Voyages en Rose

Complements of the Season. The other kind.

2012-12-31T15:02:00.004-05:00

Having disposed, darlings, of the Compliments yesterday, it is high damn time I turned to the Complements. Return with me to the definition, provided by my go-to, slightly-better-than-sketchy online resource, Dictionary.com:

com·ple·ment [kom-pluh-muh nt; kom-pluh-ment] noun

1. something that completes or makes perfect: A good wine is a complement to a good meal.

2. the quantity or amount that completes anything: We now have a full complement of packers.

3. either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole; counterpart.

Today then, I am taking my focus off of the nice things said here and there (i.e. compliments) and turning scattered thoughts to the things that completed 2012 for me, complementary things.

Complete is a relative thing, a vanishing horizon. I stretch for it always, hoping to not snare it fully. Petra much prefers restless to rested, hungry to full, tantalized to satisfied. In review, 2012 did deal up a good measure of complementary stuff, moments, habits, and things that did for moments or do, in the Dr. Evil sense, complete me.

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Writing remains a source of delight for me, and a genuine venue for discovery and expression. I sometimes feel as though I am not creating as spontaneously or creatively as I did when this blog was a toddler back in the day. Many, really most of my gender frontiers and boundaries have been pushed out to their natural and full extent. There are fewer shockingly new things or novel ideas available to me. Less to ponder and fewer words to set to print. This resulted in an all time low of 10 posts for the 2012.

It seems that I am following a common pattern here. Those of us who newly embrace our gender plurality (or whatever variance of special we possess), and have a penchant for blathering on about things in general tend to strip the ground clear down to stubble pretty quickly. Year 3 or 4 in the life of the T-Blogger is typically pretty moribund. Those of you who find a way to post regularly have my admiration and a tiny measure of low grade petty jealousy. Meg and Stana, Lynn and Janie, a tip of the pillbox cap to you.

I do believe though that the written word here on Voyages en Rose for the year is good and complete. Longer form essays taken at a walk with a slower pulse, more mature and settled, less adolescent and breathless. I have written for honesty, and for plain expression as much as I am capable of. In doing so, I am writing in a more convincingly female voice than ever before. Gender Analyzer believes with 81% certainty that the 2012 edition of these Voyages is written by a woman while the 2010 version of me was a relative butch at 71%. Yesterday’s post came in at 84%. This pleases me.

Writing, completes me.

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I write elsewhere too of course. 2012 was a great year for me at Guilty Pleasures. I am the principal editorialist there, responsible for product reviews and the overall style and tone of our surprisingly busy and influential little Lingerie blog. I penned about 20 essays there, mostly reviews of products sent my way by vendors looking for a little publicity. I have become, really quite unexpectedly, a bit of an authority on knickers. I have guest posted on bigger, more influential blogs, and been cross linked, hash tagged, re-tweeted and otherwise digitally cast to the four winds. I am a girl that gets around.

I am assumed to be female by those vendors who seek out my voice and the attention of Guilty Pleasures readers. I do not challenge anyone on the issue. We communicate (for the most part) via email, and it is a correspondence of courtship and intimacy between women. I have found the PR agents, marketing execs and brand leaders who I work with to be super kind, fun and generous women. It is a source of joy for me to share a proposed creative theme, suggestions for product assortments and early drafts with my clients. I get large parcels with handwritten notes of gratitude, smiley faces and fingers crossed in hope that all the pretty things inside fit and feel good. It is business, yes, but it is also girl talk about some of the most completely feminine stuff on the planet, lingerie.

Girl-talk, my dears, very much completes me.

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Getting to know what my tastes run to, what suits me, the criteria that go into evaluating a garment for goodness, greatness or notness has been a real labor of love. It all started by modestly here on Voyages en Rose some years ago with weekly hosiery themed dalliances. Long time readers will recall Petra’s Pantyhose Parade. I fumbled there in the dark to develop a critical eye, an engaging voice and a useful measure of expertise in the hosiery arena. I have since developed what I must immodestly call connoisseurship in a bigger broader field. It has not come easily. It has come in sustained frothy rivers of silk and satin, clasps and cusps. Some of which is pictured above as I take on the annual Re-org of the Drawers Project (yes, we all have our silly year end rituals).

Knowing knickers as I do makes a very real difference in my life. Out en Femme earlier this week, I was able to find a perfect bra / panty set from legendary French brand, Chantelle within minutes of walking into the roughly 4,000 sq ft. of retail space set aside for intimates in Bloomingdale's, needle in a haystack stuff m’dears – go ahead ask your wife if you don’t believe me.

In such settings, I am very much the predator, the accomplished huntress. There were a half dozen brands I knew would be of no interest to me. There were certain boutiques not yet marked down. There were chaotic clearance bins and racks here and there. I ran the calculus, excluded what would not work from view, and isolated something desirable in mere minutes, Terminator like efficiency I thought. I had not worn Chantelle, before, but knew from reputation that their ranges run a little small in the bra band. I did go up size, walked my pretty 70% off retail handful to the service counter and asked the woman there if I had made the right decision in up-sizing.

“Yes, Chantelle does run a little snug, the 36 should be perfect for you. Please try it on to be sure, won’t you?

“Thanks, but not tonight. Too many buttons, too little time you know. I’ll take my chances my dear”

“Just keep the tags on. I’ll staple my card to the receipt, please look me up if things are not perfect."

Things are perfect.

Perfect Lingerie completes me.

*****************

The same could be said for all aspects of wardrobe. I stopped making fashion mistakes this year. I know which things I own that I will never wear, and have them boxed up for delivery to shelters and services that can use them. I can resist temptation when the item is not ideal. There are no more repeats. Honestly, there are no gaping holes in my wardrobe, and no overarching urges to add. I spy the odd thing here and there, but am not a slave to impulses any more.

Having a great wardrobe, a complete wardrobe, completes me.

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Having a friend to share this with, the ups and downs, the good and bad complements my life too. My partner and the founder of Guilty Pleasures, Ally is a woman. She lives in Europe, and has escaped from a corporate setting to try her hand at a number of entrepreneurial ventures online and otherwise. She communicates with me in one of her many second languages, English with great precision and craft. I cannot remember quite how we connected, but Ally offered me a guest post spot way back in 2010. This lead to a correspondence and in time, a generous and more lasting partnership in the enterprise, my name on the masthead if you will, administrative access to the back end of the WordPress machinery, contact with prospective vendors and etc.

We share notes back and forth about our work, yes, but have learned slowly over time to be friends with one another, to share more generously of our thoughts, and our advice for each other. We speak to each other as sisters. She is my best Girl friend.

Having a Girl friend, being a Girl friend, dear friends, completes me, really completes me.

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I have insights and feelings of connectedness with the 51% of the world that the other 49% cannot hope to have. Perhaps you too, Dear Reader, being who you are, understand that. Having a girl friend, and being a girl friend, well it all comes with fierce responsibilities, loyalties, sensitivities. These things endow the relationship with a wonderful warm patina, a soft finish and feeling absent from our masculine relationships.

I cannot have that relationship with Mrs. Bellejambes. My wife is a marvel of adaptability, she must be, yes? Seventeen years later and us still an item, bless her warm, stout heart. But she signed on for a husband, a friend, a lover, for many things. She did not sign on for a girl friend. I could not ask that of her.

Having a wife who does not understand all of this (any more than I do I suppose) but tries to not stand in the way of the things that make me happy completes me.

Mrs. Bellejambes complements my life like nothing else in the world.

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Having readers to here at Voyages en Rose, knowing that someone will show up here, take the time to read, and even now and then leave a word or two, well that completes me too.

Thank you for helping complement a great year.

I hope your 2013 is rich with complementary moments.

Compliments of the Season. Or was it Complements?

2012-12-30T15:19:00.003-05:00

If I had to find metaphorical book ends for 2012, and you know darlings that I do, I think I would have to go with compliments. With complements running a close second. Or the other way ‘round, never perfectly sure.

Damn those homonyms. Wordy, windy girl like myself honestly ought to have had this straightened up in Junior High. Alas. Let us refer to the often reliable Dictionary.com for guidance:

com·pli·ment [kom-pluh-muh nt; kom-pluh-ment] noun

1. an expression of praise, commendation, or admiration: A sincere compliment boosts one's morale.

2. a formal act or expression of civility, respect, or regard: The mayor paid him the compliment of escorting him.

3. compliments, a courteous greeting; good wishes; regards: He sends you his compliments.

com·ple·ment [kom-pluh-muh nt; kom-pluh-ment] noun

1. something that completes or makes perfect: A good wine is a complement to a good meal.

2. the quantity or amount that completes anything: We now have a full complement of packers.

3. either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole; counterpart. .

There. Better. Compliments it is then. I have a few from 2012 I want to share with you.

I am a vain thing. Vanity has a close cousin by the name of Insecurity. You may have met them. They are near neighbors beneath my wig cap, a mere synapse apart on some semi cerebral cul-de-sac. They are separated only by a narrow picket fence, perfect for a little chit-chat, a little gossip, and O, how Insecurity just lights up when Vanity shares a juicy fresh neurotransmitter of news with her. Butterflies waft and play on gentle endorphin updrafts. All the world seems lovely. Those moments stay long with me.

****************

First notable compliment of the year came in January, one happy Saturday night as I took a solo jaunt out to LeBuzz. This spacious nightclub is the last openly gay fortress still standing in the outer boroughs of Metro Atlanta. Once you get OTP (Outside The Perimeter) here, culture and sensibilities turn from Blue to Red right smartly. Happily, LeBuzz remains solvent, and the rainbow pennant continues to flutter from the battlements.

I am not much of a night-clubber you might know, in part because it all starts so damn late and I stop pretty early. Beyond that, the noise and close proximity to youngsters and their curious Red Bull infused cocktails, well, not my tribe you know? Moreover, the featured entertainment was a Drag Review. Not a perfect night out for Petra. For the most part the lip syncing lounge lizards of the RuPaul generation are just not my cup of tea. Caricatures of femininity, exaggerations of form, and to me dismissive of woman in general. There is a cattiness in the art that I cannot love.

Nonetheless, one has to get out of the house time to time, and who knows where you can pick up a makeup tip, right? I took a perch on a tall stool with a good view of the room which left the room with a good view of me. Very bodycon skirt from BCBG, very clingy glittery knit top, pale lilac sheers and tall purple pumps.

Mostly a youngish Lesbian crowd, Asian, African and European faces, a smattering of gay chaps and a handful of clearly settled, hetero, middle-aged couples taking tables up front for the performances, really about as diverse a crowd as you could hope to see.

Not much in the way of the gender curious though. Beyond the performers, I was the only special girl in the room. Waiting for the review to begin I had a little chit chat with next stool neighbors on my right, she and he, they friends, both only recently either fully aware and out, and both a little giddy in their discoveries. While we spoke of nothing of real consequence, my eye was repeatedly drawn back over my other shoulder to the maddeningly beautiful tall boots on the woman perched to my left.

A couple of drinks and so-so drag performers later, I introduced myself to Boot Girl, simply had to tell her I loved her taste. Early 40’s I thought, there with her younger girlfriend, gorgeous dark complexion and steady eyes, she barely flickered while I said hello and told her of my love for her boots.

