet, I found some ancient pictures of myself, from the earliest crossdressing attempts. I always wondered where I had placed them! These are still analogue pictures, probably from around 1997 or so, some of which (but not all!) had been scanned by a crossdressing friend I used to chat with (since I had no access to a scanner back then). Well, I had lost most of those early scans, so I thought it would be nice to scan them again and put them up on the historical section somewhere…

But I quickly realized none of the pictures were worthy of being published. Why? Well, because these were from my earliest attempts to do full crossdressing with clothes and accessories I had bought at that time, hoping they would suit me. They didn’t, but I had no idea of that at the time. The only two things I kept from those days are a pair of high heel stilettos, which I still use occasionally, and one of the cigarette holders which I had bought at the time (I already owned two or three — as mentioned before, I’ve been a regular holder user since my late teens, even when not being dressed).

But all else was wrong. The makeup was horrible. One of the wigs looked like something out of a horror movie; the other wig, even though it’s made of human hair (I still have it!), didn’t look realistic enough. While those days I stuck mostly to black dresses, they all looked like they came of a B series movie from the 1950s. I actually looked much older in 1997 than I do now!

You might say that I’m just too critical of myself. That’s true — most “serious” crossdressers are. If all you need is the thrill of wearing female clothes because it turns you on, then probably you won’t care about what you’re actually wearing, so long as it’s designed to be worn by a woman. But if you’re like me, you’re after the ultimate female image: the one allowing you to pass.

It’s true that if you’re thin and tall and have the perfect oval face with full lips and large eyes, you can wear anything — and you’re also probably a supermodel For the rest of the universe, no matter what your genes say, you will need to figure out what looks good on you and what doesn’t. Well, here is where things start to become complicated. I remember that when I showed my old outfits to my wife for the first time, she just said that they were “too old” for me. And she was right. She then proceeded — for the first and last time — to pick some new clothes for me. Unfortunately, even though she has a reasonably good taste in clothing, her choices didn’t benefit me much. It shouldn’t be very surprising: after all, she’s small and was rather chubby back then (these days, due to her many chronic illnesses, she has lost a lot of weight), and has a completely different skin complexion and hair colour than me. Her choices didn’t “fit” me that well.

So I had to experiment further. The truth is, I cannot “experiment” that much. For the time being, I don’t go crossdressed into department stores; I just browse through their aisles in “male mode”, looking for things that I think that will look good on me. Almost always they don’t. Even a few exceptions, after wearing them once or twice, are simply wrong. Why exactly that happens in so many cases is still a mystery for me — even after reading a lot about the do’s and don’ts of certain styles, colours, and so forth. Some things make me look much older, even though I thought they would look good on women of my age. Some make me look trashy, when I was aiming for something sexy. Some make me look sloppy, even though I was buying casual clothing. And even the few elegant outfit I have… one makes me look 65, the other seems to point a huge blinking arrow with a neon sign saying “Crossdresser!” to me, and, well, the last one is sort of passable, but will never make me “pass” (pun intended).

There are a few lessons I have learned the hard way. While there are exceptions, the more costly the item, the more likely it fits better and looks great on me. This is a problem, since I cannot afford many costly items — right now, I cannot afford any items at all, costly or not! — and so I tend to buy more cheap ones: the idea being that if they’re very cheap, at least I will not worry much about giving them away if I cannot use them. But it’s still a bit frustrating!

Frustrating, yes, but not unsurprising. Since I never cared much about male clothes, I never really worried about buying them. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, I just remember buying a couple of suits and a raincoat on my own — 15 years ago. All the rest have been gifts from family & friends. Yup, I’m not exaggerating. I don’t even buy shorts or socks for me; someone will surely give them to me as presents for Christmas or birthday. I have no “personal style”, nor a “look”, and never had any intention of being “fashionable”. So I hardly understand anything about what brands are popular this year, what colour one is supposed to wear, what styles are appropriate for my shape, what makes me look younger or older. These are all a mystery to me. Or, rather, they’re filed as “unnecessary knowledge” — it’s like car mechanics: I don’t understand how cars work, I just drive them. With clothes, I just get people to offer me whatever they think I might like. And on my side of things, I’m glad that someone has taken away the burden of choice for me, so I’ll wear pretty much whatever I’m given. The only exception was my love for neck scarves, which gave me a British look that I enjoyed, but my wife was absolutely against the scarves, so I had to give them all away. I still keep a handful of ties around, but, since I started to work from home, and hardly ever meet with clients, I don’t wear them. In fact, I enjoy being a “veteran computer geek”. You don’t expect geeks in Italian suits, Spanish shoes and British ties; I can get along with a semi-casual style made out of decade-old shirts, serviceable jeans and a jacket. People in my country are far less stiff and conservative in their choice of clothes, anyway (although I had to learn that “casual” is also a fashion style which has its own rules!).

So when starting to delve into the wonderful world of female clothing, it was an incredible experience. Now suddenly fashion mattered. Now I had to combine colours — something tough to do, when you can only recognize 16 different shades of colour, while genetic women are able to distinguish between thousands (how do you distinguish “salmon” from “pale coral”? Why are “tangerine” and “orange” two completely different shades? Is “peach” pinkish or orange-ish? Is “maroon” a lighter shade of “chocolate”? I know that “crimson red” is not the same as “brick red”, but between them is there really some shade that I’d call “red”? My wife has two raincoats with the same cut, one is apple green, the other is, well, red. She constantly refers to them as “lemon yellow” and “pink”. Uh?)

But also now I discovered that my body has a “shape”, too, and that women’s clothes have different cuts depending on the “shape”. So, no straps for me; I don’t have the shoulders for that. Since I’ve got a large chest, I cannot wear round or square necklines; surprisingly, I’m supposed to wear V-cuts (which I would expect that they would reveal too much, but apparently, if you’re big-breasted, you’re supposed to show off some cleavage; the other styles of necklines are to disguise that you have nothing to show!). I’m not straight-lined, but curvy (with all that padding), so I should avoid straight cuts — but focus on anything that gives me a waistline instead. Which is becoming hard: casual clothing, and even some elegant clothing, these days seem to be designed for the heavily overweight types and/or pregnant women, by putting the waistline just below the breastline, which looks terrible on me. Most tops and sweaters are meant to be worn over a pair of tight jeans, and not inside skirts. But most of them, even if they don’t have a straight cut, do not favour the waistline much (because most thick sweaters are used to disguise overweight women!); so I’m always wearing a belt with them. There are a few exceptions, and as I mentioned once, I had to let someone cut a dress for me so that it looked right (and afterwards it did!). I cannot wear ruffled or laced blouses; they’re meant for women with small breasts. Similarly, long necklaces (of which I have a dozen!) are a no-no if you have “projecting” breasts; I can, at most, wear very short necklaces. Ugh! So much to learn!

Then come accessories, something that males don’t worry about: a guy’s only accessory is the watch and possibly the glasses, and you buy them once and cannot match them with anything else anyway. Women, by contrast, have a lot to match. You don’t wear pearls during the day; you avoid golden things, but, even worse, you avoid mixing golden with silvery/metallic things. Colour matching is out of fashion; gone are the days that you would wear green eye makeup to match a green dress and wear emeralds. But, on the other hand, colour extremes are out of fashion as well: if you’re wearing red, you’re not going to wear a green (not even a blue!) belt with that, nor jewelry of any colour… except probably white or metallic. Then again, there are fashionistas saying that “everything is allowed”. Sure, but not “everything” will look good on me! In fact, nothing seems to work well enough!

Oh, I know I’m exaggerating. A few things actually work out. They don’t make me feel neither too old, neither too young, neither too slutty, neither too casual, neither too casual. They don’t look too good either — just average and uninteresting. But strangely enough, these are the things that seem to work best. Maybe I’m just an average and uninteresting person!

At the end of the day, ironically, no matter what I’m wearing underneath, I tend to be happy that I’m wearing a black overcoat on top of everything! But I can only wear that in the winter. And if it’s too cold and I’m in an elegant mood, I wear a faux fur coat — which is too short, and, because it has a straight cut, makes me look much fatter. Gah!

No wonder that the few extremely good-looking crossdressers I know have either a) a perfect body; or b) an extraordinary amount of clothes in their wardrobes. No small wonder! They have to buy hundreds of outfits to get a few dozens that actually work for them. I would need to do the same… if my wife allowed me, of course, which she doesn’t. But I slowly start accepting that she’s right. What’s the point of wasting so much money on things that will never fit me right, even if they are supposed to be the “right” styles and cuts for my age and body?

I know, you’ll say that I look good on a lot of things on the pictures and videos. Well, yes and no. I really cheat a lot. Except for some, I use the best angles and cut off the bits that don’t look so good. That’s why sometimes I don’t bother to stand up when doing a video; I know that I look reasonably well from the breastline upwards, but not below that. And sometimes not even that. And, of course, sometimes I don’t care and do the video or the picture anyway. But the point is, I brood a lot over those things, and a thing that comes to mind is that if I ever start to go out regularly with some friends, I would be stumped at what to wear after a few sessions — I’ll quickly exhaust the amount of outfits that have a minimal chance of looking acceptable, while they all look like they have hired Stacy London or  Rachel Zoe for advice. Better still, some of them look like they’re managing the fashion school where Stacy and Rachel graduated!

How far can I go with body changes?

I have a few gurrlfriends who have perfect bodies. Sometimes, on the rare occasions I’m able to dress, I come online on the webcam, and they say, “oooh you’re dressed today! Let me get dressed too! It just takes me 20 minutes!” And so it is. Well, sometimes it’s half an hour. They just slip into a dress, get their latest wig into shape, do some minimalistic makeup — mascara and some lipstick — and there they are, a few minutes later, looking at their best, just like any other pretty woman.

My own routine takes, well, the better part of three hours.

I’m not saying I’m not enjoying myself for those three hours; in fact, I do enjoy them very much, in spite of the very skeptical comments of my wife. She says I’m insane for taking so much time; if I lived full-time as a woman, I would never be able to spend so much time in the bathroom every day.

Well, she’s partially right. Three hours is really too much. But as a male, I tend to spend over an hour to get ready in the morning anyway, and the actual showering just takes 3-5 minutes, and I don’t even shave every day.

As a crossdresser it takes far, far longer. First comes the whole routine of getting rid of unwanted hair — on the face and on the body. This takes ages — more precisely, perhaps around 40 minutes or so, if I’m using a razor. For many years I tended to use an epilator on most of the body, but that took me five hours, and I cannot use it on the face anyway (the advantage, of course, is that it keeps the hair from growing for about two weeks, sometimes even a bit more, and you just need some regular maintenance afterwards). The face is shaven with four passes, specially if I hadn’t shaved on the previous day: once downwards (in the direction of growth), once upwards (against the direction of growth), once from the back to the front/chin, and once in the diagonal (yes, I have face hair growing in all possible ways). Just that takes eons. But the rest of the body has a much larger surface than the face, so it also takes quite a while.

Then, while I wait for the face skin to absorb the moisturizer, I put on the lowest layer of clothing — padding. If I’m in the mood of creating some cleavage, this takes far longer than a sane people would think. In fact, after having worn everything I will wear that day, a good half hour might have elapsed.

The next step is the foundation. To hide the beard shadow, I still use the old lipstick trick. A CD friend of mine found out a shop in Lisbon that sells these professional television/movie makeup, which include foundation sticks for covering the beard shadow, but, no matter how good these are, they all share the same issue: they demand that I wait a bit until it dries, before starting on the foundation. I usually have a cigarette while I wait and start brushing the wig into shape, or do some manicure (but don’t actually paint the nails, because they almost invariably will not dry in time, and get ruined — and ruin bits of whatever I’m wearing).

Foundation comes next, eventually with some highlighting before, and then there is more time to wait until that dries. Another cigarette, another go at the wig, or maybe I’ll be choosing the accessories. Over one and a half hours have elapsed since I started.

Then comes the more fun part of applying makeup. Everybody has a different routine, and I cannot say what’s “best”, since I’ve experimented with some variants, and they all seem to work similarly well. I usually start with the lips, because your face will immediately change to something clearly feminine, and that helps to set the mood. Next comes the white highlighting, on the eye corners, on the nose (to make it look slightly thinner), on the cheekbones, and here and there on special eyes. Some corrector to get rid of some spots, and, since these days I’m chronically with fatigue rings, these get some “treatment” as well.

Next comes eyeliner, either in pencil or liquid, depending on the mood. Liquid eyeliner does an awesome job if you have a steady hand; the second best choice, for me, is kohl. This can get tricky as one aims for symmetry, but, of course, that’s hard, and requires lots of tiny corrections until it’s acceptable.

Then, in my case, I apply the blush. Why? I will need to tone it down over the cheekbones, to blend everything together, and if I let the highlights “set” for too long, this will not work well. I used to do a different routine — the blush came at a later stage! — but since I’ve got some compliments from my own wife on the tricks done with the white highlighting on the eyes, I do that first.

After looking all “blushy” what I do next is the actual eye makeup. I don’t truly have many special techniques and tricks. “Smokey” eyes are not particularly hard to do, although they tend to look too dramatic on me (but I do them sometimes). I used to do just two colours at most, but since having bought a pack with some 40 colours or so, I rarely use less than four It’s more fun that way, and you can experiment to see what blends well and gives some unexpected results. I’m rather fond of yellow highlights. Bronze seems to work admirably well, too; my natural skin colour on the eyes has already a lot of bronze in it (yes, again, due to lack of sleep…). If the rest of my outfit is pink/peach, then I tend to use those shades on the eye makeup as well, and they don’t look too bad. I love the lilac/purple tones, but often I get wild with them Blue is a bit “dangerous” — my own eyes are blue/green, and this means that either of these colours will enhance the eye colour so much, that it becomes overwhelming — and boring! — but sometimes I play with blue as well; emerald green seems to be easier to play with, though. And sometimes I just use completely illogical shades, like starting with yellow, go to green, finish with purple, and add a smattering of brown and bronze here and there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it becomes undetectable (which, in a sense, is also a good thing!).

Mascara (first application) comes next, then powder to set the foundation. I know that the modern girls have no patience with powder, and just buy foundation with powder to save time. Well, that’s ok if you’re not using blush and highlights; otherwise, I rather prefer to have some powder on top of everything to tone the colours down and make them much more natural. When that step is finished, I do the second mascara application.

This means that when my makeup is finished, the clock has been ticking for over two hours

Then comes the wig. These days, as you know, I’m using a lace front wig. While in theory I could just use it like a regular wig, I use a special tape to do the finishing touches — keeping the wig directly glued to the skin, so that the hairline looks absolutely realistic. And, believe me, it does. The pictures don’t do justice to the final look. You can be at kissing distance and not see where the wig is actually held in place. Yes, I’m not exaggerating. These days, when I see people like Jessica Who on YouTube — she is very good at makeup and even better at fashion — I always think of giving her the tip: get rid of those conventional wigs, girl. They simply never look right. It’s nothing to do with their fibre quality, it’s just that they cannot ever be so realistic than a front lace (or full lace!) wig. And for some reason, the front lace wig manufacturers are able to get much more hair fibres in them, specially on places that really make a difference. Don’t ask me why. It’s just the way they’re built, I guess. The disadvantage is that they might be much warmer to use in summer (I still don’t know), and, of course, if you’re a perfectionist, the extra time spent in taping them to the forehead will cost you some precious minutes.

Some perfume, adding the last bits of accessories, and it’s time to do the nails. Now for years I’ve used falsies, which are easy to apply, specially the ones that come with double-sided tape; just a few minutes and you’re ready. I tend to use glue, which takes a bit longer to apply, and is a mess to get rid off, but it’s the only way I can be reasonably safe, knowing they will not come off at an embarrassing moment. But lately, as you know, I prefer to do my own nails. It’s also cheaper that way: a pack of false nails might cost $10-15 and last for 3 or 4 times until they’ve got so much dried glue on them that they have to be thrown away. There are cheaper nail sets made in China, but they don’t look so realistic. By contrast, a tiny vial of nail polish of good quality might cost $4 or $5, but last a few months (since I don’t paint my fingernails so often!). Sure, there is an extra cost for the nail polish remover, but it’s still cheaper. Also, it’s not so aggressive on your nails, specially if you go the route of using glue for the false nails (you will almost always need to file them off afterwards; even though you’re actually getting rid of the dried glue, a bit of the nail itself will naturally come off that way, making them a bit thinner, and looking not so good).

But there are several disadvantages. The first is that you will need to keep your nails impeccable; and secondly, grown them longer, or you’ll spoil the fun. Figuring out how long you can grow before others notice (or before my wife forces me to cut them) is tricky. And, of course, some people have such thin and broken nails that they cannot achieve good results.

The next problem, of course, is how long it takes to paint them!

Unless you’re talented, it means a lot of practice. When I started crossdressing in the late 1990s, I tended to spend, say, the better part of an hour just on the nails. It was a nightmare — I would get nail polish everywhere except on where I wanted it to be! The cuticles are my major problem. Professional manicurists are constantly wiping the excesses off, and they have this special “pen” to do that, quickly and efficiently. It’s a bit expensive, though, so I use cotton swabs and nail polish remover, which is much cheaper, of course, but far harder to get it right, specially on the very fine detail. And ironically, in my teens, I used to paint lead toy soldiers and the like. I’m actually glad I had some patience doing that, who would have known that this skill would be so useful in my adult life!

Nevertheless, it’s still hard to get it right. I’m right-handed, so I can do my left hand in, say, a minute or two; I generally get it right on the first time, too. But doing the same on the left hand takes way longer :-/ I believe that I lose almost half an hour on both hands, and, to be honest, it looks blindingly fast compared to a couple of years ago!

So there you are. Add that all together, and it’s very hard to do the whole routine (and I’m not counting the time for the nail polish to dry!) in less than 2 1/2 hours. If things start to go wrong — and sometimes things go wrong with the padding! — I can spend well three hours on it.

What to do to reduce the time?

Depending on the day, sometimes I split the process in two. My body hair, fortunately, doesn’t grow as quickly as the beard, so I can generally get away by shaving everything but the face in the morning. That will give me half an hour less, later on. On some days, I shave the face before taking a nap and then continue the rest of the routine afterwards; that cuts the time to a bit less than two hours. So it seems that if I could get rid of the body hair permanently, I would save the better part of an hour! Clearly this is at the top of my priorities. Thankfully, these days it’s perfectly acceptable for males to laser out their body hair, face and all, so this would be a huge improvement.

The padding is a problem, though. To skip it, I’ll require extensive surgery and/or hormone therapy. And believe me, I’ve thought of many ways to deal with that. I think that if I could get the perfect waist and hips, I would be able to forfeit the corset and the hip padding, and, that way, save precious time. Since I’m not a beach person, most people would never notice the difference anyway, not even my parents, who are supposed to know me quite well I haven’t got a huge bottom, but it’s not too bad, actually; it would just require some “adjustment”. Hips, of course, would require silicone implants; and the waist would need several techniques to make it look right. Well, it’s just all a dream and a fantasy for now, but, among all the surgery I would need, this would be the one that would be most easily disguised — specially during the winter, of course, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t attract undue attention during the summer, either, except if I went to the beach or to a swimming pool, which I don’t go to anyway.

But if you start with surgery, where to stop? Hormones, of course, will also redistribute body fat to the “right places” (and will thin out the body hair, as a bonus), but at this stage of my life, knowing about my relatively high blood pressure which needs medication to remain at a perfectly safe and healthy level, hormones are a high risk. Surgery is the only option.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s also highly unlikely that I’d get any breast growth with hormones. Hormones are not a magic drug; they can only work with what you’ve got. Almost all women in my family have tiny breasts, and they’ve been born with the right hormones from the start. So it’s unlikely I’d get any substantial breast growth. Again, silicone implants would be the only choice. But that’s tricky: to keep them proportioned — and that means highlighting the curves in the rest of the body — I would need large breast implants. Sure, I know what you’re thinking: every female, genetic or otherwise, wants the largest breasts they can. In my case, however, I don’t really “want” large breasts: I want to visually trick people in thinking I have a “perfect” shape, which means a difference of about 30 cm between the waistline and the hip & breast line. Remember the magic 90-60-90 hourglass figure? Well, if your waistline is way above 60 cm, that’s fine: just compensate the other two numbers, and you’ll still be hourglass-shaped and feminine That’s my old trick, which I accomplish with padding: the corset gets the waistline down to 85 or so, meaning I need to be 115 on the hips and 115 on the breastline. That’s why, at least from the front, I look rather curvy, even though I have a large frame.

115 cm of breastline, for my frame, means a big D cup — that’s 1.5 kg of silicone for the two breasts, to give you an idea. Now, as a crossdresser, we can decide on whatever size we wish to be. But it would be utterly impossible to disguise those huge breasts with male clothing. Well. Not quite “utterly impossible”, but almost. I have, on occasion, gone out with all my padding in the winter, with a straight-cut male overcoat on top of a loose sweater, and I can look inconspicuous. But that’s only in the deep winter; and I cannot take the coat off, so it would be impossible to be indoors.

And if I ever went that route, it would be foolish to stop there. Who wants to have a curvy, feminine body but an ugly male-looking face on top of it? So, my nose would have to shrink, and the jawline redone by a surgeon. After that, well, all that would be left for me is to go full-time as a female

Too huge a step.

What about the wig? That also takes a long time to get it right. Well, the simplest solution would be to let it grow — which my wife doesn’t allow me in any case. I would also have to forfeit the nice red colour which I’m growing fond of, but revert to my natural hair colour, which is sort of a light brown — nothing really special. Having it braided, there are tricks to give it a feminine cut without anyone noticing. In my case, however, I’m loosing hair in a typical male fashion, so it would mean either a treatment for that, hormone therapy, and/or hair implants, which are also very expensive. The result would be to save, say, 10 minutes of the whole routine. Is it worth the trouble? I don’t really think so. In fact, if I went full-time as a woman, I would simply do the same thing that Tyra Banks, Beyoncé, Oprah, Lana Del Rey, etc. all do — just get the best-quality full lace wig I could afford and glue it permanently, which any hairdresser is trained to do professionally. Very simple, and you can completely change your hairstyle every 6 months (as the wig wears out). But it’s also a bit expensive, even though probably not much more expensive than styling the hair regularly.

Doing all that would mean reducing the whole routine to do the makeup (since going full-time also means having no more worries about painting the fingernails every day!). That would be, at most, half an hour — probably less if I’d use permanent eyelash extensions or some similar technique, and had the face skin in such a condition that I could forfeit foundation and just do the eyes and lips. Half an hour sounds just about right. To give you an idea, on the days I shave, I apply six different types of creams on my body, three of them on the face. That’s already part of my daily routine. Adding a bit of makeup and some lipstick, compared to all that, is nothing.

So, ultimately, my wife is wrong. I just take three hours or so because I have the completely wrong body for a woman; and also because lots of the things I do — nail polish, wig, glueing the breastforms and creating cleavage, etc. — are temporary things which I have to do every time I crossdress. If I could get rid of everything that makes my body and face un-female, then I could skip most of the routine, and just focus on the essential things: wearing the right set of clothes and doing some minimalistic makeup. That’s what my gorgeous-looking CD friends do: they already have perfectly androgynous bodies, and all they need is a nice dress, a wig, and a bit of makeup — that’s why they just need 20-30 minutes for their routine, and they will look much better than me even taking so little time. They simply don’t need any improvement. Many of them are of the skinny type, who don’t even need breastforms to enhance their breast line — a super-pushup bra with some padding is all they need, and that takes a minute to wear.

The conclusion is that it’s all in the genes. The more androgynous you are, thanks to your genetics, the shorter the routine you need. The less androgynous you look, the more complex your routine, and it will invariably take longer, to the point where there is nothing much you can do about it, except for extensive surgery which will turn you irreversibly into a woman (or something looking much more like a woman than a man), and that means transition and changing your life.

Jessica Who, in a serious moment (she usually is just hilarious!), addresses transition and explains, very rationally, why she’s not even remotely considering that route:

That certainly made me think. There is a balance to be found. Some of us are eternally searching for that balance, and unhappy because they never seem to reach it. In my case, it looks like my own balance can only be achieved going beyond the comfort zone. But that means crossing a line from where there is no return. And all that for what? Just the ability to wear dresses that fit me perfectly and the ability to go out and pass every time? How important is that in my happiness?

These are hard and difficult questions. And I have no Ultimate Answer like Jessica Who found for herself. Instead, I just have “temporary” answers: I’m attached to my own life, to my wife, parents, friends, and a certain number of decisions made in this life that made me to be what I am. Compared to all that, the wish to pass as a woman seems to be of little importance. Worse than that — compared to losing all that, and starting from scratch, means jumping into the void of uncertainty, and I’m not so bold to do all that. Sure, the experience is interesting in itself, but there is no turning back (not easily, in any case) in case I have any regrets.

Putting into other words: I’m content with my whole life except for one tiny little detail, a gene flaw that made me male. Half the world’s population lives perfectly with that. The alternative — which is a possibility these days, even if it’s complex, painful, and expensive — is having just that tiny little detail as your whole life, forfeiting everything else. It’s a huge price to pay!

That’s why I like to think of myself as a “failed transexual”. A true transexual is just worried about that “tiny little detail” — nothing else matters. Given a choice, they have no doubts that they would throw everything away just to get the body they should have been born with. If that means losing everything else, so be it. It’s not different from an Olympic athlete: changing one’s own life just for the purpose of getting a gold medal. Training every day for that. Abandoning friends and family just in the pursuit of the gold. And labouring long, discarding everything else as unimportant to reach that goal, until they get what they want. True transexuals are like that. Of course they will try to lose as little as they can along the process — trying to get their family’s and friends’ acceptance; trying to keep their job; trying to fit into society in their new gender role — but, if all else fails, ultimately they’re ready for the Big Jump and leave all that behind.

In my case I’m clearly not that bold. I’m not ready to abandon all those things that are part of my life. I spent most of my life living to other people’s expectations, and while I tend to fail each and every time, I’m still seen as doing a huge effort to please everybody. But, in turn, that struggle defines who I am today: someone who does their best to live as everybody else wants me to live. There were a few moments of glory in my past. When I finish my PhD — for which I personally care little — there will be another moment of glory, where a lot of people will be immensely pleased with my achievements (even though I have no big expectations about what happens afterwards, at least I will have done whatever I could). So all along my life there have been these special moments that have reinforced the way others see me, and, in return, have shaped the way I am. Being so used to think and act that way, I’ve grown attached to having all that.

Except for some very minor things — like removing all my body hair — any other step towards womanhood means dropping all that. It means disappointing dozens of people, some of them — like my parents, but they’re not the only ones — having invested a lot of their time, patience, and emotions in me. It also means abandoning the meagre means of surviving on my own; even with a PhD, how many universities out there in the world are willing to hire an ugly transexual? Not to mention a computer systems and network engineer — their employees and customers would be utterly shocked. Of course there are exceptions. A lot of transexuals have survived. Again, it depends on how good their genes are: the more androgynous you are when you start your transition, the more likely you will pass so perfectly that nobody will ever notice. For the rest of us with our flawed genes, there is no hope, and there is no choice. I might get a job as an after-hours janitor at McDonald’s, and while I could certainly survive on that salary, I would be forgotten and abandoned by everyone that knows me, labeled as the ultimate failure, and stricken from their Christmas card lists and their phones’ address book.

Is that the kind of life I wish to live?

Not really.

So, for now, as a “failed transexual” I can just try to enjoy myself as a crossdresser. That’s all there is left for me. Sometimes I think that there is not much more I can do to improve my image, and something unexpected comes along — the new front lace wig has gone a long way to raise my self-esteem and confidence, for instance. I might learn new makeup techniques, or improve my vocal skills, to be able to pass a bit better. I might finally learn what kind of clothes fit me best, and avoid excessive attention, in spite of my frame and height. And I might be able to become faster and better at going through my whole routine, spending less time at it, which, in turn, would mean more time to enjoy myself as a crossdresser (and not miss so many opportunities).

And — who knows? — I might just be able to do a few tiny “improvements”. Unnoticeable while in “male mode” but going a long way to benefit my female image. Some of the simplest which I have implemented did already help a lot, like trimming the eyebrows (nobody has noticed) or growing the nails much longer (they only notice when they’re too long) and keeping little body hair around (few have noticed but I can safely shrug it off) or even painting my toenails (nobody knows except my wife… and my cat). Who knows what else I might be able to come with!

Even in this constrained path I’ve temporarily chosen for myself, there might be still some room to expand, to experiment, to have fun with, and still remain within the comfort zone, and not need to face the Big Jump. And ultimately, having fun with those experiences is a big part of what makes me crossdress.

I just need to be content with that Jessica Who already found that; and I shall learn to do the same.

There were several moments where everything might have worked out wrong. For instance, as said, we got a voucher from my mother-in-law — but until the day before the trip southwards, I didn’t even know the hotel’s name, or if it would be a place welcome for crossdressers (not all are!). I tried to email them to ask, but the contact form on their website didn’t work. Also, my wife forgot to change the check-in date until the very last moment (she wanted to go the least number of days). Fortunately, it was still in time. We were set to go.

Nevertheless, it was just the day before the voyage that I told her (while she was in an excellent mood) that I wanted to get her to stick to her word, given 14 months ago, and allow me to dress during the vacations. She grumbled, but not really much. She just complained that we had to take another two bags with us (and she did rightfully complain about that, at least!). Ironically, I took the very same two bags that I used, twenty years ago, to “hide” all my crossdressing things… we have few suitcases and bags anyway.

The day we started the voyage was packing day. And here I expected the worst again: after a night’s sleep, my wife had plenty of time to revert her decision. She didn’t, but that didn’t prevent her from grumbling and rambling during the packing, with snarky comments all the way, and the most evil looks she was able to put on, as if by sheer pressure of her discontentment she could persuade me to give up all plans. But, at the end, this would be seriously offensive for her own mother, who “sponsored” the stay, and also to my own mother, who gave us the money for the voyage. So, at the end, she swallowed down her anger and frustration and reluctantly entered the car.

Algarve — History & Geography

A small parenthesis to give you some background on our destination. If you’re Portuguese or very familiar with the Algarve, you can skip this whole section; it’s boring. If you have no interest in its history or geography, you can also skip it, too

If you’re still here, and reading this in Europe, it’s likely that the two only places you know in Portugal are Lisbon — and the Algarve as a touristic destination, even though half the Europeans will believe that the Algarve is in Spain. As a matter of fact, this region has been part of Portugal for 800 years — 400 years before there was a Spain! It’s an ancient region — when the Romans came to invade the Iberian Peninsula, it already had a thriving commerce between its city-states. In fact, even when the Greek, a few hundred years before the Romans, started to trade here and think about placing one or two colonies there, the region was already well-developed — and they opted for trade instead. Even more strange than that are some findings that show that the Algarve had an alphabet predating what later was known as the Phoenizian alphabet (which inspired the Greek alphabet, which, in turn, inspired the Roman alphabet which we use today). It’s hard to go back 3000 years and figure out how everything started in the Algarve, but it’s pretty clear that at least for those 3000 years, there have been commerce between their city-states and the rest of Europe.

After the Roman conquest followed, and after a period of Christianity under the Bizantine Empire and the Visigoths, in the early eight century, all these lands became Muslim, and prospered in a thriving civilization, still keeping a relative independence, but of mutual assistance — and trade. This is why most cities still bear Arabic names (and why the Portuguese vocabulary includes a lot of Arabic words as well — not only guitar and alcohol, but many in fact, to the extent that Arab speakers will understand a lot of Portuguese words, even if they might frown upon the accent). It took the Christians three centuries until they managed to conquer them back, which, as said, happened in the 12th century. Now due to a freak of geography, Algarve is bordened, in the north, by a ridge of mountains that keeps it pretty much isolated from the land beyond — a vast plain, dry and hot, called Alentejo, which goes all the way northwards to the Tagus river, where Lisbon is located, and even a bit beyond. This area always was very sparsely populated — even today. Climatically, the Algarve is more Mediterranean in nature (while the rest of Portugal is mostly Atlantic) — warm and sunny, but with plenty of rain coming from the southwest and getting trapped by the mountain ridge, and thus providing very fertile land on the higher ground. The southwards coast, of course, is where the many beaches are — almost 150km of coastline, interrupted by exquisite rocky formations.

But due to the distance to the capital, Lisbon — Alentejo has just three important cities (even though small ones) in an area as large as Switzerland or the Netherlands, over the centuries, the Algarve became an impoverished region — losing all importance in terms of trade as it happened before the Christian reconquest. It enjoyed a period of wealth and prosperity during the Discoveries — Lagos and Sagres, on the western side of the Algarve, were the first cities from where the Portuguese explorers went to discover the whole world. After a few decades, they lost importance, as Lisbon provided a much larger trading port (and better control of taxes and fees imposed on commerce!). So for most of Portugal’s history, the Algarve was a backwater, too far away from everything, and surviving on its own thanks to fishing and agriculture.

All this changed in the 1960s. The British, who always enjoyed a close relationship with the Portuguese (although often one-sided) since they lent support for the Christian Reconquest in the mid-12th century, now found this remote location, away from everything, with its lovely beaches and warm climate all year round, and no tradition of tourism whatsoever. Perhaps to the surprise of the inhabitants, they started to settle there with their villas for the vacations. In those days, there was literally nothing — fisherman villages, tiny cities which didn’t even have supermarkets, no attractions except for cultural heritage, bad roads which took all day to travel from Lisbon, and just one very old train line which was hardly planned to manage the extra passenger load during the vacations. There were even few restaurants, absolutely no bars, clubs or discos.

The British soon started building not only villas, but even small resorts, with willing town halls eager to get hold of some taxes. One of these resorts even hoisted the Union Jack, which — during the times of the Portuguese dictatorship! — was not seen as a bright move. Still, the relatively mild authorities, the wonderful weather, the unblemished landscape, the cheap prices of everything, and the simple but delicious food captured the attention of the Brits. They soon started to “colonize” most of the Algarve, bringing in their own pubs, their scuba diving schools, and even some lawyers to aid prospective buyers to celebrate building contracts and property sales. The natives saw all that with mild curiosity. Remember, these were the days before rampant hooliganism and violence in Britain, and, as said, the Brits always enjoyed a good reputation throughout Portugal. They have always been very well established in Oporto (owning, at the time, most of the Port Wine brands) and Lisbon, where they have been merchants for 6 or 7 centuries. There are still family names of “Lancastre” and “Burmeister”, corruptions of ancient English names, from families established here centuries ago. But even in our modern times, the British immigrants are among the largest group living in Portugal. They’re closely-knit, very easy-going, mild and peaceful, and quite well tolerated. The Algarve was a novel destination for them, of course, and the idea of establishing tourism there was quite odd (compared to other touristic spots, like Estoril or the Island of Madeira, which have British residents since the mid-1800s and a continuous stream of tourists since then), but they got well along with the locals.

Who, of course, didn’t mind a bit extra cash, in what used to be Portugal’s poorest region. Soon the locals found out that the British loved the simple cuisine, and started building restaurants on their own, which, in turn, compelled the fishing industry, as well as the agricultural produce away from the coast, to increase to sustain the growing demand. In 1965, Faro, Algarve’s capital, got an international airport, since slowly the increased traffic from tourists could certainly support it. Today, even though Faro has little more than 60,000 permanent inhabitants (a tenth of the people living inside Lisbon city; sixty times less than the Greater Lisbon area!), the airport gets over 5.5 million passengers annually (besides the many tourists which prefer to fly to Lisbon and take a bus, a train, or rent a car — and the many who simply drive there coming from elsewhere).

The massive influx of tourism pretty much changed everything, dramatically so. Besides the British, Germans and Dutch are among the main group of tourists in the Algarve, and it became even a major vacation destination for the rest of the Portuguese. To accomodate all those people, whole neighbourhoods were created from scratch — with the many hotels and resorts popping up accordingly — but it was mostly unplanned and chaotic. Greed made the town halls pretty much accept any project, so long as it brought in the much-desired money. By the mid-1980s, which I remember quite well, everything seemed to be falling apart and bursting at the seams. Water and power, designed for a small population with little or no industry, now had to deal with the insane amount of temporary residents during the summer — and hotels and golf courses required everything and much more. The old road system had traffic jams of perhaps 50 km for hours and hours, which, taking into account that the Algarve was about 300 km away from Lisbon, it was very messy — we’re talking about one-lane roads with poor pavements across the hottest and driest plains of the Alentejo, with few villages spread around. The single-track train line was not even electrified and could only handle a small amount of traffic; a trip to the Algarve from Lisbon required taking a boat first (to cross the Tagus) and slow progress and a change of trains, with lots of stops as trains waited on the single-track line for a crossing. By car or by train, a voyage would last perhaps 8 hours — coming finally to busy conglomerates of high-rising towers covering the beach, with brownouts and failing water supply. There was only one main road crossing the Algarve from east to west, and it was permanently congested, from early morning to late night, as locals and tourists struggled to move between towns. And while the first supermarkets started to appear by the mid-1980s, the distribution of food and supplies to them would often be insufficient. Even though most people in the 1980s could afford to stay a whole month in the Algarve, for shorter stays it could mean facing a shortage of pretty much everything. And still people continued to come.

The locals are quite “creative” in the way they handle business, and a lot of tourist traps — from restaurants to fake souvenirs — quickly started to appear pretty much everywhere. Prices rose to crazy levels, compared to the rest of the country, because most people in the Algarve would only need to work for three months, during the summer, and pretty much wait 9 months until the next batch of tourists would come in. That meant squeezing tourists dry as quickly as possible; saving as much money as they could; investing in more restaurants, more rooms, more little shops, and so forth. While this mimicked pretty much what happened all over the world in places which suddenly became tourist attractions, what was more noticeable in the Algarve was the utter lack of planning and the complete chaos of the development.

Still more people came, and enjoyed everything.

Not all locations in the Algarve suffered the same way. By a stroke of luck, my own parents favoured a town in the west of the Algarve, Lagos, which escaped the worst nightmares, since it’s rather windy compared to the central and eastern destinations, and, as such, didn’t manage to attract tourists in search of hot and dry weather. There, for a while at least, some urban planning was possible, development was at a steadier pace, and the infrastructure managed to grow a bit better. Not perfectly so, of course, since much of the infrastructure is shared. For instance, the power system would also have shortages, as the central areas of the Algarve would pull much more power due to higher demand, and leave the less important towns in the dark — and without water, too, since the water pumps need power to operate as well. If the roads towards the centre of the Algarve were already congested, then the people wishing to go further on would even have longer waiting hours. I remember in the late 1970s that there was no bank in Lagos; my parents had to drive to the neighbouring town, Portimão, which is about 20 km away, to get some cash. This would take them all morning.

The flip side to that chaos is that it did, indeed, bring in the much-needed money, and today, the Algarve has the third largest per capita income in Portugal, next to Lisbon and the Island of Madeira. With that money, some planning could go ahead, and this finally solved pretty much the major issues. Nowadays, the distance from Lisbon to the Algarve was shortened by about 50 km, thanks to a straight highway which goes directly to the centre of the Algarve, and you can do the journey in 2 1/2 hours without breaking any speed limits. New bridges and re-pavement of the old roads means a lot more alternatives to cross the still desert Alentejo; the train service was completely refurbished in the 1990s with higher-speed trains which take pretty much the same time to do the whole trip, and now they cross the Tagus river on a bridge. On the rare occasions that I go to the Algarve on business, I prefer to take the train — it’s much cheaper, far more comfortable, and there are a dozen trains per day. There are no more water or power failures; many new roads and highways were built to connect all cities in the Algarve with good connections. In fact, these days, spending your time in the Algarve means not staying at the same spot. Rather, people usually follow a routine of driving around most of the cities just to find things they like to do — the tourism offices are very well coordinated and you get to know what’s happening all over the Algarve. The airport, which is located in the middle of the Algarve in Faro, is, at most, about an hour’s distance of travel to any location — which also means that driving over to the next city takes little time. Obviously this is less true during the summer — but still, traffic jams on the highways are unheard of. Parking places are a problem, though!

Decent urban planning tried very hard to revert the effects of the late 1970s and 1980s, and to a certain degree of success. You still get whole neighbourhoods of the most ugly possible buildings, since they are there to stay, but at least now they’re surrounded by gardens, golf clubs, well-paved streets, and good access to all kinds of facilities, from restaurants to convenience stores, to clinics, hospitals and pet grooming shops Unlike Spain, where every town is teeming with activity — nightclubs, bars, and all kinds of tourist attractions — the Algarve tends to clump these together in certain spots (except for restaurants, which are everywhere), but since it’s so easy to travel among these places now, it makes little difference. And for the ones desiring a more sedate kind of vacation, slightly further away from the busiest towns you get golf clubs, luxury villas, and VIP resorts, in the middle of the countryside — but with easy access to everything else. And, of course, there is still the mountain ridge — a completely different landscape which has nothing to do with the sunny beaches, and which is practically unblemished and untouched by rampant tourism. And for the ones who enjoy cultural tourism, most of the cities still have large historical centres, like Tavira, which is a monumental city full of 17th and 18th century palaces and churches.

Personally, I would flatten whole neighbourhoods and rebuild them from scratch, since they’re an eyesore and a blot in the landscape It’s too late for that now. However, there is a completely new town, Vilamoura, which grew out of nothing, and was planned as a whole town from scratch in the 1990s. It’s a luxury destination, and, even though it lacks the taste of antiquity from the old towns with their medieval and Muslim street layouts — even today, there is still a lingering taste of the bazaar-like culture so popular in the North African Muslim countries, even though stone-and-mortar shops have replaced tents and makeshift places of commerce — Vilamoura is a pretty good example of how good urban planning can be implemented, provided money is not an issue and there are no pre-existing ugly buildings to deal with. Others, however, might prefer the simple charm of old fishermen villages and their lack of sophistication; in fact, for over 30 years, that’s where my parents would prefer to spend their vacations.

So this should give you a good picture of what was ahead for me. I will just add something that a CD friend pointed out to me, and which my own wife also noticed. The Algarve, even off-season, is always a very mixed environment. A third of the locals are obviously Portuguese; but the remaining come from all over the place, mostly from Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany. As a 1.78m tall crossdresser with reddish hair, I don’t look so much out of place — half of my genes are German anyway. Locals like foreigners, because foreigners mean commerce. Even though I wasn’t very aware of that before my trip, it soon became apparent that most people doing business care little about who you are or what you do. So long as you’re there to fill their pockets, and you’re not actually disturbing the peace, they will accept you. And they are used, for over a generation at least, to deal with all kinds of freaks — and don’t mind them in the least.

Arrival — Day One

To put things into context, it’s better to start with a map:

One of the beaches in Albufeira (source: Wikipedia). This is in summertime, of course

My “home location” for the vacations was in Albufeira, at a nice, 3-star apartment hotel, the Pateo Village. This was actually rather lucky: for my wife, it meant having a kitchenette, so we could save on eating costs by cooking at the apartment. For me, it meant free access to the outside — we were at the ground floor, which opened to a pavement leading to the parking lot. This was a low-cost apartment hotel: the whole staff consisted of one person at the reception desk (they seemed to have three persons doing 24-hour shifts and rotate every day) and a cleaning team (probably outsourced). While the reception was on a good location to spot who would walk the short side-street (closed to car traffic) and go in and out the 3-floor apartment blocks, it didn’t force anyone to actually go through the reception, but just pass in front of it from the outside. Perfect!

Actually, to be honest, on the first day I did explain to the boy at the reception that I liked to wear women’s clothing and that he shouldn’t be startled if he saw someone he didn’t know walking around — I promised to be discreet and not to attract undue attention. His reaction was an indication of what would be ahead: he didn’t mind in the least. Note that this isn’t a LGBT-friendly hotel. I didn’t even get a snarky comment or a joke, not even a surprised look. Rather, he just said, in a very professional way, that it was “absolutely all right”, there would be no problem at all, and that I should be fine doing whatever I pleased. This startled me a bit — clearly I wasn’t the first crossdresser to use that hotel, or, if I was, they were well aware of crossdressing (probably exchanging comments with colleagues on other hotels or even — who knows? — from informtion spread by the Tourism Board). Whatever the reason, there was no surprise, no limitations, no comments, nothing. I was quite pleased!

Unfortunately he didn’t pass the message along to the other employees (even though I asked him to do that), which created a few embarassing moments. Or perhaps he did. But I’m anticipating the rest of the story.

We had arrived at around 6 PM, and we still needed to buy some food at a supermarket, so, even though I was tired from the voyage — it wasn’t that long, but I get always tired when driving — I just started to dress at 8 PM or so.

It was a Saturday — it’s been quite a long, long time since I last managed to dress on a Saturday! — and, even though we were at the lowest possible season, surely things must be open. The locals, after all, have to enjoy themselves somewhere. In my teens, Albufeira was famous for its nightlife, so I was wondering what I could find. So I grabbed the location for a LGBT-friendly bar from the ‘net and was wondering if I could find it (and if it was open).

Unlike what happens at my place at home, my wife was quite willing to “let me go” much, much earlier — I believe it was not even 1 AM yet. Deprived of her gaming computer (which is a desktop computer!), she was left with some books (and on Sunday she started to watch TV instead), and, to my astonishment, she didn’t raise any complains for going out “so soon”. I guess that the main reason is really that nobody knows us here, and I told her that I had warned the reception guy. Who, as it turned out, didn’t even watch me walking out of our building and pass in front of the reception.

Then I drove down to the old city centre. Unfortunately, pretty much everything was closed. I drove around – traffic is insanely complex, in those cities with narrow roads and ancient medieval/Muslim grids — but couldn’t find anything open. Even though I parked a bit away from the centre (which is closed to pedestrian traffic only), and walked a bit, there were only suspicious characters around. Now this came to me as a surprise: even though it was not very late (for a Saturday night!), there were few people around, and all of them looked like ex-cons or Mafia operatives.

All males, too — there were no women around. And they ganged in groups. Scary! Mind you, I only know the Algarve from my summer vacations in the youth, and even though I’ve spent a few nights there not so many years ago (yes, even doing some crossdressing — twice, if I remember correctly, on a neighbouring town which I visited on Day Three), I had a completely different idea of the locals. The Algarve has a good reputation as a relatively peaceful area with little criminality. Mind you, just because someone looks like they have raped and murdered a victim across the corner and is wiping their blood-dirty hands on their jeans, it doesn’t mean that they are criminals

But that was the strange impression I got — that after midnight, only the rowdy and rough elements of society prowl around, ganging together and looking for mischief. This made me reflect a lot during the next few days, but at that moment, all I thought was that this was not exactly what I had in mind!

So my next step was to drive around the neighbouring beaches and localities. I recollected from memory a few spots — all by the beach — where I was sure there had to be some nightlife. Even though Albufeira is not a huge city, it’s dead centre in the middle of the Algarve and attracts a lot of tourists — they surely have to go somewhere. And, in fact, they did — the clubs, bars, and entertainment spots moved to the adjoining beach, Praia da Oura, completely filling a street renamed by the British residents as “The Strip”. And here I found gazillions of people!

“The Strip” at Oura, by night (source: Wikipedia). Not one of my pictures. But it looked pretty much like this on Saturday night!

So many, in fact, that parking was impossible, and this was pretty much the opposite of what I wanted. Too busy! Too much exposure! I just enjoyed driving very, very slowly and being watched — while I was safely inside the car. But clearly this was more like it — a relatively public, safe area, with “normal” people, half of them locals and the other half tourists, and people from all ages. I’d certainly not look outrageous out of place there!

However, of course, I had no idea if these places would enjoy crossdressers (on the following day I looked up a LGBT-friendly spot at “The Strip”, but it was so tiny that I never managed to locate it). So I drove on around the neighbourhood — outside “The Strip” there are plenty of places around, which are far more peaceful — and found a potential café with an outside esplanade which looked “safe” enough, drove a bit more until I found a U-turn, and parked nearby. Just my luck: on the parking lot there was a pesky dog who was barking at everyone and calling undue attention. And, worse, the parking lot was in front of a hotel, with people coming in and out all the time! Again, this was too much exposure for me.

So I gave up — I wasn’t feeling too confident by then — and just continued to drive around. It was a very foggy night, but in spite of that, I managed to visit a lot of neighbouring villages, in search of potential locations for another day.

At the end I drove back to a viewpoint near the hotel; there really was lots of fog, so I walked around, had a cigarette, and went back to the apartment.

My wife was still awake, she made no snarky comments, and was getting ready for going to bed. I still lingered around for a bit and had some time to do a short video, which worked rather well, considering that I just had my laptop with the terrible webcam. But the lighting in the apartment is far better than what we have at home, so the result was not too bad, even considering that the upwards angle isn’t flattering:

Then I proceeded to undress, but I didn’t do it fully — I kept my nails painted (I had them grown very long!) and the breastforms glued on, as well as all my tape tricks for the extra cleavage and so on. My point is that this would give me an extra half-an-hour of sleep and set the stage for a special request to my wife.

Day Two

The special request was simple: I wanted to go out fully dressed in bright sunlight. Since we had gone shopping for food already, the next days would be mostly about sightseeing. My wife, if you recall, suffers from several chronic diseases, including fibromyalgia, meaning that she can’t walk around for long — two hours is pretty much her limit, leaving her absolutely tired and hurting all over. So I thought that just because of those two hours it would be pointless to insist on wearing male clothes; I could crossdress the whole day. We would not even be seen much, and always on different places anyway. This was good, sound logic, but my wife didn’t agree with me. Her argument was quite solid: she’s the kind of person who hates to draw attention. This is the main reason why, although at some point in the past she insisted otherwise, she doesn’t want to go out with me. As she so well pointed out, a redhead over 1.80m tall (on heels) attracts attention; her own words were: “you’re BIG everywhere!” So, no matter what I do, or what I wear, I will still draw attention; and, of course, on a second look, I immediately get “read” as a crossdresser — which will obviously draw even more attention. And that’s what my wife wants to avoid at all costs. Putting it into a different perspective: it’s not because of me as a crossdresser; it’s because of her who wants to go unnoticed and in peace.

Well, I can understand and respect that. So, well, I condescendingly agreed to stick to crossdress by night, and do some sightseeing with her by day. By sheer luck I did pack two male tops, a pair of male jeans, and a pair of male shoes in our luggage — because, in truth, I was not expecting to wear anything male in this trip. But I thought that at least on the long drive southwards and back, to eliminate any potential troubles (e.g. police stopping me), I ought to be in male attire, thus I had some male clothes with me.

Vilamoura is a planned city, it looks lovely, even by night! (source: Devaneios de Vida blog)

Anyway, Sunday was St. Paddy’s Day, and I forgot to mention that there i

s a rather largish Irish community living in the Algarve as well. So, even though Monday would be a working day, I was expecting many pubs to be open, full of crazy Irish celebrating their favourite saint, and the many locals who join them in the boozing

Because of that, I picked for my location Vilamoura. As said, this is rather a fancy place, so I was hoping to get a less rowdy crowd, while still finding open pubs and bars. Vilamoura also has a Casino, which often means that bars are open until 3 AM, for the visitors who want a quick snack after losing all their money and not being able to afford it inside the casino — just like near my place at home.

Vilamoura is not too far away, and the roads were completely empty. When I spotted my first open bar, I parked nearby, and took a picture at the parking lot. Time to go out and walk a bit in the chilly night!

I have to say, I walked quite a lot, and almost bumped into two guys in a garden. By then I had to change my mind regarding the kind of people that were around. At first, all I could see was the same kind of rowdy, dangerous-looking types that I had seen in Albufeira, walking in twos and threes and looking mean and tough. Hm. I wasn’t being very lucky, or perhaps I was developing the habit of being afraid of everybody! So, at the end, I just walked in my heeled boots in front of that bar — with lots of people, they all saw me outside — but didn’t walk in. I passed a relatively calm restaurant with elderly tourists inside, some of them raising their eyes in my direction, but not really taking notice of a tall redhead walking around.

In fact, close by, I watched a guy peeing on a wall, which is rather unusual in Portugal, much less in a fancy town in the Algarve. Well, clearly people were drinking too much, and that meant they would be more likely to take a fancy to a strange-looking guy in women’s clothes, so perhaps my strategy hadn’t be very clever. Who wants to be around mean-looking drunkards wanting to have some fun? Not me!

So I drove on to a parking lot near the church — I had spotted what seemed to be a disco nearby, and this time, the kind of people who were on the street seemed much more “normal” to me. There were even a few women in small groups. I walked a lot in that neighbourhood but couldn’t exactly figure out where the disco’s entrance was. And I was getting reluctant to be so far away from the relative safety of the car, which was parked in an area without a single person in sight. So, once more, I took fright — again — and just returned. By chance I saw another group of people walking around, so clearly this spot was not so deserted as I thought, but still too far away from everything to make me comfortable about walking alone on the streets.

By then, it was clear that I was facing a dilemma. I didn’t feel enough confidence in the middle of huge crowds of party-going people, where there is safety in numbers – I guess I’m not ready for that yet. Small groups of people seem to be better, but not the kind of groups that seem to have come out of the nearest prison. Curiously, most of those types I saw a round were all tall, bulky, well-muscled, and nasty-looking. Maybe these are the only people who feel safe to walk around in the Algarve during the night? Where were the normal-looking youths, the women, the skinny types, the cool, easy-going guys? Apparently, they stay at their homes and hotels and sleep. And, finally, the total absence of anyone around is frightening — specially if you’re aware that only the mobsters seem to walk around, and who knows who is lurking near the next corner? During all these nights, I never saw a policeman on duty…

So I drove back, a bit disappointed, but still happy to be able to drive and walk around. Gas was running low, and I was also short on cigarettes, so I decided to be bold and drive to the next gas station. Now, if you follow my blog, you know I have used gas stations before — many are automated during the night, so there is no need to interact with anyone, and I usually pick the ones without anybody around. But this time it was different: to buy cigarettes I would need to talk to someone. Yay! My first physical interaction with a fellow human being while crossdressed! (well, except for my wife and meeting Patrícia Coelho, of course)

Ironically, the gas station I picked had a problem with their connection and the money network was down, but I had enough cash to be still able to buy cigarettes. Also ironically, the debit card I have is from my mother, who, as said, “sponsored” the trip, so it has a female name on it, which should be interesting to see if it would raise any comment from the attendant. It was actually fun! Of course I’m sure that I don’t pass. Even though, thanks to some amateur vocal training, I can disguise my very low male voice to a degree, it’s far from “passable” — and no, I don’t need to go into a falsetto, which is way more noticeable. It’s just a trick of letting your voice come from your head and nose instead of from your chest; it takes some training, and it will sound metallic, but it will definitely sound different — not quite male and never quite female, but something in-between, like a middle-aged housewife who is on 2 packs a day. Which, well, is not really much different of what I look like

Even though it was quite clear that the guy at the station immediately knew who (or what) I was, he didn’t made any comments. In fact, he was helpful and chatty, explaining that the money network was down since midnight (it was 2:30 AM by then), and even though I was willing to give it a try twice, it didn’t work. So I just bought the cigarettes. No comments whatsoever, no grinning, just a serious business transaction.

It was really, really a great experience! It just reinforces my idea that people who are doing business don’t care about how their customers look like. They are just friendly and happy you’re willing to spend some money. Maybe this guy had a nice story to relate to his wife when he returned home — or maybe there are so many freaks in the Algarve that he has long since stopped to bother. He didn’t even goggle my awesome cleavage, that’s how professional he was.

Albufeira Marina by day. Notice the crazy architecture. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

When returning, instead to driving directly to the hotel, I decided to go a few extra kilometres to take a look at the Albufeira Marina. This is a relatively new marina, which features post-modern architecture from a famous Portuguese architect, known for his pop-art inspired buildings, which I personally find deplorable — but, alas, art is art. My point is that marinas tend to have bars open by night, and, at that hour, they might be quiet enough.

It was too quiet.

Access to the marina is a bit weird. The parking lot is some 10 metres above sea level; so you have to take one of the many stairways down to the bar and restaurant area. This is scary. The stairways are very high and quite narrow; while they’re well lighted, they don’t offer good visibility and seem to be rather constrained — you don’t feel safe. Specially when there was nobody around. I still walked down one of them, verified that none of the bars and restaurants were open, and that everything was silent, and then quickly returned to my car. The only vehicle in sight was the garbage truck. Definitely this was another dead end in my plans of finding a safe place to have a drink while crossdressed…

So I drove back and parked on the hotel’s parking lot, and here I had an unexpected surprise. This night, there was a different shift, and a different attendant, who came out to see who had just arrived. Clearly he hadn’t talked to his colleague. So he came out to meet this unexpected visitor with some curiosity. Well, I nonchalantly gave him a bright smile and wished him a good night (to which he responded in kind) and walked back to our apartment. Whew!

My wife was still up and talkative, so I had no opportunity to take any pictures or do any videos. I just went to bed after undressing.

Day Three

After a good night’s sleep and some reflection, I figured out that I had to re-evaluate my choices when going out. The first thing I suddenly realized is that, even in spite of my born gender, and my relative height and size, the truth is, I was fearing lone strangers by night — while dressed as a woman — because, well, women, in general, fear those strangers as well. And one thing is a woman that might become a target of some rude guys just wanting to have some fun, but not having any real ill intentions beyond some flirting. The other thing is that same guy hitting me instead, suddenly realizing that they’ve picked the wrong kind of woman, and becoming violent and very angry for the delusion. So, well, this told a lot about myself: I’m not as bold as I thought I was, and walking around in complete isolation was something that made me seriously uncomfortable. On the flip side of the coin, I still don’t feel comfortable being around a lot of people. The ideal situation seems to be something in-between. I have proved to myself that I have no issues talking to gas attendants or hotel employees or whoever else, so long as I don’t feel threatened. I have some qualms in entering a straight-only bar who might take issue at having a “strange” customer there, who might make other customers leave; but I have no problem in entering a shoe shop for women and looking for shoes big enough for me, for example. So I gave this some thought, and I decided that the best, for now, was to go to a LGBT-friendly bar.

After a few searches, I decided to go to Lagos, a 45 km ride away. Now I’m quite familiar with Lagos; for over three decades, my parents took me to spend there at least 4 weeks per year with them — in some years, over six weeks. It’s a very quiet town, and one that took more time to attract the massive tourism more typical of central and eastern Algarve, since the west is more windy and the sea water ice cold, due to the stronger Atlantic influence (the East is much more influenced by the hot Mediterranean waters). As said, I also occasionally spent some vacations there on my own, and even did some crossdressing there, well over 15 years ago, but never dared to leave the hotel. There is a relatively small nightlife area, most of it quite well-known to me. I know most of the streets and places, at least on the older parts of the town, which would add to my sense of security. And if most of the Algarve is relatively criminal-free, Lagos is even more so. All good reasons to drive over there, even if it meant a longer trip — taking about an hour — and a shorter time to enjoy myself. And, yes, there seemed to be a LGBT-friendly bar there, with a rather sophisticated environment, which perfectly matched my own style and taste of bars — more in the line of a quaint English club by the seaside, instead of a loud nightclub. So I decided to give it a go.

When stepping out around midnight, the same hotel attendant from the last night came out to look at me, but this time, I ignored him. I just let him think whatever he wanted. If he talked to his colleagues, they would tell them about me; I wasn’t worried.

Lagos by night. Source: jotamyg

Since on the night before I didn’t manage to refuel (because of the money network issues), this time I had to stop at gas station. This time I was even more confident. I had to wait, though, the attendant seemed either to be asleep or busy at the toilet. I tapped on glass several times and patiently waited. He eventually came out of his hiding place, smiled at me, probably thinking first that I was a female customer, but then realizing his mistake. Still, he was all professionalism, even though it was quite clear that he was enjoying himself — but did not betray himself at any moment. All went well, very professional. I enjoyed that.

Now from the map location for the bar, I had a pretty good idea where the bar was, so I sort of semi-automatically drove through the usual streets. You know how it is when you know a city well; you remember all the places to turn left and right and don’t even think twice about it. There was a catch, though, something I wasn’t aware of. Apparently, the town hall decided to turn the whole of the old city centre into a pedestrian area, with car access only to residents. A good move, of course, but it meant walking quite a lot.And I then noticed that I was at the wrong spot. Lagos has a large part of the old medieval stone wall still standing, and the streets go through some of the old gates. I was at the wrong gate, just outside of it, where a parking lot had always existed. I just realized that when walking out of that parking lot and consulting a huge map posted there; I should have taken a different road and picked the southwards gate instead. Well, it would be a long walk, but not terribly long, and I might have done that, if, by coincidence, a lone drunkard with the physics of a bodybuilder hadn’t suddenly appeared and took a huge interest in me. Fear grabbed me, and so I returned to the car, thinking that I might attempt to go to the other gate, which would be much closer to the bar. And that other gate had an even larger parking lot and was closer to the centre, so probably there might be a bit more people around.

Unfortunately, Lagos had grown and improved their city facilities since the last time I was there, three years ago. What used to be a surface-parking parking lot just outside the gate was now turned into a commercial, underground parking lot, with a huge garden planted on top of it. Nice, of course, but the parking lot was closed. Ugh. This meant parking a whole street away from the gate, and walking all the way down. And that was an absolutely empty street with bad lighting. Worse than that: there was one rowdy bar with two guys there, who immediately came out to watch me as soon as they heard my heeled boots hitting the cobblestones on the pavement. I still considered my choices: it would be a 5-minute walk on a deserted street with those guys behind me, and who knew what happened next until I found the bar? After all, the bar could be closed; it was a Monday. And it meant walking back all again, all alone, through all these empty streets. Once more, I chickened out, and decided to turn around and give up on Lagos.

To make matters worse, on the return trip, I took a wrong turn, and lost my way, drove in circles through completely empty neighbourhoods of tourist villas. All of them completely unknown to me: they are relatively new neighbourhoods, built relatively recently, and without any street signs whatsoever. Gosh, I was getting quite frustrated! And this on a town I was supposed to know quite well! It was quite ironic. Even if I wished, there was absolutely nobody on the streets that I could ask for directions. Lagos is definitely a dead town in mid-winter, outside the season, even though it wasn’t so late yet.

Eventually, I found my way, and decided to take the national road to Portimão, which is the next town on the road back. Portimão is the third largest city in the Algarve, and, even though it’s on the less touristic Western Algarve, I imagined that it had enough of a nightlife — it certainly does during the summer. On an impulse drove on to Praia da Rocha, which is pretty much in the outskirts of Portimão, and which used to be one of the loveliest beaches in the Algarve, until rampant urbanism completely destroyed its exquisite beauty. Still, with those buildings came one strip of bars, discos, and nightclubs, so I thought it was a safe bet.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. There were very few people around, everything was closed, and I just found a dozen of teens in front of what seemed to be a bar just closed. Bummer! It was getting late, and I still had a long drive back, so I just parked at a round plaza, walked a bit, and took a picture.

It started to rain. There was nobody at the hotel looking me up, and my wife was still awake, but she soon went to sleep, so I had some time to do another video:

Day Four

Final day! A bit frustrated about the last day, I looked for another LGBT-friendly bar in Faro — which is nearer to Albufeira than Lagos, and, Faro being the capital, there was a good chance it was open. Unlike the rest of the Algarve, Faro is not really a tourist city. While it’s very quaint in its own way — a nice province capital — it’s the place where you have all the services, the banks, and the commerce. Obviously there are plenty of hotels, and a few nearby beaches, but even during the summer, the resident population is what supports the city, not necessarily the commerce. While I had just been once or twice in Faro around the nightlife areas — there are two, inside the castle walls, and on the old town centre — not being so keen about nightlife overall, they were not that familiar to me. And even though I have been in Faro several times on business trips, I cannot say it’s a city I’m well acquainted with. Certainly not as much as Lagos for sure. Still, I would say it’s the second city in the Algarve that I’m more familiar with; at least its traffic around the city grid doesn’t hold many surprises to me. So I was a bit more optimistic.

This time, once more, I was watched very closely by the hotel employee assigned to the night shift when leaving the apartment — this time, a woman, who I had not met before. But she didn’t say anything, she just came out to watch me enter my car and drive away (On the next — and last — day I made sure I thanked her for the stay, and I was not sure if she figured out that I was the “woman” she saw the night before or not. Perhaps she had already talked with her colleague. Or perhaps she didn’t. She was definitely quite professional saying good-bye.).

Reaching Faro, I looked for the first available gas station which had the lights turned on, but found out that it was closed Oh well, I still had enough gas to do the trip back if there was a need. But at this time, I wasn’t too worried about gas stations any more.

Clearly not my best shot, specially from that angle. But it’s hard to take a picture with my old phone’s camera. At least I got a Buddha on the picture as well, which must be auspicious somehow!

It was relatively easy to find the bar — the Heaven Club. I drove around in search of a place to park; unlike the other cities I’ve been during all these nights (except for Oura), there was a decent amount of people around, looking for the local nightlife, even on a Tuesday. And at least they looked far more “normal” — women would be walking on the street, even by themselves, which was definitely a good sign.

After half an hour, I luckily found a parking spot just across the bar. No need for walking around half-empty streets with lurking criminals! (Not that I saw any, of course). I just stepped out of the car, walked across the narrow street, and entered the place.

The bar was open, but I was the only customer! Well, it’s a tiny place. Not very fancy, except that their idea of “heaven” is not a Christian heaven, which definitely would be lacking in LGBT people. Instead, they opted for a design in black and silver with Buddhist statues on the niches on the wall. Definitely an auspicious sign. And, curiously enough, it’s being run by a couple. Well, or at least they looked like a couple: the bar attendant and a gorgeous blonde who just sat at one of the tables, both having fun on Facebook on their laptops. Things definitely changed quite a lot since I used to go out to bars with my friends!

I asked if there were any shows tonight, and they politely explained that they only have shows from Thursday to Saturday. Just my luck! I should have planned my night travels differently, and start with Faro first. But obviously I was quite welcome to a drink. At least it was clear that here they had absolutely no problems with transgendered people; you can see the pics from their parties, they have all kinds of people coming there. In a sense, they treated me so “normally” that it was a bit confusing. Maybe all LGBT bars are like that — they make you feel comfortable, no matter how you look like. I suspected that the couple was exchanging some messages on Facebook about me (the blonde bombshell was certainly giggling), but, on reflection, it’s hardly probable — this was a LGBT bar with regular shows, thrice per week. They were certainly more than familiar with crossdressers.

The truth is, there was not much to do, except to play around on my own smartphone, have a drink, and smoke a few cigarettes. I’m not a dancing person (ironically I spent years learning ballroom dancing, though) and it would feel weird to be the only person dancing, anyway. This was more a nightclub and not really a bar, so they didn’t offer to make small talk, even though the bar attendant was extremely polite all the time. Some of you, used to British pubs, might have expected bar attendants to at least try to engage in conversation, specially if you’re the only customer. Portuguese are usually polite but reserved to strangers, and keep them in peace.

After an hour or so, I just went to the toilet, retouched my hair, and decided to go back. If I ever get another opportunity to visit Faro crossdressed, I know where to go — this is a most welcome place for the likes of us. And while it’s very small, it seems to pack a crowd during the show days. I certainly hope to be able to be able to visit it one day when there is a show going on.

On the return back, I hit another gas station — but this time, it was an automatic one, so there was no need to interact with any human. Oh well. I was getting used to having fun doing that

At the end, I came back relatively early, so I drove around The Strip in Oura again. This night, being the middle of the week, there were much fewer people than on Saturday, and half the establishments were closed. I toyed with the idea of having a drink on one of them, but, on second thoughts, there was a long trip back ahead of me on the next day, and it would be better to get a bit more sleep instead.

I got “seen” by the female hotel attendant again, but, again, she didn’t raise any questions, just watched me go by. And that was all.

Needless to say, these were my best vacations ever

And of course, I have still a lot to think about. But this post is getting waaaay too long for that. Maybe I’ll share a bit more about what I’ve learned about myself and the whole experience. But that will have to wait until the next post!

Until then, cheers to you all!

9:30 AM. Time to take a bath. I’m still shaved smooth over most of the body (except for the face) and the toenails have been painted a dark crimson for the past two weeks. This means lots of time saved. On the other hand, the wig needed to be washed thoroughly. Wifey gets immediately into a bad mood if she sees me washing the wig (it means that I’m going to crossdress “soon”) so I ought to do it while she’s asleep; then it becomes a fait accompli.

Now I have tried pretty much every trick in the trade regarding washing wigs, and I’m still unsure of what the “best” method is. Apparently there is a growing faction that says that the current generation of synthetic fibre is better washed in “tepid” water instead of “cold” water. Well, the wisdom of what constitutes “tepid” water differs. “Cold” water is apparently anything that comes out of the tap, i.e. slightly below room temperature (another source of big discussion). “Hot” water is not boiling, but hot enough to burn you fingers. “Tepid” seems to be somewhere in-between. A good working definition is “around body temperature”.

Well, that’s the temperature I usually set my shower to. So the last few times I washed my wigs, I tended to do it in the shower cabin, because I know that the temperature will be constant that way. This is certainly the “right” temperature for shampoos and conditioners to work best (as opposed to cold water). And, in the past, those wigs didn’t get ruined, rather the contrary, they became shiny as new after the wash. So I decided to do it again, but with a twist: I’d shower wearing the wig

Actually, by recommendation of my hairdresser (who styles and usually also washes the wigs), I’m not using a “special” shampoo for wigs, but a normal shampoo for extra-dry and brittle hair (because that’s what a synthetic fibre will “look” like, from a chemical point of view) from a good brand (no “white label” shampoo for my wigs, thank you very much! The wigs are too expensive to be ruined by a cheap shampoo…), and that means that it’s safe for human consumption This new wig of mine also adheres quite well to my scalp — lots of combs inside the cap and a very good fit — so I gave it a try.

It was great fun, let me tell you It’s a wonderful feeling to have all that wet hair on your shoulders and back. It was a completely novel experience for me, who always wore my natural hair relatively short. And, of course, there were new tricks to learn on how to properly rinse all that vast mass of hair. Fortunately, I had observed my wife when she washes her own hair (which is not that long, just slightly below the shoulders, but long enough to require some tricks). This helped a lot

In spite of everything, I actually found it easier than my usual ways of washing wigs. Following the recommendations on many websites, I mostly use two methods. The first is to “soak” the wig in a tin full of water (cold or tepid, depending on what article you’re reading), drop an amount of shampoo into it, and just wait half an hour or so until the wig absorbs the shampoo. You wiggle the wig inside the water — not twist it or brush it, or it might lose the styling — just to activate the shampoo. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to get the shampoo off the wig, which means filling a the tin with clear water, soak the wig into it, let it release the shampoo as much as possible, throw the water out, fill it again, repeat… and repeat, repeat, repeat. After three or four times the wig should be clean of shampoo. Then you do the whole procedure again for the conditioner — but the trouble is, as anyone knows, the conditioner is much, much harder to get out of the wig! I’ve counted at least a dozen tins full of water just to get the conditioner off, and I was still not entirely satisfied.

Too much time. And too much water spent. Of course, you can recycle it, but my toilet doesn’t take so much water, and, living in a tiny flat, I have no other way to recycle the water…

The other technique is to use the shower. First, brush the wig. Then place it on a stand inside the shower cabin/bath tub, and apply the shampoo like you would do it with your real hair. Remember to let your fingers go through the hair, travelling down towards the tips, so that the shampoo is evenly spread (this process will also loosen up the tangled hair a bit, if the brushing was not enough). Then it’s easy: just shower it, until all traces of shampoo are gone, and use your fingers, doing the same movement from the top to the tips, so that the fibres do not get tangled. Apply the conditioner and do it again. Sure, you’ll need more water to get the conditioner off, but it’s far, far easier than using the first method. It just takes a few minutes!

In both cases, the final step is to put the wig, straightened down (do not curl it into a ball or something!), inside a towel, and pat it dry. Do not rub it (like you might do on your own natural hair!), just pat it, that’s all. Fibre dries relatively well that way! Then place the wig on the stand again and let it dry naturally. You can use a hair blower if and only if it has a setting to blow cold air — never use hot air (unless you’re a professional stylist and know what you’re doing; even so, my own hairdresser never uses hot air on my wigs, and if she doesn’t, you shouldn’t, either).

The disadvantage of method #2 is that you will have to do most of the work either inside the bath or cabin, or, well, bend over in order to do it (which will not be good for your spine!).

Now I have a third technique: wear your wig while taking a shower. So much easier! And as a bonus you’ll wash your own hair too, although you have to remember not to use a very scented shampoo, or else your colleagues or family will think you smell funny! In fact, you should not use scented shampoo on a wig, although, again, my hairdresser does that all the time, and what is good for her is good for me, too

11 AM. Whew. All water activities finished. Wifey still asleep. So now I know that on the days I crossdress she’ll be in a foul mood, saying that I’m wasting all the time instead of doing house chores. Thus it was time to do all the house chores that don’t make a noise, like washing her underwear (and some of mine too, from last Sunday), putting it to dry, taking the already dried clothes on the line and folding them, and so forth.

Noon. Wife stirs in her sleep. By then, I had pretty much done everything, including keeping in touch with work issues as well. But while in the kitchen I noticed that she had done a shopping list. Uh-oh. That means she’s in a shopping mood again, and she would pester me to death until I drove her to the supermarket. In resignation, I went back to the remaining chores while she had the breakfast in bed — doing the loud and noisy ones, namely, cleaning the kitchen, putting the dishes out of the dishwasher in their places, and leave everything ready for lunch — like I usually do almost every day.

Half past noon. Wifey walks out of bed and, without a word, drops in front of the computer. The Conclave in Rome started today and she wanted to catch the news. No word about either lunch or going out shopping; she’s still in the foulest possible mood after waking up. At least her cold seems to be better. I return to unanswered mails and minor work issues; at this stage, I cannot engage in anything which is time-consuming and requires all my focus, because at any moment, without warning, I might have to either go out to shop for food or set the table for lunch.

Several hours pass. Wife continues to read the news and play a game or two at the same time. No idea of when she will start ordering me around. I patiently wait. Her mother calls: apparently, our planned free vacation goes ahead, she managed to get the voucher in her daughter’s name. Wife grumbles a lot; she’s not interested in the free vacations in the slightest. She immediately announces that although the voucher is for a whole week, we’ll be off only for five days. No, make it four. No comments on where the vacations actually are (i.e. which town and which hotel). I’m supposed to guess right, of course, and probably on Saturday just drive in a southernly direction for 250 km until she deigns me worthy of knowing where to exit the highway — and that at the last possible moment, making me miss the exit, of course. We’ll see how that goes. In her  mood, of course I cannot dare to tell her anything about my own crossdressing plans — neither today, nor during the vacation.

3 o’clock in the afternoon. Wife decides it’s time to do something for lunch, and wonders why the table is not set yet, which I immediately prepare. It’ll take her another half an hour or so, anyway. She announces proudly that “today we have to go shopping for food!” There is real delight in her words; she had been to the bathroom, where the wig is left to dry, so she makes an extra-hard effort to delay everything.