“I wondered if I was going to just sit here all night with that ass so close to me and you not saying a damn word …”

I was at a little of a loss for words just then. I was working on something along the lines of “come again dear, not quite sure I heard you correctly just there …”

“I have been sitting here wanting you for about an hour now. Damn do you look good.”

Oh. Well, that’s better, a little unsettling still. I stammeringly expressed my blushing gratitude, surprise at the flattery and the news that I was in a committed married relationship with very exclusive privileges as far as asses and other bits go. I must have sounded a bit like Hugh Grant. She slowed down a little and shared a few slightly more genteel words of admiration, at which point I slowly realized that her girlfriend was staring daggers at me.

Oh, my dear word, I had elicited a reaction of jealousy.

I tried to steer the conversation quickly back to boots. It worked for a while, long enough an interval that I could exit the conversation on a civil note and not get stuck in the middle of a domestic quarrel and have my much sought after ass roundly beaten.

It was near time for me to go in any event. I finished my drink, slid my jacket on, hoisted bag on shoulder and wished her goodnight while the girlfriend stared off into space. Here, verbatim, is what my new admirer said:

“You are no sissy, no punk, no bitch. You are all woman.”

That, darlings, made me feel like a million dollars.

****************

Flash forward to this weekend, the other end of the years bookend. A little post-Christmas shopping snoop was called for Friday. I dressed, worked hard on the makeup, and felt very beautiful. I went to a very upmarket and busy mall.

Nice girls in Nordstrom helped out, but I did not see anything pretty and perfect enough. Long walk to the Wolford boutique (Sale Time!!!) where the most gorgeous, petite woman and I chatted. I was tempted by a few of the tops and skirts, but I think having indulged in one Wolford dress this year (beautiful but honestly, too too pricey for the amount of wear I give them), and I ended up picking up a pair of the dot tights.

I walked back out into the mall, stepped on the up escalator before storming Barneys. I heard a voice.

“Miss …

It was a man’s voice behind me, and I did not connect it with me. I must have appeared aloof or rude for a moment.

"Miss, excuse me Miss..."

O, Miss… hallo, that would be me tonight. I have been Ma’am’d before, not Missed so that threw me off too. The voice was soft, a little high of register, long vowels, the International Gay Fashionista Retail Worker voice.

"Miss ... I just wanted to say that your look is just so perfect, sooooo put together."

The look was good. My latest fashion transfusion from Ann Taylor, the Zebra skirt suit is a real impact outfit, pictured at right later that evening, oddly enough in an Ann Taylor fitting room.

Getting a complement from a very stylish young (much younger) man is a great feeling. Getting a complement from a very stylish young Gay man is even bigger stuff. No ulterior motives and better developed aesthetic senses, right?

I was genuinely touched. I did look good, the outfit was super smart. I said thanks and told him that women always harbor a doubt, until some kind person helps pull us up just that little bit. It was a sweet moment. He helped my last little doubts about my suitability for the world vanish.

We chatted for a moment at the top of the escalator. He had figured out by now that this Miss was somewhat amiss. He couldn’t have, wouldn't have known before, seeing me mostly from behind, and a little in profile. He smiled, happy it seems to me to have been beguiled. We stood a moment longer, the straight man in a skirt, the gay man in flannel trousers, smiled and parted.

Again, I felt like a million dollars.

****************

I hope the woman I met that same morning on the way to the office at Starbucks felt the same way. We approached the door at the same time, I held the door open, the usual gestures, the after you and etc. for the gorgeous tall woman. A complete stunner. 5’10 or 11” and 4 inches of heel. Perfectly sleek jeans, suede tasseled jacket, tight cornrows framing a regal face.

She said go ahead to me as she pondered her choices. I put my simple order in and the barista then asked her how she was today. She said she was good, and placed her order.

I had my coffee in hand by then, turned to her and said,

“You are better than good. You are great. You really look wonderful.”

She was a little off balance, and I was on my way to the door, about to vanish. I hope when she got her Frappuccino and her balance back, that she felt like a million dollars.

It is a good feeling. One I wish you an abundance of in the New Year.

Seeing as you asked Lynn m'dear ...

2012-11-18T09:47:00.000-05:00

I have a great fondness for Lynn Jones, the proprietress of Yet Another T-Girl Blog. YATGB is the supremely well considered and seven years sustained weekly diary of a lovely life. If you do not already know her, well I just don't know you as well as I thought. Go read, then bounce back here would you?

Lynn has a questionnaire on her site. She asked for responses that she might pull together into a big colorful tapestry that might help all of us understand all of us just a little better. I cannot remember that last time I said no a pretty English woman, and I confess to a sad propensity to prattle on about myself. So you just know how my morning went today.

I share the Q&A with you here below the line.

For readers who do a little blogging themselves on related matters, I encourage you to do the same exercise. Good therapy, happy memories and provocations about the future too. Get to work!

Lynn, darling, you are a marvel. Drop me a line would you so we can figure out what to do with all of this.

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AWARENESS: When did you first feel trans? How did it make you feel? Did you embrace or run from it?

Before the age of reason. Before the onset of puberty for certain. Long before I could knit the concepts of gender, femininity and sexuality together, and much longer before I could tease them apart. I would pick age 8. The Sears catalog, all the pages of long-line girdles and thigh-high stockings seemed to be a gateway drug for the imagination. Did it feel trans? It felt transgressive. I knew that I was curious about things that were not staples of polite conversation. I embraced it all, but stuffed it pretty deep in my pocket.

ADOLESCENT COPING: How did you cope with growing up? What about puberty? How was school, or teenage life?

Adolescence is a gale force multivariate storm in any event. In the middle of that funnel cloud of hormones and insecurities, my curiosities did not stand out then as defining elements of my life. Measured against people who were bullied by peers, ignored by teachers, left alone by parents, my adolescence was trauma free and really quite a doddle. Smart enough in class, tough enough outdoors, cool enough to hang out with the cool kids, youth was easy.

I was a champion wanker. There. I said it. It was hereabouts that concepts of gender, femininity and sexuality together got co-mingled.

EARLY LIFE/ UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE: Having grown up - at least physically, how was life? Did you fit in or fall out? Did you stay home, work away or go to University, college or work?

All of the above. College disappointed me in part because of misshapen expectations. All the dull minded louts I was in high school with wound up at Uni. I looked around for the Elysian lounges of like-minded aesthetes arguing JP Sartre and JD Salinger over brandy and bongs, shagging each other senseless in the flickering minutes before we were plunged into a long nuclear darkness. Couldn’t quite find that society but did make some lovely friends.

There, in the intimate company of women, I felt as though the universe was endowing me with an extravagant gift. I could never get enough. It was, early 80’s darlings, a kinkier time. Frankfurter was in fishnets. David Sylvain wore eye makeup. Why not me? With a little bravado and a gentle hint here and there, one might find oneself in tights getting a makeover from the girlfriend.

There was furtive under-dressing here and there, and the odd visit to a dressing service. It was all very much on the surface and fetishy. Gender and femininity went into the service of sexuality, rather concretely by this point. I felt, still, as though I was in the grip of a phase and that naturally, these things would go away, quietly, when bidden.

CAREER: What you do and how you think it has shaped you (for better or worse). Is there something you long to do?

Career(s) have shaped so much. I am on my 6^th now I think. Likely to have a couple left. Changing things radically the moment I get comfy with what I am doing is the general recipe. A desire to get out to and beyond my comfort frontiers is key to career happiness, and a key element of my gender discoveries.

Something I long to do? Bubble bath and fourteen dresses tossed on the bed before finding the right one. Then lunch. Get bombed with Sylvia Path or Dorothy Parker, go shopping with Audrey or Jackie and keep a diary. Nap. Rinse and repeat.

All that being quite unlikely, I suppose writing a line or two now and then, playing my piano and travel will do. I would not mind getting to understand food better. I so like to eat, I suspect that cooking would please me.

RELATIONSHIPS: Single, married, long term relationship, divorced, happy to be single? How is family life?

Seventeen enormously privileged years married. No kids. Issues of gender do not dominate things here, they seem to be a sub-plot in our lives. Mrs. B cheerfully, but insistently said a funny thing not long after I shared my Petra-ness with her:

“you realize of course that I have no lesbian tendencies … right?”

Petra is therefore held at arm’s length. We all three of us (or 2 ½ ??) are patient souls though.

COMING OUT: Have you? Would you? If so, how was it? If not, why not?

Outside of Mrs. B, there are only of couple of people who know both halves of me. At least, that I know of. I suppose that being relatively out there, there is always the risk of being “outed”, and I maintain a dignified “I don’t care” attitude on the matter. Thing is though, I do care.

I have managed over the years to tease apart the threads of gender, femininity and sexuality, weave them back together evenly, and normalize the joy I find in the discovery of the whole me. Exposing these facets of myself is so wildly life giving, so educational, so wonderful, and as great a gift I have found in life outside of the love that a few remarkable people shower on me.

But these discoveries, and the process of exposing them is a private, guarded thing.

My non-Petra life is good and full, and easy for the world around me to digest and respond to. A more broadly known Petra would add layers of complexity that I do not have the appetite to manage. I will not be broadly “out", by my own hand in any case.

THE WAY FORWARD: What’s next for you? What are your hopes - trans, or otherwise?

No real plans. I have a generalized hope that myself and Mrs. B can find a place where Petra is a little less vexatious a presence.

WORDS OF WISDOM: Anything you’d like to share to a younger you or to other trans people?

Be honest. Trust the people that love you. Breaking that trust is a far greater foul than any propensity you have for self-discovery. If you are in a relationship that means something to you, find a way to share your feelings.

Know that you are not alone. You already know somebody who feels the same way as you. There is another boy in your class, or another man at work who revels in the same delights, and wrestles with the same compulsions and confusions as you do. You just do not know who that boy or man is, and they do not suspect much of you either.

Get a grip. This is not a fever that will pass. It will return. Sorry to break the news, but you have a gift that you cannot return. If you do not care for it, unhappiness will be your inheritance.

Find a place to safely be you and share your differences. Like it or not, if you are under 30, yours is the vanguard generation. You are at the cutting edge of change, the continuance of an age old civil rights battle. You will face lower barriers to change than all of us a little older and grayer met. Your individual voice has a larger chorus to join. You know how to Google up your scene. Do it, and for goodness sake, graduate from virtual experience, get a little real life experience with other complex and beautiful people in while your complexion is still that good.

Dress appropriately. Divide your age by 2 and add 7 years when dressing. This formula will get you to age appropriate. Dress for your setting. Fishnets, short skirts and strappy sandals are not commonly sited Saturday afternoon at the mall. Be spectacular, do not be a spectacle.

Passes

2012-11-11T08:04:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, darlings, it was outdoorsy. I spent time astride the gables, peaks and shingled ridge lines of our sprawling bungalow, manfully, futilely blowing leaves, pine straw and cones out of eave troughs and downspouts. There was pruning out some excess tree limbs and the dismantling of a long since decommissioned satellite dish too.

This weekend it is indoorsy. The water closet in our en suite has become truculent. Handle jiggling no longer drives the desired silent outcome rapidly or reliably enough. The Throne has been in service at least 11 years, predating our purchase of Chateau Bellejambes and is therefore the only seating in our home that the prior residents ever sat on. Time for change.