Lunchtime. How this works is like this. She’s a superfast eater — you wouldn’t imagine how fast she is, since she’s so petite and, these days, rather thin — so that means that every second counts. So, after cooking, she runs to the table and waits for me to bring the dishes — darting furious looks at how slow I am to cover the distance, which is about eight steps. When I put them down, and while I take the few seconds to take my seat, she has already eaten half of it. Well, almost, but you get the idea; when I go back to the kitchen to take the dishes away and bring a bit of the chocolate tablet to have as dessert, she has already given up on me and returned to her seat in front of the computer. Total lunch time was about 2 minutes and a half for her, five for me as I deal with the dishes, a few minutes longer to clean the kitchen, etc. I smoke my after-lunch cigarette on my own.

Decisions, decisions. It’s half past three now, and I wonder what I’m going to do next. I have no clue about what she’s going to demand. Will she have an after-lunch nap? But she was asleep until noon, so probably not. Should I have some coffee? Should I have my own after-lunch nap? Do some meditation? Get back to work and see what I can do until she says something? At the end, it’s clear that she’s having great fun watching the opening session of the Conclave. She announces that afterwards we can go out to shop for food. Great. Half the day is wasted already. But there is still the other half left.

The Conclave opening session is simple. 117 cardinals line up and pronounce their vows. We joke at their accented Latin and try to figure out from what country they come. The Germans are easy to spot, as well as the Americans. The British and Irish have the better accent. The older the cardinal is, the better their accent. Spaniards sound funny. Brazilians don’t. It’s a game, like everything else; a game that takes until five o’clock. And what was the whole point? Neither of us is a Catholic any more.

Finally she decides that it’s time to go out and buy some food (and tobacco, our reserves are low). We return at almost 7 PM. I had no coffee, no sleep, and I’ve got a mild headache. Tomorrow we have to wake up early, to drive her to do some medical exams; in the afternoon, more driving, this time to take her to the therapist. And there are things to do in the evening as well. So Wednesday is a “dead day” for me — one of those days that I will neither be able to work, nor to rest.

So, doing some math in my head, I had been waiting for twelve hours for her to allow me to dress, and now it’s too late for that. Sure, I could get ready in 2 1/2 hours or so. I’ve done it before. But then I’ll have to go to bed much, much earlier than usually. What’s the point of just dressing for an hour or two? None whatsoever.

She decided next to take a nap until 8 o’clock, and, lacking anything better to do, being tired and sleepy as well, I sort of followed her lead, even though I couldn’t sleep. She, by contrast, slept like a contented lamb, without the slightest worry; while I was mentally going through the outfits I might take with me on the hypothetical “crossdressing vacations”.

Day’s over. Dinner. Doing minor chores. Attending an online discussion (not related to crossdressing, but philosophy). Meditation practice. Sleep.

The wig is not dry yet, but almost.

Now today was not exactly one “typical day”, but it’s a good approximation. Not all days are as bad as this; in many cases, I have actually a slight clue what lies ahead of me, even if that mostly means “no crossdressing”.

When asked to list my biggest faults, I usually put pride at the top, and laziness next. Pride is a very insidious thing: every time you think you’re slightly better than anyone else, you’re being proud of yourself. You might think that you’re allowed to be proud of something you’ve done well, but that is not necessarily the feeling of being superior to others: it’s just pure rejoicing in something well accomplished. But there is a thin line to divide both. If you think, “oh, this was well done, I did a great job, I’m glad I’ve accomplished it”, then it’s probably just rejoicing in doing something well. If you add, “and I’m soooo good at that compared to others“, you’re being proud.

Pride is not always terrible, but it sort of continuously reinforces the idea that you’re better than others, and by thinking that way over and over again, over the years you actually start belittling others, overlooking their ideas, looking down on them. And that will just lead to making them angry at you or frustrated (which might not affect you directly, but will certainly make them feel miserable). So I have to work hard at recognizing my own pride and eradicate it. It’s hard. When I look at myself on the mirror after applying the makeup, I feel pride. When I get flattered on a webcam session, I feel pride as well. But then I face reality: I’m not really that good. Others look so much better. Sometimes, realizing that your pride just blinds you to reality, gives you the determination to work harder and actually become better. It’s not too bad to be critical: it means you’re willing to learn to improve yourself.

Traditionally, the antidote to pride is to adopt humility, but there are two dangers down that road as well. The first is completely losing the belief in your own abilities; that’s depressive and to be avoided. Just because you’re not better than others, it doesn’t mean you’re worse than them. Humility can also work like “pride in reverse”: some people can gloat for being the lowest of the lowest, that way they attract their attention and get some support — pats on the back saying “no, no, that’s all right, you’re not that bad really” “oh yes, I am, I’m the most worthless human being on the planet!”. Well, that’s actually pride too, just working in the reverse — pride of being the worst.

And, finally, we have false modesty, when you assume a stance of humility as a disguise, a mask to hide your pride, and elicit compliments and flattery from others. That’s just hypocrisy. It’s even worse than honest pride, because false modesty has the intention of deceit behind it; “honest pride”, at least, shows your true colours.

Pride is so complex and so hard to spot that it’s a very difficult fault to avoid. It really requires a lot of training.

Laziness, by contrast, is simple to spot. It’s not just “doing nothing” — il dolce far niente, as the Italians say (a rough translation would be, “the sweetness of doing nothing”). It can also be procrastination, postponing the work to do. It can be just doing a lot of things, none of them relevant (which is what I mostly do all the time!). And it can be something even more harder to spot: getting discouraged, believing you’re unable to do something, because it’s either too hard, takes too much time, or requires something you don’t have. I certainly have that as a major fault as well.

To this list I’ve recently added a much more complex emotion, which is the strong belief that I have absolutely no control over my time. This is something rather strange for me, and because of that, my reactions are very strong against it. Let me try to explain.

At some spot in time, around 1994/5, I pretty much decided I would be mistress of my own time. That would mean 12 hours of work every day, 7 days a week — sometimes 14 or 16, but the average would be 12 — to really get things done. Lunch and dinner would not be priorities, they would be things that would eventually be attended to once work was going according to plan (which is always hard to accomplish in my line of work — computers behave unpredictably in the realm of system and network administration!). The rest of the day would be for sleeping, and chores like taking a bath and commuting, although I religiously read something at least half an hour per day. TV was out — too much time wasted. During the weekend I would sometimes accomodate the family lunch on Sundays, and on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, I’d usually go out to a café, carefully locating the ones with power plugs to connect my laptop (these were the days where batteries lasted an hour at most), and work outside the office or the home. It was an easy life, and I felt full in control.

Obviously, often things would go wrong. When computers or networks fail, that requires a very high focus and the ability to work long hours until the problem is fixed. Nothing can distract you while you get things back online. I think that my own record was working some 36 hours without interruption. But these occasions are rare. Like the military, work at what later used to be called Rapid Emergency Response Team in the IT industry was several days of inactivity followed by several intense “bursts” of activity which required all the alertness I could muster. Then, the emergency having successfully dealt with, I could relax — mostly preparing things so that the next “emergency” was better dealt with. This requires training, and, those days, I had nobody to coach me, so I had to learn it on my own. I can boast (there, my pride again!) of being rather good at that. These days, I maintain a server that can work for 2 or 3 years without a single interruption, serving thousands of users without a glitch; but back in the mid-1990s, this was hardly the case.

Even when switching jobs, some more demanding than others, this sense of controlling my own time remained for a long while — almost two decades. As I got better and better at doing my job, I had more time free for leisure. When you’re used to 16-hour days, being able to work just 12 hours and achieving the same result meant 4 hours free. I didn’t simply “waste” them watching TV Instead, I did some creative writing; I allocated that time for personal projects; I flirted and got involved with girls; and, yes, sometimes I could afford a few days off for crossdressing. Most of what I’ve read about crossdressing came from those “extra hours” where I could simply read about it, because there were no emergencies to deal with.

As we get older, of course, it gets harder to continue this rhythm, 365 days a year, so I would usually collapse from sheer exhaustion every other year or so. This would mean some 15 days doing something completely different — like taking a short vacation. Which I did on my own — doing vacations with other people meant adjusting to their own timetables, and that was exactly what I was going to avoid by doing vacations! — and this often meant some crossdressing as well. And staying around on chatrooms, which, at that time, were just starting to use webcams, which were not yet popular.

Starting this century, I began telecommuting more and more. I already did that in the late 1990s, but somehow I enjoyed being “away from home”, because I — correctly, as I’m finding out — believed that “home” has too many distractions. In fact, from 2000 to 2004, I had a rather decent schedule for my week. Work was around 12 hours per day, starting with breakfast at a fancy place (back then, I could afford all those luxuries). I’d arrive at the workplace around 10 AM (advantages of being one’s own boss!) and work regularly until at least 8 PM, but usually 10 PM. Then I’d drive off to my fiancée’s place, and stayed with her until 2 AM or so. Back home for a good night’s sleep of about 6 hours, and work again. Saturday mornings, while my fiancée was always asleep, I’d do all the house chores — tidying up and so forth — and spend the rest of the day with her, after she woke up. Sunday mornings I’d spend with my parents, and in the afternoon I’d spend with her again. This was a very regular routine. You might have noticed there was little time left for crossdressing, and you’re right — I didn’t crossdress during those five years, except by wearing some lingerie, some breast forms, and a wig while doing the house chores. But that was all, except for occasional weeks of vacation. Since my fiancée almost never had the same days free than I had, there was little chance for us to spend together (so I could do my crossdressing in peace). We still managed to go out together for a whole weekend; and she often stayed at my place during the weekends as well. In fact, by that time, all my non-working time was spent with her. And soon the working time would also be spent that way.

It happened around 2002 or so. My last “regular” company failed (long story — there had been a misrepresentation of the commitment required by the major partner, who was just informed, after almost two years of operation, how much he was supposed to invest — I had done all the investment on my own until then — and he dropped out after he found out that one of the partners had never shown him the many business plans we had provided. It was nasty. A pity.), so I became a “business butterfly” instead. I was partner in three companies (just one of them related to my field of work, which soon made me realize that I had no clue how the rest of the world worked) and also did some work on a non-profit organisation. So my week was split among travelling between all four of them. My wife worked on one of the companies, another female friend of mine was the CEO of another one, and the third one was a regular IT company where I had switched roles with a former employee and friend: now he was my boss. I actually enjoyed the arrangement: he had all the responsibilities now, I just had to worry about getting things done (I still work with them). The non-profit was great fun to deal with and made me understand how hard it is to keep volunteers motivated; unfortunately, non-profits rely mostly on funding (over here in Europe, it mostly means getting funds from Government at some level; we worked with local Government mostly), and when the funding evaporates, few can survive on their own. At least this one was unable to do anything. But while it lasted, it was great.

So now my schedule was hopelessly complexified. In the mornings I used to start with one of the companies which was nearest to my home — I would spend a few hours with my friend there, while logging in remotely to see how the others were faring. Then I might pop for a while at the non-profit, which geographically was the next in distance. In the afternoon I would go to the IT company in Lisbon. Then I would wait for my wife, who worked across the river, pick her up and return home with her — sometimes her home, but more and more frequently my own place. By that time we were quite steady and sure that we would continue to live together, one way or another.

The schedule was not so strict as before. Often I would spend a lot of time across the river with my wife, at least once or twice per week. Sometimes, the non-profit would organise some big event, and I would spend the afternoons there. Other days, emergencies might force me to remain in Lisbon, fixing servers and networks. Between all that I would have meetings with partners, clients, marketeers, and so forth, as well as some conferences to attend. It was a time of juggling schedules, but it wasn’t really “stressing” in the usual sense of the word. Why? Because I held the keys to the time. I, and nobody else, would make my own schedule. People just had to wait for me. Even my wife had to wait. There was no question of things being different.

And because of that, I increased this tendency of believing that I controlled my own time, more and more, so that it became something very deep and profound in my being. So far as I was in charge of my time, I was happy. Sure, many people — my wife included! — complained that I was never able to keep up schedules. Tough on them! Emergencies — either computer emergencies, or emergency meetings with partners, or a conference that got delayed — happened. I had to adapt. Others had no other choice but to do the same. The only thing I regretted during that period was that my crossdressing time was severely restricted: I was hoping that I would be able to spend at least a day per week at my own place, in leisure — almost all my work could, after all, be done remotely — and crossdress in peace. But every time I had some “free” slots to remain at home, my wife would demand that I spent it with her.

I think this was a sign of what the future would bring me.

Well, I already described what happened afterwards: with the collapse of the economy after 9/11, and the Internet bubble burst, there was a financial crisis, banks were ruined, and on top of everything, I was swindled by petty criminals, had to deal with extortion at gunpoint, and all the sort of nightmares. It happens. The result was the need to move out — to where the petty criminals couldn’t follow — and start from scratch, living with my wife on a room with 8 square metres, and earning far below the poverty line. But in my mind that wasn’t the worst. The worst was the inability to crossdress; it would only be many, many months later, when returning home, that I would reveal myself.

Life in exile, except for crossdressing, was not terribly hard. My wife got a job relatively soon; in fact, she earned so well that we agreed to exchange places. I did all my work remotely, the HQ of the IT company I still worked for being 1000 km away, half an ocean between us. So I stayed at home, did all the chores, and had plenty of free time to do pretty much what I wished, while she was at work; during the evenings we enjoyed our time together. Usually I would shop for food while picking her up from work (I had to get rid of my two cars and sell them; so I walked a lot these days); we might have something quick at a café, walk a bit, then pick up the bus, return home, have dinner, enjoy some fun in front of our computers (we had discovered Second Life by then; I’m still a regular user, and she very occasionally does some work for real customers there), and retire early to bed. She did work hard at her place, but it wasn’t terribly hard, and rather well-paid. While I lived in paradise

Some days, when there was really little to do at work, I would just walk around the place we were. Just sightseeing like a tourist. On one of those days, I bought a cheap bra — the only bit of female clothing I ever wore during those days in exile. The urges slowly became overbearing, but I had no way to “hide” clothes anywhere (the bra was usually hidden in my computer case…). I began worrying about how to deal with the crossdressing. Either we would live in exile forever, and I would have to tell her something… or we would return home, where I still had my old clothes and accessories, but I would also have to tell her something. While there was no decision made — either to stay or to return — I was still postponing the decision. There was a good reason for that. As said, I couldn’t survive solely on my income. She could on hers, but I couldn’t on mine. We had to stay together. And while that happened, I couldn’t afford to break apart the relationship by revealing her about my crossdressing. It was selfish of me, but I simply wasn’t prepared to remain alone, without a regular stream of income, just because the urges to crossdress were rising and rising.

But then all good things had to come to an end. She lost her job, but it was not her fault; in fact, she excelled so much at her work, that they accepted her recommendation. You see, she was doing some architecture consulting for a hotel. The hotel wanted to know if they could maintain everything as it is — it’s a century old — or if they had to demolish everything and rebuild from scratch, to comply with European standards. Her recommendations were to demolish. They took that option — rendering her job obsolete. Demolishing meant a long wait of a few years and a new team.

After another month or so it became clear that neither of us had any chance of getting better jobs (or, in her case, another well-paid job). I did receive something from some independent consulting which remained us to postpone the decision for this extra month, but, at the end, we really had no option but to return.

And here my first brush with the lack of control of my time began.

At the beginning, it wasn’t too hard. I would work away from home in Lisbon most of the day, so we switched roles: she would stay at home and do the house chores, except for the tougher ones — washing and ironing — which we could afford to outsource to a friendly company, picking things up and delivering them at our place. I did the bathroom cleaning and general vacuuming once per week — still on Saturday mornings like my old routine! — but the rest was up to her. When commuting back home, I’d ask her first what she needed me to buy, and so I would return for dinner with everything. During the day she remained mostly alone or pestered her sister or mother to go out a bit with them. And, not many months after we picked up this routine, I finally revealed myself to her. Things started to work out fine for us, and a few years later we even managed to start a new company together, using some shared space at the IT company where I was already working, so we would spend our time there, do our shopping after work hours, return home, log in to Second Life and have some fun, and I’d do some crossdressing during the weekend. This worked well for a few years, but things quickly started to become more complicated.

By that time, all our work was remotely done. It was a bit silly to commute all the way to Lisbon, when there was very little we couldn’t do at home. First, she started to stay at home on her own — after all, our tiny start-up just had two people full-time (she and another partner), and all others were outsourced from all over the world, and all meetings were done through the Internet anyway. So it was a bit stupid to do the commuting. We even had better Internet connectivity at home — just two people sharing the connection — than at the office, where around 15 people had to share the connection there. But after a while I also thought we could save some money if I didn’t go to the office every day. After all, I had worked for them for 7 months at a remote location; they really didn’t need me there, except for occasional meetings. So I would only commute for those meetings.

But after a while this started to raise a few difficulties, since, being at home, it meant that my wife dictated the schedules.

During the first years it wasn’t so bad: after all, she had a lot of work on her own, and I really mean a lot — she would routinely do 16-hour-days and have little patience left for anything else. More to the point: she had no time to pester me at all. Which was excellent. Almost all our conversations at home were work-related anyway. We had little else to do. My crossdressing days also became less tied to a fixed schedule; I could, after all, crossdress and do all my work. It didn’t bother her in the least. These years I tended to crossdress early in the morning, and remain dressed until the evening. She respected those days and just pestered me to go out on others; but the point is, because she had to work so much, she had to organize her own schedule much better.

Alas, two things happened next. First, her health started to deterioriate catastrophically; and secondly, the company was not working so well any longer. For many years, we still managed to survive with the income from it — but she started to work less and less, due to her many chronic conditions. She had some surgery, but that just improved one of the conditions, not the others. Things quickly came to the point that she had to dump our last regular customer and pretty much leave us without a steady stream of income, except the little I got from the IT company I still worked for.

Worse than that was that she abandoned all pretenses of having a schedule. She would sleep when she wanted; work a few hours (while we still had that customer) at leisure; spend most of the time playing computer games; and starting to “demand” that, at all sorts of odd hours, we ought to go out and shop for food. Now I firmly believe that she did that to relieve her from boredom. Also, it eased her temper and the increasing sense of being useless — which only got worse when she finally had to abandon all attempts to work.

Something definitely changed by then. Her temper, of course, is legendary; she always has been like that. But I’m fine with that; on the list of my own virtues, patience is at the top, but it’s not perfect: it’s only recently that I have realized that I’m patient about pretty much everything except the lack of control over my time. Also, I’m used to people with bad tempers and foul moods; in fact, I think that pretty much all people I have closely worked with had terrible moods, and we stuck together, wherever I worked for, because I was always the patient one. I’m used at having everybody putting the blame on me and venting their frustrations by yelling at me. I’ve heard stories from former employees that there used to be a huge silence in one of the companies I had founded with one person with the foulest possible mood (he suffered from ADD and didn’t take medication at that time) while he shouted for hours and hours at me, kicked things, and hammered fists at the desks. I usually just sat there benevolently, offering input now and then, but just waiting for the storm to pass. Then it would be over and I would come out of the office with a smile; people would know that things weren’t as bad as it sounded. I’d simply pretend nothing had happened; and, in truth, the discussions were often irrational and pointless — that particular company actually worked out very well.

But over time I met several people with that kind of temper and worked closely with them. My female friend who was the CEO of a tiny company selling hand-painted tiles also had one of the foulest tempers I ever had — she could beat my wife any time! Much later on, both these cases were correctly diagnosed and corrected with medicine and some therapy. I’m still friends with both. As I’m still friends with pretty much everybody who has a reputation of having a bad temper: I’m really, really used to that.

Of course, things are different when you’re living with someone like that. My own patience is also not perfect, as said, even though I’ve handled things better. Astrologists tell me that Geminis tend to be all smiles most of the time, until they blow their fuses, and then they become pure devils. But it takes a lot to offset the scale. The problem is, when a Gemini explodes, it usually goes beyond all tolerable limits: usually there is no way back. By contrast, people like my wife tend to have very short fuses, are angry all the time, but the anger subsides fast, and the next day she will not even remember why she was so furious with me.

Geminis are also sneaky and insidious. Instead of telling others exactly what they think about them, they prefer to use sarcasm and irony, and slowly working up their insults, wrapping them in complex wording. So when they finally blow up it comes as a huge surprise! I’m well aware of that shortcoming, and recognize it; thanks to my training, I’m now often aware of the precise moment where I’m close to the limit. It’s really very, very rare that I allow myself to go beyond that threshold, because I know how nasty I can get. The few times I did it, things ended with my wife in tears — often leaving the home and going for a walk, furious at how low I can get when angry. Specially because Geminis can become angry in two ways: it’s not just by yelling, but also with cold anger — saying the most hurtful things in a steady voice, without needing to yell. This hurts way more, and Geminis know that very well. It’s their own weapon of massive destruction — it puts a knife directly into the heart and twists it around. It’s not nice to see.

Patience, by contrast, is not something that comes that naturally to Geminis, unless they use an apparent calm to hurt others more deeply. So I had to work on patience a lot. And, in general, I can really tolerate a lot, as said. I can go to levels that anybody normal would find absolutely insane — “nobody should be allowed to accept that!”. Well, my point is that patience is a wonderful skill to have. If you refuse to get angry, people cannot affect you. This is why my wife can do pretty much what she wants to me, and she will not get anything more than a look of disappointment which I cannot avoid. She often tries to pick fights about my lack of reaction — “don’t you think that by remaining silent you’re winning the argument!” But the truth is that when even that fails to elicit a reaction, there is no place for her anger to go. It has to subside. And that’s what usually happens: she is unable to remain angry with me for a long time. A few hours, sure. On her worst days, she might remain angry the whole day, and constantly nagging me in the hope of shortening my own fuse. But when that fails to happen, she can only give up, and when she does it, the anger evaporates.

Now, the ultimate level of patience is when you realize that the other person is just engaging in conflict because they believe this will make them feel great — “achieving victory” — but it’s just a delusion, and this fills you with pity for them. By refusing to engage it means accepting defeat — but without a fight. I don’t care if I “win” an argument with my wife — not any more. Because, ultimately, when two people get angry at each other, both lose. The secret of success of any relationship is to know how to gracefully lose an argument, and, by doing so, “win” another day of peace. As the saying goes, I can keep doing that all day. And day after day after day.

But of course I’m not perfect. I’m still a Gemini at root — and that means that things pile up and up all the time. When more direct attacks failed to unsettle me, my wife’s strategy is now to aim at one of the roots of my faults, which I didn’t even previously recognized at such: she attacks my sense of control over time. And this is really very, very hard to bear. Because time is something precious to me, by depriving me of my own time, she’s biting at my artery — and, worst than that, she’s not the only one. Others are doing it as well, all the time, without even noticing. This is the other side of the coin of patience: it means that people can easily abuse your availability.

For the past two years or so, I have noticed this more and more. First I just saw things happening occasionally: say, some plan I had to crossdress, or even go out with friends, and at the last moment, “something” would pop up and thwart my plans — I would get frustrated. I remember crying like a little kid when that happened once or twice. The sense of frustration for being unable to stick to my own schedules was overwhelming. There was this sense of powerlessness in the presence of others; but by refusing to admit that, and “forcing” my point of view — “I also have a right to my own time!” — would just mean letting my anger rise, and break my shield of patience. And when that happens, I lose all arguments. Anger makes you stupid; it robs you of clear insight. On the other hand, patiently enduring everything, makes you notice how things are much better — and sometimes you realize things that you didn’t really notice before.

I really wasn’t in control of my time. I just had that comfortable illusion. It’s when the illusion got shattered that I started to feel very frustrated — even depressed (there are tons of ways how depression affects you; it’s not all about crying a lot and don’t even wanting to leave the bed. It’s usually very hard for someone undergoing a depression to understand that it’s that what they’re feeling). But the problem is not really “my wife” nor “all the others who conspire to rob me of my precious time”. I just think that is. In reality, what makes me frustrated is this illusion, in which I fully believe, that I ought to be mistress of my own time. It’s the delusional belief that I can set up a schedule, and by doing so, “fix” the future so that it benefits me.

In fact, no plans work out as intended. I, among so many people, should know that. Computers and networks will break down, no matter how you do your best to prevent that from happening. The best server of the world will, one day, have its hard disk drives failing. They don’t last eternally, and it’s impossible to predict exactly when that will happen. When a hard disk manufacturer stamps on a disk, “mean time between failure: 3 years” it doesn’t mean that, on day 1095, the disk will stop working. No, what it means is that, on average, disks work well without problems for 3 years. But some will break down on the first day the computer is powered on. Some will only break down after 5 or 6 years. An average is just a statistical function; it doesn’t “guarantee” anything.

I trained to deal with that in my line of work. When a network fails, I don’t throw a tantrum because of that: I know that networks fail, equipment fails, everything fails, and we cannot predict exactly when that happens. The best we can do is to avoid the worst, apply contingency plans, use redundancy. But it cannot be avoided; just dealt with.

My own life is like that. It’s not just computers and networks.

People too. It’s impossible to predict when my wife is in a bad mood, or for how long it will last. It’s impossible to know when, for no particular reason, she starts becoming snappy and vent her anger at me. It’s pointless to “complain” about that; it just happens. It’s part of the way things work.

This is, for me, very difficult to accept. So difficult, in fact, that I don’t know yet how to cope with it. It also reflects on my work: I have this strange way of working, where I require a handful of hours every day to do something productive. Others can work for 15 minutes, get interrupted for a couple of hours, and continue from where they started; I cannot. I take 15 minutes just to figure out where I was; and if all that remains of my time to deal with an issue are 15 minutes, during which I can become a “victim” of my wife’s whims, well, then, laziness steps in: I just postpone the issue, until I have a few hours to work on it. But by doing so I’m deluding myself again. I’m sort of saying, “oh, today my time was unpredictable, so I better do this tomorrow, when I’ll have more time to deal with it”. How do I know that? For all I know, in fact, tomorrow might even be worse!

These days, I look at my schedule on Sunday, and try to guesstimate how bad it will be. For example, for this week, I saw that Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday would be “impossible” days — nothing is going to be done. Tuesday looked to be promising — and I could even crossdress, it would work out fine. But I hadn’t taken into account that it was my schedule, not my wife’s, so obviously things didn’t run the way I wanted.

But even if my wife weren’t around… there could still be other things that would thwart my plans. It just happened to me my wife, but there could have been others. So I cannot spread the blame around and be happy with that — it solves nothing. It just reinforces this idea of mine about controlling time, and, the more I reinforce that idea, the more I will hurt when I finally realize that time was not there to be controlled at all.

Oh well. This is getting too long, even for me. The whole point is that I have to work harder on my “great expectations” (with an apology to Dickens!). I have to look back on my life and see how time was never under my control. I have to break free of the chains that constrain me to believe that “others are robbing my time and preventing me to do what I wish”. Instead, I have to look at the source of all that, and see that my frustration only comes from having set up those expectations, and seeing them to pass away without a trace, except my memory that I had, in fact, planned to cotnrol time.

It’s very hard to do.

This is naturally not universal. Many transgendered people feel the strong urge to become a slutty female, even after transitioning. So many, in fact, that there is a whole industry around that. Others, sadly, are driven to the streets in order to survive, and while all they wanted to enjoy was their new feminine self, they have no other choice to become sex workers to be able to eat and pay the bills. No small wonder so many are not willing to go that route.

Well, this is about something else. Many of you are aware that I’m sometimes available at Cam4 or xHamster. I do that mostly to spend some time while waiting for some of my CD friends to arrive. It’s always fun, because these sites are clearly for pornography, and the last thing in my mind is to do some strip shows there. In fact, as I’ve explained before, all I do in them is to smile, smoke, and engage in conversation. I do nothing else. Surprisingly enough, I often get full rooms that way, even when I’m using the bad webcam from my laptop!

Both these sites accept tips. Gold or premium members are allowed to”buy” tips which they give to the performers they like most, hoping for a private show or thanking them for doing something “special”. Whatever the reason, webcam performers can earn some money that way, and I noticed that I already had US$5.30 on xHamster. You might think that’s not much, but when you realize that it’s all I might have by the end of the month to eat for a few days before getting my student’s grant, it becomes more important. And for three times that amount, I can buy a new dress or some lipstick.

So, well, today I signed up for these two sites as a “performer”. This is just an euphemism to describe the oldest profession in the world: getting paid for sexual activities. Even though all I do is to smile, smoke and chat, for some reason this might be exciting for a lot of people — enough for some to be willing to part with a few dollars. So, why not?

The encouragement came mostly from a CD friend of mine, who looks gorgeous on webcam (and I mean it, I’m not exaggerating). She is a closet crossdresser, and a rather irregular one — wasting months without getting ever dressed again, and then, all of a sudden, remaining glued to her webcam for days at a time. She’s very amusing, has a brilliant humour, and is fond of doing all kinds of kinky things on webcam. And she has the body and the looks for doing that — she’d be prime candidate for a full transition turning her into a supermodel without anyone noticing the gender she has been born with. In reality, she has absolutely no intention of transitioning — the thought is completely alien to her — and has no need of hormone therapy or surgery, she’s just that kind of T-girl who naturally looks like a woman without doing any special effort, and she can even pass without any makeup. Gosh, she’s so lucky! (How I envy her!)

At some point in time, she started joining a lot of paid webcam sites as a “performer”, and made regularly a few hundreds of dollars every day. And she admitted that she didn’t even need to do strip jobs most of the time, and would only reserve them to special customers who were quite willing to pay for the privilege. At that time, I understand that she was financially not doing very well, so the extra money was a treat to her. Later, as her financial condition improved, she avoided the “business” for a while, even though now and then she still logs in to those sites.

Well, I’m not really interested in taking such a huge step. Both Cam4 and xHamster work slightly differently, with the tipping scheme. Viewers are not really “forced” to pay for the girls they want to watch; they just spread a few tips around on the girls they like most, but there is no obligation to do so. While private chats can definitely be arranged for a certain amount of tips, this is all up to the girl and their eventual customer. I suppose that these sites use that kind of system to avoid being labelled as a full-fledged prostitution organisation. It’s more like paying a drink to a nice girl in a bar — that doesn’t turn the bar into a whorehouse.

On the other hand, of course, one cannot expect to make a lot of money this way. Which I’m not expecting to do. Still it might be enough to cover the hosting and maintenance fees of this website — which would be great! — and, who knows, I might be able to buy something for myself once in a while. I don’t expect much more than that. I also don’t wish to be glued in front of them during all the time I’m dressed, but just while waiting for my CD girlfriends to come online — there are often several “dead” moments where I have little else to do but write on my blog or keep up doing my (always late) work. So, why not use that time for having fun chatting with strangers, charming them, and accepting some tips?

I’ve submitted my application to both websites today, and now I’m waiting for their approval. We’ll see if I can test this out the next time I’m dressed — which won’t happen until next Sunday, at best.

When I look at that sentence, I have to look back to the past 7 years or so, when dressing became something regular — usually, every week or so. Sometimes twice per week; sometimes only every other week. But there was some regularity. And when something “came up” I would become seriously pissed up, frustrated, and sometimes even showing common symptoms of minor depression — irritability, headaches, lack of patience, lack of focus/concentration, sleeping badly, and so forth.

This is just to be accepted, after all. We all get frustrated when our expectations go down the drain. What is amusing to consider is that, 8 or 10 or 15 years ago, when I crossdressed much less often, I was not so frustrated by the lack of dressing. Rather, I just made the best out of the few days I managed to dress. This is pretty much what every CD friend of mine does, among those who have little freedom to dress when they wish (due mostly to family issues).

So it seems a bit arrogant of me to suffer for just skipping one or two weekly sessions, when others have to deal with long periods of no dressing whatsoever, stretching over months and months.

Shifting the blame

We like to imagine that we live in a world where people accept responsibilities; and accepting them is considered a highly-regarded ethical principle, and we learn that in our tender years. When, as kids, we do something wrong, if we have a brother or sister, our tendency is to lie and blame our sibling. Eventually our parents will figure it out and we get punished (even if these days it’s just with harsh words). Throughout our lives, we get educated to accept that we’re responsible for what we do, and to learn not to shift the blame elsewhere.

But nevertheless we use every possible excuse to do so. In my own country, even if it’s the least Mediterranean of all Mediterranean countries in Europe, we have strong Mediterranean cultural bias which have been impossible to shake off, and one of them is “blaming the Government”. Oh, I know that everybody, everywhere in the world, blames their government; but things are a bit different in some countries. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, and also throughout the German-speaking world, when a problem arises, the community rises to fix it. That’s their first reaction: we have to do something about it, let’s roll up our sleeves and solve the problem. While in the Mediterranean, if a problem arises, we ask the Government to fix it. We’re too lazy and egoistic to do it by ourselves. And if the government does nothing, then we wash our hands of the problem — we have successfully shifted the blame, and now we don’t feel guilty any longer for leaving the issue unresolved.

This is a tendency we all have at all stages. Ultimately, if you’re a believer, and there is nobody else you can shift the blame upon, then you blame God. Atheists have it a bit harder, but some can blame “random events in the Universe”. All that to avoid blaming oneselves.

It would have been very easy to blame a lot of people for the lack of crossdressing for a whole month. But in fact I’m the only one to blame: I voluntarily joined two very intense workshops related to my spiritual practice, which happened during the whole weekend and all evenings/nights (after labour hours), meaning zero time free for dressing. But it was my choice. I wasn’t forced to do so. I could have refused to join, or just join one of them.

At the beginning of the whole bunch of sessions I was quite aware of what it meant — a long period without crossdressing, and having to suffer the usual withdrawal symptoms. Naturally enough, after a while, my natural tendency to shift the blame to anyone else became manifest. Why couldn’t the organisers have arranged things so that we could get a few days off? But, again, this was just me being angry at myself — I did have the schedule beforehand, I knew it was intense, and I knew there would be no chance for crossdressing. So why blame it on anyone else but me?

It’s tough when you cannot avoid to accept responsibilities, specially when you’re agonizing because of your own decisions. But the irony is that I was supposed to be dealing with my own expectations and the resulting frustration of not fulfilling them. It was only then that I managed to smile a bit at my own stupidity, and recognize those feelings of anger as being utterly pointless: I wouldn’t feel better because of that. In fact, it would only make it harder to accept the responsibility of having made my own choice.

Temptation

In the middle of the third week, there was an unexpected twist. The main lecturer, seeing how tired people have been due to the intensity of all those sessions, took pity on us, and declared that we were entitled to a day off — he’d resume it afterwards or continue on the next workshop. This was quite unexpected, and all of a sudden, I saw my opportunity to at least get that day for my dressing! I felt immensely relieved and in high spirits, even though I was quite tired.

My wife, due to her array of diseases, and being even more tired than I was, was in a foul mood, which the rest on the “free day” didn’t improve in the least; at those times, I know that the best I can do is to keep my mouth shut. But this obviously created a new dilemma. When she’s in that kind of mood, just grabbing for the box where my wig is hidden will get her cursing and yelling at me, and, depending on the day, it will end in tears, kicking furniture, or her leaving the home in fury (rare, but it happened a few times). Well, to be honest, I wasn’t in the mood for taking all that, I was too tired, and too anxious to dress a bit to relieve my own urges. The least I wanted to face was a constantly-nagging wife. And, again, I was shifting the blame again: blaming her for having a temper, blaming her for being tired and in pain, blaming her for, once again, preventing me to enjoy a few hours of bliss.

So I made a decision. Even though I had all the opportunities to dress that day, the truth is that I wasn’t expecting that day to be a “free day”. So why spoil everything, and instead of enjoying the much-desired rest, spend the rest of the day with a furious wife?

While my concern was mostly to keep my wife away from her foul temper, it was nevertheless an egoistic feeling. By deciding that I wouldn’t dress that day, I would “buy” some peace of mind, because I could avoid being yelled at and facing another tantrum. So that would give me some opportunity to rest, too. Between dressing and resting, of course, I don’t need to tell what I prefer — specially because it would mean another handful of days with anxiety and frustration. But, again, it was my choice. It was hard to bear, but I kept my urges in chains, and just let that day finish without even mentioning the word “crossdressing”.

Obviously it wasn’t easy. It’s like an addiction when you decide not to indulge in the pleasures of the addiction. Sadly, crossdressing is not an addiction. It’s not like saying that by keeping away from crossdressing the urge diminishes. It doesn’t. Naturally, I could decide, from every day onwards, not to crossdress any longer, and thus avoid the anxiety and frustration — but the urge would simply become intolerable.

A colleague of mine once asked how he should deal with itching, and the answer was another question: what happens when you make the choice not to scratch? His answer was, the itching sensation grows and grows, until it becomes unbearable. But the truth is that it goes away, if you’re willing to wait long enough without scratching. We hear that from our parents all the time, when we get blisters for some reason or other, and aren’t allow to scratch ourselves. It’s actually true for most of those relatively benign physical pains — they come and go, if we just observe them, and are willing to patiently wait until they subside. It’s quite different with serious physical pain, like a broken leg — you can’t simply ignore it, it will hurt every time you step on it. The pain is there to tell you something is seriously wrong with the leg, which should not be ignored. Of course, how you react to that pain is different. You can completely lose your control and cry and yell and so forth. Or you can just notice that the pain in the broken leg is there, it’s not going to go away by merely wishing to do so, but you’re not going to die from a broken leg, all you need to do is to get a doctor to fix it and endure a few weeks in a cast. This is a completely different attitude than just get furious at something — shifting the blame to whatever caused the leg to break — and do nothing more about it than yell and ask for relief.

The urge to crossdress is just like a broken leg. You can ignore it, suppress the urge if you wish, but it won’t go away. What you can “send away” is the attitude you have regarding the lack of crossdressing. Instead of shifting the blame to someone, becoming furious, then frustrated and depressed… you can just accept that there are things in your life that are beyond your control. This was pretty much what I did. I had no further choices left: I simply would have to forfeit that extraordinary day with its unexpected free time, but, while the urge to crossdress was stronger than ever (feeling that I was “missing a chance”!), I could just accept that as a consequence of my choice. And, of course, rejoice that at least I didn’t need to deal with a furious wife in a bad mood.

Later on, when these very intense four weeks were over, I didn’t dress immediately. The last session was in the afternoon of a Sunday, one of the days I usually pick for crossdressing, and there was plenty of time left for that. But I just collapsed into bed and slept. I didn’t regret it — even though I’d rather prefer to dress, at that moment, the priorities were reversed. Later on, when I woke up, obviously I blamed myself for being too tired and wasting precious crossdressing time while sleeping, but there is nothing I can do about it: I’m merely human, and my body has different priorities than my mind

And, as things go, the subsequent days were “catching up time”, which is always what happens when I cannot count on having 16-hour-workdays to keep up with all the work. So, once more, instead of dressing, I made the choice to address the piled-up workload. To make matters worse, we ran out of money, which put my wife in the worst possible mood until I got paid on the last day of February. Only then, at last, I could finally have some time off for myself. Unfortunately, my wife went to bed so late that I didn’t even manage to go out for a bit, so I pretty much remained online chatting until the sun rose.

But did I get rid of expectations? Naah.

Expectations pile up, they don’t disappear, we can only hope to be able to deal better with them (in the sense that it becomes easier over time). Just thinking that I lost all those days without any dressing made me want to dress every day just to compensate! But, of course, that’s always pretty much impossible, my schedule is simply too busy for that.

To make matters worse, most people around me have their evenings and weekends free, and assume everybody else does, too. So they organize everything to be on evenings and weekends, thinking that it will better for me (and others). A typical example: my mother-in-law always insists in having dinner with us on Saturdays — every Saturday night is thus “lost” to crossdressing, which is a pity, since it’s the day most crossdressers have free time and there are more opportunities to go out. Similarly, I’m doing a 5-year course in Buddhist philosophy, which, for the same reason, is always on Friday night, “because everybody has Friday nights free”. True, but it means forfeiting the two best days in the week for crossdressing. While Sunday nights most people have to go to sleep early, and I don’t, sometimes people assume that I’m doing “nothing” on Sunday, and arrange all sort of things in the late afternoon instead — thus spoiling that day for me. My plans were for dressing again on Sunday, and, naturally enough, there was something I had to attend at precisely the time I would be spending in dressing.

During the week I have a very flexible timetable — I’d be fine if people planned things for me at all times of the day except evenings. But that’s exactly the time they pick. Unfortunately, even my wife does the same. I’ve lost track on all those days where I had nothing really important to do, with the evening free, and my wife spent the whole day playing computer games… until, by sunset, she suddenly announces that I will need to take her out shopping for food, thus spoiling the crossdressing session. It drove me to insanity a few years ago — she has nothing to do, spends 10 hours playing games since early morning, and why, oh why, does she “suddenly” desire to go out shopping in the evening, when we had the whole day for that?

Then I have this uncanny way to badly plan things. On Sunday my wife “announced” that we ought to go visit her sister, either on Monday or on Tuesday. My whole week until Sunday is naturally busy at evenings, thanks to everybody who wants me to do all sorts of things at those hours. So, fine, thought I, we can visit your sister on Monday, and I’ll have Tuesday free, I just have an online meeting to attend, but I can do that crossdressed, since nobody will see me. I’d expect her to arrange things with her sister on Sunday. No, she couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone. Then, well, early today I asked her to call her sister and arrange things for the evening. She didn’t bother, ignored it, stuck to her computer games, and it was only after sunset that I told her that it would be quite rude to pop up at her sister’s place without giving her a call first. So, very reluctantly, she picked up the phone — and, as expected, her sister had already made other plans, and suggested we came to visit her on Tuesday evening instead.

So basically because of a phone call I wasted both days. Had my wife called her sister early in the morning, as I told her, she would have known her sister was unavailable — leaving me Monday free. Better still, had she called her sister yesterday, she might have arranged things differently. Of course, it never crossed either sister’s minds that we have the whole day free (her sister is also self-employed and has no fixed schedules). Why didn’t they arrange for lunch instead? In fact, it’s always very embarassing when we visit my sister-in-law, because she spends almost the whole time asleep. She also rarely eats with us, because she tends to have a very early dinner. So it’s a bit stupid to leave after sunset to someone else’s place, bring our own dinner, sit in silence, eat, watch TV, while the alleged host is sleeping all the time, except for opening the door when we come in and leave.

A more rational approach would be to just visit her during lunchtime, or early morning, or any other time… just not when she’s tired and wants to sleep. But no. My wife has this fixed idea that she wants to go over there at the time that is more convenient for her (and as most of you know, she’s at her most alert after sunset and until 4 or 5 AM in the morning).

Now I have considered switching my own crossdressing schedules. For instance, if I give up on evenings and nights, I could dress early morning and remain dressed until something popped up in the late afternoon, as it is bound to happen. Why don’t I change my own routine instead? The advantage of daylight is that I get better pictures, and will not be so tired anyway!

There are, unfortunately, two good reasons for not doing that. The first is that after getting undressed I might not be able to eliminate all traces of my dressing session. For instance, the perfume, as well as the odour of makeup, nail polish, and so forth, will linger for a while. My hair will be ruffled because of the wig, and often I get marks from the hairnet I wear as well. I could obviously take a bath afterwards, and probably that would get rid of most of these issues. The second reason is that I will not be able to go out. But since I haven’t been able to go out anyway, I might have to resort doing that some day. At least until my wife starts arranging things to go out during lunchtime to thwart my attempts of dressing during the day, but then I can revert back to my evening/night routine again

So obviously there are always more and more expectations, and I have to deal with them, one by one.

The next one will be tricky to deal with, and, of course, I’m bracing myself for the worst, which is almost certainly going to happen. If you have been following my blog for a while, you might have come across a plan, established a bit over a year ago, where my wife suggested that we might go out in vacation to a city nobody knows us, and then I could dress at will and go out, since there was no fear of getting recognised. I was excited by the idea, but both of us knew very well how hard it would be to raise money for that. For a while I even tried to put a few Euros apart in order to present her a trip to Venice as a gift, but unfortunately we needed that money again, and so this was endlessly postponed.

Well, sometimes there are twists in fate My mother-in-law is subscribed to some kind of tourist service, which I hardly understand how it works, where she can reserve some apartments for free, a week or so every year. I have no idea if this is one of those time-sharing solutions or something else; all I know was that she enjoyed a few days off last year, but this year, she told us that we could have the apartment for free. After ascertaining that we would be able to cook in that apartment — or else, it would be too expensive for us — we sort of accepted, my wife complaining all the way, and shortening the planned week to just five days. The main reason is that she hates the place where we’re supposed to be going, which looks like this:

It doesn’t look so bad, does it? In fact, I’m not sure if this is the exact spot, but it should be in the neighbourhood — and obviously it’s March, it’s cold and raining, so there will be no beach for us which is perfectly fine, since none of us like the beach, in spite of living by the ocean!

Now I didn’t say anything, of course. I’m not too fond of any type of vacation, since that means lots of times away from the computer and the Internet (and while on previous years the company I work with used to pay the data access package on the phone, so I could access the Internet on my laptop through it, this year they’re cutting the packages to the bare minimums). Also, I have a quite different view of “vacation” than my wife does — for me, it’s an opportunity for doing nothing more than rest. For my wife, it means waking up at 6 AM and visiting everything she can visit and return at midnight, and do that every day until the end of the vacation period — which means I need to take a few days off afterwards just to rest a bit. Remember, she does nothing the whole year, so she has lots of energy for those few days!

Of course, now she’s so ill, she won’t be able to stick to that routine. Also, on the place we’re going, there is not much to see. Or, rather, there is, but it requires travelling a lot, and she is not so fond of that — for her, “driving” is a necessity to be able to go shopping for food, but not something one does for pleasure.

It was then that I remembered my wife’s promises from last year. Well, this was the perfect occasion: being stuck in a place where nobody knows us and where there is nothing to do. What could be better for some crossdressing vacations?

See, that’s quite something to look forward to, and naturally my expectations were raised. So much, in fact, that I dealt with them my making a long list of all that could go wrong before the departure date.

Firstly, my wife was almost forced to accept the generous offer from her own mother. She was in a foul mood about that and vented it off on her mother, until I told her to stop: her mother, after all, was just doing what she felt to be a kindness. She noticed the other day how constantly tired I was, and gladly forfeited her own vacations to allow us to go in her place instead. It would be quite unpolite to complain and grumble constantly about it and refusing to go, claiming “there is nothing there to do” and so forth, which made her mother almost regret her generousity — which is something quite bad to do. Very, very reluctantly, she negotiated to shorten the stay from 7 to 5 days, but that didn’t stop her from complaining all the time. The irony is that when my own parents invite us over to their place up in the highlands she is always eager to go! (I can’t crossdress there, even if my parents are not present, because it’s a small hamlet where people are constantly entering each other’s homes without announcement — such a pity, because it’s a huge place, and it even has a secluded backyard. The problem, of course, is that everybody knows us…)

So she tried first to convince her sister to come with us, too, which would obviously spoil my plans. But this didn’t work out — her sister would be working during those days. Her last attempt to ruin everything was a few days ago, when she felt so ill that she was going to tell her mother that all plans were off, she wasn’t going. I remember that I just smiled and said that I’d go on my own instead, which baffled her for a while, and then she did what she usually does when something goes against her plans: she simply forgot everything. The day of our departure is getting nearer — around March 15, if I’m not mistaken — and I’m almost sure she has forgotten it, and will, at the last possible moment, tell her mother that she had forgotten it and made other plans, so she cannot go.

Well, I have no idea what will happen, or if she actually managed to get her mother to cancel everything (she might have done so without telling me anything). What I did not tell her is that I expect to crossdress when we’re down there at the holiday apartment, and that I also expect her to stick to her word about the promises she made the other year. I know it’s bad of me, but I’ll do that at the last possible moment, and hopefully on a day where her mood is not as bad as usually. Otherwise, I know she’ll have plenty of time to cancel everything. But on the other hand, right now, I have no way to know if we’re going or not. I have this idea that she might already have told her mother to cancel everything and neglected to tell me about it, but I don’t know for sure. If I raise the subject, she might still be able to cancel things. If I remain silent, the due date may arrive, and then she will have no way to avoid it — and I can just say that either she comes with me, or stays at home, it will be her choice. And of course I’ll tell her that I intend to crossdress all the days we’re down there. My initial plans were to crossdress fulltime, but now I might be willing to discuss that. After all, I have no idea what to expect, and it’s likely that on the first and last day, while we’re travelling, and need to talk to whoever has the key to the apartment, crossdressing might not be an option. I also have no idea if this apartment is always the same one that my mother-in-law uses, or if it’s a different one everytime, and I surely don’t want to embarrass her if someone sees me as Sandra. So there are a lot of variables to deal with, and the best I can hope for is to be able to dress for three of the five days, and only doing that in the evening. But, who knows? There are simply too many loose ends to tie.

It’s all those imponderables that make me realize how stupid it is to rely upon expectations. I simply have no way to figure out the future. It’s pointless to plan. I tentatively give the whole operation some 10% of chances of success, but that’s just based on how often my wife thwarts everything — but, this time, there are even more variables to take into account. The likelihood of going, at this point, is perhaps 50%. The likelihood of my wife turning back on her word and forbid me to crossdress is about 90%. Well, make that 99%; I know her pretty well by now. She will not even bother to give an excuse for having thought otherwise — I’m pretty sure that her promises were based on a very reasonable assumption that we would never have any money for vacations, and so there was little risk that I would ever put her word to the test. And, finally, not knowing the place we’re going, I cannot foresee how easy it will be to crossdress full-time there.

In my days of crossdressing in hotels, I could make better choices, like picking up apartment hotels with independent exits and so forth, where I could slip out unseen. But in this case I don’t even know what kind of “apartment” this is. I’m assuming it’s some kind of time-sharing solution on a big building full of nosy neighbours. But the truth is that I have no idea.

And being pretty much clueless about everything, it’s pointless to plan ahead. After all, if I cannot plan something simple like getting dressed either on Monday or Tuesday, because there are so many variables beyond my control, how can I possibly expect to pull off my “crossdressing vacations” successfully? To be honest, 10% is rather very, very optimistic. 0% of chances is much more realistic. And, as such, I’m learning to deal with my expectations once more. Also, the more complicated the plans, the more likely they will fail. Specially when the easiest plans are prone to fail, and I experience that every week.

—

Today, to be naughty, I spent 24 hours in a bra, just to see if she cared (or noticed) — no comments so far. Sure, I’m not wearing the breastforms, so it’s not much noticeable…

Going out ever again?

Carnival is approaching. Even though this year, because of the ongoing financial crisis, we’re deprived of the holiday on Tuesday 12th, people who love dressing in a silly way and going out during this special day of the year (similar to Halloween in the English-speaking world) are coping, and most activities will happen during the weekend.

This is the only day of the year where crossdressers can go out without getting raised eyebrows, neither from friends & family, nor from neighbours, nor even from shops and restaurants. Whole towns celebrate the holiday with wild parties, and, as last year, a group of local CDs are planning to go to one restaurant an hour away from Lisbon, on nearby Torres Vedras, which is rather famous for their Carnival celebrations.

Since it’s a relatively safe city, where everyone will be having fun anyway, and I will be surrounded by friendly people, maybe my wife allows me to go out.

Maybe.

Unfortunately, there are two things which might prevent me from going. One is that Carnival is a lunar holiday, meaning that it has no fixed date. It’s a pagan holiday, not a Christian one (even though the Christians have “turned” it into a holiday as well), and, as it happens with most pagan holidays, it’s actually also used by the Eastern cultures: for them, it’s the new year. Although Eastern calendars are a bit odd, this year, Sunday the 10th will be both the Chinese and the Tibetan new year, and that means that my Buddhist group will do a lot of celebrations. Which makes it tricky for me to juggle schedules. I might just be able to make it, but will not be able to enjoy a very long evening.

The other issue, of course, is my wife. She’s in a particularly bad mood these days, since she’s currently suffering from vaginal hemorrages due to her complex medical issues — it’s a clinical condition unrelated to the period, and usually lasts far longer. When she’s in this mood, it’s impossible to reason or even to talk to her; even snoozing in her presence is offensive! So I stick to my silence, knowing fully well that anything I’ll say will trigger World War III, even if I mean well and just speak kind words.

So we’ll see. I’m not very hopeful.

Great source of transgendered resources: Susan’s Place

A couple of months ago or so, I re-visited Susan’s Place. They’re one of the oldest sites with resources for transgendered persons — and they stick to the same look they had in 1997 or so! — and I was checking it up on some technical details. Susan’s Place has an extensive Wiki with lots of information, besides a vast reference library, and — as I found out recently — what must certainly be the largest transgender forum in the world! It has over ten thousand members, with hundreds of very active members. It’s spread among so many categories that I tend to stay around the spirituality forums — just these provide a wealth of discussion and information. It’s so big that it’s truly staggering.

Forums might not be what rocks your boat, but for me, coming from the old USENET News days, I’m a great fan of that style of online discussions. These days people prefer short updates on Twitter or Facebook, which are quickly forgotten after a few hours. I personally prefer long discussion threads — a few on Susan’s are years old, not merely days or months. And, truthfully, everything can be found there. Ironically, Susan started this as merely an online chatroom. It just became bigger and bigger.

A fair word of warning: the forums are heavily moderated. This is mostly to protect the existing members (who are often quite open about themselves) and make sure that spammers, scammers, and predators are kept at bay. New forum users are specially “watched over”. After a few weeks, however, if your intentions are good and you’re a regular participant, the moderators will keep you in peace. This is supposed to be a friendly community — albeit a rather large one! — which is mostly focused on exchanging relevant information, from surgery to beauty tips, from politics and activism to spirituality and support groups.

Emigration on a temporary stand-by

I haven’t confirmed this, but allegedly I cannot simply emigrate to Brazil as my wife wants. I’ve got a signed agreement with the (public) foundation which sends me the meager monthly stipend to allow me to survive and continue my studies: if I start a job, even as a teacher, I have to return all the money. Obviously this would mean working for at least half a decade just to be able to pay back everything — not to mention paying the extra costs for living abroad. Brazil has slighly lower living costs than Portugal, but here I enjoy a tiny flat without a mortgage, and managed to finish to pay for my 1997 car. These would be extra expenses to cover. If I need to repay the whole grant, I would really have to have a “dream job” at a Brazilian university — which usually pay a salary for about the same amounts than here in Portugal. The difference is mostly in lower taxes, slightly lower cost of living, and upwards mobility, even without a finished PhD — and no financial crisis and more job opportunities. Around here, new jobs as a teacher are probably out of the question before 2015 or 2016 — and starting from the bottom, I would actually earn less than what I get with the monthly student grant, and add the cost of renting a flat someplace else, since it’s rather unlikely that I’d get a job at a university near me (everybody wants to live in Lisbon and its suburbs! There are no jobs here). Even so, I would have to add the costs of driving around to work (these days, public transportation is more costly than driving — what crosses our politicians’ minds is unfathomable! — even considering the high parking costs. It’s nuts, but there you have it).

So, while I still need a final evaluation of the contract I have for the grant, it’s likely that they will at least demand a big chunk of money to “let me go”. So far, I got no replies from the scattered contacts in Brazil. They would have to offer me a millionnaire job to make it worthwhile And although that’s not completely out of the question — Brazil has some 2,500 universities, but, of course, everybody wants to live in Rio or São Paulo, the two cities where I utterly refuse to move to! — it’s not very likely. In fact, I find it far more likely that my wife allows me to go out with CD friends than believing someone will hand me a well-paid job on a silver platter.

But, we’ll see. Anything can happen. Needless to say, my wife is utterly disappointed and very frustrated. The only good news is that an old customer of our company has started to pay her again. They paid the October 2011 invoice in Januray 2013, and are promising not only to pay every remaining invoices, but also to pay the new ones that are sent regularly to them every month. If they can keep that up as promised, it would double our monthly income — which goes a long, long way to ease my wife’s constant fretting about lack of money.

We’ll have to see how it goes. For now, I’m happy — I wasn’t really that keen to move to a backwater town in the middle of tropical Brazil (which was the only offer I had so far), although the choice of city might persuade me to move. I had my eyes set either on Belo Horizonte — they self-style themselves “the cultural capital of Brazil” — which has a huge transgender community, or go to one of the capitals of the three southernmost states in Brazil, specially Curitiba. These are European-style cities with a mild climate (it snows in the mountains!) and are as much un-Brazilian as you can imagine.

Here’s a picture of what Brazil looks like:

Truly not what you have in mind when thinking about Brazil, right? Here is the same building without snow:

Look at those perfectly trimmed lawns! It seems we’re in Switzerland!

Actually, it shouldn’t be very surprising. This area of southern Brazil has been settled mostly by Germans (and Italians). There are whole towns up the mountains where practically everyone speaks German at home. Remember, Brazil is a huge country, almost as large as the United States and larger than Europe, and it has all sorts of climates, from the deep rainwater forests in the Amazonia jungle, through savannas and deserts, to vast farmland where the average farm is larger in size than my own country (!), to the beaches in the northeast (or in Rio!), to the high, cold mountains, covered with snow of the south. It’s not just heat, samba, and beaches — that’s just in Rio. Although it’s true that everybody loves soccer

Still drooling with the new wig

Well, this was certainly one of best things I’ve ever bought for me Although I’m fond of many of my dresses and accessories — like the Amoena breastforms — I still think that it’s the wig from Pink Lace Wigs that makes the difference. I haven’t yet had it styled as I wish, so I’m stuck — for now — to a “retro” look. Even so, it’s incredibly realistic and absolutely natural. If you’re still hesitating about your next wig, make sure you buy a front lace wig next time. Yes, they’re a bit more expensive than “standard” wigs, but you’ll finally get a wig that doesn’t look or feel like a wig, but like real hair — even on very close inspection. You’d have to pull my wig up and watch the bits where it actually fails to appropriately cover my real hair near the ears to believe it’s not “naturally grown” — even with synthetic fibre.

It also holds a lot of possibilities for styling. I have to admit that I’m terrible at doing that, thus my reason to get it professionally styled. But if you enjoy your hair “raw” and the ability to play a lot with it, there is little you cannot do with it. I’ve tried some braiding, and I was actually astonished at how great it looks. Pulling it to the back instead of a side part also gives awesome results. Remember, I’m mostly used to pre-styled wigs, which have little opportunity to “play” with (they’re intended to be worn “as they are”), so no wonder I’m having fun with this one

It’s midwinter and always cold in my flat, so the only thing I’m slightly worried about is if the wig is “too warm”. Of course, during the winter, I don’t notice that — it’s actually nice, for a change, to have something to cover one’s head adequately But since this wig has a lot of hair — it’s really dense, even though the individual hairs are very thin and realistic — it might be too hot for summer. During heat waves I avoid dressing anyway, but during “normal” summer days, I have no idea how hot this will be. So I have to be patient and wait. I still keep my “old” wig with the bangs around, which is far lighter (and much shorter!), so I might be “forced” to wear it when the temperatures start rising again (and, in this country, one never knows when that happens — it can start in March!).

What I have also noticed recently is that I’m able to pose differently. You know my old motto: smile a lot, and you’ll look more feminine. This is definitely one of the best tricks I’ve ever learned. I still keep a lot of my oldest photos around, where I hardly smiled, but attempted to do some sultry looks. They invariably failed, and just made me look three times more ugly. It was by chance that I had noticed that the rare pictures where I smiled were almost passable. My first smiles were rather shy, or I just tried to do some “sultry smiles” instead — which didn’t work, either. It was just when I learned that my natural smile stands out by itself that it became a feature of pretty much all my pictures.

Well, this new wig has allowed me to explore a little more. Since it’s so incredibly realistic and feminine-looking, it naturally catches the attention. For the past years, I’ve been using bangs — which hide my forehead, giving good results for most CDs — but I realize now that I have two extra features which also catch the attention: my eyebrows (which are neither masculine nor feminine; I keep them trimmed to something in-between) and, naturally, the eyes. On most of my  pictures with the bangs you cannot fully appreciate my eye makeup; now you can, so I’ve been working on my skills. What I like most on the pictures you see here is that the makeup looks “natural”, although, in reality, it’s not — it’s a bit dramatic, the camera just tones everything down (well, except for the wrinkles below the eyes, when I’m too tired — nothing can ever hide those, not even the heavy-duty eye concealer I use!).

All this put together draws the attention away from my male features — namely, the horrendous nose and the too-strong jawline, which no amount of shadow and blush can conceal. But when taken from certain angles, I can get away without smiling, and still raise some doubts about my gender. Not all pictures are good enough, of course (the one pictured in this section is definitely not one of the best examples). But on some, I can actually manage a few different facial expressions and still look feminine — just because the viewer’s attention will be mostly drawn to the hair and the eyes.

Not that I dislike smiling That’s not the point! The point is, when going out (even on my own), I cannot keep smiling all the time, and, as such, I might easily be spotted as a male in drag. With the new wig and the ability to play more with the eye makeup, I can at least raise doubts when not smiling.

Of course, no illusion is ever perfect. I’m still too tall and too broad-shouldered; my upper arms, even though they have little muscle these days, are still too thick. But I can disguise the broad shoulders and remember to wear styles that will draw the attention away the upper arm region — like, say, drawing the attention to the cleavage instead What is simply impossible to disguise is the view from the side. It’s simply too broad; there is nothing I can do about it. With the corset and the padding, my figure from the front or even the back looks acceptably curvy; but not from the side.

It also makes it harder to disguise my age. You see, there are two types of women in my country. The elder generation — the one of my parents! — is all short and overweight. This is the complex mix of Mediterranean, Maghrebin (North African muslims), and gypsy blood. Women generally look great in their teens, but once they marry, they become barrels almost overnight. It’s not just the good food; it’s the genetic makeup. There is little they can do about it.

On the other hand, the newer generation — people ten years younger than me — have completely different genes. For the vast majority, they’re skinny and slim, even though most are still not very tall (on average). And it’s also not food-related: the younger generation, on average, eats much worse than the older generation. Still, they have different genes, and they look completely different from their mothers. They also lost most of the “curviness” of the generation before them. They’re mostly flat and their bodies have uninteresting shapes, which they compensate with appropriate clothing.

So what this means is that I look 10-20 years older from the side, but the curviness in the front and back somehow makes me look my age — if I were a genetic female — or slightly younger (my own wife, five years younger than me, is very curvy indeed, with long legs, although she’s petite in size — however, her own body type is fading out and disappearing). This poses a problem when trying to pass. While the height can be attributed to being a “foreigner” — thanks to my German blood on my mother’s side — the strange body looks awkward.

There is little I can do about that. Lots of CDs who are ten years older than me actually pass rather well in our country. If they don’t use any padding besides the breast forms, they just look like the average women in their 50s: short, stocky, barrel-shaped, overdressed, and with too much makeup. If they keep their hair length shoulder-size, they will completely fit in the average look that you see here. All right, they might not look awesomely sexy, but almost no woman in their 50s, around here, looks sexy anyway. Since they have great tastes in clothing, and dress elegantly, they actually capture the attention of the older male population, who is so used to that type of woman that they can pass very easily.

Of course there are many exceptions. My mother-in-law, turned 60, is relatively tall, and, thanks to cosmetic surgery and a gastric bypass, is rather skinny (which was true, specially in the first year after surgery). This has uplifted her mood and the desire to wear elegant, sexy clothing again; among her group of female friends, she completely stands out as having a dramatically different body type than them, and her exquisite fashion taste also allows her to look even better, even though, as I mentioned before, her face is really not very attractive, and I think that her hair styling doesn’t improve her in the least, but it’s her choice, of course. The point here is that all these people are exceptions around here. So, as exceptions, they draw attention and invite a closer inspection — something that a crossdresser wishing to pass should definitely avoid.

I look particularly awful when wearing my lovely faux fur coat. But in deep winter, that’s all I’ve got to keep the cold away. My usual trick is to get a belt on top of the coat, to at least define the waist again — it’s a bit better, but not perfect. I managed to enjoy myself a few weeks ago, wearing that coat, boots and fishnets, and walking on a posh street near the beach, where I had plenty of places to watch my reflection. Well, in the middle of the night, using a very long holder, I certainly looked like something just out of a fancy brothel The irony was that I had been toying with the idea of entering a bar I didn’t know about which was still open at that time (it was past 4 AM already), but I didn’t feel confident enough. I subsequently learned that this bar is actually a fancy striptease club… lol! I couldn’t have made a better choice!

Anyway, just some random rambling, to keep my memories fresh. It’s highly unlikely that I will be able to be around as Sandra in the next two weeks, because of the Tibetan New Year celebrations. Even if I’m allowed to go out next Saturday, no matter how unlikely that seems right now, I will be rather stressed out to dress quickly before rushing out of the door and meet my friends — time is of the essence, and Saturday will be unusually busy, leaving me just the adequate amount of time to dress and do the makeup. So I won’t be able to be online for sure, and will rely on my friends to take a few pictures. And that is, obviously, the most optimistic scenario: in reality, it’s much more likely that I will be stuck at home and forbidden to go out even on that special day where the streets are safe for crossdressers.

Cheers!

We humans are odd creatures. We tend to create an image of ourselves and believe it’s true. When we’re young, we might be disappointed with what we see on the mirror — we wish to be stronger, sexier, better-looking. When we age, we still have our youthful self-image in mind, and the mirror betrays us, and reveals what we dislike most: that we cannot turn back the clock of time.

But as transgendered people, we have an extra problem to deal with. Our image on the mirror doesn’t even match the gender of our self-image. So we work at it — with clothes, accessories, makeup. It still doesn’t match, so some might add hormones and surgery. Finally, for some, the image might at least come close to the gender. Then there are lots of new problems to deal with: sure, the gender might match, but the image on the mirror still doesn’t look like the inner self-image.

For part-time crossdressers, usually we don’t resort to hormones and surgery (at least, most don’t), so we have an even more difficult time! Matching what we have in mind with the canvas that is our face and body requires talent and skill; but there is a limit to what one can do.

But sometimes, well, things “just work”. And when that happens to me, I usually get shocked.

On my last dressing session, for a moment, I didn’t even recognize myself. True, I’m not joking! It was just for a few seconds, looking at the reflection on the window. Then the moment passed swiftly away. But the weird sensation of “not being me” was rather startling — something I hadn’t experienced since my very first sessions, and which my critical eye usually doesn’t allow to happen. But, well, this time, at least for a very brief instant, my mind was tricked.

The merit, of course, is not mine: it’s all thanks to Pink Lace Wigs, who do an astonishing work with hair, and this was what suddenly tricked my mind. I feel reluctant to say that Pink Lace Wigs “do wigs”: I should say that they do “artificial hair prosthesis”, because that’s pretty much what the result looks like.

If you started like me, you probably thought — a wig is just a wig. You went through site after site in search for one that looked nice on the picture and which was within your budget. Then comes the first disappointment: very cheap wigs will quickly “wear out”, they lose their styling, and on very bad wigs, the more you wash them, the quicker they’re ruined. Believe me, I know — I once bought a wig from China, ordered through eBay, for just one Euro! It wasn’t as ugly as I thought (for that price I was prepared to accept anything!) but of course after a few months it was completely ruined.

But it’s not just the wear and tear. Cheap wigs use low-grade synthetic fibre — usually heavy and with totally the wrong texture and feel of real hair. And they usually don’t fit that well: those one-size-fits-all caps will usually fit nobody right. There are, of course, a few tricks: you can sew some special combs into a cap, and they will stick, at least to a degree that you feel confident enough that the wind will not blow it off your head. Nevertheless, a badly fitting cap is always a mess: it will never look “natural”. And from certain angles people will always know that you’re wearing a wig.

As you progress towards better-quality wigs — not necessarily way more expensive ones; there are cheap high-quality wigs, too; more on that later — you will get better synthetic fibres which flow more naturally. They will be as shiny as real hair — not more, nor less. The styles will look more natural and more modern: they will have professional stylists telling the wigmakers what styles are fashionable. They will often have some highlighting or a blend of colours, which will look way more natural — or have an uniform colour for the ones preferring the look of dyed hair. And with proper care they will last longer, too, and resist washing quite well, looking almost “as new” as when you bought them.

But of course they will not last forever: sooner or later, like real hair, the tips will split. The hair will lose its flexibility and become more rigid and less natural. Of course, real hair can go through the same process, but at least, with real hair, when you cut it (or brush it too hard so that the hair strands are torn from the scalp!), it will grow back — well, most of it anyway — which obviously isn’t the case with a synthetic wig. So at some point there is nothing else to do but to buy a new one; there is a limit to what a professional wig stylist can do…

In the past few years, I’ve mostly bought wigs from a local supplier, who sells them to genetic women with alopecia or falling hair as a result from chemotherapy. They’re very CD and trans friendly and quite discreet, so many of us are familiar with the place. The advantage, of course, is that you can try before you buy, get an expert opinion, and have a friendly stylist to help you maintain your wig for a long time. Price is low to mid-range — depends on the quality of the fibres (human hair is more expensive and quite harder to maintain properly!) — but, in general, even the cheaper wigs are quite good and nicely styled. The problem, of course, is that they specialize in the senior market. This leaves out very long wigs, although they know they sometimes get a few customers for those from the CD/trans community (as well from younger women who unfortunately had chemo very early in their lives).

When my particular style and length was out of stock I had to look for alternatives. That meant getting back to the Internet shopping for wigs. My “old favourite websites” were still up — but they continued to offer variations on the same styles and types as before. Frankly, they look too outdated: even ten years ago, they were out of fashion. And because most CD/trans sites sell wigs for occasional use, they keep the prices low, at the cost of lower quality items — they know CDs don’t wear wigs all the time, and prefer to have more options instead of higher-quality wigs who would cost way too much.

Then there are the wigmakers for the occasional wig wearer. These are usually designed by stylists which give their wigs a modern cut. They’re designed for women who want an occasional radical change of look without needing to cut their hair. Here you start to get some interesting options — at least the styles are modern, and the quality is supposed to be high (you don’t want to be seen on a prom ball or a wedding with an outdated look and a wig that looks obviously fake!). Still, they’re usually constructed in the very same way they used to be ten or twenty years ago: things haven’t changed much in this area.

I was looking for something entirely different. And actually I had found it, but the prices were prohibitive for me — it would be a pain to buy a wig that I wouldn’t use much (unfortunately, I have 2 or 3 which fit that description!). So I naturally hesitated a lot.

By chance, as I’ve written here before, I met Patrícia Coelho a few months ago. Just look at the gorgeous hair she has! From the picture it’s impossible to tell if it’s natural or not; in fact, lots of people ask Patrícia the same question, and she just smiles. In my case, she even challenged me to tell if her hair is natural or not, standing in front of her “in the flesh” and observing her carefully — which I did. I still couldn’t tell. I had to assume it wasn’t natural just because I know she’s not been dressing for a long time, and to get hair with that length takes many years. But I was baffled at the way it fitted perfectly.

Well, I do apologise to reveal her “secret” here

But before I do that, I shall first explain what radical changes happened in the wigmaking industry. All of the sudden, artists and actresses needed to have “always perfect” hair for their shows and movies — and this means being in contact with the public, too. Specially in the Afro-American ethnicity, natural hair might simply not be good enough for a glamorous “superstar” look. So what these women needed — people like Beyoncé, Rhianna, Tyra Banks, Oprah, and of course thousands more — was a technology that allowed them to have perfect hair which is impossible to distinguish from real hair, even at very close quarters, and which could be styled dramatically (like natural hair) and resist the stress and demands placed on these artists when they’re on stage.

And they have to be flexible in the ways they can be styled: pony hairs, braids, and all kinds of parting techniques must be able to work well with these wigs. After all, starlet hair stylists are supposed to be able to do whatever they wish — and whatever their skill allows — to that hair. If you have some experience with “normal” wigs, you know how hard it is to accomplish this: the better wigs will allow you to part hair this way or that, pull it together into a braid, add a few clips here and there, but… there is a limit to what you can do on a “normal” wig. That’s why wigs with synthetic fibre are popular: they get pre-styled, the fibre has “memory” of the style (so when you wash it, it will return to its style without the need to go to a salon…) and you don’t do any extra work on the wig. If you wish a different style, you just buy a new wig. Simple.

Of course there are a few alternatives for using artificial hair which can be styled in a salon — like, for instance, using hair extensions and similar hair grafting techniques. These work quite well if you have something to graft to, and of course offer lots of opportunities for styling — just add more extensions here or there to give you a different look. The major problem, however, is if you have a male hairstyle, adding extensions might not work out in all cases. Also, except for extensions using combs, the other techniques really require a lot of skill — or a professional hairdresser to add them and remove them at will.

To address these issues, the wig industry came up with a new, alternative technology: lace. This is hard to understand how it works. The basic principle is the same as with any wig: hair strands, in small groups, are sewn on top of a piece of cloth, following a natural pattern. So far, nothing new. Early wigs had a cap made of some flexible cloth — more modern ones being ventilated, to cool the head — and have an arrangement of elastic bands and/or combs to keep the cap in place. Lace wigs have an ultra-thin porous fabric — each “pore” is also used for sewing the strands in — which is usually transparent or lightly tinted to look just like your scalp. When I say “ultra-thin” I really mean it: the fabric is perhaps as thin as surgical tape, and there are two varieties — French lace, which is stronger and less thin, and Swiss lace, which I have never seen, which is way thinner still.

The question that begs to be asked is — how will such a thin fabric keep the wig in place? And, more to the point, how will a lace wig be actually more resistant than a “normal” wig? The answer is simple: you glue the wig on top of your hair.

That’s right. This is what the likes of Beyoncé, Rhianna, Tyra Banks, Oprah do. They go to their favourite hair stylist, get the lace wig glued to their natural hair, and then let them cut and style it, just like normal hair. The glue used in this process is specially strong, and should be able to get the whole wig in place for as long as 6 months or even a year, when correctly maintained. You wear it all the time, just like some kinds of extensions. You can bathe in it — and swim, if you wish. It seems miraculous, but you can imagine lace wigs as the ultimate kind of hair extension — one that covers the whole scalp. The advantage is that you don’t need to glue it bit like bit, like you do with extensions. Instead, you glue the whole wig to your hair, and you’re finished. Allegedly the procedure is easy enough for someone to learn it to do it a home; millions do that, and just go to the salon when they wish to cut the wig’s hair and restyle it a bit.

Now you might be thinking… yes, well, but I’m not going to wear the same wig for 6 months, so probably this is really not for me. And you might be right! Also, just for having fun and going out with some friends, it’s a pain to go all the trouble to glue the wig to one’s scalp, and then to remove it all again with the special glue remover… too much trouble. “Normal” wigs are so much easier, you just put them on and take them off. Simple!

Well, soon enough, the wig industry had to face this issue. Not everybody is like Beyoncé who needs perfect hair for 6 months at a row, goes to a hair stylist who charges her US$5k for the haircut (and the wig!), and keeps the wig on top of their heads 24h/day during those 6 months. Many of us just want something that looks as good as Beyoncé’s hair, but which can be easily put on and removed.

So front lace wigs were introduced into the market. These are a hybrid of full lace wigs and regular wigs. They have a cap just like the normal wigs, but the bit at the front — where most people will look at carefully! — is done in lace. Depending on how “deep” the lace goes — it can be something like 10-15 cm, depending on the brand — you also get the ability to part your wig’s hair in a very natural way. But it means that certain sections of the wig are on top of a regular cap — you won’t be able to pull your hair up on a very complex hairdo, like you can do with full lace wigs. There is a certain amount of things you can do with a front lace wig, but not everything is possible.