And beneath the kitchen sink too, a little low grade Plumbing CSI is on tap for me. The In-Sink-Erato hit a couple of pitchy notes during the supper tidy up on Election Night, and then, poof, expired in a sad acrid puff of smoke which I will remember as only fractionally as offensive as the cloud of profanity that will doubtless hover over my prone and pinched body as I wrangle the new unit in later today.

There I will be, ratty jeans, scuffed steel shank boots, tools scattered here and there and the right one not ever easily in reach, grimed up with a couple of days of stubble on in a pretty compelling impression of a man who owns and cares about the half acre of heaven that Mrs. Bellejambes and myself call home.

This is not my natural setting. I am not a habitual do-it-yerselfer. But in point of fact, when I put my back into it, I am pretty handy.

I pass.

And then there is Petra.

Not much passing going on there of late.

Friends and people I admire are pressing boundaries here there and everywhere. Janie wrestles with nails and males here. Meg figures out how a girl furnishes her first apartment and splits the rent with a roomie there. Famous Stana continues to evangelize and bravely share her fuller self where her only her partial self was known and accepted before. Chrissie gets to put a few bob in the bank in support of her next threshold of change. Halle pokes, prods, and ponders causality and consequence in a way I have not had the energy for in eons. And Lynn, bless her stalwart generous heart, skis nimbly between the pylons of family and fabulous with a perfectly English pluck that I marvel at.

I salute you all. What excitement there is at the frontiers. I remember fondly so many of my own advances, the completely enlivening, crystalline and suddenly normal, perfect, special places one occupies when pressing ahead, having an appetite, and draining that loving cup of new dew.

I am, just now, in a nether world, a neutral place, not moving and shaking much in the way of anything up, sipping now and then but not gobbling big drafts of change with any regularity.

Petra has a very real presence in our home. A full bedroom is dedicated to me. Drawers of knickers, bras, slips and such. Racks of shoes and a tumble of bags. A largish armoire and full closet, neatly hung frocks and tops and coats. A Smithsonian-worthy archive of hosiery. Wigs, make-up, jewelry, the whole She-bang. Largely unused.

I do dress. I skip the commute and work from home a couple of days each week, and on those days when Mrs. Bellejambes is busy on the road with her case load and client visits, I take the time to dress. Not head-to-toe, most often toe-to-shoulder, minus the hair and maquillage. I take on my business activities with the same gusto and macho aplomb as any other day, conference calls, vendor wrangling and tweaking my ever evolving market maturity and penetration models.

I just do all of that with my knees pressed a little closer together by a fitted skirt. Sometimes the knees brush the underside of my desk as a result of a few extra inches of heel beneath sheer clad ankles. My shoulders are held back more, my elbows hew closer to my sides, the surface elements changing all motion, more sway, more grace, more attention to, well everything.

The work, for what it is worth, gets done with as much good, bad or indifferent effect as it does in any setting.

And then, mindful of Mrs. Bellejambes schedule, after a few hours I will change surfaces, hang and fold things away and get back to what … passes …. as …. well, normal.

It is all a little furtive, acknowledged but not spoken much of. Petra is not a confrontational or indeed a needy, greedy presence. Mrs. B has a whole and entirely creditable host of concerns, feelings of unease, and generalized agita around the whole Petra issue. I get it. I really do. I am, above all, a good and loving husband and partner in our shared enterprise. Petra pads about on tip toe, no lightning strikes of stiletto heard here.

Organizing a “hall pass” for Petra remains therefore a touchy thing. We discussed an outing in fact earlier this week. I had a Friday invite for cocktails and a dinner with a dear friend. Much to catch up on, the sort of easy chit-chat that a girl looks forward to. Mrs. B did not want to say, "...please no...", and she did not need to. She hesitated. Her eyes said everything perfectly, and beautifully even when sadness and worry dust her gorgeous, soft and warm face.

I did not get the pass. I took a pass. And I did not, therefore, get out and try to pass.

I stowed my hope much in the same way that I stow my wardrobe, after it flickers and dances for a while. All quiet orderly and free of fuss. No drama. No confrontation. A nice, adult accommodation, the imperfect balancing acts that we, all of us more or less grown-up types make a dozen times a day.

It is all a little unsettling. I would say that I am in a waiting room of sorts, except that I do not have a destination. I would enjoy more access to the rest of me, and more opportunities to dart across the lines of engagement in the gentle gender wars that we are all partisans in. Good things happen out there. When I return from those too infrequent Voyages en Rose, I have had my loving cup.

Honestly, I cannot see my appetites getting much more ravenous. Pierce the ears? Nah. Paint the nails? Maybe for a night. Change any element of my masculine inheritance in a permanent way? No such urges. What I shave or pluck grows back. I will groom with a blade, but nothing, and I mean nothing, is going under the knife.

Yeah, not a waiting room. A different place. Somewhere between the sovereign lands of contentment and contention, embraced and embargoed. No bucket list and nowhere near kicking the bucket. Don't quite know what to call it my dears. Must do a little something to moves things along though. Life is short and ought to be sweet, yes?

........................................................................................

Update: Got all the handy stuff done, and more in fact, than initially planned. Pleasant as that outcome is, all the chores were done without a single outbreak of profanity. People who do not know me could be forgiven for believing that I have a persistent and ungovernable form of Tourette's. Seems to be better managed these days.

I am more likely, of late, to deploy profanity as a spice, a piquant grace note that complements the flavors of a story. In times gone by it fanned out indiscriminately behind me as though from a crop duster or, on a bad day, Agent Orange from a Fairchild C-123 leaving nothing but scorched earth and tears in my wake.

Certainly, the passing of years has a little something to do with the changes, the mellowing. Experience and all that good stuff, natch.

Chemistry too m'dears. T-levels drop for even the most chest-thumping primate with enough turns of the odometer.

But even without an ounce of empirical support, I have to give credit to the influence of Petra. Seems that my more masculine self smartens up and flies right in the presence of a lady.

SC Part 3: Belle Curves, Outer Space and Inner Peace

2012-10-14T17:15:00.002-04:00

Here we are friends with the weekend running away from me at the speed of light, can’t keep up with it all even in flats. Go, go, toujours go, now, now, and encore de now, Still mentally unpacking from SCC. The clothes and surface things are hung, slung and bunged into various chests, closets and tranny crannies Chez Bellejambes. And so with the surface things out of the way, time for a deeper dive within.

It is just so damned nice to hang out with great numbers of guys and dolls of a similar or sympathetic disposition for a few days. You can feel it just a couple of hours into the proceedings. Our non-normative narratives join a swelling chorus. Our deviations from the mean become the standard, our out-of-tolerance behaviors are not just tolerated, they are dominant. We statistical outliers move to the center of a societal bell curve.

Conference attendees constitute the majority population for a few short days. The hotel staff gets past our differences pretty quickly. The accidental tourists and stowaways from Drabistan camping out at the hotel kind of cling to the walls and shadows. Whatever they have in their wallet is not coin of the realm here this week, and we special people wear the crown.

And this feels good, dear friends, truly good.

I am not generally much of a "joiner", quite cautious and guarded about the company of Earthlings really. I get mellower with time, but still draw on pretty deep wells of what many regard as cynicism or snobbery. I am just a little awkward around “us”, not ever entirely certain about how we are supposed to behave, or fully proud of how we do, you know?

Against all logic, I still remain hopeful of a rescue mission from my distant home planet, The Council of Elders will of course shake their outsized, fragile, translucent heads in disbelief while reading my report. Said report will have much to do with just how replete with shit the proverbial fan gets when we Earthlings gather in great numbers around practically any theme.

One of your great thinkers, Kurt Vonnegut opined smartly on these matters, referring to groups of people affiliated through a shared identity or purpose as members of a Granfalloon.

Good old Kurt.

And for all that I enjoy practically every waking and dreaming moment of SCC, I feel within me cautions against uncritical Granfalloonery. I am a better loner than a team player, and always have been.

I tell you this now because while I am breathless in anticipation at for the start of SCC, it is not all a fairy tale fantasy for me. I see thorns amongst the roses. Back now to the roses.

I stand (with slightly pinched toes) in complete and utter shoulder-back, jaw-slack awe at the countless tall and short, thick and thin, dark and pale, blonde and brunette, demure and daring, alto and baritone, big city hicks and county crossroads aesthetes, gun nuts and peaceniks, drop-outs and post-Docs and everyone else who each uniquely found a path to SCC this year.

To each of you who paused for a few minutes on your path, and shared it with me, I am terribly grateful that you did. I may have said something nice about your outfit or your beautiful smile. Perhaps we got to talking about our home towns or sporting heroes long forgotten. We may have spoken a bit about the whole ball of gender wax that we got rolled up in years ago, or just how the pleasant the shade and birdsong in the back courtyard of the Crowne Plaza is.

Whatever we spoke about, it all seems now, and seemed then, pretty much normal. Normal with the highs a little higher, and the lows about the same. I very much enjoyed your company and hope I left a little something of value with you too.

Some weeks later, looking back, taking a few years of SCC experience in at a safe remove, I think the value of coming to such a conference is now clear. We get to be a majority for a few precious days. Being a priestess in this church makes it a little easier to be a heretic everywhere else. This company of friends and perfect strangers with a sympathetic perspective on the world fortifies me the rest of my Voyages en Rose, out in the bigger wider world, uncertain of the reception, hopeful of a smile here and there.

So, come to SCC next year would you? Or Keystone. Or Esprit. Or Be-All. Or Fantasia Fair. Or wherever. Whether you are completely private and closeted or loud and proud, newly on your way or long decades past trying, you owe yourself a few days in the majority, a few days of glittering normality. Does a guy or a gal good.

SCC Part 2: Girl (Politely) Interrupted

2012-10-06T18:22:00.002-04:00

My minutely considered editorial calendar, beautiful friends, was torn entirely asunder upon receipt of a loving and welcomed comment just this morning. You know who you are, my Dear Anonymous pen pal. You moved me greatly today. Thank you.

I do not know the why behind Petra. I have looked long and have not cornered the prey. This Golden Fleece is on the protected species list, never to be pursued with vigor, and left to roam peaceful, unperturbed by my clumsy footfalls.

I do know precisely why I write though. Much of that why comes down to the periodic payoff of a nice word from a reader. Terribly shallow of me I know. The work itself should be sufficient dividend, yes? Hmmm. Well theoretically, yes. But while I have over the decades attained a few precious and sometimes pharmaceutically aided moments of clarity, I simply do not live on a very high plateau of self-actualization. Periodic roses tossed in the path go an awful long way with me.

And so, thanks again, Anon the Third. Especially for the pleasant reminder of my encounter with Leisl in the Belk bargain shoe racks way back in springtime ’09. A very special day for me. I had a happy return to this same sort of unexpected intimacy while out in the Vanilla world all Tuti Fruti’d up a couple of Fridays ago. I’ll tell the tale here today and come back to bigger picture observations about the Southern Comfort Conference the next time that time allows.

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It was a sunny Friday, my Day 2 of SCC, after a perfect makeup session with Monica Prata of Nouveau She, and a smart luncheon of grilled chicken salad. Ashley and others of the pretty Minnesota cohort jumped a ride with me to Perimeter Mall for a little shopping therapy. I got a too hung up in Ann Taylor for my friends, and so we parted ways in part so that I could continue to rifle racks and fondle frocks.

I recognized the woman who was helping me. I had a particular thing in mind, and asked her where I might find it.

“Where o where … forgive me, I am just here today from my home store at Northpoint, not sure I know where things are quite yet…”

“No worries, take your time”, says I, “ you have helped me out on a couple of occasions there and I love your style”.

This earned me a double take as she tried to match the present woman with the past man. We found a couple of items together, she prepared a fitting room in that courtly AT manner, and then more or less vanished to help a few other shoppers out.

I have written before how the private sanctuary and world of wonderful mirrors is a place of near religious revelation for me. Honest, open, and intimate moments happen here amongst the girls. Moments that chaps cannot buy for money. Very enlivening moments on a good day. Did I mention I was having a great day?

Bag dumped on the booth bench, booties kicked off, side-zip slacks peeled down, the flowing lace overlay skirt pulled up, zipped up, and door swung open for the short toddle over to the fiercely opinionated 3 way. An interrupted toddle as it happened.

“What do you think? ...” the stranger posed of me, indicating the plum pencil skirt she had shimmied on.

“I like it. I do. What’s the occasion, Oooh, and turn for me would you?”

Her skirt hit a couple of inches north of beautiful, dark complexioned knee, The blouse threw off complementary floral sparks of pink. Fit and curved, lovely altogether from bare foot to popping smile, bright eyes and swept hair.

She pirouetted and seemed not to mind my rather baritone register.

“First date. And he is younger, only by a few years, but you know how men are, I just don’t want to be … too old. I just don’t know if this does it…”

“You’ll be fine. For starters you are beautiful, honestly, and if he doesn’t get that, he shouldn’t get past a first date. Show again? How did you meet him?”

“Oh, friends hooked us up, they always worry about me, I have been out of the dating game so long and you know I don’t mind really, but it all tugs at me you know?”

Honestly darlings, I do not know. I perceive that dating is mostly pure and utter awkwardness, dashed hopes, dropped standards and disappointments, and I thank the cosmos daily that I have been sidelined for 17 years. But that leap into the unknown, the need for optimism, the hope for Prince or Princess Charming, I can still summon up electric memories and a bellyful of butterflies at the thought.

“OK. Listen up: forget your age, you are a stunner. What about the guy? What do you know about him? Will he want to talk football?”

“Golf. I think. Yeah, he is supposed to be a golfer.”

“OK, quick primer. The Tour Championship is in town this weekend over at Eastlake. It is a cliffhanger. Tiger Woods has a shot at the win, but he is in tough against Brant Snedeker and Rory Mcilroy. Eastlake is where Bobby Jones learned to play, legendary place. Ask him if he is watching the tournament and that should wind him up for at least a few minutes.”

The saleslady came back with another armload of gear for her, and I padded off with my too big skirt into the shop to find the skinnier version, and O, while I am at it, that blue half-sleeved just-above-the knee shift dress in pretty jewel blue looks tasty...

Chit chat continued in open volleys over the walls of our adjoining confession booths on this that and the other thing. The lady who was helping her out was not really hitting the fashion mark. Wrong sizes and colors and out of the who-knows-where suggestions where being pried in the door and I could just feel the tension building. We stepped out to the mirror together again with the area to ourselves.

“She just doesn’t get it. Honestly is she listening ?... "she said helping me up with my zip “ Oh but I like that. You like?”

I only nearly liked the dress, just a little drapey for me. I am slender at the waist and hate to give up this pleasant inheritance simply for the sake of an of-the-moment silhouette (ed. Vanity, thy name is Petra…).

And so it continued. We talked. Zipped. Unzipped. She talked me out of the strappy sandals, and she was right. Too high a tone and too low a heel for my liking but tempting still. It is lovely and necessary sometimes to have a suspicion confirmed by a woman with an admitted shoe addiction. She got the skirt. I talked her down a size, a size she didn’t believe in, but one that worked a charm on her.

She was bright, alert, and absolutely paying attention. It was plain to see, and plainer to hear, that I was equipped with a non-standard solitary X chromosome, not a fully pledged member of the Sorority, plain as day that I am not, in the broadly accepted way, a woman.

And it just did not matter, did it?

Maybe my difference did matter to her. Perhaps she was spinning the karmic wheel, whispering goodness to the universe and paying forward a small measure of acceptance. A measure of acceptance that I am sure she has been denied by people with a pale complexion as she stood hopefully at one crossroads or another needing only a smile and an encouraging word.

Maybe my difference didn’t matter. Perhaps the fitting room warren is very much like a train minus the jostling and unsettling aromas, with a destination and separate paths bought and paid for and soon, complete with virtual bungee cords that save us all the effort and hurt of the endured commitment to kindness.

And maybe goodness and openness is just good and open. Free and priceless when a moment presents and the spirits conspire.

We parted with a hug. I did not ask her name, and I did not volunteer mine. She won’t read this blog post. And we are likely not to see or recognize each other again. But I am hopeful of a couple of things:

I hope her date did not talk golf. I hope he asked her about a favorite meal, the best smell ever, or a sunset that she would not trade for gold. I hope he told her about a terribly embarrassing moment in his life, one where he prayed the ground would swallow him whole but that he can laugh about now. I hope he held the door. I hope he lost track of time. I hope he wanted the privilege of more of her company, and asked for it like he meant it.

I hope she said no when he pressed for yes. I hope she did not need to look over her shoulder when her key hit the door to know that he was watching every gorgeous, womanly step she took walking away from him, desirable as all hell get out as she no doubt looked.

Yes, I do know how men are.

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Postscript. An open letter to Anonymous 3.

I did intend to write today. At the start of the day I had not picked the lock on a theme or approach to the labor. Your comment cleared a path and cheered me up.

I did not intend to dress today. This is an anniversary weekend for Mrs. Bellejambes and I. On such a weekend, well, we really don’t want Petra stepping out of the Sleek Chorus singing unsettling verse. As is happens though, Mrs. B had a few beautiful hours scheduled with friends this afternoon, and so prior to writing I did dress, for just a couple of loving hours. Favorite shades, purples and pinks like my friend. Minus the makeup, nails and fragrance, but nearly fully the Petra I so love to become from time to time.

I have thought of you today, and projected myself into your life a little. Five years, cold turkey as you say, is a daunting thing. I reckon though that there will be such a time for me. A time when the clothes do not fit, where the outer surfaces do not meet the inner dreams sufficiently, a time when this appetite diminishes as many other appetites have in my life.

I do not know you from Eve. But I believe that you have access to a beautiful measure of your inner Eve. I want to live my whole life hanging on to mine for dear life. She makes the outer Adam much more agreeable whatever he is wearing, doesn’t she?

Sincere thanks for your visit.

Much love to you all.

Getting back to Petra. SCC Part 1

2012-09-30T15:59:00.002-04:00

The Southern Comfort Conference finished up, dear friends, just last weekend, and your fickle Pen Pal was en scene, embedded, engaged, bedecked, bejeweled and altogether beguiled for two glorious days of full Petra immersion. This was my third visit, and SCC, is now pretty well established as where and how I wriggle out of the summer cocoon and spin myself up in slinky silky stuff for a new life, a new season.

Still shocking too how natural and easy the chrysalis is. Lasting too. Par example, I was in a drab social setting later that weekend, after my SCC time was over. There I was, unshaven, butch wallet, no spritz of perfume behind the knee, and I still had to absolutely bite my tongue when introducing myself to strangers. Having spent the prior couple of days with “Hi! My name is Petra …”, I was still quite in the habit. It took the full evening to comfortably find my way back home to my more commonly known given name, with some damn near misses along the way. I had to smile.

I had much to smile about.

This year, I chose to stay at the host property, the Perimeter Crowne Plaza. Mrs. Bellejambes, you see is quite concerned about Petra getting clocked making daylight dashes through our close knit neighborhood. I take her point quite well. Yes, there does lurk a silly adrenaline junky within who rather enjoys the thrill, the sound of the drum pounding away inside my amply padded chest cavity. That cheap thrill doesn’t tip the scale when measured against the value of my wife’s peace of mind though. And on the upside, a second or perhaps a third glass of wine would not be out of order if I was only a short elevator ride from my crib rather than even a shortish drive home. Virtue and necessity do accessorize perfectly from time to time.

And so I rose early Thursday morning, burned through the final thousand requirements of the work week, set auto-reply and phone messages for the long weekend, and stepped off the grid. I then took a deep breath, the first in a series as it happens.

After that moment of calm collection, I proceeded to pack like a refugee.

Ginger Grant wheeled 3 full seasons of glittering evening gowns aboard the S.S. Minnow for a 3 Hour Tour. Ginger Grant ain't got nothing (but looks) on me. I had been too damn busy to really have anything more than a sketch of a wardrobe plan, and this absence of forethought showed in the Sherpa-sized bail of gear that I schlepped across town. What really stands out though are the things forgotten. A decent facial soap for instance, or hey girl, would it kill you to bring a camera maybe?

No time for regrets on these matters though. It was time to change time, to slow time down, to anticipate the change and savor it. First things first, the room, Petra’s room. Not a place for either a chap or a chaperone. Petra’s room. Unpack first, populate the drawers, drape the closets and cover the counter tops with an orderly display of feminine occupation. The last vestiges of drab me folded away, given the dignity of a plastic bag burial and slid beneath the pillow array on the spare bed.

Time for another deep breath.

Now for the body. Not the pressed and practical prep of the man day. The patient, purposeful pamper, the care of the skin that soaks in so much more than skin deep. The first autumn shave, all the shearing and plucking and gumming the plumbing required to achieve my undoubtedly preferred surface characteristic. Buffed, moisturized, painted and powdered, the body feels new and young again.

Time then for the face. On with the wig cap and off with the glasses, the eyes another year worse for the wear, the hands and fingers months out of practice, but surely and slowly connecting with habits long gone but not forgotten. An afternoon palette for the eyes, nothing too dramatic, thin as they are, my own lashes with a few coats of lacquer will do. I am glad I cleaned my brushes before putting them to rest in the spring. A couple of false moves and uncertain strokes, nothing Q-Tips and Kleenex can’t obscure.

The foundation and powder shine up and smooth out things well enough, some cheek color and lip contour. I finish by reminding myself and a gentle reminder that I am a 50-something now, and didn’t have soft facial contours and bee sting lips for starters. I feel proud in a different way, a way unique to Petra-time.

Nails on now, and finally, the crescendo moment of the coronation, the hair. It never fails to feel awesome. I can believe myself fully now.

I know now that I am really only short minutes away from the world. Just the breath-catching moment as the dress hugs me in snugly. The shoes then, the jewelery, lovely big chunky things, the mist of fragrance, a check of the contents of clutch, a last look in the mirror, and the last deep breath of the day.

The one just before the door opens, and closes, clack, locked behind you.

More later on so many lovely people and moments.. Nice to be back.

Strange Fruit

2012-08-26T16:32:00.000-04:00

I sprout in the autumn and flower all winter long. Come spring the leaves fall and flutter away. Then summer. The dormant time. I go entirely to ground.

It is all upside down, yes?

Upside down, back to front, topsy-turvy yes, and all that, truly but not chaotic no, nor random. Cyclical. Orbital. Predictable even when I take a peek at the cheat-sheets of hindsight.