Still, it’s an excellent compromise. Because just the bit that is laced is highly expensive, front lace wigs are cheaper, as they just have that bit, but the rest is a normal cap. However, they have “the bits that count” — and that’s what makes all the difference!

When you watch someone wearing a wig, you’re usually close to their faces, and you will notice the hairline in the front. A regular’s wig cap is always noticeable, but some hairstyles might be able to disguise it — one reason why I like bangs! (with them, you never know where the hairline actually is). Lace wigs are built in a way different way: when the lace is glued on top of your hair or even on top of your bare skin, the lace becomes invisible. It’s next to impossible to notice it. But the top lace wig manufacturers have even more tricks up their sleeves to make it even better!

Our human hair does not grow uniformly all over the scalp. Close to the hairline, even if you have grown your natural hair very long, you will have what is described as baby hair — much shorter and thinner hair. This is usually not noticeable, since when you style your hair (or even brush it), it will follow the general direction of the longer and thicker hair just behind it. However, on “normal” wigs, the lack of this kind of hair is immediately noticeable on most styles. The hair just seems to “appear suddenly” from the scalp, and becomes thick (because the cap is underneath!). This is a telltale sign of someone wearing a wig! Of course, as said, some hairstyles can minimize the impact (that’s why bangs work so well for us CDs): if you cannot see where the hairline actually is, you won’t notice the “missing hairs”.

Caps also need to conform to a specific design: after all, they have to fit, and they need the elastic banding to keep the wig in place. Now this will always mean that the area to the sides, above the ears and so (i.e. the front of the temporal bones), cannot be adequately covered with a cap. This area is usually “exposed” and it’s up to the wig stylist to do their best to make it less visible. The problem is that you cannot adequately construct a wig cap that covers those zones and has elastic banding to keep the cap close to the scalp — it’s just not possible.

Lace wigs have no such issue. The cap pretty much follows the design of a normal wig’s cap, but the lace is free to “flap” and cover whatever needs to be covered. In fact, all lace wigs — full or frontal — have to be cut with a scissor before usage: there is always extra lace to allow for those “flaps” to be shorter or longer, according to each individual. These flaps will, to an extent, have baby hair too. What that means is that even if the overall wig style covers well the area above the ears, if someone “peeks” below the hair, they will just see… more hair, where it should be. It’s very ingeniously designed, and I have some difficulty in describing how exactly it works — you can try to see some videos and pictures of lace wigs to understand the process better.

Now, ideally, all this lace — even on front lace wigs — should be glued on for best effect. But modern wig manufacturers have been able to deal with even that. The cap, besides elastic banding, also has some combs to keep the wig in place. In theory, you just need to let the lace naturally rest on top of the skin just close to your natural hairline; it’s usually enough. For best results, however, there are special double-sided tapes with glue for keeping the lace really close to the skin. The lace is totally transparent when directly on top of the skin, but it might look whitish if it’s not glued to it. This is not a huge problem as most people have relatively unpigmented scalps, i.e. your scalp beneath the hair is usually white, even if you wear a tan, so it will look natural enough that way. The only problem is that the lace, because it’s so thin, will easily curl up, spoiling the effect: just a tiny stretch of tape deals with this very easily!

Actually, I already had one front lace wig, which was bought on the salon/shop mentioned above. It included combs to keep the cap in place, but I had no way to glue the wig’s lace to the skin. The results were still rather good. I just stopped wearing that wig because, well, it’s not very long and makes me look ten years older than I am! So it’s mostly a question of vanity… This old wig, however, is not so well-designed as my new one. It lacks the baby hair and the more complex lace contour which covers the areas over the ears perfectly. And it has far less volume, too.

So… I started making a list of all I wanted in a new wig

• First of all, it had to be long. I’m sorry, but I have tested shorter hairstyles. I might have no option but to wear the hair short when I’m 50 or 60, because there is so much prejudice against senior citizens wearing their hair long, but, until then, the shorter the hairstyle, the worse it looks on me
• Secondly, I need volume. My biggest complaint about many of the wigs I’ve got is that, to keep them light, they have little volume. This is not because the wig manufacturers are cutting costs… they know that a wig owner will have their natural hair beneath the cap, which gives volume on its own. However, my own natural hair is rather short and thin (and I’m getting balder and balder too, of course!), so my own “natural volume” is not enough. I have seen videos of crossdressers who add some “padding” beneath the cap to compensate, but I found that too awkward and unnatural for my own tastes.
• There is also a volume-related issue that I’ve noticed in many of the wigs I’ve got. I do have a very old natural hair wig which has adequate volume overall: the point here is that I want to cover the head all around. Many wigs simply don’t have enough hair for all that. Why? Because hair is heavy. That natural wig I’ve got is really heavy, and this, in turn, makes it less fun to wear, as you cannot flip it around so easily — and of course it means it’s very warm, too! So this seemed to be one of those paradoxes — either you have “too much hair”, which looks great, but is heavy and doesn’t allow you to flip your hair; or you have a lighter, cooler wig, lots of flipping opportunities, but which, however, will always look as if there is some hair missing on it.
• After so many attempts at shades — I would love to be a blonde, but there is no shade of blonde that suits me! — I think that the colour I like best is a light chestnut with highlights, or auburn. The natural hair wig I’ve mentioned is truly copper red, which is waaaay too red for me. Auburn works fine. But the highlights, or at least a mix of shades, work best: they’re very fashionable and add to the realism.
• While I rather fancy the bangs — they help to hide the forehead and the hairline! — I’d like to try something different. The front lace wig I already had allowed me to play a bit with parting and had nice layering — I enjoyed it a lot. A pity it was so short! So that was my starting point.
• I’m really not very good at putting a wig on, and even worse at styling it. So the wig ought to be easy to wear! This also means that I have to forfeit a natural hair wig, because those really require a lot of maintenance. Also, they’re far more expensive!
• And, needless to say, I’m on a very low budget!

Now do a search for “front lace wigs” on Google and you’ll see a billion companies offering all sorts of styles. Front lace wigs are quickly becoming “the” standard in wig manufacturing, and, thanks to the vast amount of manufacturers, the prices have fallen down considerably. These days you can get entry-level front lace wigs for as little as US$100-200, which should have more than enough quality for a good, realistic fit. Contrast that to “normal” wigs, which these days go for as little as $20 or $30 (and are way, way better than US$200-300 wigs made two decades ago!). Natural hair wigs will perhaps cost US$500 or more, but with natural hair wigs, the sky is the limit — as said, Beyoncé pays US$5000-6000 for her wigs. Obviously that includes the styling, which is probably the most expensive bit of the overall cost!

So I hesitated for a long time, until I started reading recommendations. On a CD forum where I participate as a regular member, they were praising Pink Lace Wigs, so I sent them a few enquiries… in July, shortly after I scrapped some money received for my anniversary.

Pink Lace Wigs, as a wig manufacturer, are slightly different than most. They actually don’t offer many styles on their website, compared to others. This is because their strength is in custom orders. Since all their wigs are hand-made — they have a channel on YouTube showing how they manufacture the wigs and how to maintain them (wash, trim the lace, and so forth) — this means that they can accept custom orders. They do have an impressive array of options, but — and this is what counted for me — they’re incredibly cheap.

And they even accept images and PDFs to give them instructions about the wig you wish. I send them a lot of pictures and 3D images of the wig I wanted them to create

To be honest, after hours of searching, I couldn’t find any other manufacturer with such low prices. There might be a few around — I just couldn’t find them.

There are several reasons for the low prices, none of which related to the incredible quality of their products. First and foremost, perhaps, is that they send the wigs unstyled — just like with extensions, you just get the hair. Then you need to go to a hair salon and get it styled. This makes a huge difference: in my country, getting a reasonable competent hairdresser to style your wig will just cost some €10-20. So PLW saves what it costs in the US to style a wig by sending it “raw”. Well, you have seen the pictures, and you can also see the video below, to get a taste of what an “unstyled” front lace wig from PLW looks like:

Unstyled looks good enough for me although I might get my talented hairdresser have a go at it some time — I’d love some layering on it for a more modern look. We’ll see. It seems a pity to cut such a lovely wig, though

Of course, PLW also styles wigs — the ones shown on their online shop are usually styled (they look better that way!).

The second reason for the low price is — not surprisingly — because they manufacture their own wigs, they don’t buy it from third parties, nor do they resell orders from international stylists. What you see on some higher-end online shops are “branded” wigs, where a professional hairstylist will order a wig “raw”, style it, and resell it under their own brand. It’s likely that many of those wigs are actually rebranded wigs from PLW! So by handling directly with them, you are cutting the middleman.

And I also think that they must be selling gazillions of hand-made wigs, which of course lowers the price

PLW also runs a lot of contests and keeps in touch with their happy customers on Facebook. Obviously they’re not the only wig manufacturer doing that, but it also provides another channel to talk to other customers and to the PLW employees and get some questions answered.

Now, not everything is pink at Pink Lace Wigs

This is naturally just my own personal experience and of course your mileage may vary. But my order took a lot of time to be delivered!

I might have been unlucky, but here is what happened to me: as said, I started contacting PLW back in July. First I had a lot of questions about technical aspects: their order form is complex, they have really a lot of options, and I needed to understand a bit better what all those options meant. Now I guess that if you live near one of their physical shops, you could just walk in and ask everything. When ordering via the Web, you are given three choices: telephone calls (not an option for me for several reasons), email, or Live Chat.

Email gets answered depending on who is on duty… sometimes, you get an answer after a couple of days. Sometimes, it takes a couple of weeks to get an answer, which is next to unacceptable, but I’m patient Maybe they’re so flooded with email requests that they can’t keep up…

Live Chat is interesting. It’s very, very hard to get an operator there — a whole week could pass without having anyone behind the computer. When I finally managed to get someone to answer, I would obviously have almost every question instantly answered, specially during the “planning” stage. However, the delays in getting emails answered, and the eternal wait for someone to come to Live Chat, meant that a whole month had elapsed until I finally managed to place my order, at the end of August.

Custom orders take 6-7 weeks or 4-5 on a rush order, so I placed a rush order. It quickly became apparent that they would be unable to stick to those schedules. In fact, the wig took over 16 weeks to be manufactured and delivered! I placed a minor complaint, and they offered me to return the extra money for the rush order, but I suggested that they’d add some extra items (namely, more double-sided tape) instead… which apparently they forgot to do. During that time, I tried to reach them almost every day, but it would be a lucky week if I managed to get an answer. Live Chat seems to have a lot of trouble to get hold of their colleagues at Production and Shipping — they usually don’t answer “immediately”, so you’re stuck waiting for Live Chat to find anyone to tell you something about your order, and very often being unable to do so.

I don’t think they “forgot” the order, though. They sometimes post information on Facebook about stock rupture. Sometimes, they might simply not have all the hair fibres or dyes in stock for a custom order, and have to wait until their suppliers replenish their stocks. These things happen and they’re perfectly understandable; however, as a customer, I would rather prefer that they gave some feedback on that (if that’s the reason). Also, at some times, they’re simply swamped with orders. As time passed, and Halloween came near, they got tons of rush orders. Then, for Thanksgiving, everybody wanted a new hairstyle for the holidays. Now I guess they’re full with orders for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Of course, as there are always holidays and special occasions all over the year for people to order new wigs, this means they have lots of periods totally overwhelmed with work.

Also, they ship using USPS. If you live in the US, this is not really a problem, and USPS is cheap. For me, however, I rather prefer DHL, for a very good reason. DHL operates their own aircraft, and they have their own local customs. What this means is that almost everything I order from the US via DHL goes swiftly through customs, and since the orders are never large, I never pay any surplus custom taxes.

USPS delivers directly into Portugal’s customs. I suppose that since these days pretty much everybody uses DHL unless they don’t have an option, the customs people have little to do, and, when they finally get a package through them, they make sure they charge everything the law allows them to charge! Currently it’s about 30% or so — it makes a difference. DHL, even at a higher shipping cost, rarely goes up to 30% of the total cost. Still, I can’t complain much, delivery was unusually quick for this holiday season, even though the local delivery guy failed to press the buzzer for the right door, and I had to pick up the parcel at the local post office, after retrieving the pick-up paper slip from a neighbour…

So will I shop again with PLW? Very likely. The quality of the wig is totally unlike any other I have ever bought, and I have bought more expensive ones occasionally. Looking at my list, PLW managed pretty much to meet all my expectations. The shade is a bit more red than I thought, but, to be honest, I don’t mind — I have a fetish for redheads, I love being one I was expecting a styled wig, to be honest — I had included a lot of detail on the instructions about the styling — but I’m still glad I got the wig. As you can see on the video, it still looks awesome, even unstyled. And I can style it here much cheaper than in the US.

Using the sticky double-sided tape is also far easier than I thought. I have mostly seen videos and tutorials to explain how to use glue, and I thought it would be incredibly messy. Tape is so much easier to apply. It adheres quite well — better than surgical tape — and is easily removed, without any special product, and without leaving stains or any kind of mark. I’m also more used to clip-on combs — like the ones used on extensions — to keep the cap in place; PLW, when sewing combs, is generous — 5 in all; usually you just get two — but they’re not clip-on: nevertheless, they’re more than enough to keep everything where it should. The cap is most definitely the best I have ever worn by far: that’s thanks to PLW having different sizes! Even the crossdresser-specific wig shops have too small sizes for me. PLW not only has three different, “standard” sizes, but you can measure your own head using their guidelines, and “design” a totally customized cap just for you. In fact, they recommend doing exactly that for full lace wigs, specially the ones with human hair, to make sure the fit is perfect. In my case, they recommended to measure myself first and see if I fitted within the interval for the large sized cap — which I did — and don’t bother too much about a custom cap. They were right. The fit couldn’t be better.

The hair is very sturdy! I have learned to brush the wig vigorously when it arrives: that way, all the half-loose hair strands will come away, and you won’t get any further surprises. Well, I’m happy to say that the PLW wigs loose little hair, which shouldn’t be surprising if you see their manufacturing videos — they aren’t exactly gentle with those hair strands! The result is a wig where there will not be any “sudden” hair loss (which definitely happened to me with other wigs).

Of course, what pleases me most is the way the hair falls naturally, and that there is so much of it! The braid made with all the hair is unbelievable thick; but when you look at the individual fibers, they’re silky, thin and flexible. This opens up a lot of possibilities. As said, my old human hair wig also has volume, but when pulling it back to braid it, it doesn’t look natural enough — it’s the lack of the details explained earlier. The PLW wig is completely natural in that regard.

I’m just curious to see if the wig is too hot in summer, because it has so much volume. This will be the final trial, due next summer. I can’t say that it “feels” warm (unlike my human hair wig, which is very warm) but it’s hard to say.

So, at the end of the day, it all comes to how much time you’re willing to wait for a custom order. If, like me, you’re fine in waiting a few months, then PLW is the ideal place to shop for your unique design, which you can customize with uncountable options. If you can’t wait and expect instant delivery, the best is to walk straight into their shop and buy one of the available styles Failing that, they promise to ship any of the wigs they have on their website in 2-3 days, but, of course, you’re limited to the available choices. Also, they might not carry all the styles, all the time — they’re constantly releasing new ones. If you do a custom order, however, you can always reorder the same wig over and over again (they have a button just for that!).

On the other hand, even if you don’t use PLW, I would most certainly recommend a lace wig over any other kind. Nothing else comes close enough in terms of natural look. I seriously suspect that non-lace wigs will soon remain out of business, or be strictly available for single-use during Halloween (to be discarded immediately afterwards). As lace wigs are currently so cheap and become more and more popular, it’s not worth the trouble to buy any other kind, no matter how good it looks and feels. Lace wigs are simply a next generation which addresses all shortcomings of the older technology, and gives plenty of options to wear them; nothing else comes close, if you don’t have a natural hairstyle that is adequate for extensions, which might be the only thing beating lace wigs…

To summarize, because this post is getting too long again:

• Lace wigs, like their normal counterparts, are available in all kinds of human and synthetic hair.
• Human hair can look better, but they require much more maintenance, just like regular hair. If you’re not prepared to do that maintenance, stick to high-quality synthetic hair: nobody will notice the difference, even by touch.
• Lace wigs are available in two types: full and front only.
• Full lace wigs are designed for prolonged use. The lace is very thin and available in two types: French (slightly thicker and more sturdy) and Swiss (extra-thin). They are usually glued on for extended periods of time (several weeks), which requires a lot of skill to do properly at home (but it’s not impossible! Everything can be learned!). They are a common replacement for hair extensions, when one’s hair is not appropriate for adding extensions. Full lace wigs can be worn when bathing, swimming, sleeping, etc. They’re known as full cranial prosthesis in medical circles and are not really “wigs” in the common sense of the word (i.e. they’re not something artificial used for fun, but a replacement for hair).
• Companies like PLW also offer glueless full lace wigs, which don’t require glue or tape (the lace-based cap is stretchable).
• Front lace wigs have regular caps but the more visible part of the wig — hairline at the front, over the ears, etc. — is made of lace. They’re a good compromise: they’re naturally cheaper, and they will have a perfect, invisible fit at the front, which is the most noticeable area. The bit of lace ought to be taped or glued (but can also be worn without glue) and is enough to do perfect parting. However, updos or ponytails might be impossible or hard to do, unlike full lace; also, they are not appropriate for prolonged use.
• Lace wigs were originally meant to be used as a custom fit and not as one-size-fits-all, over-the-counter items. Full lace wigs, for best results, requires perfect measurements. Front lace wigs are commonly sold with differently-sized caps, and are more akin to “regular” wigs, just with enhanced technology. Custom-made wigs have lots of options, so be prepared to choose carefully!
• If you’re comfortable in letting a hairdresser style your wig at a salon, this can save you a lot of money and keep the price of a wig down: just get the wig “raw” and save the money! Also, see if the supplier manufactures its own wigs, and is not merely a reseller — manufacturers can often offer wigs at a much lower price with exactly the same quality as “brand names”.

Happy shopping for new hair

Disclaimer

Now I have to start with a big disclaimer. I’m not a therapist. I’m not a health professional. I’m not even qualified to talk about what I’m going to talk — a method which can help to deal with the urges, the anxiety, the stress, the depression, and the disappointment. However, I’m just very fortunate for having met the people who taught me this method, and for which I’m very grateful, and I can only hope that it will be of any use to you as it was for me.

And next I should warn beforehand that none of these methods “work fast”. Often people who are desperate will try pretty much anything to get rid of their frustrations, and, as such, expect immediate results. That’s only natural: when we’re in a bad mood, we want it to go away quickly. Now these methods take a long time to actually have some effect. Don’t expect to follow them for a few days and see immediate results. In fact, the higher your expectations, the longer it will take for them to work — because, fundamentally, they’re methods to deal with way too high expectations. This — hopefully — will become clearer below.

I use this method to deal with my own urges, anxiety, and frustrations, and have practiced it for half a decade. However, that doesn’t mean anything. I still have urges, anxiety, and frustrations — they’re just a bit easier to deal with. When describing the method below, there might be some unintended errors, because I’m really not qualified to explain it fully. Thus, don’t be disappointed with the method itself; it’s just my own incompetence in explaining that rendered it in a confusing way which might not be very understandable to you. Fortunately, there are good experts easily available with which you can discuss the method, and who will be able to explain it flawlessly to you — rely on them for good advice, not on my poor understanding.

And the final warning is to let you know that if you feel that your condition is hopeless — please, please go and visit a therapist! Several will be familiar with the special requirements and needs of transgendered people, and can provide you with immediate relief. I understand that for many of you things like “shame” or the refusal to “come out” (for whatever reasons) are big incentives not to look for a professional therapist, and so you’re turning to the ‘net for help. I actually understand that quite well — I went through that route myself, but my own case is relatively mild. If your case is serious, you need professional help, but there is nothing to be “ashamed” of — health care professionals who are experts in the subject of transgenderism are able to deal with your issues. Don’t rely too much on what you read on the Internet for treating yourself at home because you’re “ashamed” to talk to a doctor or a specialist about it; instead, use the Internet to research what professionals are available in your area, see which ones are more discreet and have good reviews, and place an appointment with them. You will be in safer hands that way.

My motivation for writing this article

I have stumbled across a website known as Stop Crossdressing about a year ago, and revisited it recently to see what the author, “Jared”, had added to it. To keep it simple: Jared, a crossdresser with a strong Christian background, believes that crossdressing is “wrong”, for several reasons. He read a book to help those who want to break the habit of sex addition, and considers crossdressing to be nothing more than that: an addiction. Jared is reasonably well-informed and documented. He knows all about crossdressing, read everything he could about it, learned that it’s usually understood by the medical community that you cannot “cure” crossdressing, and so forth. He’s also highly rational and very intelligent (which is not unusual for transgendered people!) and so he proposes a method to “break free” of the crossdressing habit. He’s also very honest: since making the decision, he relapsed at least twice, and is very open about his experiences — showing how hard it is to “break free”.

But why does Jared ultimately want to stop crossdressing? It’s not just because of his religious/moral convictions. Ultimately, what he feels is that the urge to crossdressing drives him to a high degree of insatisfaction, which can lead to anxiety, frustration, and, ultimately, depression. So he wants to get rid of that urge. By looking at crossdressing as a habit, or an addiction, he can change his mind to believe that it’s “wrong” to crossdress, develop a mindset that only wants to get rid of the frustration and experience a certain degree of happiness, and, to do so, he has to stop feeling the urge to crossdress. He reasons that once he is deeply convinced that crossdressing only leads to insatisfaction, his mind will break free of the habit. His relapses only show that, at some point, he’s not fully convinced yet that crossdressing is so “bad”, and so he keeps returning to it. Recently, he has been experimenting with a typical association of ideas: crossdressing leads to sexual arousing; it’s a sophisticated form of assisted masturbation; so if he gets rid of the desire to masturbate, his urge to crossdress will disappear as well. So far, he seems to be “winning the battle”, according to his latest entries.

Now let me explain first that I understand Jared very well. The urge to crossdress is very strong for some — so strong that it only leads to suffering of some sort, even if it’s just thinking about it all the time and sighing out loud “what a pity that I can’t crossdress until the weekend!”. All transgendered people feel exactly like that to a degree: we’re usually never happy at the level of crossdressing we can do. If we’re able to dress once per year, we want to do it every month. If we can do it once per month, we want to do it once a week. If once a week is actually possible, we want to do it every evening. And if we spend all time at home crossdressed (I know a few CDs who do exactly that, with encouragement from their wives), we start feeling the urge to dress all the time, and, well, why not go through transition then? In fact, “transition” is one of the surgical procedures with the highest degree of success in the history of medicine — success rates are usually around 98% or 99%. It’s also suprising that although, to a degree, a transexual will encounter a whole new host of problems and complications — hate, rejection, discrimination, even rape — they prefer that to the constant urge to be a woman without the possibility of doing so. It just shows how powerful the urge can be.

So Jared is right. For some, the urge to crossdress is so strong and powerful, and the frustration from the lack of crossdressing so intense, that the actual crossdressing session is just a “temporary relief”. For a few hours, if you’re lucky to get those few hours, the desire subsides, and you experiment something akin to a sense of happiness. But it’s temporary. And you know it will go away once you return your clothes to the closet. Some of us, even while crossdressed, are already pining for the next session — because they know this one will not last much longer — and don’t even enjoy themselves much. What’s the point in dressing, after all, if all you can think about is that “it’s never enough”? This is the route that leads to depression.

Jared thus suggests that stopping that cycle is the only way to avoid the traps of anxiety, frustration, disappointment, and eventually depression. This is, of course, the point where I disagree, but the reasons for doing so are a bit more subtle.

Many might feel attracted to Jared’s methods — finally, a way to deal with the urges! — but be put off by his writing style, since, even if not always obvious, it’s rich with religious thoughts, expressions, and morality.

Now most religions in the world, to a degree, condemn crossdressing — more or less strongly, of course. Some Islamic countries will simply put crossdressers in prison, because “it’s an offense to God”. In Christian countries, most of which have a secular state, we’re a bit more tolerant. In our countries, crossdressers are merely subject to discrimination and hate, but not treated like criminals or mentally disabled people by the State. Putting it very simply, the major reason why most religions condemn crossdressing is because they consider it (like Jared does) a sex addiction. Sex, because it causes pleasure without divine intervention, is considered undesirable — it means that humans, on their own, can forfeit God as the only source of happiness. This is, in fact, the only reason for forbidding everything which gives pleasure by itself — in most theologies, the ability to derive happiness without the need of a God is very troubling. For millenia preachers have thus preached that everything that causes pleasure is Evil and that God does not want us to have pleasure on our own, but only by establishing a link with Him. Sex, drugs and rock’n'roll question this “only source of happiness”, and, as such, they’re “forbidden”.

A few of the more forward-thinking religions tend to view transgendered people as “lost lambs” who have to be “brought back to their rightful place in front of God”. At least, these religions replace hate and discrimination with love and compassion: they seriously believe that a transgendered person is just merely confused but can nevertheless still be “saved”. To be honest, some of these religions actually freak me out.

Recently I saw one magazine from one of these religions with an article on how a transvestite performer “found God again” and abandoned crossdressing. You should have seen the pictures — my words cannot convey the horror of what I felt when reading that article. The first picture showed this person in her feminine role. She was way beyond gorgeous; she was a diva; she was more womanly than any other woman I have seen, and definitely pageant material. She also had a wonderful life as an entertainment performer and earned quite a lot from her performances, enjoying a comfortable life. But more important than all of that is that you could see in her radiant smile and the twinkle in her eyes how absolutely, magnificiently happy she was. With her gorgeous body she was adored by everybody, she was famous, rich, powerful, and truly happy with herself.

By some stroke of bad luck — the article didn’t explain how it happened — this fantastic, happy person found one of the preachers of the organisation (I always wondered, “what was the preacher doing in a transvestite show??”). Somehow he managed to brainwash her and tell her that her soul was lost but could still be saved if she agreed to go through a process of “reverting” her transgenderism. And then we get to see a picture of the result: an ugly, skinny guy with a receding hairline, wearing an even uglier T-shirt, and some sort of agricultural implement. The smile was lost, never to come back; the shine in the eyes disappeared completely. This guy was a hollow shell with no will of his own; unable to earn money to sustain himself, he became a farmer (a rather unsuccessful one). Obviously just looking at the result I could not believe any of the quotes saying “I’m now much happier”. Really. Just one look showed me that this guy was a complete wreck, a mere shadow of what he once had been. And totally apathetic and unable to think for himself; he had no more urges because he was completely brainwashed not to think by himself. The article finished, of course, saying that anyone feeling similar “urges” could be “saved” just like this guy was “saved”.

Of course Jared is much softer in his approach, but rational people who are transgendered easily reject most religions, since those religions don’t offer a solution except for convincing yourself — auto-brainwashing — that what you do is “evil” and you should stop. Now. Put into other words: these religions are not interested in dealing directly with the urges and the insatisfaction related to those urges — like modern psychology does — but just in terminating with the cause: stop crossdressing, and you won’t feel any more urges, sooner or later. Oh, and God will love you for that.

Naturally enough, this gets easily rejected by many crossdressers. Unless, of course, they’re desperate, and the only solution left — before going beyond the abyss, i.e. considering suicide — is simply to “stop”.

Well, I know this is not the only solution. There are, indeed, methods to deal with the urges, the anxiety, the disappointment, the frustration, the insatisfaction, and eventually even preventing depression ever to appear, without needing to adhere to any religion or philosophy, and this is what I propose to explain a bit — not necessarily because I’m good at those methods, or even because I’m good at explaining them, but mostly to encourage anyone reading this to look for a qualified teacher in those methods, and get good instructions from them.

Crossdressing is in the mind

Let’s start at the beginning. Many of you who are transgendered to a degree asked this question over and over again, at the very least when you started crossdressing: “Why am I this way?” Or perhaps you turned the question around: “Why don’t other guys feel the same way I do about dressing as a woman, since it’s something so great?” This, of course, is not restricted to crossdressing: you can apply it to everything. For instance, one of my friends is constantly teasing me to try a plug because it’s so exciting to feel penetrated from the behind, and she cannot understand that, for me, it’s something that just hurts a lot (also, I have surgically removed hemorrhoids half a decade ago, and I’m not so keen in having anything hurting there). On the other side of the coin, it’s hard for me to explain to a non-smoker (or, worse, to an anti-smoker) why smoking is so pleasurable for me. A non-smoker, specially one that had tasted at least one cigarette, will only see the bad side of it: it smells horribly; smoke makes you cough or even vomit; the nicotine buzz will give you a headache; it leaves a terrible after-taste; and, ultimately, it will destroy your health. And people enjoy all that? Non-smokers can only conclude they’re out of their heads.

Nevertheless, most of them went through similar experiences with beer or coffee, and now enjoy both substances like everybody else, and never stopped a minute to see that smoking is pretty much the same. We get used to everything and it becomes pleasurable once you’re familiar with it.

When it comes to crossdressing, my wife often says something similar. There are, of course, crossdressers with perfect bodies, and all they need is to wear a dress. Simple. I’m obviously not one of them: I require extensive padding, corsets, lots of cleverly applied makeup, and a wig. When I first started crossdressing, all this was painful to wear and do. It took me a while to discover how wonderfully comfortable corsets can be when they’re properly worn. Still, it’s true that sometimes the whole experience is not totally pleasurable — after 10 hours of wearing high heels, in some cases, my feet hurt a lot. Or if it’s too hot, the wig becomes unbearable. Or the bra might be chafing and rubbing at the skin and hurting it.

But do I care? No. That’s what my wife teases me about: she says that I spend hours to look vaguely feminine, getting subject to what amounts to physical torture, just to look pretty. While — in her opinion, of course — I would be much better off just by accepting that I’m not a woman and enjoy my male body, which doesn’t require anything to look like it does.

At this point, all of you crossdressers will side with me and say that my wife doesn’t really understand what’s crossdressing all about! We will bring out our lists of justifications of why we take pains to achieve a minimally female image for our pleasure, but, roughly speaking, they will come to the same point: it’s the way we are, we cannot change our nature.

A few decades of medical research on the subject of transgenderism will validate that opinion. At best, researchers will try to explain some issues by pointing to genetic makeup, or certain hormonal imbalances during foetal development, which were not enough to suppress a different sex. All animals, obviously including humans, are born female — female is the “default”. It’s the appropriate enzymes, hormones, and other proteins coming from the XY chromosomes that will subtly change the chemical environment during the early stages, and make a foetus develop as male. Females don’t require the extra chemistry. In fact, there is a medical condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome where the androgen receptor is not functional, and, as such, an individual with XY chromosomes (legally a “male”) will develop externally as a woman instead (but will lack an uterus). This is very uncommon (about 1 in 100.000) but just shows that the difference between male and female is not even determined at the genetic level — a slight mutation is enough for us XY-carriers not to develop as males.

It is conjectured — but not yet scientifically proven — that transgendered people might, during foetal development, be just very slightly insensitive to androgens. The difference is too slight to trigger any external, physical characteristics. But it has been proposed that the brain, which is far more sensitive to tiny variations, might not fully develop as a “male” brain. While all this has been subject of recent research, it’s still very much in the speculative stage. It is, however, enough to show that crossdressing is not merely a “whim” or a “disease”, that can be “treated” and “cured”. There might be physical reasons for transgenderism.

Until those are figured out, all we know is that the mindset is certainly different, even if science doesn’t know why. The “why”, at this stage, is not so important: what matters is to recognise that there are differences, and those differences cause suffering, whatever the true origin might be.

Now here comes the tricky part: even though we all have a mind, science doesn’t exactly know what it is. It seems a bit paradoxical: if we have a mind, we ought to know what it is, right? But no. It’s one of those things that we can identify and recognise when we experience a mind, but not exactly say what it is. Let’s show this by means of an example. Even a small child knows that a fluffy teddy bear has no mind, but a cat does. We might conjecture if plants feel anything, but we know that a fly is hurting when we rip its wings off. Obviously, depending on our own beliefs and moral systems, we might say that animals “have no soul” and are “driven by instinct” and “do not feel like we humans do” — even if there is no evidence for saying that — but the whole point here is not to discuss what animals feel or don’t: it’s just to show that we can immediately know what has a mind and what has not. It’s easy to recognise, but hard to describe what it is!

What is harder to accept, but vital for us transgendered people, is that the mind is not the body. When the body dies, in the immediate second after its death, we know there is no mind there. However, most physical processes are not instantly stopped when the body dies. A few seconds after its death, there are still a lot of chemical processes going on, just as before. But the mind is “gone”. But more weird is what happens when you’re in a coma or go through general anesthesia — a routine procedure these days. Your mind is literally “shut down” during coma or surgery, but the body still functions normally. However, when going through anesthesia, the mind “recovers” on its own and continues to operate normally. The same happens when fainting, which we computer geeks describe as “rebooting the brain” — the mind shuts down for a while and recovers again by itself. During that period of time, you have no consciousness whatsoever — it’s not like “deep sleep”, where you might have dreams and have some idea of the passage of time (even if dreams seem to take much longer than they actually take).

So… clearly mind and body are very strongly related, but they are not “the same thing”. Here is where transgenderism plays a role: it’s when the mind, somehow, to a degree, thinks that it’s not exactly aligned to the body’s gender.

Now these “misalignments” are hardly uncommon. Anorexia is triggered by a mind that believes that the body is “too fat” — no matter how much the body actually weights or looks like. In fact, it’s actually quite rare that people believe they have a “perfect body” — when they do, we call them narcissists! So somehow it’s viewed to be “healthy” and “normal” if you’re not entirely satisfied with your body! Also, of course, as we age, our perception of our body changes — as it gets older and less functional, we tend to dislike it more and more. It’s the degree of rejection of one’s body that marks the difference between a healthy individual or, eventually, a mental disorder of some kind. On the other hand, transgenderism is not a “mental disorder” in the sense of something that “develops”, but in the sense of a permanent condition: the individual’s mind clearly “was born” rejecting (to a degree) their physically assigned gender, and all they can do is to deal with that.

Jared’s strategy on the Stop Crossdressing website is to persuade himself (and others who follow his techniques) that having one’s mind “misaligned” with the body’s physical gender is “wrong”, so he tries to “convince” himself otherwise. This is a mix of a suppression technique (avoiding feelings, thoughts and emotions that trigger the crossdressing urge) and an adoption technique (training the mind to accept that the male body is something desirable, exciting, agreeable, and pleasurable). These techniques can work to a degree — after all, similar methods are used to “cure” addictions — but they all have a catch.

First of all, they might be very stressy by themselves. It’s hard to “train” one’s mind, and if we’re “training” it to suppress pleasurable things, the mind resists the change. This is one of the reasons that we see religious fanatics becoming very unbalanced people, full of resentment, envy, and negative thoughts — they condition themselves so hard to suppress their urges and desires, that they get furious with pretty much anyone who is enjoying themselves.

But the reverse is also true. Simply following our urges and desires also leads to problems. At the very least, we will quickly discover that those urges and desires increase more and more. There is no stopping them! So when we’re constantly following those desires, we will need to follow them more to feel the same degree of momentary happiness, which seems shorter and shorter. This is the problem I alluded before: we’re never happy with the amount of crossdressing we do, until, finally, the option seems to be to crossdress all the time. When that is impossible, no matter how much we have indulged in crossdressing, it will ultimately fail to please us.

You can see at this point that this is the bare core of “addiction”, and, as such, Jared is not totally wrong when he follows the theory that crossdressing is a form of “sex addiction” (because, for Jared, crossdressing is linked with masturbation). Other addictions work like that, too. Alcoholics will, indeed, need to consume more and more alcohol to induce the desired state of stupefaction that they require; but at some point, even a small amount will induce ebriety, just not with the desired intensity. Typical drugs will also require more and more consumption to trigger the same effect. But it’s not just chemical substances that cause addiction — take the example of hoarders, for instance. They also will buy more and more things they don’t use until they cannot even live inside their houses, crammed full with useless things, but they don’t even notice that — all they know is that they have “never enough”. At a milder level, some people will compulsively and obsessively buy more and more dresses and shoes, but feel they have never the “right” thing to wear. In fact, all our consumer-oriented society is based on the fact that we need “more and more”.

But not all addictions work the same way. Smoking, for instance, is a bit different: at the beginning, you will quickly consume more and more cigarettes per day, until you reach an equilibrium, which is different for everybody. When you reach that plateau, you will not feel the “urge” to smoke “more and more” — you’ve reached a limit. However, you will feel the deprivation from smoking less — that’s why it’s a very hard addiction to get rid off, because it’s almost impossible to “smoke less and less” until you stop smoking. You either cut it completely, forever, or it won’t work. But lots of people are “casual smokers” — they can just smoke socially and never become addicted, or smoke so little per week (say, a handful of cigarettes) that they’re not considered “addicted”. And, of course, for these people, they can stop smoking at any time. Why? The explanation is beyond the purpose of this article — I might write on it another day — but the whole point here is that not everything is an “addiction”; that “addictions” are not merely physical (like hoarding, for instance); that some of those addictions are purely mental, others are physical; and, of course — and this is my point — just because something looks like an addiction (like Jared suggests) it doesn’t mean it is an addiction, but can be something entirely different altogether.

Now we humans are mastermind pattern-matchers — we find patterns even when we there aren’t any! We give significance to things that don’t mean anything, just because our brains, evolved from the most deadly predator on Earth (yes, that’s what we are!), are extraordinary pattern-matching tools. This gave us lots of wonderful abilities, like the ability to read, write, and use logic to analyse and discuss things. But sometimes we stretch analogies too far! That’s the bad side of excessive pattern-matching. Jared, and some early psychiatrists — and almost all prominent religious figures — “believe” that transgenderism is “just like a habit or addiction”, and, as such, can be “cured” using the same techniques (i.e. just stop doing it, and stick to that).