I am a bit of a feather head friends and slow on the uptake. It only occurred to me this year that I feel the same way in Atlanta early in August as I did eons ago in March when I lived way the hell up north. For those of you who have not lived in Canada amongst Gods Frozen People or in other places of extraordinarily dark, chill, and long winters, let me describe the day of light and hope.

Up north, it happens in March. Out of the blue comes a day that nukes snow banks and sets spirits soaring. Beautiful human forms emerge from shapeless fleece and feathered cocoons. The UPS dude wears shorts. Umbrellas pop up and open on long shuttered restaurant patios. Lunch runs long and loose and, for me back then, liquid. You know with absolute certainty that you will get flattened by one more soul crushing blizzard but you know even more that you have survived another gawdawful winter.

And what a feeling that is.

Here in the south it comes in August. After long months of sprawling, sweaty summer where every outdoor breath is a soggy shot glass of 5 Hour Apathy there comes a day of lightness. Air, first thing in the morning, is cool and crisp. At lunchtime, the car is not a hellacious furnace. Early in the evening, while the sun is still up, the dogs bark and bay for a good walk. The mosquitoes might be carrying something that will knock you flat, but the odds are that you will see Autumn again.

And what a feeling that is.

Way back in March, on a Friday, I had my last real night out en Femme. That Saturday, the wardrobe was folded, the makeup cased, the bags, shoes, wigs and the rest of the pretty accoutrements were put away. Ploughed under, furloughed away.

Here in August, come the early shoots, stirrings underground, in the quiet times before the sprouting and flowering. Foreshadows and rumblings of the riot of fecundity and flat out fun that go along with my topsy-turvydom.

And what a feeling that is.

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To those of you who have reached out with the odd hello, I am very grateful. Believe me when I say that you have my very full respect and affection. You know who you are. Thank you sincerely.

To those of you whose blogs I love, please accept my apologies for not following you on your journeys as well I would like, and for not cheering you on from the comments section. I admire your ability to write and share with such constancy and care.

And to those of you who drop in here time to time looking for something scandalous or halfway witty, thanks for coming back. I am promising to myself to have great experiences this autumn. There should, therefore, be much to propose and prose on about here on Voyages en Rose.

January seen from February.

2012-02-19T14:17:00.000-05:00

Shamed I am, by my lack of attention to this old house, Voyages en Rose. Much to chat about after all, just precious little time available to your humble hack with which to tumble thoughts into keystrokes. I did get a post out in January, and with today’s effort, will be able to count one for February too. A streak of sorts I suppose.

This evidence to the contrary, I have been pretty well steeped in the life of Petra year to date. With my pal Ally on an extended tropical retreat, editorial responsibilities with Guilty Pleasures have taken on a life of their own. Samples from lovely vendors have been piling up here at home. For those of you with an interest in largely favorable and hopefully witty reviews of pretty intimates, do take a moment or two to visit.

Mrs. Bellejambes and the UPS man have both become accustomed to parcels addressed to this mystery woman. Not so concerned with the UPS man of course, but happy to report that my admittedly non-normative fascination with the life of women is, well, normalizing here at home. Mrs. B. does rather wish that we shared more sizes and is wondering when my wardrobe will squeeze us out of our home, but Petra is, on the whole, not a troubling tenant.

So, where was I? I did have a great January. The first planning session for the not-to-be-missed Southern Comfort Conference happened one sunny Saturday. SCC has a new-look, new-function web-site, and a massive crew of volunteers laying into the epic effort of staging a big, complex function for complex people. Wonderful stuff. Your attendance will add considerably. Please mark your calendars for Sept 21 – 25. Friends of Petra will reliably find her perched on a tall stool cradling a chilled glass.

I dressed on this day for the fitting room and was mission driven to find a great pair of wide lined black pants. This wardrobe staple was absent from my closet. Bulls eye on first pick with the always reliable I.N.C. line. Guy mode me has not worn flared pants since Frampton Came Alive and will not even long after he is dead, but Petra delights in the look. Shopping for slacks is, by reliable reports, a typically traumatic day for many women. I remain blessed by good fortune, and love the look and feel being the woman in perfect pants.

Next stop Ann Taylor where I scored a gorgeous new skirt (pictured above) for a song, and again enjoyed fashion chit-chat in the fitting room warren with other enthusiastic fashionistas. This skirt is by the way, still available in a great assortment of sizes and can be yours for a mere $15.00 for the next few days. Go click.

Last stop, the lamentably soon to be shuttered Bloomingdale's Perimeter store for a romp through their store closing clearance event. My finds from TC Intimates found their way up and over my hips and into the pages of Guilty Pleasures in the form of a loving review. The ravages of time and a general lack of exercise have contributed to a little weight gain about the waist friends. You know my vanity well by now, and so should not be surprised to see me singing praises about foundation garments that help order ones shape about. If you do not have a seriously smoothing slip in your wardrobe, you should, and could do much worse than the TC Torsette, seen below. The pull-on Nipper too helps provide a little waist to hip relief.

I spent a couple of hours wandering about, bags slung from shoulder and honestly enjoying what amounted to a spa day for my soul. Never an unkind glance or unwelcoming word from any of the civilians and staffers I chatted with, and this in broad daylight at the busiest time of the week in a thriving suburban setting mall. I have said it before, and reinforce it here: Even just a few hours out and about with the world from time to time does the rest of me a power of goodness. Lovely memories to carry about long after the bags are emptied, and the wig and the rest of it all folded away until next time.

Next time did not wait all too long either, and I claim a personal first on this recent Voyage en Rose. I packed a second bag for a business trip to the sunny west coast and saved myself a gruesome red-eye flight home by allowing for a little LA time en Femme. I had a theme of holy pilgrimage in mind as I begged off Friday evening invites, swapped identities and strode out of my hotel for a drive up to Studio City and a visit with the famous and fabulous Alison of Faire Frou Frou fame.

Faire Frou Frou is the epicenter of intimate wardrobe luxury, and I have enjoyed a friendly on-line relationship with Alison and her equally darling mom Gail for some years now. Nothing will get you past the rigors of LA Friday traffic more quickly than a little visit and modest shopping splurge in this Oasis of Underwear. Entirely refreshing and luxurious for the blogger to meet, in the smiling flesh, someone you really admire. Loads of girl talk ranging from fashion, knickers, relationships and even business of all topics. Wonderful shopping too, bien sur, and precious moments in the prettiest fitting room in the inner solar system. Read about the whole intimate idyll over here.

From there, the sublime, and slowly into the tawdry heart of Hollywood for something closer to ridiculous. We have to give credit to Fredericks of Hollywood for romanticizing lingerie and bringing sexy to market. Their flagship store is right on the Walk of Fame, vogueing vainly for attention amongst the dispirited tourists and busking Peruvian Pan-flute bands (yes, two of them) thronging the broad sidewalks. I executed a near-perfect Carrie Bradshaw stiletto-heel, gazelle-leap, hair blowing and bag flailing, darting through the vehicular mosh pit, and burst quite delightedly into Shrine # 2 of my evening.

Fredericks is too brightly lit for my liking, and the lingerie is of suspect quality for the most part. But still, I was nearby and dressed, so a polite genuflection was certainly called for. I did genuflect around the shoe department, and could not find a comfy fit amongst the towering platforms and over-the-knee boots on display. The prices were right yes, but the costs of pinched toes and aching tendons are to be weighed more heavily in my view. Out into the night empty handed therefore, one more swan dive into and through the Hollywood Boulevard chaos, and back to my hotel for a little end of day supper and perhaps a glass of wine.

Now, the Cross Dresser is accustomed, when out and about, to feeling like the most conspicuous person in most settings. This was not the case upon my return to the LAX Westin. I popped up to my room first for a quick refresh of the maquillage, and met fascinating company in the elevator back down. You see, there was a Wrestling Convention of some sort in my hotel. I shared the ride with three entirely cute and menacing young bustier-fishnet-and-boot clad Gladiatrixes who were practicing well choreographed moves in the tight elevator confines.

Awesome physicality, youthful beauty and an outrageous sense of fun was the general vibe. I share at least the outrageous sense of fun, and so we paused in the lobby for a while together. I was introduced to a handful of their male counterparts, massive hulking presences, neon tights, cowboy hats, evil Ninjas, hillbilly bullies, you name it the whole crazy assortment of personae that populate the squared circle.

And me.

Proper in Ann Taylor, dripping in faux pearl, shining in Donna Karan sheers, and clearly the least remarkable presence in the whole damned hotel. Top that, dear friends. There was absolutely nothing I could do to scandalize the setting. Time for hugs with the new girlfriends and retreat to a smallish booth in a dimly lit restaurant. My waitress was a complete sweetie, ready with the black table linen and a warm welcome. A super evening altogether, and one I will long remember.

My senses are always a little more lit when traveling, and seeing a place less well known. These feeling are magnified magnificently when traveling en Femme. I will have occasion to do this again this year, and the thought, amongst others, helps time click happily along. Perhaps I will have another tale of this variety for you in March.

Thanks as always for your visit, for your stamina, and for your curious appetite for my odd tales.

Happy dressing and everything else too.

Prowling and Pouncing on the New Year

2012-01-01T11:49:00.003-05:00

Putting aside, for just a moment the still real possibility that the Mayans were right all along, and our whole loving world goes kaput some time or other this year, I am quite looking forward to 2012.

Amongst other things, I feel driven to expand my animal style menagerie to include Zebra prints. Yes friends, Leopard has been done to death, and I feel partly responsible. So, yes, the 2012 forecast is all about Zebra. Tiger too. Ocelot also I suppose. And more Snakeskin and other motifs Reptilian, ne c'est pas??

Oh, who am I fooling? There will be Leopard too.

(ed. Leopard, darling, I was only joking. Those other animals, they mean nothing to me. It’s always, only been you.)

As busy as things have been with work, family, holidays and the rest of the year end madness, I am happy to report that Petra has been shown some good loving care of late. There were three life giving outings in December, our darkest, brightest month.

A few weeks back now, dear friend Gabrielle put together a social at Atlanta’s Club Chaparral, and I was delighted to see a beautiful brace of local luminaries and various Gendernauts all dolled up on a school night.

Gabrielle starts off at 6’ tall before the heels go on. And this evening she had the absolute nerve to fix her hair in an up-do. That’s a whole lotta girl. It was good to catch up with her not having chatted since Ramona’s memorial service. Managed as well happily to spend time with the inexhaustible Miss Edie, Phoebe Reece, Debbie Lynn and other friends old and new. Gabrielle plans to make a Thursday evening social a regular feature of life here in Atlanta. Drop me a line here if you are local and looking for more information.

Pastor Paul, leader of the epically open minded, liberal faith community at First Metropolitan Community Church was in attendance too, and tendered an invite to his Christmas service luncheon for the following Sunday. I ran a little late because honestly, I simply don’t know how to do Church appropriate eye make-up.

Loads of families, a wild palette of complexions, young and old and warm welcomes all around. Miss Edie brought along her Gretsch, a stack of amps and her sweet, sweet voice for musical entertainment. Real holiday season stuff. Nice to catch up with Barbara especially. My Lizard pumps were a big hit with the choir girls.

And with the curtain closing on 2011 last night, I slithered into a party frock and shimmied out into the night. CyndiLou and Joanne Purcell managed to organize cocktails, dinner and entertainment for twenty or so local ladies and loving partners. I had a prior obligation and so sadly could not stay for supper or the undoubtedly fun times had by all at Le Buzz. Do you know though, even a short few hours en Femme in great company really goes a long, long way.

Loads of gold(ish) bling, a clingy dress, powdered and perfumed surfaces, a genuine New Years Eve effort. I felt like a million dollars my dears. There is a vast wide river of confidence that flows from having a well put together look. The belief that you are wearing the nicest lingerie in the room doesn't hurt either.

It comes out in the walk, shaking the hair out, throwing the shoulders back and smiling as the doors slide open into the lobby of a nice hotel. Stop a moment, scan the room, meet all the eyes, spot the bar and stride on in, heels on tiles and that slightly breathless feeling that I still get, that feeling that I hope never goes away.

The feeling that I can summon up even the smallest fraction of power that women have. The power to make the world stand still. How dazzled I have always been by that power, and how privileged I feel to touch it as fleetingly as I do.

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I did mention prior obligations though, yes? They necessitated a fast drive home and transformation back into the more broadly known me for a most excellent celebration with Mrs. Bellejambes and the company of a lovely couple to usher 2012 in with.

We spoke briefly, Mrs. B and I about the possibility of ushering in the year in Petra-mode. It was a serious discussion and a real coin toss in my view. Ultimately, my beautiful wife came upon words that made it a no-brainer for me.

“I want to go into the new year as us”.

And so we did. It was good. Great in fact.

I still have a facility for trousers, cuff links and a smart blazer after all. Yet another Leopard that cannot change spots.

Each of us, Mrs. B. and I, are accommodating “Petra” better here now than we did a year ago. I feel as though the year ahead holds even more promise of understanding, discovery and sharing than any year in the past. I most sincerely hope that you are feeling that way about your prospects too.

Happy New Year.

Chemistry

2011-11-19T09:19:00.001-05:00

Excluding SCC, I have been out and about as Petra only thrice this year. Ouch. Well, four times now as of last weekend. I did then rather enjoy things seen through pink lenses, and wrote effusively about the whole pretty pageant here.

Time has been the principal thief of opportunity. Work stuff is planted to rails of my metaphorical farm. The fallow, clovered pastures that Petra did once flourish and frolic in are presently under plough, upturned and nitrogen fixed for commercial purposes.

I have come to think that work, the way I spend my days has a pretty big impact on my “Petra-ness” beyond simply being a time soak. The impact is behavioral too. Like any job with grazzilions of dollars at stake, the day is composed of a fair amount of adversarial posturing, the odd volley of tactical aggression, and an always-present sense of wariness about things in general. You know, the generalized chest-beating, loud tree-top howling and Samsonite-hurling that corporate Great Apes conduct in the service of the business.

Women can and do succeed in my role, in my industry, so the exercise of masculine traits is not a pre-requisite of success. A little more project nurturing here, a dose of quiet collegial grooming there, terrific female Great Ape behaviors, these work too.

And ya know, dear friends, I am not proposing that one behavior or another is the exclusive domain of one gender or another. I am merely suggesting that having spent about 99% of my life expressing male, those are the behaviors I reflexively lay hand to under pressure. I call frequently on those traits in part because there is so much newness in the work that I need to rely on a lot of background processes, reflexive stuff to keep my higher mind available for the work.

And so “Petra” has been a little less available to the whole me just now.

Darling friend Janie, of CD Janie blog-fame touched on a related topic recently in a series of short, revealing posts starting with Inner Voice deliberating on the process of going rapidly from femme-space to drab-world and back again. Go read. Janie is a star. Do come back then, will you?

These posts struck a chord in me. It seems that while there is a certain amount of biology that manifests itself in the life of the gender-curious, there is a pretty big beaker of chemistry in the mix too. My brain chemistry, just now, is wired more for my familiar male life than it is for wonderful explorations of the less familiar, the more feminine.

I will tell you this though:

Getting out for a gorgeous evening really has the effect of shaking that beaker up and generally catalyzing and effervescing things. I have spent this past week more distracted by thoughts of a dreamy nature than I have been in a good long time. I popped into a shop in drab mode and snared another gorgeous new outfit at a shocking price (pictured Harvest Gold Ann Taylor skirt for a dumbfounding $7.00, 8% of original retail and a smart top too). Chatted with the (typically) gorgeous sales assistant at length. She was in a sad state having just found out that she was on duty at Midnight, Thanksgiving Day for the increasingly insane rigors of Black Friday.

I wanted to touch her hand and say it will be ok more than I wanted to throttle the throat of the insensitive, short sighted lemming at HQ who thought that an upmarket woman’s boutique should follow in Wal-Mart’s less than stylish footprints. I drove home closer to the speed limit, leaving more room between me and the next vehicle, weaving less and exercising patience more. I found a tiny tributary of pretty thought to paddle around in and express in a product review for my friends at Guilty Pleasures.

Lovely things, lovely feelings. I hope that as more and more of my work becomes a little more reflexive to me, that I will have more room in my higher mind, room for Petra. It feels good when this part of me has room to stretch out and touch things as surely and gracefully as she can. I suspect that, with time, I will be able to employ my fortunate access to wells of feminine strength and wile more easily, more purposefully in my everyday life. Better living through Chemistry indeed.

A Cross Dresser's Exciting Three Way

2011-11-13T14:10:00.011-05:00

Shameful really, what some bloggers will put in a headline to juice traffic a little. For those of you expecting a salacious tale of bedroom acrobatics, well I am not that kind of girl. Take heart though, the internet was practically invented for you.

For the rest of you, dear friends all, the 3 Way refers to the mirror, or rather I should say The Mirror. A topic worthy of a long post, long even by my lax standards. Perhaps a pee break would be indicated now before you settle in for a read. You see, yesterday, Petra curled her index finger and cast the rest of me a come-hither look that I had not the strength to ignore. So I (we???) went out last night and got in front of a few of them. Mirrors, that is.

I have blathered on here about how much of a high it is for me to be accepted in exclusively female environments – wig salons, shoe sale racks, the aestheticians counter at Macy’s, Nordstrom’s or what have you. Wonderful places where, freed from the presence of guys, women find their natural, unguarded selves, their truest voice. This is the voice I love best.

That voice can be found in the hushed, hopeful hall at the back of the shop, that well-lit warren of far-from-the-Office cubes, the runway of runaway shopping impulses, the Fitting Room area. First stop, Dillard’s at Atlantic Station for a quick run through their BCBG Max Azaria boutique. I have been lusting for some months now after a beguiling skirt of the clingy, flashy variety pictured here. The gorgeous sales assistant pulled the last one from an off the beaten track rack when I described what I hadn’t found.

“Oh yes! The foil skirt … we have one, hang on… yup, your size too!”

And then disappointment as she toddled the trophy back to me …

“O no! there is a tear in the waistband …”

I suggested that I should at least try it on for size, and think then about picking it up online.

“Oh yes, you will love it, cute, cute cute…”

There is an invisible membrane between public shopping spaces and private changing places, a membrane that repels the fellows. I love passing through it.

The door closes, the bag is hung, the jacket draped, something is peeled off and something new is pulled on. And if that something is not a total disaster, the 3 way calls. The Big Mirror down the hall. You see yourself walking towards it, running all the calculus, does it fit, what would I wear with it, is this really my silhouette, don’t I already own this ….?

You will have quietly resolved the thousand questions by the time you step up on the small riser, strike a pose, look left and right, up and down, front and back with the one question left … is this my skirt (dress, blouse, jacket, etc…)?

“Oh my God but you rock that skirt … you like?”

“Like? I love it (hands smoothing skirt, a little shimmy, knees together…), shame about the tear…”

“You know that must have come from some girl who had no chance of getting it past her knees. Honestly you would not believe what gets ruined before it even leaves the store”

“Really? ,,, ouch ( reset the waistband, turn 90°, regard ass over right shoulder) … too too bad”

The second shop assistant walked in ..

“Uh huh, you like? … I thought it was too stiff for me….”

“Yes, o yes … ( hands on hips, standard female comic superhero stance)… Love it.”

More conversation of a similar ilk followed, I continued to flirt with the wounded skirt I knew I would leave behind, stripped down and dressed up again, waving so long. It wouldn’t be fishing if you struck every time you dropped a line I suppose…

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I went to drop a line down the road at Ann Taylor. The Friends and Family 40% off every loving stitch in the place sale was on last night. AT is always a top shopping experience for me. Quality, current, and classic, I believe that AT has the pulse of the maturing contemporary woman better than any other major retailer, at least in this part of the world. You would be mad to not be signed up for the email specials.

Love the shops too, wide open eye-lines, loads of space between the fixtures, none of that awkward butt-brushing, shoulder-to-shoulder rack rifling typical of most shops. Ann Taylor is just a stately place. And the fitting rooms? Bigger than many New York studio apartments. Yummm.

After the usual “Welcome to Ann Taylor” salute from the staff and a slow wander / ponder about, the nice assistant asked if she could set a fitting room for me, relieving me of the rapidly building pile folded over my arm.

“Thanks, of course. Let me see grab a couple of other things … see you there in a tick.”

“Take your time … I’ll just leave the twill slacks on your rooms door, ok?...”

OK, indeed. I grabbed one more pair of slacks, asked for the stacked platform giraffe print bootie and retired to my private space. While changing the tap-tap-tap on the door heralded the arrival of my shoes, but you know it is ok to pull the door open in a half-dressed state here.

“Here are the 8 ½’s, hope you like them!”

Out to the long hall, prowling, dead center the length of the walk up to the riser, pretty much convinced that the pants were not for me and my fellow shopper hailed me with a nice smile …

“Give me a zip up please, would you?”

A dark complexioned woman, nearly dressed, early 30’s with stunning grey/blue eyes, a rare sighting of one of the universes most extravagant displays of beauty, gestured towards her back. The royal blue knit dress with the dropped waist was a little full on her to my eye as I fastened her in, but she was more concerned about the short hem.

“O no, the length is great. Opaque tights and you are fine. And the blue, o my god it makes your eyes just pop! I think it looks great, but you … you not convinced are you?

“I just don’t know. It is my color, but…. I don’t know….”

“I like the cut … it’s not for me though, I like a higher waist line..”

I helped her then with the unzipping, and we each retired to our private reserves. The style chit chat continued over the tall walls, and we both made a few forays back out to the racks trading views all the while. There were a couple of men there, attending their wives, fidgeting uncomfortably, privately wishing the Mayans would move the end of the world up a couple of months and just end it all, now. Not us girls.

I saw the skirt at the cash desk, opined that I liked it, hadn’t seen it in my size and asked did they have one for me? Yes they did, and I settled into the work of imagining a top for it. My new friend pointed at the ruffled cami and said that would work. That was not available in Petra dimension, but I did spot the glitter, metallic thread long sleeve crew neck that I thought might just work.

I was completely on the scent now, arms and legs moving like a veggie dicer, off with old, on with the new, cinch the belt back on, and now triumphantly back to The Mirror. Perfect.