We know this is simply not the case. A transgendered mind just works differently.

Observing the mind: it’s just thoughts!

Now if “suppression” doesn’t really work — it will just make us unhappy — but getting dressed “more and more” also leads to “more and more” disappointment and frustration, what can we do?

Some will say at this point, “learn contentment”. Find an equilibrium. Don’t suppress it too much, but don’t follow your urges too much. Find a middle way — avoid extremes. These are all good advices, but… how do we actually do that?

To understand that, we need, at first, get rid of a lot of social conditioning we have regarding things like pleasure/pain, feelings, sensations, emotions, and thoughts.

Traditionally, for centuries, we were taught that all these things are different. For instance, when we feel pain, we immediately react; until very recently, we called this action “instinctive”, since the brain didn’t need to “think” about it. Nowadays, modern science has sort of discarded the notion of “instinct” — something artificially introduced by religions to separate “men from the beast” — and explain everything with levels of consciousness and complexity of thought, and so forth. But the point remains that we have been conditioned for centuries to believe there was a difference between “instinct” and “rational thought”.

Similarly, we say that we feel emotions, and react upon them, because emotions are biologically conditioned, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. We can even explain them through evolution: for instance, “fear” triggers adrenalin in our bodies, allowing us to run to escape the source of fear, so animals developing this fear/adrenalin relationship did manage to escape predators and enemies, and reproduce — while others, not having developed “fear”, might have been too slow to react. Of course this is an oversimplification — things are way more complex — but, again, the point is that we commonly say that fear is irrational, we cannot control it, we’re at the mercy of what triggers fear and can do nothing about it.

Get a list of emotions and feelings, and it will be the same thing over and over again. We might not even agree on the same list, but most people will be socially conditioned to believe that emotions and feelings “just happen”. They’re “juices flowing in the body” and outside rational thought — in fact, a lot of emotions are known to trigger chemical changes. Tears collected from someone laughing have a different chemical composition than the tears from someone weeping in distress. Anger triggers a rise in blood pressure and the blood capillaries near the surface of the skin get irrigated; we feel heat radiating from our face because of that. On the other hand, some chemical or physical changes inside our bodies clearly trigger emotions and feelings; thus, we feel hungry because the stomach is empty (to give a simple example), or we are driven to the toilet because the bladder is full. Pain and pleasure are also usually explained that way.

It’s very hard to think about all this things differently because we’re so used to this explanation!

Here is my challenge: observe all these categories for what they really are — what your experience is — and not from what you’ve learned at school, from parents, from friends, or from browsing the Internet. This takes a certain amount of critical thought and an open mind!

Let’s start with a simple example: pain. Pinch your leg. It hurts. We will say, “the leg is hurt, so I feel pain”.

But let’s analyse this more critically. Is the pain a characteristic of the leg itself, i.e., can the leg feel pain by itself? If you observe it closely, you will quickly come to examples where this is not the case. For instance, if you’re deep asleep — not merely in a dream state — you can get pinched and you won’t feel any pain: you’re asleep! Obviously, the same happens when you’re in a coma or during surgery: you can “shut off” pain that way. But let’s not be dramatic: I’m sure you have felt “pins and needles”, or a leg that has “fallen asleep”. Have you pinched yourself when that happened? Did you feel any pain — or even the touch of your fingers on the leg’s skin? Finally, of course, if you pinch a corpse’s leg, it’s clear that the corpse will not feel any pain — they’re dead.

So it’s not merely the leg that feels pain. There has to be “someone” that registers the pain. We will say, “oh, of course, it’s the brain”. Well, that’s not quite correct. It’s true that signals from the pinching arrive at certain parts of the brain and it will thus register pain. But the same happens when you’re asleep or in a coma; the difference is that the brain, even though it receives the same signals, doesn’t register anything. Don’t shrug this away by saying “in those cases the brain is anesthetized, so obviously it doesn’t ‘feel’ anything”. It’s not so simple! Medical science doesn’t really know what “anesthesia” actually is, all it knows is how to induce it artificially, how to maintain it, and how to trigger the “waking up”. Science doesn’t say what it is — we just describe its effects.

There is this old joke that to get rid of a headache you should drop a hammer on your toe — then you will forget all about the headache. That’s certainly true, but it’s not obvious why! But you can be a little less dramatic. Imagine that you have been stung by an insect and now it hurts a lot; but in the mean time you get a phone call from your sweetheart. What happens? Sure, you might complain a lot about having been stung, but, as the conversation flows, and you get more enthusiastic about your loving partner, the pain subsides — at least, until the phone call is over. You might say that this is not really what happens in your case, but I have more examples like that — just bear with me for a moment.

The point here is to observe “where is pain”. And if you are paying attention, there is only one point it can be: it’s in your mind. Now I’m not saying you’re “imagining things” — not at all! It’s quite obvious that, under normal circumstances, if you stub your toe while kicking a rock, it will hurt. There is no question about that. It doesn’t matter if the pain is “in” the rock, “in” the foot, “in” the brain, or wherever else: all you know is that it hurts. But — and this is the important point to recognize! — this pain doesn’t exist by itself. It requires a lot of things to happen at the same time: you need to be awake and conscious; the foot has to kick the rock; you need to be focused on the pain and not on something else, etc. If all circumstances are present, then, yes, you register pain. If some of them are absent, you don’t. The lesson here is that pain doesn’t exist by itself, it requires a conscious mind that is aware of the pain, and a lot of circumstances to trigger it.

Let’s switch from pain to pleasure. Imagine your favourite dish or dessert — let’s say it’s ice cream. Now imagine you’re enjoying yourself eating a delicious portion of ice cream, and suddenly you get a phone call from your broker, saying that they lost all your money. Or a relative has just died. Or your kid at school has flunked an exam. What happens? For most of us, suddenly the ice cream “turns to ashes in our mouth” — we lose appetite, it doesn’t taste as it should, all because we’re worried with something else. Conversely, something you don’t really enjoy eating may be much more pleasant if you’re surrounded by good friends and having a lot of fun together (that’s one reason why we tend to drink too much — we’re not really paying attention to how much we drink while we’re having fun!).

So where is the “taste”, the “appetite”, the pleasure of eating some foods and not others? It’s in the food itself? Or is it just like the pain example — you need to be conscious of what you’re eating, the food has to be around, you need to be eating it, you cannot be distracted. When all that happens simultaneously, then, yes, you’re tasting food you like and enjoying yourself.

Now let’s analyse other emotions, like, for instance, anger. We say that certain people or situations anger us, and we shift the blame to them. For instance, at school, we might say that a bully is universally hated by everybody, bullying is not acceptable behaviour, so that bully is what triggers our anger (and very rightfully so). The bully is inherently deserving our anger.

However, that bully will have loving parents who adore him and think the best of him. He might have other bully friends. So how can that be possible? How can the same person trigger love, friendship, adoration in some, but “universal hate” in others? Evidently, all we can say is that the bully’s actions go against our own ethical conduct, and, as such, we dislike the bully — and everybody sharing the same ethics will agree with us, so we must be right (and the bully’s parents, friends, and so forth are all wrong).

But if we analyse things the same way, we will see that this is not really the case. A typical example: let’s look at our relationships. A few among you might be living with their first love in a never-ending relationship and miss the point, but most of us will have gone, at least, through a few relationships. What happens is that we think the best of the world of a newly acquired partner and all is rosy and cheeky at the beginning. Then, over time, we learn more and more disagreeable things about that “perfect partner”, who suddenly is found not to be up to our incredibly high expectations. And vice-versa: one day, harsh words will be spoken, a certain behaviour will not be more tolerated, and that person who was our best friend will become our worst enemy. We will say that this person has changed, that it wasn’t the same person we first started to go out with, and so forth. But we forget that we are not the same, either! But clearly it’s not only the other person that suddenly became completely unacceptable — after the breakup, that other person might quickly find a new lover, engage into another relationship, and clearly become another’s source of love and veneration.

So in these emotions we see, once more, that it takes a bit more than just being adorable, sexy, perfect in every detail — because the same adorable, sexy, perfect person can be paradise in one moment, but hell in another. At the beginning, we say that there was “chemistry” between both lovers, which made “their hearts beat as one” — but somehow the chemistry is gone at some point (and we shift the blame on our former partner for having changed and failing to meet our expectations). So where is this “everlasting emotion of love”? To be blunt: it only existed in our minds.

At this point you will complain that love is not just that; it’s also passion, lust, and the desire to make them happy. These are visceral emotions, coming “deep from within”.

But we have to take a look at all of that carefully. What triggers that passion and lust? If it’s the person’s body, what happens when the body changes — when it grows old or catches a disease? Well, we’ll say that the chemistry doesn’t last. But the truth is that someone incredible attractive, once they behave in a way that makes us angry (instead of loving and caring), suddenly loses all their attraction. However, to a third party, that person might continue to be attractive, and they might be baffled about your reaction — isn’t it still the same gorgeous body?

To summarise: all these emotions, feelings, sensations, and so forth, no matter how we list and classify them, don’t exist by themselves. Instead, they’re a complex interplay of circumstances which trigger them. And where are they triggered? We usually think (mostly through social conditioning) that they are either triggered in the body or somewhere in our brain. And while from a perspective of neurochemistry this is not entirely incorrect, one thing is to describe the physical properties associated with these emotions and feelings — neurological signals travelling our nervous system, hormonal messages being carried by the blood to the brain — the other thing is who or what experiences them and labels them as emotions, feelings, and so forth. And there is just one answer: it’s our mind doing the labeling. There is no place else for that to happen.

Let me recap. One thing is describing in acute detail what happens at the biological level; we can do that, and we have more and more sophisticated techniques to do so. The other thing is actually experiencing the emotions, feelings, and so forth. The experience happens in the mind. And this is why the same set of circumstances — the same set of triggers — will produce different experiences depending on our mindset.

There are typical examples to show how this works. Imagine that you’re strongly attracted to women. On the first scenario, you go to a club, full of octogenarian men, dancing to the latest hit by Jay Lo. Disgusting! On the second scenario, you go to the same club, listen to the same music, but this time, the club is full with young supermodels enjoying themselves. They might even be doing exactly the same choreography than the grandpas on the first scenario. Why do you feel “different”? It’s the same music, the same sound, even the same dance movements. But in one case, you enjoy yourself tremendously; on the other case, you just feel it’s revolting and disgusting. What’s the difference?

“Well, I don’t feel attracted to 80-year-olds!”

And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? So the “difference” is really how your mind finds some things attractive, and other disgusting. But, on those same scenarios, a 80-year-old grandma would rather prefer the first scenario, and find the second scenario an attack on morality and just pure depravation! It’s not the scenario by itself that is to blame, it’s the way people’s minds label and categorise things.

Is this hard to grasp? You bet it is. But it’s just because we’re conditioned to think otherwise.

And now, to end this chapter, we should finally analyse the last item on the list: “thoughts”. What are they? Where are they stored? Where do they come from, where do they go? When we have a thought, where is it? Don’t simply say, “they’re in the brain”. Neither you nor me can see our own brains. Yes, sure, they’re probably encoded there somewhere — but that’s not what we experience. We experience something completely different. We don’t need to know what kind of complex sugar structures our brains are consuming, what interconnections they’re building, what neurons are firing, what hormones are acting on the brain’s structure to change it every second… we don’t need to know any of those things to experience thought. We know that we can think even if we have no clue how it works (and thankfully, that’s the case). We don’t even need to learn how to have thoughts — they appear nonetheless, unbidden or not.

The hard thing is to realize that all that we have spoken so far — emotions, feelings, pain/pleasure, etc. — are not different from thoughts. But this is not easy to do. We have been trained to think otherwise. Thoughts are thoughts, they’re “under control”, they’re part of the rational mind, while emotions and feelings are not under our control, and pain/pleasure are altogether something different.

Well, our thoughts are not truly “under our control”, neither are those emotions and feelings completely “out of control”. In fact, there is absolutely no difference between thoughts, emotions and feelings — we’re just conditioned to think there is.

“What You See Is NOT What You Get”

Curious so far?

Let me bring Exhibit A into this discussion. I’ve deliberately used a smaller size, because it has less definition that way. Show this picture to any of your heterosexual male friends. At a first glance, at such a small size, what this incredible pattern-matching machine which is our brain will do is to start labeling the image: it has a person dressing like a girl, wearing makeup like a girl, wearing her hair like a girl, smiling in a sultry way like a girl — so, yes, it must be a girl. Right?

Some of them might even feel the emotion of lust — it will come, unbidden, flushing the organism with hormones, and their brains will register pleasure and desire.

A more closer inspection will show that something is not right. The nose is too big; the chin doesn’t look as it should; the hands are large; the shoulders are too wide. Oops. After all, it’s not a girl! All of a sudden, the lust and desire are instantly replaced by aversion, disgust, and even hate (for having been tricked!).

But the image is exactly the same! It hasn’t changed!

So how can possibly the same image trigger completely different “emotions”, “feelings” and “thoughts” in the small interval of a few seconds?

There is, of course, only one explanation. Heterosexual males are strongly conditioned (by upbringing, cultural norms, feedback from their peers, etc.) to analyse a certain amount of patterns, and, based on incomplete data, formulate a thought about what they’re seeing, which, in turn, gets the brain flooding the organism with hormones and similar chemicals, triggering mechanisms that the brain register later as “pleasure”. This happens almost instantly, and it’s a feature of higher organisms like ours — we are very, very, very specialised in analysing lots of patterns very quickly, and, even with incomplete data, formulate a decision. In a sense, this is the base for what we call “intelligence” and appeared through evolution: our ancestors living in the savannah had to deal with tigers hiding in the underbrush. Tigers are very good at hiding, and they’re very quick at leaping to catch their prey — delicious human beings So we evolved to read “hints” and “clues” from the environment, which do not show us the tiger, but let us infer that a tiger might be present. We might hear twigs cracking. We might notice that the underbrush is moving, but there is no wind. Birds might suddenly take flight from some trees. We put all these hints together, think “there is a tiger hidden there!” and start to run, before it’s too late.

So we do not see a tiger at all, but we think, based on incomplete data, that the tiger might be there. We’re so good at doing this that our ancestors actually survived to pass along their genes until our days. Sure, they were wrong in many cases: sometimes there simply wasn’t really a tiger there, and they were running away from ghosts… but that’s fine. It’s better to run away when there is no tiger, than to be unable to read those hints and get eaten! This means that evolution favoured those intelligent primates of the species homo who managed to survive being eaten by tigers by being quick at reading hints and clues and coming up with the idea of a tiger, even when there was nothing there. Because we quickly became very good at doing this, we avoided most tigers, and, to be honest, we didn’t run away so much when there weren’t any tigers.

When an heterosexual male (or a homosexual female!) looks at the picture above, they’re just using that very same mechanism, inherited from our ancestors, to formulate an image, an idea, a thought of “a girl”, picking up clues here and there — but, in this case, getting it wrong. With more clues — less incomplete information — they will get it right. However, “girl” or “guy” trigger different reactions.

What matters here is that these people “see” a girl when there is nothing of that sort there. Well, not quite. There are hints and clues, after all. I do dress like a girl; I do wear makeup like a girl; I do wear my hair in a style that girls usually wear. However, I’m not a girl — but this is something I know! Others might just assemble from all those hints and clues something that is not there. But, in their minds (in the absence of more clues), they see a girl, and they react to what they see as if there was really a girl. Putting into other words: it’s irrelevant if I’m a girl or not; all these people are doing is to assume something from their perceptions (what clues and hints they see) and mental constructs (what their social conditioning tells them how a girl should look like).

This is a very crucial point to understand. The way our mind works is to create ideas and thoughts about what we think we see. We do see things that are not “really there”, but that’s just because our minds work that way. And we act — we decide things, we think new thoughts — based on what we perceive, and our interpretations of our perceptions. That’s all we do.

However, our fundamental problem is that we’re firmly convinced — it’s a dogma we have written in our hearts — that what we perceive is “really there”, that is, we believe (irrationally!) that everything we see (or hear, smell, touch…) does really exist.

In fact, as Exhibit A shows so well, this is hardly the case: we can be very easily fooled to “see” something that isn’t really there (and act upon it as if it exists).

On the other hand — and this is also important to understand — we cannot shrug everything away, brush it under the carpet, and say, “oh, nothing exists, it’s all my imagination, the world is an illusion”. No! Again, Exhibit A shows this quite clearly: there is something there for sure. We can describe a lot of characteristics in that picture — and even agree with them — and it’s obvious, for example, that there is a human being in it. That human being is wearing sexy female clothes. We can all agree on that. It wears makeup and a cute hairstyle. There is no question of all that. We might even agree on the names of the colours. The issue here is that what we cannot agree is that all this put together is “a girl” or “a guy in drag” (unless we have more clues). So, depending on how many clues you can see on that picture, you create an image of reality as being “a girl” or “a guy in drag”, and attribute reality to that image, and say: “that girl really exists”. When more clues are apparent, we say: “oh, it’s not a girl, it’s a guy in drag”.

When we realize that — where did the girl go?

Well, she didn’t go anywhere! There never was a girl there in the first place. So we imagined a reality which doesn’t exist, based on some things that are “really there” — a human figure, clothes, makeup, hairstyle — but when we saw what really is there, reality didn’t “change”. What changed was our mindset! First we thought there was a girl there; then we thought it was a guy in drag. But neither are “reality” in itself: they’re just labels, that we use for our convenience to describe our perceptions of the environment surrounding us, filtered through our senses.

It’s when these complex things are clearly exposed that we get confused — or even angry. In the example of the heterosexual males getting angry because they were “tricked”, and putting the blame on the person “tricking” them, the anger is not really about “being tricked” or not. It’s a bit more subtle than that. What happened was the following sequence:

1. Heterosexual guy starts picking clues and hints from the environment (in this case, the picture used as Exhibit A)
2. From these clues, and social conditioning, an image forms (“this is a girl”)
3. Reality, for that heterosexual guy, is now “this girl really and truly exists”
4. Mind registers expectations about the desirability of this reality (“I want this girl!”)
5. Qualities and attributes of that reality are exaggerated (“This girl is SO cool!”), and this produces desire to “own” it
6. Body gets messaged to trigger lust and passion
7. Brain registers chemical changes
8. Heterosexual guy, in “his” reality, now feels horny
9. New hints and clues are revealed
10. A new image is formed (“hey! this is a guy in drag!”)
11. This new image contradicts reality as imagined before
12. Mind is confused about what reality is “more real”!
13. Since the expectations are now unfulfilled — “if this is not a girl, why am I horny?” — the mind registers the absence of the object of desire, and “something” or “someone” seems to have “robbed” it of the fulfillment of those expectations
14. This registers as anger

At this point, well, the guy might be angry at the person showing the picture, angry at the poor innocent who is merely posing inside the picture and has no clue of what is going on, or, in some rare cases, angry at himself for getting so easily confused about reality.

This happens to all of us every moment of the day.

And the reason for that is because we take for “real” and “truly existing” everything which is, in fact, just our own perception of reality — just an image, just a thought, nothing more and nothing less than that. But because we stick to “our” idea of reality so strongly, when it’s finally revealed to not be what we thought it was, we either get angry, or, well, frustrated and depressed.

So all our problems have a common cause: we are constantly making up expectations about a reality that only exists in our minds. We exaggerate the pleasure we derive from those expectations; or, reversely, we exaggerate the pain from the things we fear. When “reality” is revealed to be nothing that we have imagined, we “feel” anger, revulsion, despair, frustration.

But it goes even deeper than that: it starts with the belief that our own “self” — whatever we wish to call a “self” — also exists and has an inherent reality of its own. And this is at the core of all problems.

Gratifying the ego

What do we all want?

No, it’s not money, love, health, and being famous To put it very simply: we all wish to be happy (feel pleasure) and avoid being unhappy (feel pain, anxiety, frustration, depression). We constantly search for ways of being more happy, and to avoid being unhappy, but, unfortunately, we’re not very good at finding those ways.

Why? The problem is mostly what I’ve described above: we have wild imaginations! We believe not only that reality is something “out there” that exists on its own, but that this “self” we have requires constant pleasure and avoidance of pain to have ever-lasting happiness. This happens with all beings — humans and animals alike — but, of course, for each of us, what actually causes us happiness or unhappiness might be completely different: for a heterosexual male, Exhibit A might be a girl worthy of lust and desire; for a tiger, it’s just the next meal. Both are right! Or, if you wish, none are: there is no intrinsic reality to that girl, and depending on one’s perception, it’s a different object of desire (a sexual partner or the next meal).

What leads to unhappiness — all the time! — is because we’re so easily fooled by our perceptions, and thwarted in our expectations of what is real. The heterosexual guy, anticipating a night of romance and wild sex, gets frustrated when reality is revealed that there had never been a girl there in the first place. The tiger gets frustrated because I run away from him, refusing to become his next meal.

It seems then that we should just drop our expectations, and things would be easy!

But that’s hardly an “easy” thing to do. Why? Because we have habits and tendencies that have accumulated over decades — in fact, from our most tender years of age, we’re told we have an identity (we are called by name, to distinguish us from others). We are told that we have to dress and behave in a certain way. Later on, at school, we’re taught that we have to compete with other fellow students and earn good grades. We are taught that in order to succeed in the dirty, competitive world out there, we need to acquire certain skills. We learn from parents, family, and friends to idealize the way we should live, the kind of partners we should pick, the behaviour we should adopt, and so forth — and we’re given methods to achieve all those things. Some of us will succeed here and there and find some comfort, at least temporarily. The rest of us will quickly find that things are not so obvious and that we get thwarted all the way by all kinds of obstacles.

Nevertheless, we are always told what to do in order to achieve “happiness”. We get so bombarded with ideas from others — who often are stuck with them because they have learned those ideas from others still — that they slowly cause us to behave in certain ways, think in certain ways, until they feel “natural”. Learning, in fact, is a process where we attempt to do some things artificially, but, by repeating them over and over again, they become natural — we even say “second nature”.

We all remember how hard it was to tie our shoelaces, or to learn how to write, or, later on, how to drive a car. Our movements, at the beginning, were stiff, and required a lot of concentration; we would have our arms hurting a lot after the first driving lesson, or headaches from the first writing classes. But by repeating these exercises over and over again, they became natural — they became “learned”.

The same, however, happens all the time with all kinds of behaviour, not just those that we pay attention to. We either accept our parents as role models and emulate them — and emulating them becomes “second nature” — or we totally reject them as models, and pick different ones, but we still start to learn to emulate those other role models instead. We read things from people that inspire us, and say, “I want to be like that!” and adopt their behaviour. At first, it might look and sound strange or funny, but, with enough repetition, it becomes natural. This happens all the time, even if we’re not aware of it. Even watching TV — we’re looking at role models, at marketing stunts showing us what items are desirable, at how people live who are allegedly more happy than us, and this makes us behave like them — or wish to do so. If you’re “immune” to TV, then you’re going to do the exact opposite: rejecting those role models, rejecting advertising, rejecting other people’s behaviour — but that’s exactly the same mechanism, just turned upside down.

Now once this mechanism is in full force — and it starts, as said, when we’re very, very young — we begin to create our own image of what reality should look like, based on our perceptions, our expectations, and our fears. But we also create our own image of how we relate to that reality, and call it “our self”. Even someone who admits “wearing a mask” when they go to work — playing the role of a ruthless businessman, for instance — and another mask at home — “the loving husband and caring father” — and still another at leisure with friends — “the cool guy who is a pleasure to hang around with” — will ultimately fully believe that there is a “core self”, buried within, perhaps under layers and layers of masks, which exists intrinsically, even though nobody has access to it.

But what is it? From the perspective of neurological science, all we know (from neurologists like António Damásio, for example) is that certain areas of the brain, when damaged, will make the “sensation” of self disappear. However, it’s anything but clear how the “sensation” of self appears in the first place. All we know is that “self”, like everything else inside our mind, is just a collection of thoughts — thoughts we have about ourselves, and how we ought to react to the environment.

Here, as you can see, is a problem. This “environment” depends a lot on our perceptions; so, this “self” somewhere “inside us” is reacting to something that ultimately is based on perceptions, and, based on those, we create a “self-image” which is just an assembly of thoughts upon perceptions upon thoughts upon perceptions… layer over layer over layer. We believe there is something beneath all those layers, but we cannot pinpoint what it is — it just remains that, just a belief. But it’s so ingrained in us, we have done such an effort to “believe” in that self, we have acted and reacted for so many years as if that self, deep down there, is really there… that we act and behave as if it really exists. In fact, we cannot act in any other way. And others — behaving just like that as well — are just reinforcing that thought: if others behave as if their selves exist (and we clash and have conflicts because of that!), we better behave in the same way, as well.

Based on that belief in a self, we feel the urge of gratifying that self: it needs to be pleased, and the way we please it is by learning — through social conditioning — what is allegedly “desirable” for that self. It’s at this point that ideas like wealth, pleasure, comfort, health, relationships, etc. pop in — these are seen by other selves as desirable, and so we want them for our self — ourselves! — as well. So, influenced by others, we attribute to all those things a lot of expectations, and exaggerate their importance. When these things fail to please us, we’re immensely disappointed — something is wrong, either with us, with our methods, or with the universe-at-large, which is failing to provide us the necessary ego gratification we desire so much. At this point, we start shifting the blame onto others who are perceived as obstacles for our self to achieve all those desirable things; and when we blame them, we hate them as well, and start to see them as far less important than pleasing our own selves.

It’s hard to break out from all this.

De-conditioning ourselves

We transgendered people have actually a huge advantage. First of all, we know, deep inside, that “something is wrong” with the alignment between what we believe to be our self, and what we believe to be our body and its role in society. Putting in simple words: if we’re MtF transgendered people, we think that our self is somehow female, even if we don’t know why, while for some reason we got a male body. We wish to experience a female body; and we also wish others’ perception to see us as female and not male. But, unfortunately for us, our body is not aligned with the perception we have of ourselves: there is a dichotomy here, which somehow feels “wrong”.

From a purely neutral perspective, we have two options: either we change the perception we have of our selves, or we change our bodies to match the perception that our selves have about the body. Needless to say, the latter is far more easier to do, and this is the route that most transgendered people follow. The ones that don’t — i.e. autogynophilists who never crossdress — are not really “solving” the problem, they’re just avoiding it and forcefully suppressing their desires and emotions — sometimes successfully, but often with just a lingering depression over the horizon.

The problem, of course, is that our society has created roles for males and females, and, based on our physical bodies, we’re expected by others to act and behave like males, even if we are attracted to the role of the opposite gender. One could simply shrug it all off and say, “there are really no gender roles, these are just mental constructs like everything else”. This is quite right! However, it’s easy to say it. It’s very hard to actually realize it!

From a purely intellectual point of view, we could try the following thought experiment. Suppose that our society would change so that there were no role differences between males and females, and, because of that, both genders would dress the same kind of clothes, have the same names, etc. They would obviously, from a physical point of view, still be males and females and procreate through sexual intercourse. But externally, in their dressing, behaviour, jobs, and overall roles in society, there would be absolutely no difference. Would you still wish to crossdress?

This is actually a very interesting question, and I’ve heard that it’s often used in psychological profiling to determine the degree of gender disphoria. For me, the question is pointless. I have the urge to crossdress in this society, because this society has split into male and female genders, attributed different roles to each, as well as different styles of clothing and behaviour, and I’m attracted to the role females have in this society. If I had been born and socially conditioned in that hypothetical, utopian society, I would have a completely different social conditioning, and the question might not even make sense.

But does this mean that male/female is “just social conditioning”? Well, this is again one of those questions that are hard to answer. In our society — not an hypothetical, fictional, utopian one — it’s mostly that, and there is little evidence of the contrary, but we cannot say that our physical makeup (guys are stronger, girls are more tolerant to pain) didn’t influence the original build-up of those roles. There have been few examples of societies where women had the dominant role — and even when they had it, they would still adopt a certain behaviour that would be familiar to us. For example, in the southern parts of the Iberian peninsula, which had been under a few centuries of influence of the golden age of Islamic civilization, women were land and business owners, inheritance went through the matriarchal lines, and men just did the hard work, but did not worry about money or sustaining the family — that was the role of women. To this day we still see echoes of that mindset. But that doesn’t mean that women in those regions dress as men, or that men are effeminate: the roles are not “reversed” in that sense. On the few examples of matriarchal societies, there is certainly a shift in some aspects of the roles, but men are still men, and women are still women — the major difference perhaps is that women tended to be less abused in those societies and more protected, since they owned the land and the money, and, as such, wielded more power. But this is very relative!

It is thus fair to assume that the physical constraints and the differences between the two sexes have influenced the gender roles, but it’s not “pre-determined” that these roles are “written in stone” and have to be expressed in just a certain way. In fact, in recent decades, we have seen how the external appearance of women has changed according to a change of certain role elements. With the rise of feminist groups, women became more financially independent, and far more accepted in the workplace in positions of power. Not surprisingly, though, as they rose in power, they emulated men more and more, often surpassing men in ruthlessness, because those typically male traits — harsh decisions, cold logic, ruthlessness, etc. — were viewed as being “part” of the role of “power”. So, in a sense, women became “more like men” to be able to compete for the same roles as men (at least in business). From the 1980s onwards — and perhaps even starting as early as the late 1960s — women’s clothing started to become more and more masculine. Trousers are now universally acceptable for females — as well as short hairstyles, no makeup, no perfume, letting hair being grown under the armpits, and all sort of things like that. Women swear as badly as their male counterparts and engage in the same habits, vices, and hobbies as men do. In fact, one of my biggest frustrations in the 1980s was that females lost so much sex appeal, because all they wanted to do is to cut their hair short, forfeit accessories, wear jeans, a T-shirt, and comfortable (but ugly) tennis shoes.

The last round of feminism — Third Wave Feminism — sort of “corrected” this trend, and the genders moved apart again. Women discovered that they could be sexy and still wield positions of power. Women could attend the workplace in mini-dresses and high heels and get the same degree of respect from their colleagues as when wearing sneakers and stone-washed jeans. They could be elegant, sophisticated, gracious, feminine, and caring mothers, while still being intellectuals, hard workers, ruthless businesspersons, and so forth.

This is just to make my point — it’s true that “gender roles” are merely social constructs and nothing “intrinsic”. However, there is a strong tendency to split the roles across gender, and attempts to “merge” roles, while not having exactly “failed”, have “bounced back”, sharpening the distinction between genders, even if it becomes socially acceptable to blur that distinction. We should take into account that during the Renaissance, men wore outrageous outfits with lots of colours, while women wore simple dresses in boring, faded colours. In the 18th century, dress code was much more uniform across both genders (specially in the upper classes, of course), as both genders would wear wigs, apply makeup and perfume, and wear intricate clothes with garish colours; women were expected to be witty and intelligent when conversing with men. The roles drifted apart again during the Victorian era, came closer together in the 1920s and 1930s, then drifted apart after WWII again, and came closer again after the 1960s.

So nothing is truly “written in stone” — it’s really mostly social conditioning, which changes over time. What seems to remain apparently “fixed” is that our society has a duality of roles, even if what each role actually is allowed to do or not to do, how to behave or not to behave, what to wear or not to wear, changes over time.

Now when we reject the social conditioning that is attributed to us — externally — what can we do?

Unfortunately, like all radicals who reject the established norms and rules, we are shunned. That’s the consequence. It’s not easy to be “outside the status quo“.

The method: observe your thoughts

So finally we come to the actual method of dealing with all the above (and much more, since this method is not limited to the frustrations about the lack of crossdressing). Enough talk — this article is already huge! — and it’s time for some action

The first thing to understand is that all this happens inside our minds. It’s an idea that really takes hard getting used to, since we are really so used to “shift the blame” to external things. What we have to realize is that if things did not happen inside our minds, we had no way of dealing with them! Thankfully — even if we, at first, might be reluctant to accept it — it’s because everything is about our mind and how we perceive things, that we can change our mindset, change our perceptions, and, as a result, get free from all those decades of conditioning — without, however, becoming crazy, shunned, disrespected, or totally alienated from reality. This method has exactly the opposite goal: to turn us into more functional, rational people; more tranquil (but not apathetic!!) and able to look at things more clearly, and, thanks to that, being able to act in a better way, both for ourselves, but also for others as well.

Seems perfect, right? Well, as said at the very beginning, it takes a lot of time. It’s not something you can learn and train for a few days, and expect immediate results. That’s hardly likely! We carry such a huge baggage of social conditioning, habits, tendencies, acquired behaviour, and so forth — accumulated over decades! — that it’s simply not going to disappear, from one day to the next. It takes time!

What we do at the beginning is to get familiar with how our mind works. Once we start to grasp a little bit of that, we can use that as the foundation for further steps.

Now it’s very important to be clear about each point. Unlike Jared’s method — or even what some psychological trends propose — we don’t want to suppress anything about the mind, or add anything to it. This method is not something like “Positive Thinking”, where you constantly “force” yourself to have “happy thoughts”, in the hope that you can train it, add it as a new habit which becomes “natural” after enough repetition, and “feel happy” all the time. This is just more conditioning — conditioning to suppress things, or add things. We do wish to avoid any kind of conditioning whatsoever, no matter how “positive” it may sound!

So what we’re going to do is to observe. That’s the very first step of understanding: first, we observe, then we can reflect a bit on what we have observed.

To do that, it’s better if we’re in a relatively quiet place with a reasonable degree of comfort. If you have a garden, just sit on the garden bench. If you have a room with a view, sit in front of the window. If you have none of that, just pick a quiet spot at home with a comfy chair, and stay there for a while.

It’s good, for starters, to remove excessive distractions (you will quickly understand why). So, make sure you can have the TV and the mobile phone switched off, at least for a few minutes. Music is unnecessary. You don’t need special clothes, special chairs, or anything of the sort. Just a chair (or you can sit on the ground, if you find it’s comfortable). Keep your back straight — just like at school! — because it will help you to pay attention (your grammar school teachers knew what they were talking about).

First of all, after you have sat down, remind yourself of your motivation for doing this exercise. You’re going to learn how your own mind works, so that you can work with it and get rid of all your frustration regarding the unfulfilled urges to crossdress, and hope to achieve some mental stability. This motivation is very important — just think about this for a few seconds before starting the exercise.

Now, our mind is constantly grasping at things. Remember that’s what your brain is: a super-efficient pattern-matching machine which is constantly on the lookout for those tigers… and even if there are no tigers around, the mind will constantly wander to look out for them! So we need to give it something to entertain, when we get distracted (which will happen often, you’ll see). Ideally, it should be something you have always with you which isn’t either very attractive nor very repulsive, so you can practice anywhere. The simplest thing is just to watch your breathing. We aren’t really “excited” about breathing — it’s just something we have to do! — but neither do we reject breathing as being unpleasant. So it’s a good start.

This is not about “controlling” your breathing, or doing any kind of breathing exercises. Just observe the slight feeling of the air flow through your nostrils when you inhale and exhale. It doesn’t matter if you’re breathing deeply or shallowly, or quickly or slowly. While at first we will have an immediate urge to “control” the breathing somehow, over time, we should not worry at all about “controlling”. Just breathe naturally. If you just have run up the stairs, the breathing will be quick — that’s all right, just observe it. Eventually, the breathing will slow down on its own. If it doesn’t, don’t worry, it’s not important how quickly or deeply you’re breathing — what matters is that you rest your mind on the tickling sensation of the air flow through your nostrils.

While you’re doing that, you will soon notice that thoughts will pop up in your mind. At the beginning, they might be things like: “this is SO stupid, what am I doing here??” or “why should watching my breathing help me to deal with the urge of crossdressing? I’m still feeling that urge, stronger than ever!” That’s all fine. There are no “stupid” thoughts, nor are there “good” thoughts. Just watch them, no matter what they are, and see what happens: they will appear from somewhere, remain a bit around, and then fade and disappear on their own.

Sometimes you will wish to follow the thought — like starting to think about what you’re going to do next, or when your next crossdressing session will be, what you’re going to wear, and so forth. When that happens, go back to watching your breathing — you’re just following a train of thought, creating thoughts after thoughts after thoughts, conditioned by your habitual tendencies. That’s exactly what we wish to avoid!

You’ll also get distracted often — a noise on the street, a door closing, a neighbour yelling, a pain in the back or the legs, whatever. Don’t worry if you get distracted — just get back to observing the breathing for a while, and resume the exercise of watching your thoughts arising. So as you can see the breathing is like an “anchor” for this exercise: every time you get distracted, either from the outside or from the inside (your mind, your body), you just go back to the breathing. After a lot of practice, you’ll see that the breathing is not really necessary, nor is it the goal — it’s just a very convenient way of calming down the mind for a bit so that you can get back to observing thoughts again, which is the whole point.

And of course we will have a tendency to start labeling thoughts: this thought is good, this one is bad. If I’m thinking about something positive, that’s “good”. If I’m feeling depressed, it’s “bad”. Stop labeling those thoughts; just watch them. During the session, anything that appears in your mind is neither good not bad; it’s just your mind which, by conditioning, is used to label things as good and bad. With this method we simply let thoughts remain unlabeled.

Similarly, we don’t extend or prolong “positive” thoughts or feelings, artificially “forcing” them to stick around. But we also don’t reject or suppress “negative” thoughts or unpleasant feelings or sensations. It takes some time getting used to it. You can start by observing painful or disagreeable sensations — like, say, your back hurting from sitting down with a straight back. Just observe that sensation, but don’t do anything to suppress it. You will actually learn quite a lot about pains, itches, and so forth — like everything else, they come and go. Their intensity is not the same. Sometimes they’re periodic — waxing and waning — but sometimes they’re very acute for a few moments, then disappear. Just watch all this happening — rest assured, you won’t injure yourself if you sit with a straight back for three minutes! Even the most irritating itch can be just observed for 3 minutes without scratching or considering it “bad”. You’ll see for yourself. Note that the pain or the itch (as well as any pleasant feeling!) will not “disappear” — in the sense that this technique is not about “removing” physical pain in the literal sense of the word — but your compulsion to do something about it will just diminish. You will learn that scratching an itch is really just a compulsive behaviour that you have learned to do automatically, but you have the option of scratching it or not — it’s up to you. So, just observe how it comes and goes. And, of course, when the session is over, and the itching persists, you can always scratch it by then — but, over time, you’ll see that it’s not really necessary!

Do this for, say, 3 minutes. It’s important to do it every day. 3 minutes is not much. To some people I tell them to do it during the TV commercials — turn the sound off, straighten your back, and move your eyes off the TV. You can do the whole exercise during the breaks, and you won’t feel that you’re “wasting time”

At the end of the session, just remind yourself that by doing this exercise you did a small step towards becoming a more functional person (even if you don’t “feel different”! Don’t worry: remember, this takes time), and, through that, you will actually be more happy, more able to deal with others, who will also benefit from less grumpiness and depression from your part. So it’s not just “for you” that you’re going through this exercise; if you’re happy, you will make others around you happy as well. Remember this for a few seconds, and you’re finished.

So, to recap:

1. Sit down comfortably, with your back straight
2. Check your motivation: you’re doing this to learn to deal better with your urges and frustrations, and, through this exercise, become more functional, by being able to deal with that
3. Rest your mind on the air flow going through your nostrils, in and out
4. Observe as thoughts appear in your mind, remain for a while, then disappear
5. Don’t “follow” thoughts with more thoughts; don’t “recall” thoughts from memory if you just missed a thought for some reason; when you get distracted, just get back to watching your breathing
6. In the same way, if you get distracted with external things (noise, smells, etc.) or internal ones (sensations, feelings, pain…) just get back to watching your breathing
7. Don’t label thoughts as “good” or “bad”, trying to extend them or to avoid/suppress them. Thoughts are just thoughts, they will come and go on their own.
8. At the end, remind yourself that by completing this exercise you’re benefitting yourself — getting more functional, more happy, less stressed — and this will also improve your relationship with others
9. Do this for 3 minutes, every day

It’s very simple, right?

Now you may be asking, “what’s all that about?” and “how does this benefit me in any way?”

Benefits of getting familiar with your mind: don’t take things too seriously

This is like a spoiler for the forthcoming chapters but you should understand it as an explanation on why this method works. Again, I should stress this point once more: don’t expect it to work quickly. If you’re so depressed already that you can’t even pay attention to your breath for 3 minutes, it’s very unlikely that you will see results “soon”.

What you will notice at first is that you have lots of thoughts! You might not even be able to keep up with them! That’s perfectly normal; what else is the mind is for, but for having thoughts? Thoughts are natural for the mind. The issue here is that you have all those thoughts all the time — you’re just not paying attention! But while observing the mind with this simple exercise, you’re actually taking some time to watch what happens, and it’s normal to see all those thoughts popping up.

With time, however, you will see that the thoughts will appear a little more slowly, and you will learn to watch them more carefully, and catch them at the moment they appear, follow them through while they’re there, and see them disappear.

Now what’s the point of all this?

A few years ago, my wife, for some reason, prevented me to crossdress on a certain day — she had other plans. I was really, really looking forward to that day, going to enjoy myself on some chatrooms with my friends (and some voyeurs!). I had planned it ahead for a whole week, constantly dreaming about what to wear, and generating huge expectations about how great that session would be, about how happy I would feel, and so forth. With just a sentence, my wife shattered all my carefully planned session, and what do you expected that my reaction would be?

Of course, seeing her as the obstacle to my expected happiness, I was full of anger, and got ready to protest and yell at her. But something strange happened. I felt the build-up from all that anger seizing my body, and could observe it quite distinctly — it just takes a fraction of a second. I opened my mouth to say something nasty… and closed it again. Suddenly I realized that I really didn’t need to yell at my wife. It would just lead to more angry confrontations, and you know how it goes, nasty words piling up on each other, nobody having any reason any more, and just saying to each other things they will regret later on.

So, instead, I choose to be silent. I was still furious, of course. Still trembling with anger. But after a while, the anger subsided. I remained silent and made no comments. Then I thought a little more about this experience…

The emotion of anger had been very strong, I didn’t really “suppress” it. I felt it seizing my whole body and mind. It was not “dampened” or anything of the sort; it was just my ego’s natural reaction to being thwarted in my expectations, and, as a result, it was reacting as strongly as it usually does. However, I also realized that I didn’t “need” to be conditioned by that emotion: I had a choice. In this case, I had no idea what was the “best” choice, but it was clear that just yelling in anger and frustration was not functional. Instead, silence seemed to be a good enough choice.

After all, I would be prevented to crossdress anyway. If I had yelled at my wife in anger, I would not only be prevented from crossdressing that day (which would not happen anyway), but I would have to deal with an angry wife as well. So, well, at least I could avoid that. I have no idea if she ever noticed how angry I was — she wasn’t looking directly at me when she spoke. But since I didn’t vent my anger and frustration at her, she remained calm and happy, and, while I was neither (at that moment at least), at least I didn’t make things worse.

The ability to be able to exercise my free will, at the moment I noticed that I was being “seized” by emotions that, until then, I thought to be “uncontrollable”, was a very liberating experience. I was well aware that actions have consequences; and acting in an angry way obviously would have consequences, disagreeable both to me and to her. Since then, of course, I became better and better at dealing with the anger and frustration when she simply thwarts all my plans with a single word or two.

You mighty think this will turn me into a submissive person, never able to protest or defend my “rights”. Well, no, rather the contrary. In fact, I started to become even more critical and think: what are my rights? Do I have the “right” to selfishly indulge in pleasure, at the expense of my wife, who wants to do different things that will make her happy instead? What is important in my relationship? Do I truly believe in what I say — “I wish to make you happy for the rest of our lives?” If that’s taken to heart, what does it really mean? Well, for me, the answer is very simply: when having doubts about what is more important, my own momentary happiness, or my wife’s everlasting happiness, I choose the latter. But I do it of my own free will, not because someone tells me to do so (not even her!). And I do it even in spite of feeling all those emotions of anger, frustration, and despair — because I recognize them for what they are: just mental constructs, based on expectations I create for myself, but not really “existing” outside the domain of my mind.

This slowly made me learn not too take things too seriously, specially my own thoughts!

Similarly, I apply this technique to pretty much everything in my life, but specially to all issues related to my crossdressing sessions. You already know about my own frustration of not being able to dress more and go out more. I still feel frustrated, but there is a big difference now: I understand that all this frustration is just the result of high expectations. It’s my mind that creates this idea that I can only feel some happiness if I’m fully dressed, and, ideally, do that all the time. I exaggerate all the advantages of being dressed, and attribute all bad things to be unable to dress. But all these are my ideas, my mental constructs, my deluded way of believing that I have a “self” which is female and “demands the right” to be female. I’m still pretty much convinced of that, mind you — the difference is that I know it’s just my mind being attached to those ideas and giving too much importance to them, to the point that I’m compelled to act in a certain way — being selfish, ignoring my wife’s needs, being a bit careless when going out, and so forth. So this first step is to be more honest with myself — I’m very good at lying to myself about what truly makes me happy, and find all wrong reasons for that. Well, as said, at least I recognize now that all these are just thoughts; and, like all thoughts, they come, stay for a while, and go.

The reverse is also true. I actually enjoy crossdressing much more. Why? Because, since I’m able to pay more attention to all details of my feelings while crossdressed, I can enjoy these feelings more fully. Being aware that the whole session is not going to last long — I would wish it to continue forever, but I know it’ll be just some hours — I will be paying attention to every moment of it, enjoying the taste of being crossdressed, instead of worrying too much about the moment it will end. And, when it inevitably has to end, and I need to pack all my things again, I rejoice in the short moment of happiness I had, which, like all others, will inevitably fade and disappear — but the good news is that I can experience it again in the next session.

It’s very important to understand a few points, so not to raise a lot of expectations about this technique.

1. Did I say that it takes a long time to see some results?
2. You aren’t “suppressing” emotions at all. You will continue to feel them at full force, with the same intensity as before (or even more so, since you’re paying attention to them). The difference is that you will be free to act upon those emotions and feelings, instead of merely reacting to them in a conditioned way. This experience is tremendously liberating: you finally get a taste of what “free will” really means.
3. You won’t “stop crossdressing”. You will continue to feel the urge — sometimes even stronger than before. There will be still strong, intense dreams and desires about getting crossdressed. But there will be far less frustration when you can’t crossdress, or the session did not go as you planned — you will understand that all the expectations are just thoughts, ideas, things that you make up for yourself. This will be experienced, not just intellectually analysed; and here lies the big difference. It’s not just words you read in a book (or on an article on the Internet!), but something you can train and experiment for yourself.
4. Giving less importance to the power of your emotions, feelings, compulsions, tendencies, and habits also means that others around you will not be bothered so much because you will be able to break free of the conditioned response to those emotions. So, even if you’re in the strong grip of anger, you will be able to choose the way you act, and, if you have other people’s interests in mind, you will not vent your anger at them — because you can choose not to do so. This, in turn, will mean that others won’t yell back at you, of course, and improve your relationships.
5. You will still make plans, have ambitions, set goals, plan ahead. Nothing will change in that regard. For instance, I have this crazy idea of emigrating to Brazil or Canada and go through transition there, away from family & friends in Portugal. I do still dream about that, and plan it. But it might never happen, because, well, all those plans are just thoughts in my mind, and, as such, they’re not very important. Things might happen or not. If they happen, they will have some consequences (what shall I tell people when I return?). If they don’t, I won’t shed tears — they were just ideas and dreams. Like the dream from last night, there is little point in worrying too much about it — it’s gone, it’s just a memory, it doesn’t truly exist any more. But I can cherish the memory!
6. With proper training, and enough practice, you can achieve the goal of enjoying crossdressing (or even transition!) to the utmost without even the slightest regret or fear of frustration for “not being enough”. But at the same time you will not feel “awful” about it. In fact, all the suffering and frustration and anxiety will be gone. When you dress, you enjoy yourself to the utmost limit, but you don’t pine for it, nor will you regret the moment your session finishes, nor will you lose nights of sleep over the next session.
7. Because you’re getting trained in the way your mind works, being able to appreciate the subtle interplay of thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, and so forth, you’re paying attention to them all, and, in that way, they’re far more intense. But you’re not conditioned by them, so you can enjoy them. For instance, the first times I went out, I trembled from head to foot, since I was so nervous — but, on the other hand, the adrenaline rush was great to feel. These days, I just enjoy the adrenaline rush. It’s not gone — I cherish it when it gets triggered with the anticipation of going out. However, I don’t need to feel nervous — it’s just an idea I have, some mysterious “fear” (about what?) which gets triggered and pops into my mind, but I don’t need to act upon that “fear” in a conditioned way. So I can just observe that feeling, enjoy the adrenaline rush, feel every nerve tingling… but don’t take it too seriously.

As you can see, this is pretty much the opposite of the results that Jared promises for his own method. He suggests eliminating the source of frustration by “cutting the evil at the root” — i.e. just stop crossdressing, and you’ll feel much better. Instead, I suggest that his method just creates two new problems: the first is that crossdressers enjoy crossdressing, and Jared’s method is to prevent enjoyment (because that enjoyment leads to frustration). The second is that Jared teaches how to suppress emotions, which will be only “deeply buried” on the lower levels of the mind, but still there, to pop up when the right conditions appear — that’s why Jared relapsed twice already. You can bury and bury those emotions and thoughts as much as you want, but sooner or later they will pop up at the surface again, more stronger than ever.

Instead, I think it’s rather more functional to simply observe what happens inside your own mind, recognize everything as being just your own expectations, and don’t give them too much importance. Like the most stupid thought popping up in your mind, it comes, remains for a bit, and goes — why give it such importance? Instead, enjoy whatever happens, without feeling compelled by your conditioning to extend a moment of pleasure (which will, sooner or later, go away anyway, no matter what you do). Just enjoy it But between sessions, when feeling the urge and anxiety about the next forthcoming session, all you need to do is to observe those thoughts, see them fading away on their own, and just don’t give them more importance than they deserve.

Needless to say, this is far more difficult than it seems, and takes a long time. On the other hand, what do you have to lose to start your training right now, except 3 minutes of your time every day? It’s not much to ask for… and you’ll soon notice that you’re able to do it for 5 minutes, then 10, and so forth, until, at some point in time, you’ll be able to do it at every moment.

Where to go from here

I’m going to be honest — this method or technique to get familiar with the way your mind works, observing your thoughts without labeling them — is actually quite old, and it was first expounded by an Indian prince named Siddhartha Gautama (usually known as the historical Buddha), some 2600 years ago, and put into practice by millions of people who, since then, have experienced the same results, and taught them to others, until the methods reached our days.

To do it properly, it’s not enough to read about it. We interpret words — like everything else! — according to our own perceptions. No matter how clear the instructions might be, people will misinterpret them, apply the technique wrongly, and be disappointed with the results. The only way to learn it properly is to get a qualified teacher. Fortunately, there are quite a lot of them around, many of which achieved precisely the same results as Siddhartha did — he was just a regular human being like all of us.

Unfortunately, there are always lots of unqualified teachers around, and if you wish to do some serious practice, it’s not very easy to figure out which is which. This has always been the case; it’s not the hallmark of the 21st century. So there are a few rules that you can follow when choosing a teacher.

The first thing to ask him or her is what their lineage is. Lineage is just a list of qualified teachers from which they have received the same methods and who have put them in practice and achieved the same results as Siddhartha. Any qualified teacher will be glad to point out his own teachers, and so forth, all the way back to Siddhartha himself. And you should check them up (at least, the ones still alive!) — these days, it just means sending them some emails You should also ask them if they gave this person the permission to teach. So, be very wary of those who are somehow reluctant to name their own teachers.

Secondly, they really should have some experience with the practice. Avoid anyone who just claims to have read a lot of books and attended a few workshops; that’s simply not enough. A qualified teacher will have years of practice (even though they might not be intellectuals, just normal people with an easy-going mindset). Decades of practice is, obviously, even better — none of my teachers, for instance, has less than 25 years of practice! And even then, they will still be humble and freely admit that they have lots of shortfalls… So avoid anyone claiming results with “just one workshop” or “a secret technique that will bring results in a month without effort, for merely $500″. All these are clearly frauds — there are no such methods.

Thirdly, and perhaps even more important, a qualified teacher will just have one goal in mind: your own interests as a student. Anyone who still has personal interests at stake — be it money, power, growing their student base, reaching fame, glory, good reputation, or just having some nice-looking girls as attendants — are definitely not qualified. Such teachers are rare, but at the very least they should show good signs of being honest enough with what they do. This doesn’t mean that they need to live as hermits under bridges and be completely destitute; one of my teachers used to be a high-profile litigation lawyer for the Internet industry, the other is one of the top notaries in one major European city, another makes a living as a therapist, and so forth. It’s not how they look that matters. It’s what they set as priority. It’s easy to notice if they really place other people’s interests before their own.

While it’s hard to judge from the exterior, most qualified teachers will naturally be easy-going, good humoured, establish warm relationships, joke a lot, enjoy life, have fun, be charismatic, and still be able to be very, very serious when they need to be. After all, what’s the point of following a method to reduce one’s compulsions and become more functional and happy, if all that happens is being stiff-necked, apathetic, and speaking in a monotonous, monochordic voice? That makes little sense. A teacher without a sense of humour is something very weird indeed. Of course, there is a certain image, propagated mostly by Hollywood, that all these people have to be serious and so calm and relaxed that they’re almost asleep — and make their audience asleep as well. But that’s just Hollywood. Real, qualified teachers are fun people to be with. Otherwise it would be rather pointless to learn their methods!

It is also important to understand that Siddhartha didn’t just teach one method. He knew very well that we are all different from each others, and what works for one person might not work for anyone else. Traditionally, it is said that Siddhartha has left us with 84.000 different methods of achieving the same results, but of course there are many more; the exact number is not important, what matters is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, which would be stupid to claim, since we’re not exactly clones of each other. The method I’ve described is commonly taught by the Nyingma and Kagyü schools of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, but it’s just one of those thousands of techniques. Don’t be too surprised if you find a teacher that has a completely different approach; if he’s able to show that his lineage is authentically derived from Siddhartha, rest assured that his or her methods are correct — Siddhartha didn’t teach “better” or “worse” methods, or some that worked and others that don’t. All his methods work. They might just take longer in some cases, or be better suited for some kinds of people but not for others. I have to admit, for instance, that the above method was perhaps not the first one that lead to some results for me. I had to learn other techniques, and go back to this one later.

This shows the importance of getting a qualified teacher, who will know a lot of different methods, and, based on your own experience with them, will be able to pick one that works best for you. It’s not unusual for the same teacher to teach completely opposite and contradictory methods to different students, and this might be a huge source of confusion for some! On the other hand, some outstanding teachers might just know a few methods, but they will be more than happy to point you to another teacher if they feel that none of their methods work for you. They shouldn’t be jealous of other teachers or manipulate students to join “their” classes and avoid others.

Nevertheless, it’s important to stick to one method, get familiar with your own mind, and continue to improve your training. Switching techniques, confusing methods or mixing them with each other, endlessly searching for other teachers in the hope that they might teach something different with which you’re more comfortable — that will lead to nowhere. It’s obviously acceptable to drop a teacher if you feel that his or her methods don’t work at all for you, but be honest with yourself: is it the teacher’s fault, the method’s fault, or just you that are too lazy to put the method into practice?

To finalize, I sincerely hope that this article has been of some use for you, and, at the very least, that you feel motivated to learn more. You should now end reading this article by looking again at the disclaimer!

I’ve been regularly crossdressing for about 15 years now. A bit more, to be precise, but I will not count my first years as “regular”: they were very confusing years in terms of admitting to myself that I was a crossdresser. Once I got over that bit, I slowly — very slowly! — resigned to myself that there were three things I could do about it.

The first would be to completely suppress my urges and drive myself to insanity because of that All literature I read about that simply told that this would lead to nowhere, except to deep depression. At that time I was a bit scared about depression — so many people I know wallow deep in depression, and that is completely non-functional: it’s just suffering and suffering and being unable to anything with one’s life. That was certainly not for me.

The second thing would be to go ahead full steam and completely change my life. Of course, 15 years ago it was even more impossible than now. But I had some crazy goals back then. Having finished a relationship (and not yet sure about the upcoming one!), my energy was spent in becoming a millionnaire before I was 30. That’s right, I’m not joking. My idea was simple: I have very few material needs. With a million sitting in the bank, I could live off the income on my savings, and forfeit work forever. I would get a tiny apartment, easy to manage and to clean, in a peaceful neighbourhood away from everybody I knew, and just spend the remaining decades in comfort and no more financial stress.

This would allow me to transition as well, of course. That was part of the plan. Knowing by then how hard (if not impossible!) it is to get a good job as a transgendered person in my country (or even elsewhere!), the only reasonable choice would be to be in a financial position where work would be optional. By then I already spent most of my time telecommuting anyway; my job is based on providing services over the Internet, and, most of the time, I don’t even need to meet my customers “in the flesh”. So I would be able to continue to do those odd jobs now and then, but even if I didn’t got a regular income, I wouldn’t need to worry.

I almost succeeded in my plan. I didn’t become a millionnaire with 30… but with 31. And I still live in the tiny flat I bought (with cash, so as not to depend on any banks!) back then. All seemed to be going according to plan!

Unfortunately, a lot of circumstances changed after that. First, of course, I was unprepared for dealing with so much money. Money attracts creeps: the worst of them are the banks, but how was I supposed to know? Between the hordes of swindlers and creeps who wasted half my money in schemes and plots, and the incompetence and malevolence of the banks who managed to lose everything, after 5 years I was not only penniless, but in huge debt. A debt which I might not be able to pay until the end of my life. So all my plans were shattered.

To make matters worse, computer specialists end their active lives as “hireable” employees around 30 years or so. There are so many computer experts around, and every year the universities spew out a few hundreds of thousands more, that the market is completely saturated. With computers, “experience” matters little. You either get hired as a top executive before you’re 30, or you’re a blot on the landscape — useless and worthless. Of course, the alternative is working on your own (which was what I did before I was 30). Or you might teach — teachers are still respected after they’re 30. But that’s pretty much all there is.

So I had to go back to the third alternative: getting used to the idea that at least for this life, my best-laid plans had utterly failed, and there are no alternatives left except enjoying as much crossdressing as I can and be content with that.

In that regard, I believe I can be termed to be lucky. I have a loving wife who tolerates my crossdressing (so long as I refrain from shopping too much, since we can’t really afford to do so), even though she’s not excited by it. She just understands that there is nothing I can do about it. So we can work it out among ourselves: crossdressing one day per week is acceptable, two is pushing my luck, more than that is out of the question. And everything has to be dealt with patience: seven years until I “came out” to her, seven more years until she (very reluctantly) accepted that I have to go out once in a while as Sandra. I’m only allowed to do so when she’s deep asleep. But I’m fine with that: managing relationships is about setting limits that will make both parties comfortable. It’s like striking a business deal: a good deal is not about how much money you make, but by having both parties happy that each got the best they could from the bargain. Relationships are not much different, at a superficial level: the limit set on what you are allowed to do is what prevents your partner to become unhappy. If both do that to each other, both will live well together.

After 15 years of crossdressing, what have I learned? I have a few images from my early attempts, and some not-so-old videos of myself (long gone from all public sites), and I can be very critical about them. Like many crossdressers, I started with a mix of “drag queen” and “slut” — a completely unrealistic image — and, besides, all was done wrongly. That’s understandable, it’s part of the process. Some CDs will want exactly that image and persist with it — it’s their fantasy, after all. In my case, I still had my old goal in mind: I wanted to be a woman that could “pass”. So that meant paying good attention to how women dress, move, behave, and even talk in public. Observing women, fortunately, is an accepted pastime for males and even though my close friends would probably be imagining how to get the “hot babe” we were ogling in bed, I would look at her with the same degree of concentration — but pay close attention to what she wears. How she flips her hair. How she poses the head. How she smiles. What accessories flatter her. Sure, the thought of getting her in bed would naturally also cross my mind, but that would be secondary (let’s say it would be “an extra bonus” ): what still matters most to me, when I watch women with some intensity, is how they carry themselves. Sometimes this gets a bit overwhelming and I feel like I’m a pervert, drooling at all those women… but when I’m dressed as a male, who cares? We live in a male-dominated, chauvinistic society. Males are expected to behave like that. So, while I’m careful enough not to look too much like a pervert, I certainly pay constant attention to all women around me, and enjoy that very much.

I don’t look only at the gorgeous women, although God knows how many of those are around! Either this is a consequence of being past 40, or something happened in my country, because these days, it seems that I live inside a Hollywood studio. I remember being in Paris in the late 1990s. French women are supposed to be exquisite and have an excellent fashion sense, but the truth is, there were very few of those around. Perhaps one in ten was worth a second glance, and yes, those would look rather nice. The remaining 90% were ugly as hell, poor girls. Much worse than what I was used to see around my place.

These days, however, I’d say that half the women around here are definitely worth a second or a third glance. Even the rest makes an effort: there is often not much that they can do, but at least they can look clean, well-dressed, well-manicured, with a nice haircut — which will go a long way. And it was on those that I actually spent more observation time.

Why? Well of course I prefer to look at gorgeous women But for my own crossdressing skills to improve, I wouldn’t benefit from looking at those gorgeous supermodels with 6″ height and skinny as an ironing board. What would be the point? I have not such a figure! I can appreciate how they look (even though I don’t like the skinny types), obviously, but to learn how to dress and behave, I had to look to the ugly ones.

We project our own image of ourselves. I remember that quite clearly on my first crossdressing sessions. When I finally managed to apply some makeup that didn’t look like something the cat has thrown up, I saw myself on the mirror, and said: “Wow, what a gorgeous woman is looking at me!”. Back then I didn’t take many pictures, but I had a few. Weeks later, after the excitement from the CD session had long since faded, I would look at those pictures, detached from the exuberance of what I felt while I was dressing, and launched a critical eye on them. Who was I kidding? I looked ugly as hell. A bulldog with a wig would look better than me.

And it’s not just being plain and ugly; it’s being ugly and having it all wrong. Wrong hairstyle, wrong hair colour, wrong makeup, badly applied; wrong clothes, wrong poses, wrong everything. But this didn’t frustrate me. Rather, it made me question, over and over again, what I was doing so wrongly.

The pictures of CDs on the Internet normally aren’t that useful to me. The most good-looking ones have already such fantastic bodies that anything they dress will look right on them. The remaining CDs look as ugly as I do. But there are a few exceptions, and I have learned a lot from them.

These are CDs who know very well that they don’t look like Angeline Jolie and never will. However, that doesn’t mean they cannot enhance themselves here and there: showing the best of their features and hiding the others. This means changing wardrobe; choosing the right styles to wear; picking up a suitable hair colour and style; knowing what to do with the makeup. I was coming across pictures of CDs two decades older than me, with a worse figure, who, however, looked so much better than me. Wow! What was their trick?

Actually, the “trick” is repeated in most crossdressing manuals over and over again, but I paid little importance to it: they remind us that women, just like men, come in all sorts of shapes. And for each shape there are appropriate tricks to apply. You might look like a barrel and be completely disfigured and exuding “maleness” from all your pores, but do it right — applying the tricks that pertain to your body type and look — and you can be in a gala with Angelina Jolie next to you, and still get some compliments. It sounded crazy, and I didn’t really believe in it much, but it’s true.

And it’s not so hard actually. Of course it takes practice and training. It means experimenting a lot, since even on those manuals and tutorials, they tend to address some “stereotypes”, and we never fit exactly into a single one. So we need to figure out what works and what doesn’t. But this means two things: being a very good observer and being very critical about yourself.

That’s what I did. In fact, I’m now aware that even though I wanted to drive out as Sandra 7 years ago or so, when I first talked about my crossdressing to my wife, she told me that “I wasn’t ready yet”. And she was quite right. Now it’s very easy to see how many things I was doing so wrongly back then! Even my whole body movements were all wrong. It’s not just that it would be impossible to pass, it would be ridiculous to go out that way!

So I had seven long years to experiment. Once in a while, very rarely, my wife would give me a few tips. She’s not really a fashionista, and doesn’t dress that well herself, but at least she benefits from the experience of also having to deal with a body type which is hard to turn into something that looks great (that she managed to do so successfully is proven by the fact that she obviously caught my attention, 15 years ago ). For example, in my case, necklaces had to go. Overdoing the makeup also had to stop. Wearing too-fancy dresses would make me look twenty years older (I still have to improve my wardrobe, though!). And being a platinum blonde definitely won’t work with my skin type, even though I thought otherwise!

Strangely enough, the thing that usually is the more difficult to do, I caught up naturally very quickly: body movement. I have mentioned before that I’m actually slightly homophobic, and I’m sure that came from a reaction I had when I was 14 or 15 and suddenly figured out I wanted to dress like a girl, but didn’t want to have sex with boys. Being scared to become homossexual, I generated a strong aversion to them (which is irrational, I know), and this still lingers. So I thought to myself, well, I have overcome that, but there is a problem here. Women don’t move as men do: they do it completely differently. If I want to pass, even at a distance, I have to move like women do.

What bothered me is that I didn’t want to adopt gay mannerisms. Even when dressed as a women, these bother me. So I observed. And what I found out is that women actually do not move and gesture like some gay people do. A few do, sure, but they’re the minority. In fact, the vast majority of women move, pose, and gesture differently then men — we pick that up immediately! — but they don’t overdo it like some gay people do. And like some “ultrafeminine” types do. Well, I had to be critical about myself: with my body type, I would never look “ultrafeminine” — not even with major surgery! So I should adopt gestures, postures and poses from the women with body types similar to mine, and not emulate other types of women which have nothing to do with my own type.

This became surprisingly easy. I think that what mattered most is that I had some reluctance in adopting “flamboyant”, drag-queen-style gestures and poses, and, by avoiding that trap, I adopted much more natural gestures instead. Looking back on some old videos and comparing them with the more recent ones, there is no doubt that I made progress. While I’m still surprised at some comments on those videos saying “you look so feminine, congratulations!” when I know perfectly well I couldn’t fool anyone, I now began to realise that it’s not just the look they’re paying attention to, but the posture and the gestures: because they are now appropriate to a woman of my age, height, weight, and body type. And that’s pretty much the “secret”. I proudly admit now that I can convince my most hardest critic: myself. Some of the latest videos in the past two years or so are really convincing, even though in almost all of them, I’m enacting a fantasy and that leads to some exaggeration.

Sure, when walking around in public, I still have to remind myself about some simple tricks — things that all male crossdressers quickly forget. Elbows have to be always tucked in. That is my first and most important rule of all. I have seen videos of gorgeous crossdressers who forget that all the time. They look lovely at first sight until they start to move about; the illusion is immediately shattered because having the elbows stucking out is so male that it will overcome the most glamorous, feminine dress and the most perfect makeup. Secondly, when walking, I have always to remember that the legs have to be as close together as possible, and take small steps. As a male, I’m so used to do exactly the opposite that it’s hard to remember that all the time.

Of course, we non-genetic females have those extra bits between our legs, so naturally we keep the legs apart. It’s hard to walk otherwise. Even if we are wearing tight panties, that is usually not enough to make us remember that we have to keep the legs close together. In my case, I get the best results with combinations of garments like gaffs and my “special” padding that allow me to keep the legs very close together all the time without being uncomfortable, but that takes some getting used to. But it makes all the difference.

The third trick is the whole body posture: straight back, no slouching. Slouching is a habit we males have, and the older we are, the more easily we slouch. It immediately shows off our “maleness” and shatters the female image. In my case, it helps a bit to remember having the elbows tucked in; because the easiest way to do so is to keep a straight back! So, yes, these things tend to go together and reinforce each other.

And, finally, smile. That must definitely be the least mentioned secret — although many manuals and tutorials mention them. Smile all the time, even when you are on your own and nobody is watching you. In almost all my early pictures and videos I tried to “look sexy” with a sultry look… and forfeited the smiling. These look simply horrible. With the kind of face I’ve got, it’s very hard — not impossible, but almost — to look sexy and remain serious. I sometimes manage that, but it’s way too hard, and I guess it’s just a lucky shot. It’s far easier to smile, smile, smile. That will work wonders all the time.

You might say, “but women don’t smile all the time!” Well, no, but many do; and most will smile more than the average guy. The difference is that smiling will transform your whole face, making it more radiant and happy, and these are features we associate with being female. Also, smiling is easy, even though some people who never smile might think that a forced grin is worse than just remaining serious. I would disagree. Force your grins, baby! They will become more and more natural over time; also, a smile will take years away from your face. What could be best?

Of course, I don’t do all these things all the time, and this is why I often watch my videos again. Here I forgot to smile; here I was worried about something (like ash dropping from the cigarette) and forgot to keep the elbows tucked in; here I bent down and kept the legs apart more than I was supposed to do. Well, yes, there are all those flaws here and there, but, in general, it’s getting better. It also becomes more and more easier with practice; in most cases I don’t even remember doing what I do, and it’s just afterwards — with an inward smile! — that I notice what I’ve been doing. That’s what is supposed to take to successfully pass in public.

Makeup is wonderful. I’m not surprised women love it. Over the years, while I applied all types of tips and techniques, I found out a lot about the wonders of makeup. These days, with so many makeover videos on the ‘net, I’m really impressed how a woman’s beauty so often washes out with soap and water. Of course there are genuine beauties out there, but among us ugly types, makeup is truly a blessing.

If I don’t forget to smile, and turn my head just so, I can get pretty convincing head-on shots of myself, and I have to proudly admit, once again, that sometimes I do a great job. Many of you wouldn’t believe how ugly I look as a guy (no, I won’t show). It’s true I have nice green-blue eyes and rather large lips, but they’re completely underplayed in “male mode”, and while they might have stood out when I was 25, with 43 nobody notices them. What they see is the ugly nose and the double chin. But makeup changes all that, shifting the focus towards the areas I want to enhance and keeping away from the ugly bits. Sometimes people ask me how I’m able to apply falsies so well, because they look natural. I don’t. I haven’t used false lashes in well over a decade. It’s just mascara and liquid eyeliner. Of course I had to experiment with different brands and techniques, but these days I surprise myself all the time: my “real” lashes are nothing special, and since they’re a very light brown, they completely fail to attract attention. But using the proper techniques they look super glamourous, or, well, they look like I’m wearing falsies

Similarly, I don’t do those complex techniques to “get rid” of the eyebrows — a mixture of glue and powder, or something like that, to disguise them and paint “false eyebrows” on top of them. No, fortunately, these days women wear their eyebrows a bit wider than in the 1950s, although super-thin eyebrows are still fashionable. My own eyebrows, in male mode, are pretty neutral. They used to be straight and a bit under a centimetre wide. What I did over the years, without anyone noticing (even my wife has some doubts if I have trimmed them or not), was to thin them very slightly and give them just the hint of an arch. In fact, it’s more important to get rid of the straggling hairs which grow widely outside the “line” than to do the “perfect trim”. Then I got a tip from my wife: brush the eyebrows, so that they look well kept, and do a last sweep pulling them horizontally away from the nose, towards the edge. This will give them a “kept” look. A bit of white pencil beneath the arch, and that’s all I need. A hairstyle with bangs will naturally help a lot — nobody looking at my eyebrows in female mode would suspect that they aren’t trimmed to be “female-looking”. But the cool thing is that even all this minor trimming isn’t noticeable in “male mode”. Why? Because people focus on other things instead, not on my eyebrows.

Alas, the problem is that I haven’t been able to disguise my profile. This is rather hard to do from the side, because the techniques I use work just from the front. The ugly, twisted nose is just too noticeable from the side; and so is the double chin. I can lose some weight — which will shrink the double chin until it’s not so prominent — but there is nothing to do about the nose. If I did any facial surgery, the first thing to go would be the nose. It’s also slightly lopsided — barely noticeable unless you know what you’re looking for! — so I’d definitely like to get it straight. And thin. And small To be honest, when I go out in public, this is what worries me most: I look fine from the front, and perhaps not too bad from the back, but I look horribly male from the side.

Where I do wear a lot of “disguises” is… underneath. Now I know this is a matter of personal choice. I cannot say what is right and what is wrong. These days, it’s common among CDs who go out a lot to praise the “totally natural look”. That means they don’t even wear breastforms. They just keep themselves fit and slim, use push-up bras, and wear dresses that flatter their image — pretty much like any female who was not lucky enough to be born with the perfect image. The only “false” accessory that is allowed is a wig, and, even so, many CDs I know don’t even “allow” that, but tell other CDs they should just start to grow their hair long. Makeup, of course, is always allowed, but the less, the better.

And they might be right. After all, most women these days don’t have perfect bodies, either; they just wear fitting clothes for their body type, and go ahead with what they’ve got.

It bothers me a bit when I see some of my online friends, who go out together in public, but are are barrel-shaped. Many have gorgeous faces and flawlessly trimmed wigs; and often they have stunning dresses as well. But, alas, if they’re over 40 like me, they will have the most unflattering, un-feminine bodies, and it hurts me to see them looking like that. Because there are definitely alternatives!

Over those 15 years, I learned a very important lesson. When we talk about the “ideal” curvy feminine figure, we have those numbers in mind: 90-60-90 (in centimetres!). Obviously few of us male CDs will get those numbers without major surgery! Specially if we have drooping bellies; and if we don’t, it means we’re getting fit on the gyms, adding muscles to our body and having even larger shoulders, so we will look even less feminine that way! So it seems hopeless, even with appropriate clothing… doesn’t it?

Actually, no. The trick about those numbers is the ratio between them. What looks “feminine” is having a chest size as large as a hip size, and a difference of 30 cm between both. This is a “trick” not often mentioned on beauty magazines, so it’s well worth sharing it. What this means is that a woman with 100-70-100 will look as sexy and voluptuous and curvy as one with 90-60-90, specially if she has a larger frame. Similarly, a petite-sized woman with merely 75-45-75 will have more curves than a panoramic railroad up the Alps So the trick is looking at your real measurements, and get some padding to make sure you get that ratio!

Here is the major difficulty: males have next to zero hips, and, with advancing age, they get larger waists than their hips. Also, of course, without breastforms — or too tiny breastforms — they will not get the correct chest size.

In my male mode, I have a chest size of around 98, a waist size which varies with my weight but is usually around 100 or so, and the hips get 107 — I have been fortunate to be born with a rather large ass, lol. Still, as you can see, these numbers are nowhere close to what I need to look “right”!

So what I did first was to bring the waist size down. My corsets tend to bring me down to 84 cm or so, which is an improvement, but not enough: merely 15 cm or so is simply not enough. Since I adore breastforms, I experimented a lot with them. My first set was too small: it was labelled as a “C cup”, but I soon realised that “cups” go together with “chest size”. A C cup on a large chest size looks like a B… or even an A. On the other hand, a so-called C cup breast form on a petite woman with a 75cm chest will make her look like Pamela Anderson! Figuring out the exact size is not easy, and that’s why I got professionals to do it for me: I went to an Amoena shop to get the correct fitting. And, to be honest, the breastforms they sold me were enormous! I had seen their measurements and thought that I would be buying two sizes smaller. When the shopkeeper brought me the sizes she had picked, I told her that I didn’t want such huge breasts! She smiled knowingly and told me to try them on.