She did not have to say a word, just smiled and nodded. She was in fact trying the same skirt on, truthfully to lesser effect. I felt it was simply too big on her.

“What size is it?” I asked.

“Two”

“Petite right?” (She is about 5’ 2” tops, and the skirt hit at knee where mine was right where I like, about three above the knee.)

“It has a lot of stretch to it dear (hands circling rump) Try the zero, it will work and you will feel soooo good about wearing a zero, admit it…”

“O god, you know me too too well… and that top, I would not have picked that … great outfit”

I was finished by now, and glowing even before I realized the bargains I had won. The $130.00 skirt and the $80 top for a mere $58 after all the markdowns.

I waved goodbye to my stylish sister, and waded back out into the evening air, into the wider unsuspecting and mostly uncaring world. I was armed against worry in part by the bag hanging from my shoulder, striding happily along the busy sidewalks, happy couples and lurking lads, everyone looking everyone else up and down, top to toe. Atlantic Station on a Saturday night is very much a place for people watching, and some did watch me.

I was particularly charmed by the young woman who dropped her boyfriend’s hand for a moment to touch my hot pink flared-waist jacket and tell me she loved it. I told her she was sweet and that I loved her hair. She gave me a quick hug and a wink and carried on down the road with her flummoxed fellow.

A short drive home, a glass of wine, the slow disrobing, the long shower, the many layers of exterior washed off, folded away, leaving the more familiar exterior surfaces of the guy visible. The interior things have a longer, deeper impact though, feeling it very much this morning. I revel in my privileges, and feel tuned up, in touch, at peace.

Simply had to share that with you today. Thanks for staying with me.

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For those of you who are curious to read a little more about what is going in my fashion life, I have been busy as a beaver over at Guilty Pleasures. The audience there is a tad more … mainstream than you dear friends, but we all share an interest in the looks beneath that flatter the rest of the ensemble, and help us all feel as beautiful as we can.

I encourage you to visit often, and especially encourage you to check out the many fine vendors I have been delighted to work with. For the complete body of Petra Guilty Pleasures essays, simply click here. Recent posts include some terrific hosiery finds (including the wonderful Cecilia de Raphael’s, pictured at right), and a wild, happy variety of all the pretty things a woman needs.

Happy shopping friends.

Lasting beauty and beauty for the renting

2011-10-16T11:21:00.005-04:00

Terribly butch couple of weeks here on the domestic front. Mrs. Bellejambes, self and our checkbook are making up for recent years of laxity in matters of home maintenance. We are pretty much recovered from recent rigors of the installation of new flooring, the annual autumn prune-a-thon (including another grizzly battle in our no-end-in-sight War on Wisteria^®), and a fair old whack of exterior and deck painting too. Much of the work that requires actual skill was staffed out, dear friends, but all of it required a certain amount of heaving, grunting and sweating on my part. Not a pretty sight.

And then, late Friday night, close on bed time we heard a sound dreaded by homeowners, the near ballistic explosion and the subsequent demented rattling, sizzling cacophony signally a massive failure of garage door springs. It is an odd thing, I had not actually heard the sound before, but the very instant I did, in my PJ’s and at the other end of our home the following thought coursed through my mind:

“... well, that’ll be the garage and I wager that my Saturday is well and truly fucked.”

And so it was. All is back in working order now, but my hands look a bit of crime scene, knuckles scraped and nicked, and not all of the gunk out from under the nails. Perhaps then, using those same hands to type out a note or two in Petra guise will help put a more feminine finish on things in general.

Back we go, therefore, a few weeks to my last outings.

Much of what one actually pays for at Southern Comfort are the seminars. Measured this way, I did not get great value from my conference fees because of my schedule and my propensity to hang around bars for the chit-chat. I did however ensure that I had a good seat for Monica Prata’s session “Looking Sexy in Age Appropriate Fashions & Successful Shopping on Any Budget!”

I met with Monica briefly last year at SCC, and developed an instant crush. Some women just have the whole woman thing knocked out so perfectly that one wavers between wordless adoration and wistful sorrow at how far away from that elite zip code one lives.

Monica has it. And in a much more substantial way than all the glossy, shapely surfaces and finely tuned sense of style indicate. She is a Vesuvius of enthusiasm, really gorgeously alive, wired, colorful and compelling. And, O yeah, she works with special people, the likes of we. A tip of the pill box cap to the universe for this lovely gift.

In any event, Monica’s seminar was live audience participation “do this, and good god girl, do NOT ever under any circumstances do that" kind of material. A few brave and generous girls had dressed in some of the “don’t” looks to provide the packed room with living, breathing (gasping?) examples of fashion fails and fixes too. We spent time on shoes, and were cautioned against pointy toe pumps. You see, this sort of shoe, beloved of all, does make ones feet look a little larger than they actually are. Not the sort of feature the big boned Cross Dresser really wants emphasize, I think we will agree.

“Any girls in the room wearing pointy shoes?”

Guess whose hand shot proudly up? Come on down Petra! I scrambled up to the podium as Monica introduced me, asking me my shoe size.

“8 ½ darling”

“Well friends, Petra is a lousy example. Once you get above 9 you are into trouble territory and should really consider rounded peep toes or open sandals. Petra can actually wear these … and I love the way she rocks the Ombre skirt….’

My vanity was satisfied by the moment, but I did feel poorly about not providing full reinforcement of Ms. Prata’s curricula. Big hearted woman that she is, we remain friendly. For those of you who want to spend time with someone who will help you make what you have more wonderful than you have ever imagined, you could not do better. Look her up. She is based in San Fran, and has frequent travels to Chicago and New York in the service of making the world more beautiful, one curious person at a time. I can’t wait to see her again.

This is true in part because I do not think I will ever get my eyes looking so right as they did for Saturday nights gala dinner. I had high high hopes (and shoes to match) for the evening stemming in part from my shopping decisions. My own makeup skills were not going to rise to the occasion, and so I organized a little spa time with saintly Monica. Time well spent. Thanks darling, sincerely. I feel as though my peepers popped like never before. Beyond that, it is an entirely gorgeous experience just hanging around with you.

For the big evening, I had picked out a couple of party frocks from Rent the Runway (pictured on self at right, and on more poised models in prior posts here). RTR is a peak shopping experience. Loyal visitors here know that I do like a bit of shopping here and there, and this romp was a true topper.

The sapphire blue Christian Siriano color and feel was gorgeous, but felt to me just too simple a cut and finish for a gala night. I am glad to have slipped into it, and giddy that I peeled it off and tossed it dismissively on the bed, opting instead for the Christian Cota. A stretch silk blend in a shimmering copper tone, gathered and ruched in a thousand places, turning a tent worth of lifeless fiber into a clingy lighting rod of gorgeous sensation. Sweet merciful creation but I did feel a pang of loss when I put her back in the mailbox on Monday. Enjoy your life sweet, sweet dress, and know always that I love you more than all those other women that rent you.

I highly recommend the Rent the Runway experience if you are dressing for a special night out and if your finances are not precarious. The size range tends to stop at 12, so those of you possessed of a fuller figure may find yourselves thwarted at the checkout. With that said though, go ahead and sign up there for the email updates. It is worth it to spend a little time looking at what is current and beautiful. Lovely styles all around, interesting reviews (unflinchingly negative ones too in some cases… RTR really lets the reader participate in the business). Natural born journalist and consumer advocate that I am, of course I left a review. Spot the spelling error friends! I really must take better care. I do get a little gushy and rushed when writing about things I love.

Yes the dress fit like a glove, barely room for an impure thought beneath lustrous surfaces and my own ample padding. She is captured, in her natural environment, at a party in close proximity to a glass of wine and a smiling, happy womanly form. The scarf is a smart finishing touch borrowed from a dinner companion, Beatrice, who upon hearing of my fondness for savage animal prints insisted on an accessory fix and a quick snapshot.

When time allows, I will be back here to leave a note or two on the topic of some of the lovely people one can meet when dressed appropriately. Beyond the seminars, this is where the real value of Southern Comfort is.

Happy dressing and everything else in the meantime!

About Time

2011-10-02T14:14:00.001-04:00

It is no small matter of pride, dear friends that I am able to present as female pretty much as well coming out of the long summer months of hibernation as I did before going in. The fashion flare remains intact, the make-up skills do not rust much and my walk works and struts with the same seismic intensity it had when I parked it way back in springtime of this year. My leg conditioning, however, was miles behind the rest of me. After three high altitude, pinched toe days at SCC my thighs, calves and hooves were in a state of outright mutiny.

Napoleon Bonaparte was reputed to have said that an Army marches with its stomach. Petra is here to tell you that a Tranny marches with her feet. I have a long, happy and cool autumn winter season ahead of me now, and put myself back in stiletto trim. In the meantime, I will find and share this clichéd solace: no pain, no gain.

Enough of the pain then. Let us move on now to gains which net out to this: I got to be Petra … Panavision, Technicolor, Dolby, THX, IMAX, Blu-Ray Petra, my happy 34B self in a fully immersive 3D world for days at a time. I don’t know about you friends, but I really have missed me. It is good to be back. So many good things absent and unnoticed in the general busy-ness of the drab day-to-day.

I won’t dive into specifics here today with you. That will wait for another tide of time. For now, I have a bit of a reverie on time itself for you.

I have missed taking my time, sweet patient time, the time required to unearth Petra from beneath my more broadly known and gruff exterior. So much of what passes for progress in my day to day life is done by brute force, volume over value, donkey-work and doggedness in pursuit of keeping pace with or perhaps even a step ahead of the needs of the now. Petra however cannot be rushed. Petra requires forethought and finesse. Petra gets coaxed into the light. No amount of pushing or shoving helps.

God, but it takes time to become Petra, and the expense of time underlines just how precious time is.

Time is required to conduct the breathtaking archeology of transition, the adding of layers, sediments and shrouds, to reveal the person within.

Time is required to compose the elements of shape, color and scent, to orchestrate a harmonious whole.

Time is required, time to pause, breath and measure, time to not madly dash forward, time to be sure of the next step and the step beyond that one.

Time for the trivia too, are my keys in the purse, is the hair fixed just so, stop now before the lip line and gloss, did I brush my teeth since dawn?... good god I will be speaking with people after all, and look at you not a ring on your fingers, better set that right and slowly too. Be calm, move slowly, stay dry dear. The whole world is out there now, you can lock the door behind you and go out into it now, alert, attenuated and receptive.

No matter that I have been aching to be out, present and presenting as Petra forever now, stillness is required to do this fully and correctly. A stillness that I have not reflexively sought in the rest of my rushed everyday time.

I propose that the qualities of stillness, patience and mindfulness required to be Petra are very much the same qualities required to recall and write about those precious moments, minutes and hours. Or about anything else I suppose.

Since going back into a corporate setting in January of this year, I have missed that stillness. Not much room for considered, conscious receptivity to the moment with all the milestones to meet and millstones to carry. I have known at some level that this change in the nature of my days would be a price of the work I took on. It has, however, taken the time required last week to be immersed in the life of Petra to actually have benchmark against which to measure how far away from stillness I typically live.

It has felt good, great in fact, to be Petra again. It’s about time too in more ways than one. Time to not be rushed, time to coax rather than cudgel, to persuade, to not push and shove.

Wardrobe and words, make-up and metaphor each require time, time I do need to catch up on a little. Looking forward to it. Thanks for spending your time here.