One popular mistake with crossdressers is that they get the wrong shapes for their breasts, mostly because obviously we have no experience with breasts (except as to what happens under the bed sheets with our female S.O. — but we’re probably not using a measuring tape then!). In reality, they grow from underneath the armpits and go all the way to the centre. If we’re very wide-chested — and most male CDs will be, compared to genetic women! — it means that we have to take in account that our breastforms will have to have “extra flesh” (or, rather, silicone) to allow for covering a much wider area. That’s why the “proper fit” will seem to be so big. Then, of course, one needs the appropriate bra which will hold everything in place to look natural — because even a D cup bra for a shorter torso, even if it has extra straps and such, will not deal with the breastform correctly. Then again, 80-95% of all women don’t know their correct bra sizes, either — so why should we be different? Even though we have an advantage: we can select the bra size we want, since we decide what breastforms we’re going to use! The added advantage, however, brings in the difficulty of needing to select the proper shape of the breast form we want. I remember my first breastforms: they were made of latex. Even though they gave me the desired chest size, they were shaped all wrong. It’s not the manufacturer’s fault — it was my fault for not really understanding breast anatomy! So, while I cannot claim to have “perfectly shaped breasts” (that doesn’t exist!), what I can say is that they are realistically shaped. I have noticed that mostly from the profile — my worst side! — where the breasts really look very natural.

All right, enough about breasts! To summarise, now I have something like 112-114 cm on my chest and around 84 cm on the waist. Perfect! That’s the desired “30 cm difference” which makes my body look so feminine. There was just the matter of the hips to deal with: at 107 cm, they’re simply too narrow.

For most cases, I’d say it’s pointless to worry much, and this is what I did for many years. Choosing the right fit on the skirt will cleverly disguise narrow hips, for instance. Add a wide belt, and the waist will be enhanced visually, taking the viewer’s attention away from the hips. The Internet is overflowing with tips to enhance “boyish” figures with styles that are appropriate for narrow hips.

All that is very nice to know, but I was not really very happy with the overall results. I even sent a dress to a seamstress to “improve” it slightly, making it fit better. But I wasn’t totally happy: I needed my extra 10 cm of hips!

So, well, padding to the rescue. You might have heard horror stories about padding: most systems are simply styrofoam or gel pads embedded in panties. Some look acceptable even if they’re cheap, but they are often of the “one-size-fits-all” kind, which, as you know, never fits anybody. I was actually lucky, because I had not thrown away my old Veronica 2 from Classic Curves, bought a decade ago. This is a custom fit undergarment. What you do is to send in your exact measurements — a lot of them! — and this gets input into a computer that will calculate the amount of padding to give you a realistic, feminine figure. So it’s not just about the hips: it’s an all-around solution for hips, behind, and shaping. Very sophisticated! It has, however, several problems. The first, of course, is that the measurements are so precise that if you gain or lose weight, it won’t fit any longer. This is why my Veronica 2 has been stored away for so long. When I lost some 10 kg or so, I gave it a try again, and I was really surprised about the results: all of a sudden, all my dresses started to fit correctly! And the resulting feminine imagine is simply unbeatable with any other trick or technique.

As said, the Veronica 2 (I haven’t tried other products of their lines) has other problems. The most annoying one is probably the zipper. There are zipper-less versions, but they’re allegedly “harder to put on”. The zipper, however, has the big disadvantage that it gets stuck on everything. Remember, this is really a very tight foundation undergarment. To prevent the zipper from sticking to things, they have sewed in a protection — a bit of silky cloth that gets velcro’ed beneath the zipper — but, of course, the zipper will stick to that as well, and the only way to get it unstuck is to tear the protective cloth apart. I’ve tried to sew it together — given enough time, I do sew reasonably well; my problem is sewing in a hurry — but sooner or later the zipper will get stuck at the seams, and everything will come apart. Of course, without the protection, the zipper will get stuck at everything — your panties, any frilly undergarment you may have, or the laces from the corset. And don’t even think about going without panties! It’s better to ruin them then to get the zipper stuck at… you know what! So, yes, it’s always a pain to get the zipper closed without getting stuck at anything.

The other problem is that the foam pads, after much use, will slowly crumble apart. Since they’re designed by a computer-driven robot, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you can easily replace — except reordering from Classic Curves. Also, like everything made of foam, they’re good for the visual illusion, but not for a “close inspection” (i.e. touch). Of course the garment itself will be over the pads, so that’s ok, but Classic Curves also sell gel pads, which are much more realistic and don’t crumble apart, but they’re far, far more expensive. And, very likely, they can be washed too — because you can certainly wash the Veronica, but not the pads. Classic Curves sells the shorter Veronica 1 announcing that it can be worn under “swimsuits” but I fail to understand what will happen to the foam pads if you decide to go swimming! (The gel pads should be fine, though.)

Problems aside, at the end of the day, the simple fact is that I’ve achieved my goal. No, I’m not 90-60-90, but I’m 114-84-114 or so, or close enough for the difference to be unnoticeable, and it shows. That’s definitely curvy material to work with! And it also means that all of a sudden, pretty much everything you wear will fit correctly — you simply won’t have a “male figure” any longer.

Of course it’s just an illusion. And one that has its drawbacks. For many T-girls, even breastforms might be uncomfortable; mine weight 1.5 kg, which is something “new” to handle (but I love it!). Corsets are still deemed by many to be a form of torture, and best relegated to the BDSM crowd. In all honesty, even though they take some getting used to, they’re actually very comfortable to wear for extended periods, because they force you to give up the slouch and keep your back straight, which is actually much more resting. You have to try them for extended periods to believe me, I know There is just one problem with corsets: it’s when the whalebones stick through the garment. Ouch! On the other hand, the Veronica has some quirks for extended wear, on the crotch zone. You might ask yourself why I need both a corset and the Veronica. I’ve tried to go without the corset; it works with some outfits, but my pot belly will not be held in place by the Veronica’s elastic banding. It takes the strength of a corset to do that Overall, the major problem is, of course, the heat: combine all of that and a wig, and it becomes next to impossible to dress on a hot day. While everybody’s sensitivity to heat is different, I have found out that I cannot wear all these things with indoor temperatures above 25ºC: I sweat too much and will ruin the makeup that way.

But even though it’s “just an illusion“, it comes close to what I had in mind back in the mid-1990s when I started to crossdress. The goal was to pass, and I’m pretty much near to the limit to what I can do to achieve that. There is always room for improvement: I’m not very happy with my outfit choices, but it’s actually hard to figure out what fits well and what doesn’t. For example, I actually prefer tops and skirts, but I found out that dresses fit me best; why, I don’t know, but there is just one combination of top + skirt that looks great, the rest simply won’t match well for some reason. Also, it took me a lot of time to figure out what hairstyles will fit me well, and I came up with something which I would have never bought from an online shop — it was just because I tried it out that I bought it, surprised that it looked rather nice! (I’m currently on a waiting queue for a custom-made wig, which I’m very curious about, since I have no way to know if it will look nice on me before it arrives; the best I could do is to use a website for virtual makeovers to get a preview on how it might look like) But the whole point is that it took a lot of time to get a feminine image that is relatively acceptable. Why so much time? Well, because I don’t dress every day, and I have no benefit of geting advice from family & friends like genetic girls do. They can go through the trial & error phase very quickly. Also, they start to do that when they’re very young!

I should open a parenthesis in my thoughts. At this point, some of my readers will remind me that I look already great on the pictures and on the videos I post, and so I should stop complaining! You’re being very kind to me but the plain truth is that I cheat. I tend just to show the “best” angles. I wear makeup that looks great on videos, but would look scary or daunting in broad daylight. Under a controlled enviroment, behind a low-resolution camera, I do, indeed, look acceptable. But that’s just the illusion behind the camera: out there in public, I’m just a very ugly woman that “looks wrong”. I don’t really pass — the best that might happen is to raise some doubts, specially when seen from afar. If I come close to someone else, they’ll be shocked to have mistaken me for a real woman. Most of you don’t realise that, since most of you are crossdressers as well and very tolerant and encouraging (this is a great community, btw, where we all encourage each other so much!) and are used to it. And, again, the camera helps a lot. I still get a lot of people on popular chatrooms that are tricked to believe they’re viewing a real woman — I tend to visit those chatrooms less these days, but sometimes I spend some time there, mostly to gauge the reactions. It just shows how good the camera is in hiding my imperfections — some people even think I’m younger than 30! But, again, this is not “reality”. It’s a convenient illusion, and I take full advantage of it. In “reality” I look much worse and are easily picked up.

The irony is that pretty much half of my life has gone by until I pretty much achieved my intended goal. I’m already starting to notice some aging effects which makeup cannot cover: wrinkled hands, for example. More pronounced lines — not really wrinkles — to the side of my cheeks, which weren’t there 5 or 10 years ago. In another decade, I will have to start wearing different styles of clothes, and probably wear shorter hair, which simply looks disgusting on me (I’ve tried!). In another 20 years I will try to pass as a nice old lady, full of wrinkles, and with overdone makeup. In 30 years, crossdressing will not be so fun — it will just be something I will have to do to appease my urges. And in 40 years I might be too old and in constant pain and unable to dress on my own. Time is very tough on us crossdressers, specially if we aren’t as regular as we wished to be. I often think back to how I would look like when I was 25 or 27, if I knew what I know today — I would pass much better! And with 17, when I was skinny, I’d look gorgeous as a woman — I had no muscles and no fat! But those days will never come back again.

I also think of my plans for when I was 30 years old. 30 is a good age — not too young, but not too old either. If I had transitioned back then, and went through hormones and extensive surgery, I’d still look gorgeous today — men age differently from women, we actually have some advantages in that regard. In my family, for instance, the male part rarely gets wrinkled skin before they turn… 80! By contrast, the women in my family start to get white hair and tons of wrinkles around 50 or so. My mother, 8 years younger than my father, always seemed to be physically much older (she largely compensates having a fantastic extroverted personality and smiling a lot). So, with surgery and hormones, I think I would be able to pass as a relatively good-looking woman for two good decades at least.

But not any more. Hormones today would have little effect — more psychologically than anything else. They might help to redistribute fat — removing it from the belly and put it on the behind, where it belongs, thus compensating for the lack of hips and allowing me to get rid of the Veronica. It might round up the face a little, soften the edges, but I’m lucky not to have “chiseled” features anyway, so I can compensate with makeup. It might also tone down the muscles, even though I haven’t many, but it could help a bit, specially with the arms, which look “too male” for my taste. Of course there would be the advantage of getting a bit less facial hair (but I would still require extensive laser hair removal) and probably get some more hair on top. But it wouldn’t change much more: I would still have wide shoulders and be much higher than the average female in my country, because hormones cannot change that. And no, I wouldn’t get the so-desired breasts that all crossdressers love — in my family, except for one aunt, all women are small-breasted, so I would need surgery as well. My nose, as well as some features I dislike on my chin, would also require extensive surgery. Even with some fat distribution, it would probably not be enough: I would have to “aid nature” and get some hip implants. While the “pot belly” would get somewhat reduced, I’d still think I’d need to remove all fat surgically as well. Add that all together, and, well, it’s insanely expensive… for what? A few years having fun as a female, before the onset of old age? It seems a bit pointless to me.

Fortunately, that choice is taken away from me. So what remains is a certain amount of resignation: it won’t happen. Not in this life. So why worry? Instead, I should be happy in what I have achieved. There are still a lot of things that I haven’t tried out — namely, really going out with friends to a public place (and not merely meeting a CD friend on a remote spot). My wife warned me that I would become bolder once she gave me permission to roam the neighbourhood fully dressed (inside the car), and she is right: I’d love to go out during Carnival (Mardi Gras) and just pretend I didn’t care if people looked oddly at me, even when going to a very public place like a shopping mall These are still goals in my list. I also have some fantasies of going to a baroque music concert in my best evening dress — where lights are dimmed and people cannot talk much or point fingers at me — or even going to the movies. I’d love to go to a non-LGBT esplanade or café or restaurant in plain daylight, even if fully knowing that everybody would know I’m a crossdresser, but not really caring about what they’d say — public places have the advantage that they won’t allow serious disturbances to happen. The worst that might happen is denying you entrance, but some spots wouldn’t really care — I could address them in English, and tourists and their oddities are welcome everywhere in my country They might get me a seat at the worst possible place (to make sure I leave quickly!) but they wouldn’t deny me a place. And I’d love to travel crossdressed to another country where nobody knows me and enjoy myself a whole week fully dressed.

All these are achievable goals. Transition is not. When looking at things from this perspective, I can see that there is a lot that I can still do and enjoy. Why worry too much about the things I cannot enjoy? It just spoils the fun! Instead, I should be happy for having so many wonderful opportunities of having fun dressing as a woman, all of which are perfectly achievable.

It often helps to think how much some of my friends in transition are suffering. I have already told you about the law changes around here, which make transition affordable and simple. Among a group of a dozen or so very active users of an online community I’ve joined a couple of years before the law changed, half of them are in transition. Most of them never even seriously considered it before. Some are relative newcomers to crossdressing. Every month or so, it looks like someone else is starting transition; often I think that I will be the last “plain crossdresser” of that group!

One would think that transition is easy and fun, or people would refrain from doing that! But it’s neither easy nor fun. Almost all transgendered people I’ve met online are in serious financial trouble of one sort or another. Some are unemployed and have been so for a long time; they are fully aware that their chances of getting a job after transition will be next to zero. Others are employed in male-only jobs — like building — and will have to quit their jobs, having no idea what to do afterwards. Most are anxious about the relatively long procedure until they are finally allowed to take a few hormones; and then they stress out about the lack of immediate effect and wonder how much longer they have to wait until they finally get to notice any difference. Some are clearly confused about their future anyway, and don’t identify neither to a “male” world nor a “female” world, but believe that they would feel better once they’re classified under the “female” label. So, overall, this is hardly a painless situation for them. I just find it interesting that their “real life” cases are so different from what has been reported about transexuals going under transition. And I think that the major difference is that those reports come mostly from activists, who live completely different lives. These people I call my friends, even if I just meet them online, are not activists. They just want to be themselves, alone, and not get pestered by anyone else. Some have support from their families; most had to sever themselves from their families to enter transition. There are a few interesting cases of incredibly female-looking individuals who, however, are not going through transition, but, over time, they have dressed more and more female-y even among friends and family and increasingly get more accepted that way. A few toy with the idea of getting hormone therapy, but they don’t think so much about it. Instead, they’re happy to have fun to dress as females and do what females do, even if they wouldn’t apply the word “transexual” to themselves — they simply don’t worry about those things. They’re the kind of T-girls that paint their nails in neon pink for the annual Christmas dinner; and after an initial shock from the more conservative members of the family, the women at the dinner start to ask more about the place where she had her nails done. For the Easter lunch they might undo their ponytails and show that their long hair actually has a very feminine haircut, which they obviously never show at the workplace, but, being among friends and family, they feel it’s ok to show off their hair as well — or perhaps a sleeveless top.

Of course not everybody’s family and friends are that open-minded, and this will work only in certain social environments. But my point is that these people are enjoying themselves. Instead of fretting about transition or no transition; instead of worrying about quitting their jobs and families and starting everything from scratch; instead of spending endless, sleepless nights in anxiety about their future… they just enjoy themselves more and more, dressing as women, perhaps not always fully, but having no qualms to appear among friends and family in the way they like. It’s like showing off a tattoo, for example: in some circles, it might still be seen as a “daring” move. But once you have a tattoo in a visible place, there is no way to hide it any longer — it would be pointless to do so. Instead, not worrying too much about it and making fun of the whole situation is the right way to go ahead.

These examples are very encouraging to me, and they show that there is “life beyond transition” for a crossdresser like me who knows that transition will never be an option. While my own family would probably die from shock, as well as my conservative friends, I keep going back to the idea that my mother-in-law would probably find it very amusing. On the other hand, just daydreaming about that will just generate expectations, worries, and anxiety — so why bother thinking and thinking about that? If the opportunity comes, I’ll seize it; if not, I shall not worry too much about it. That’s the way that leads to happiness — it’s called contentment: being happy with what you got and not worrying too much about what you cannot get.

Every month has small victories. My recent “boldness” brought me to a gas station (twice). Of course it was an automated one — nobody was around, except for the CCTV — but it still was fun to do. Before that was getting money out of an ATM. And, of course, meeting the lovely Patricia in person. Who knows what will happen next? The main point is: let’s not worry too much about it. It just spoils the fun.

View at Picasa Tirada pela Patrícia Coelho — http://cdpatriciacoelho.blogspot.com18-Jun-2012 00:08, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. FE360,X875,C570, 3.1, 6.3mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 160

There is a new word I’ve learned last Thursday: when a CD takes you out for the first time en femme, offering her support and experience, and putting you at ease, she becomes your godmother.

Now I have a godmother too! And doesn’t she look gorgeous on the picture on the top?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Like everything else in my complex life, this event has its own story. It starts some 15 or so years ago — when, for the first time, a CD acquaintance I had met online suggested that we met and went out together en femme.

I’m almost ashamed to say that around that time I couldn’t yet afford to live on my own, so I had to rely on my parents to provide me with shelter and food (don’t get me wrong, I love my parents!). This, in turn, meant a limited capacity for crossdressing. But I still had the vacations on my own — I spent part of them alone, where I could indulge in crossdressing. The problem was that it became hard, if not impossible, to synchronise the days I was on vacation with the days my friend was available for getting dressed as well: so this never happened.

Shortly afterwards, I moved to my own place, where I hoped to be able to crossdress much often. But it was the exact moment in time when I also met my current wife, and, of course, all free time was spent with her — and she moved in with me not long after my new place had been restored and decorated. Even before that happened, she would already sleep over the night with me during weekends. Afraid that she’d find out what those strange black bags were, and why I never opened them, I kept all my femme things stored away — in the trunk of one of my cars, where, among all the junk, they wouldn’t attract much attention. So there was a big dilemma there. My daily routine was to go to work, pick her up, drive her home, spend as much time as I managed before collapsing in exhaustion, and drive back to my own home to sleep until morning. During the weekends we spent almost all waking hours together. Effectively, even though technically I had my own place and freedom, didn’t talk much to the neighbours, and nobody would visit me, in practice I hardly managed to crossdress at home. It happened just once or twice and was never a “full” session. In fact, I continued to dress only during my solitary vacations (because we couldn’t match vacation days together, my wife and me had to take them separately). And by that time I hadn’t much time for vacations anyway — a week per year at most, if at all.

When she moved in with me full-time we went through a very complex time of our lives, during which I literally lost all my money to creeps and scoundrels — and to the incompetent banks which panicked during the crisis of 2001-2003 after 9/11 and the burst of the dot-com bubble. We had even to leave our home and get to live far away for half a year. It was only when we returned that I had to make the decision to reveal myself as a crossdresser. As you who follow me know, this went rather well, but my wife imposed some rules and limitations: I could dress at home occasionally with her consent, but she didn’t want me to leave the safety of our place. After seven long years, she finally consented to revert her decision last January, but, again, with the restriction that I could only leave home after she went to sleep, since she gets so anxious about my leaving that she doesn’t want to face it.

Now I go out practically every day I manage to dress. The problem, of course, is that she goes to bed very late — never before 2 or 3 AM. This means that by the time I wait for her to get sound asleep — she reads in bed for a long time, smokes a few cigarettes, and then takes perhaps another half hour to finally get asleep — I’m already very tired, it’s insanely late, and everything has closed. There is always the fun of driving around and walking on my heels on the cobbled streets, totally empty (or almost!) by then. The only people who complain are my long-time online acquaintances and friends, since the time I used to spend with them in loose conversation are now replaced by going out. I’m sorry for that! But it’s hard to do both things…

Well, most crossdressers work full-time in “male mode”, so this means that going-out times are only on Fridays and Saturdays. Which are precisely two of the nights that I never have free: I’m studying on Friday, and I go to my mother-in-law’s place on Saturday. There are, at most, one or two exceptions per year to this rigid schedule, and it’s impossible for me to know them in advance… so I never, ever, plan to crossdress on either of those days. In Portugal we still have some holidays which fall in the middle of the week (something which might change in the near future) so sometimes there is the slight hope to go out at a time where other crossdressers might have some time as well — but, so far, this hasn’t happened. Also, the time I can go out is only when everybody is driving back home — which means missing fun entertainment like going to dinner parties or some shows, since they will all have finished by the time I’m allowed to go out.

Over time I sort of resigned myself to the futility of expecting conditions to change. The studies I’m doing on Friday will only finish in about 3 years or so, and it’s possible that they will be extended; my mother-in-law is not likely to change her weekly dinner date soon, either. And for the remaining week days before a holiday, it’s unlikely that my wife gets less anxious about me going out earlier — or to assume that my friends are willing to stay up so long and wait for me.

A few weeks ago I was sort of grumbling and complaining about that to Patrícia Coelho. Patrícia is a very interesting case. First, she’s insanely clever, which is the kind of person I’m comfortable with — I love challenging people, and anyone brighter and more intelligent than me keeps me on my toes, and grabs my attention But more to the point, she has picked up crossdressing very suddenly not even a year ago and instantly became one of the most valuable members of the Portuguese crossdresser community. After her few shy experiences, her drive to pass with a perfect female figure catapulted her into becoming one of the most fashionable, good-looking CDs I ever saw around here. She goes out at least twice per week, but often 3-4 times; and is currently planning her transition, probably thanks to a very supportive (new) girlfriend who accepts her as Patrícia and might have encouraged her to move on. No, it’s not as easy as it sounds for her, either — she wouldn’t be accepted in her workplace (which is highly machist), and changing careers at this time is not a very practical choice. But she’s considering the challenge; in her own words, there is little more she can do to enhance her feminine figure without going through hormone therapy and eventually some surgery. And in her desire to achieve perfection, this seems to be the natural course of things to follow.

Let me open a short parenthesis. Someone who never crossdressed in her life and all of a sudden plans transition after a little less than a year might seem surprising to most. But in fact, in the past two years, I have been astonished at the ever-increasing number of acquaintances and friends who are doing exactly that. If it were restricted to my country, Portugal, I could understand — after years of repressive legislation (which ended in 1974), transition was a highly-complex bureaucratic procedure, with lots of pitfalls, which had to end with the transexual person filing a lawsuit against the Portuguese state in order to get the gender change accepted. While this was a mere technicality (the courts would always allow the gender change to take place), it meant years and years of waiting with very hard access to surgery and hormonal therapy, few doctors and psychologists familiar with gender identity problems, and universal ostracism. The new law changed all this and it’s one of the most advanced in the world: nowadays it’s merely a bureaucratic, administrative procedure, which starts with getting assigned to doctors from the National Health Service who will evaluate the transition procedure, recommend therapy, and formally emit a professional opinion to allow the gender change to happen, which is then accepted by the central registries to formally change the name and gender on all legal documents. All the medical aspects of the transition procedure are paid by the Social Security. Gender has been disconnected from genitalia; nobody is forced to go through hormone therapy, surgery, or chemical sterilisation (yuck!) to change gender, since same-gender marriage is also legal (the sole limitation right now is that same-gender couples cannot adopt children; but they can adopt them before they get legally married). Even the “Real Life Test” seems to be less strict as before: many are allowed to go through therapy even before starting the Real Life Test (it makes sense: it’s far easier to pass as a woman in the Real Life Test if you already look like one). It sounds “perfect” but of course it isn’t — the bureaucracy takes a lot of time, about 2-3 years until the transition is finished, but it’s a far less painful process, and obviously much cheaper, too. It’s not unexpected to see so many repressed transexuals all suddenly applying for a gender change.

But strangely enough it’s not only here that there is a rush for “quick transition”. To be honest, I don’t know what “quick” means any longer! In some cases, some crossdressers I follow on YouTube or other social sites, after a year or two, aren’t crossdressers any longer: they have transitioned. Often it’s incredibly quick and unexpected — one day they’re talking about their latest set of clothes, the next day they suddenly decided to transition, and the day after that they’re already posting post-op pictures and videos of themselves.

Of course this is good! I’m envying them, not criticising! It shows a radical change from the experience I had a decade ago, where transexuals would spend years and years in suffering, and perhaps after a decade or two would then finally start their long transition process. Transexuals in the 1980s might only have become legal women by the turn of the century. That was what I was used to see. Not any longer! Nowadays, even more-or-the-less casual or occasional crossdressers seem to be able to get hormonal therapy, even if they don’t really want to do the full transition, but just look more feminine when dressing. A lot of couples, where the tolerant and supportive wife actually finds their crossdressing hubby “cute”, are absolutely fine with the changes — so long as they’re made with the overview of a doctor, of course — and this is becoming more common among the crossdressing community. It’s also not unusual for people to ask me online for how long I’ve been taking hormones, and be surprised when I tell them that I’m not on hormones at all. “Why not?” they ask in surprise. These days, the barrier between crossdressing and transexuality has shrunk and faded. So-called “serious” crossdressers who search for a passable feminine image are “expected” to do some hormonal therapy and minor surgery, even though they wish to keep their day job as males. In Portugal, as said, you have all the options — going through therapy and change your legal gender; ignore therapy but still change your name and gender; or do both things if you wish — and this means that people are getting them.

So, well, this wasn’t a short parenthesis But it should be enough to explain all about Patrícia’s decision and show that, nowadays, her situation is not that unique nor abnormal, but actually fitting quite well in the current trend. Patrícia really wants to pass. And if that requires hormonal therapy and minor surgery, so be it. She might have to think about her future career, and this might prevent her to become a full-time woman, but as she goes out passing as a woman for half the days of the week, she still wants to do a bit more than perfect her make-up (which needs little improvement) or her smart taste in clothing.

And she’s definitely got the experience. We crossdressers all know about friends who dress occasionally, and have done so for years and years, but there is no progress in their techniques and style. They still pick up the wrong clothes for their figure, dress as someone twenty years older (or twenty years younger!), and either overdo their makeup or apply it completely wrongly. Again, this is not a criticism. As I told Patrícia last Thursday, my first sense of accomplishment came when I realised that I was better at doing my own makeup than my own wife. And while I don’t achieve salon-grade nails, when I pick up good-quality varnish, I can apply it in five minutes without needing to correct it — a decade ago it took me hours and hours, as I applied it and removed it over and over again, and it never looked good enough. My wife doesn’t paint her own nails, but her sister does, and it’s with some pride that I notice that I can do a much better work than her. It has absolutely nothing to do with “talent” — I’m not artistically inclined, rather the contrary (my wife tells me that, thanks to my male genes, I can only “see” in 16 colours ). But I have a lot of experience. My wife might apply makeup two or three times per year, and doesn’t do the full routine anyway, because she has no patience for it. But I take less time and do it fully — because I practice every week. For years I avoided painting my own nails, so I just practiced on fake nails and glued them on, but, at some point, I just decided to learn doing it on my own nails, until I was happy with the results. 15 years ago I needed to do the eye makeup over and over again until it looked a little better than something just out of a horror movie. Mascara would get stuck all over my face. Now I can apply liquid eyeliner with a firm hand, something which would be impossible just 3 years ago. I have less success with clothes, because it took me years to find out what would fit my (enhanced) figure best, and that meant wasting a lot of money on clothes (my wife put an end to it; I’m not allowed to buy any more clothes for the time being). I still have some problems in figuring out what suits me. Coats and jackets, for example, are a nightmare to buy, and that’s why I have so few…

Still, I just do it once a week or so, so of course my progress is not that quick. Patrícia, by contrast, does that every other day. She has far more experience, acquired in just a year, than a genetic woman who might just get dressed for special events, like weddings and special dinners. She looks great with perfect makeup because she managed to experiment a lot. For months people have asked her if she is using her own hair or a wig, because it’s impossible to tell from the pictures (and you can stand just inches away and still have no idea). After all, nobody questions if Beyoncé, Oprah, or Tyra Banks are using wigs or not, right? They will refer to their own hair as “their own hair”… even if, technically speaking, it isn’t. But there is no difference… at all. Anyway, just another example on what you can achieve if you have lots of practice, and I really mean lots.

Going out that often also makes a whole difference to the attitude. Again, I have to refer to the example of genetic women. The average genetic woman who deals with a daily routine where she dressed casually (or business casual), wears flats most of the time, and goes to the hairdresser once per month or so, has a completely different attitude than some girl who dresses up every other day. You might have noticed how oddly these women are when they finally get to dress specially for an event. They don’t know how to walk on heels. They don’t know what kind of clothes flatter them — look at how they pick prom dresses for a cocktail party, for instance They might not even know what hairstyle looks best on their face. They have no idea how to match things — not even the colour of their makeup with what they’re wearing. And I’m not even going to pick on women who paint their toes red but their nails brown… just because it takes so long to do their nails (or it’s too expensive to go to the salon) and don’t bother, since, most of the time, they won’t be wearing sandals anyway. Orange nails might look great on casual wear, but it’s horrible with formal dresses — unless they’re wearing an orange dress. It’s those small things that come with a lot of experience, and, to be honest, most genetic women simply don’t have that experience at all. They might do a professional makeover for a very special event — when they get married, if they allow a pro to “do” their outfit, they will obviously look at their best. But ask them to dress elegantly for a different event, on their own, and they’ll be clueless on what to do.

This shouldn’t be interpreted as boasting on my part. Let’s be honest: the pictures and the videos of myself capture me from “best” angles, and I don’t look nowhere as good as I sometimes seem. There is a lot you can do by capturing the camera angle just so to hide imperfections; I often reject a lot of pictures before publishing them. So don’t get deluded. I make a lot of mistakes and still have a lot to learn.

Quite a lot, in fact. I remember, not so long ago, commenting that I could remain on heels for as long as 10 hours or so, and my feet wouldn’t really hurt. Well, perhaps on very high heels, or on shoes that have a too tight fit. When walking at home, I have a lot of confidence in my walking, and I’m aware I don’t do many mistakes — I look rather feminine when walking, and it takes little effort to properly walk.

But that’s just walking at home. Two weeks ago, after walking for about half an hour, I finally learned that I don’t walk that well on high heels (and I was wearing my most comfortable sandals). It’s not just the “hurting” — it didn’t really hurt, those sandals are great — but I just started losing a bit of my poise. I can guess that at the end of my stretch I wasn’t looking that feminine any longer. On Thursday I walked for an hour and a half, and I was quite conscious, when walking with Patrícia, how little experience I actually have — she managed to keep her feminine image all the time. I’m sure I was failing after 10 or 15 minutes, and, while paying attention to our constant stream of chatting, I had to remind myself that I’m supposed to be walking gracefully as well. It wasn’t easy and very likely looked quite artificial. Why? Because I’m not used to it — not for such a long time, out in the open. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Maintaining a “perfect image” — which means enhancing one’s best features and downplaying the worst ones, while at the same time wearing something that is fun and fits one’s own image; you can have a perfect image even if you don’t have a perfect figure! — requires experience. A lot of trial and error. Even watching tutorials and looking at magazines is not enough: most of the women in them will not have your body and your figure, so the results of copying them just because they look gorgeous in their outfits just will make you look silly and ridiculous. But once you achieve that “perfect image” for your body type and your tastes it gives you a lot of self-confidence. That’s what Patrícia has: she knows she looks great — considering her figure and her tastes — and so she has confidence in her image. That allows her to project self-confidence, assurance, optimism, safety. What could someone like me wish more in a godmother?

When she told me that she would be willing to meet me at the oddest hours, just for a walk and a chat, while she’s having some days off — during which she can sleep until late — I was thrilled. Here was the goddess of crossdressing in my little circle of CD acquaintances who was happy to go out with me, just to give me a nice “push and shove” of encouragement. I felt I was not worthy of her kindness; after all, she’s enjoying those few free days, when she could be with her crowd of “professional” crossdressers — T-girls like her who go out every other day and look better in their outfits than any genetic woman I know, barring perhaps my mother-in-law… — but she was kind enough to spend a couple of hours with me on some remote place where everything was closed. That kind of helpfulness and selfishness is rather rare. I’m aware that the CD community is not so much different from others — there are golden hearts and rotten apples, like everywhere else. Obviously I like to be attached to the few “golden hearts” I know, but I hate to intrude and ask them for some time for me — it seems selfish to do so. Patrícia could have gone anywhere else and have way more fun. Instead, she arranged to meet me near a beach where I live — usually a quiet spot, which I have driven by often, and even parked on the lot, noticing that nobody is ever around. Well, sometimes they have a van selling foodstuff and drinks which is open all night.

Patrícia, in spite of coming from much farther, arrived earlier than me. There were a few cars on the parking lot, and the food van was open, with a few late customers. The wind was howling furiously; it was not dreadfully cold, but it was certainly annoying. In typical Portuguese fashion, we kissed each other on the face, like good female friends always do in public (female friends and acquaintances never shake hands with each other; that only happens in extremely formal environments, like meeting a Cabinet Minister or something like that). What first astonished me about her was that she looks exactly like she does on the pictures. Unlike me, she doesn’t need any fancy lighting tricks or odd camera angles. That’s rather surprising: if you have met TV or movie celebrities in public, you will often be disappointed on how so much better they look on the screen. There are exceptions, obviously — and Patrícia is certainly one of them.

The second thing I noticed, after we decided where to walk — there is a small marina nearby, with a good sidewalk and plenty of light — is how much at ease she always is. Again, her long practice of going out so often showed me how fantastic it is when you actually know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. It’s like when you learn to drive a car. You might remember when you finally got your license and started driving around on your own: you will be stiff, doing jerky movements, always focused on remembering everything you were taught during your driving lessons, and all your movements will seem artificial and mechanic. Then, after a few months of driving, you don’t need to think about them any longer — they become fluid, natural, and spontaneous. Well, that’s Patrícia walking around: she looks like she has been walking like a girl all the time since she was born. But that’s just the contrast between someone who has a huge experience going out and walking around like her, and someone like me who was — literally! — taking her first steps.

We actually talked a lot about experience vs. intellectual knowledge. We obviously both agree that experience is far, far more important than knowledge. As said before, reading all the books on makeup will not give you an idea on how it actually feels to apply all those techniques on your own face; and the first time you do it on your own, it will seem to be impossible to replicate the smooth movements that actually get all the many pigments on the right spots. Even the best tutorial cannot convey you the precise idea on how to actually do the makeup. So all this is pretty much worthless — unless you wish to write your own books and tutorials on makeup! — except, of course, as a reminder. If you have no idea about the difference between a concealer and a foundation, the best picture and the most accurate description will not help you at all. By contrast, if you have used both on your face, you’ll know exactly what each is supposed to do. And if you have experience applying them, you will now understand why the tutorials mention one or the other in certain techniques — putting into other words: those tutorials on makeups are reminders of what you’re supposed to do, once you have experience in doing so. Obviously, once you have mastered a few techniques, and experimented them on your own face, you will find tutorials for new techniques easier to follow. A typical example: if you’re learning about applying eyeliner, the first time it will be impossible to get the pencil doing what you see people doing on the videos. You won’t have a firm hand (unless you’re a professional artist!). You will notice that eyeliners from different brands are harder or easier to apply, once you have bought a few; that kohl, for instance, is usually easier to apply but might give too dark results; while cheap eyeliner pencils might be too “hard” and thus not transfer the pigment easily. But once you’ve mastered pencils, you’re apt to learn how to use liquid eyeliner. It’s much harder to apply, but the experience gathered with using a pencil will help you a lot — even though, at the beginning, it feels like learning a completely new tool.

Patrícia and I didn’t discuss just makeup techniques Actually, we didn’t discuss that at all.We talked mostly about her past experiences, and some common (Internet) acquaintances, and her forthcoming decisions regarding a possible transition. While we talked, we were paying attention to our surroundings. In fact, curiously enough, there were quite a lot of people around. Many more than it’s usual at that spot in the middle of the night! I had to admit that I was a little nervous, but Patrícia was confident — she didn’t fear anything, but didn’t try to “provoke” anything at all. There is safety in numbers, and while Patrícia is smaller than me, on heels I’m over 6 feet high, and that will make isolated individuals think twice The few “night owls” around, however, didn’t bother us. Some were curious. They listened to our voices and knew we weren’t genetic girls. Most just spared a glance or two, and then just ignored us. So I didn’t have to run away like on my previous going out alone — and Patrícia avoided larger groups, just to be on the safe side, although we kept a steady, casual pace, showing that we were clearly not interested in getting approached, but also unwilling to “run away” and spoil our own fun. I can only wonder at what those people thought about us. I mean, if we were genetic girls in daytime, we would just be two friends casually talking and taking a walk and smoking a cigarette or two. The “oddity” was being close to 5 AM and that both of us weren’t genetic girls.

This was also my chance to get some pictures taken by Patrícia, who is an amateur photographer and a perfectionist. Since it was horribly windy, and my own wig is really starting to show its age, I’m sure that I looked horrible — unlike Patrícia with her lovely hair — but she spared me the “worst pictures” and just sent a few that didn’t look half as bad. It’s been ages since I had been photographed by someone else — my wife did take a few pictures of me once, in early 2005, but I looked terrible back then. I commented that I would certainly love to do a photo session on day, having someone as talented as Patrícia to do it for me — but not on a windy day!!

Well, all good things have to come to a close. Since the sky was already showing the signs of a very early pre-dawn, I apologised, but it would be better for me to return home. Patrícia kindly obliged; in her neighbourhood, some people wake up really early, and she didn’t want to be seen by her neighbours like that, either. So we parted with some more face kisses as good friends

It was certainly an admirable day, worth remembering for a long, long time.

Thanks for making it happen, Patrícia!