SCC After Words

2011-09-27T21:14:00.003-04:00

The fragrant dust of the 21^st Southern Comfort Conference has been settling a few days now, and I feel a little more certain of being able to start to tell you all about it. I cannot promise a great post here, dear friends. I am as much out of practice at blogging as I have been, until quite recently, at spending long hours in tall pumps. Nothing for it but to start and try, yes? On we go therefore.

Roughly 850 registered attendees (including a surprising 450 first timers) gathered with countless supportive friends and family, and a vibrant number of peripheral participants at Atlanta’s Crowne Plaza’s Perimeter for what I believe to be the largest Transgender conference known to man, woman and everyone somewhere in between last week. I was able to extract myself from work long enough to enjoy a good part of Thursday, much of Friday and practically every loving moment of Saturdays glamorous finale en Femme.

A mad gusher of posts emerged from my first visit to SCC last year, which you may find here, here and ooooh, I can barely reach it .. just over here. The Sophomore visit, with so many elements and sensations so familiar, leaves fewer themes to exploit. Some things need mentioning though, and the important ones have to do with gratitude.

I have spent many years attending conferences of many types over long decades, and must tell you this: SCC runs a tight ship. Not an easy thing to make the trans run on time darlings, and dammit but they do. Hats off to Lexi, her Committee Chairs, and the 100 or so volunteers who just put their backs in to a big piece of work. A special call out is due to Blake Alford whose tribute in words and pictures to Transgendered soldiers, sailors and aviators past and present was without doubt for me the most stirring moments of a great event.

Close in the stirring moments parade came Friday evening at a commitment ceremony for four beautiful couples, amongst them dear friends Cindy and Joanne, both radiant in white. Such a privilege to witness such an open, loving embrace of all the differences an individual can bring to and enlarge a home with. I missed the tossed bouquet by mere inches.

These moments were however eclipsed in the few hours that Mrs. Bellejambes was able to spend with my sisters, brothers and I. Again, I am thankful for much. I hope a fraction of that feeling shows in this picture.

More ponderings to follow as time allows. Let me leave you with a finishing thought:

If, in your journey, you have not enjoyed the luxury of time spent with people with whom you share a difference, you should. Put your spare change in a big jar. Mark your calendars. Visit Atlanta next year for Southern Comfort. You might catch the bouquet yourself.

See you here.

Petra is back. Still working on the front.

2011-09-21T20:29:00.001-04:00

Voyages en Rose has been exhibiting a very faint and irregular heartbeat of late. Seven posts in eight months, a lamentable showing. Circumstances have conspired however to shake me out of the doldrums and provided some newish feminine fodder, Dear Reader, for pondering and prosing on about.

The recent loss of our friend Ramona certainly brought things into focus. Beyond that, well SCC is in full gear by now. Hooray! I am very much looking forward to participating, starting tomorrow evening, to giving long overdue air time to this other, integral part of me. If you are attending, please reach out or drop a note in the comments section here. It is a wonderful thing to meet blog friends in the flesh, yes? That’ll be me perched on a tall stool or teetering on tall heels where the nice people fix cocktails.

There will in short, be much to write about over the next few days, weeks and months.

The wardrobe made the migration from attic to its more airy and organized closets in la Chambre de Petra. I did a rather thorough audit of this and that, and am alarmed to note that a few of my more clingy skirts are rather stressed at the seams. Borderline unseemly in fact. I have, it seems, lost a tooth or two in my metabolic machinery, and put on a little curve. Ravages of time I suppose, and approaching 50 as I am, well it is to be expected. In fairness, this a long time coming. I am suitably warned. It is time for me to be more mindful of lifestyle.

I will be forming a relationship with a consignment shop shortly I fear. In the meantime I will be on the lookout for skinny girls at our conference in the hopes of finding a more suitable hostess for some pretty things that deserve to be worn well.

Life has not been without writing from my adoptive female perspective though. Many of you know that I have been doing the odd product review or fashion editorial for a special friend, Ally, the proprietress of Guilty Pleasures. Ally has been a wonderful source of insight and support. I am quite proud and really quite giddy about the reality that I can and do write with authority about the most intimate fashion category, intimates. Every now and then a smart parcel from a terrific vendor shows up in the mail, and I do my best to find accurate, engaging and honest words about the bras or knickers or tights contained therein. Life is full of surprises. My drawers runneth over. If you haven’t visited, please do. Here is a link to the collected works of your faux fashionista friend.

Also on the fashion front, I splashed out a little on the weekend on a vendor whose business model and fashion sense has had me drooling in recent months. Rent the Runway is thriving online enterprise where a gal on a budget can take temporary possession of a serious party frock for a fractional fee. Tomorrow, a big box of beauty arrives. There is no godly or ungodly way I could ever justify spending $1,000 ++ on a dress. I can justify the $140 rental expense though. More than this, I have decided that I cannot afford to go without the experience of wearing a truly wonderfully made, current piece of serious pret-a-porter at least once in this life. My little heart is going pitter pat in anticipation.

The Christian Cota (top) will be sported at Saturday’s Dinner Gala, and I plan on slithering into the blue Christian Siriano to attend a wonderful Commitment ceremony at SCC. There will be a good number of couples renewing vows, and celebrating enduring love on Friday. I will be especially happy and honored to see Cindy and Joanne P take new vows. Hopefully the mascara will hold. These will be special nights, deserving of a little extra care and preening. I will surely share notes on the experience and other findings from the life en Femme here shortly.

Happy dressing, and happy everything else wished your way.

Passing

2011-09-18T13:31:00.001-04:00

Dear Friends,

First things first. All is well, genuinely so.

The genuinely good things will get only scant mention in this post though. I must share some sad news before all of that. The good things will follow not far behind this entry. All of you with whom I am close, and for those quiet, anonymous and not-known-by-name-to-me visitors may be fully assured that Petra has a bit of happy chatter in reserve. I am anxious in fact to unpack findings from my annual Summer Drabbatical, and sort them out here. I sense that the muse is back upon me. Thank you all for your patience in my absence. And now, as some say, to cases…

The last post on Voyages en Rose in May of this year mentioned a lovely visit with a very important person in my life, Ramona. Ramona passed away on September 1, after a valiant, inspiring and always hopeful battle with a determined foe. Would you mind if I shared a few thoughts with you?

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I found Ramona at the time my life that I decided to unlock and take full possession of the contents of my own Pandora’s Box. I had long decades of closely guarded curiosity and compulsion about gender behind me and a furtive future ahead. I had an awkward assortment of garments to my name, and a handful of public sorties en Femme that were not complete disasters to claim. The taste of honey felt worse than none at all.

And so I called Ramona. And so everything changed.

Ramona had, through a seemingly random series of connected events, caromed into the business of helping people like me become acquainted with their inner woman. And my, but she was good. I spent a lovely evening in her care, and for the first time in my life, stepped convincingly out on the town. I cannot describe adequately the impact this had on me. The impact was visible on my surfaces yes, but the internal impact was the thing, the real thing. Tectonic forces shifted the continental plates of my whole self, fertile new plains of undiscovered land emerged, enlarged, virgin and fertile, ripe for exploration.

That exploration unearthed within me a much happier person, much better prepared for understanding and living within a complex and challenging world.

That exploration helped me develop the character to share with my wife truths that I did not have the character to share 17 years earlier when we first met, courted and agreed to be each others everything.

And not trivially, that exploration provided me with experience that was too big, too rich and too damned vivid to not write about. Much of that experience has been documented here on Voyages en Rose over the last three years in something north of 200,000 words in 227 posts. 340 pages of 10pt thoughts not counting the smoldering 10X heap of deleted detritus and still-borne simile.

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I had long harbored suspicions that I could tell a story but felt as though the risks of working at the craft and failing were higher than the potential payoff of working at it, failing at it, and working again. Becoming “Petra”, I slid into a protective authorial prophylactic that shielded me (the broadly known me that is) from the full weight of those risks. And so I wrote, at a slight remove from responsibility.

The work of writing became a part of my emerging life. It then seeped into the rest of my life. White papers, commercial copywriting here and there, deeper more convincing thinking on the numbers that my clients businesses ran on. Words for money.

By late last year I had leveraged this newly found confidence and attracted an agent. I was offered a good contract to ghost a book for a notable executive on subject matter I had enough familiarity with to ghost well. At this exciting moment, a more sure and certain path opened up; a staff position in a less creative role with my biggest client. I opted for the staff position and returned the book contract. No great or at least permanent loss in my view. The path I am on will allow me to commit to independent creative efforts in a few years. I should have an adequately plump cushion beneath the high wire and my semi-retiring arse by then.

I have Ramona to thank for this entirely unexpected and exciting possibility. I have much else to thank her for, but of all of her gifts and her splendid friendship, this stands out.

And you, Dear Reader, if you feel your times here have been well spent, a quiet salute skyward might be indicated just now.

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In her last year, Ramona found the company of a remarkable partner, Gabrielle. Ramona was giddy, girly, head-over-heels besotted for Gabrielle. What a privilege Ramona enjoyed. Her best times came as her last times.

Gabrielle stands now as the principal keeper of Ramona’s memories. There is a long line of people flanking Gabrielle, all touched and changed in ways great and small by the happy accident of finding Ramona. Finding her, and is so doing, finding themselves.

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Ramona had never been much of church going lady, but this past spring, at Gabrielle’s urging, the two of them popped on smart Easter bonnets, attended a service at Atlanta’s First Metropolitan Community Church and were welcomed with open arms. Gabrielle had been raised, like so many Southerners, in a praise community, and wanted very much to find a place where the best parts of this tradition could be expressed joyfully and freely. More than this, she wanted to share the peace she knew could be found in the best of these places with the most important person in her life.

Ramona surprised herself, and me when she spoke about how much it meant to her to find and be welcomed by this community. When she faltered, they rallied to her side, held vigil and held hands with Gabrielle and others close to Ramona at the end.

Many gathered last Sunday, September 11 for a memorial service at FMCC. The choir sang. The piano rang. Moving tributes were paid. Many of us did our best to present in a way that would have made Ramona proud. She loved animal prints, and so I opted for the leopard sheath that I had worn on one happy day of shopping with her what now seems like forever ago, yesterday or so. I chronicled that day here. Ramona in fact took this picture, and then threatened me with the silent treatment if I did not stop dithering about which perfect skirt I would buy already. We had a busy day ahead after all.

Mrs. Bellejambes attended the service with me. When I told her of the loss and the plans for the memorial, without blinking she asked to attend. She never met Ramona, but recognized that an important person in our shared life had passed, and wanted to mark the moment with me. We will visit FMCC again, together. A final, parting gift into our home from an absolutely gifted woman. A woman I will miss dearly.

See you again here shortly.

Me, Women, and The Other Woman

2011-05-22T14:44:00.002-04:00

The thermometer in Atlanta is cresting 90f (33ish for friends of the Metric persuasion). The population of Casa Bellejambes has swelled to a seasonal high with welcomed overseas visitors. My precious wardrobe has migrated to attic, summering privately away from our hustle and bustle for the dormant months. It is a sad ritual, the careful folding and hanging, the last look over the shoulder and, with a slight push on the door, the official end of the dressing season.

I did manage a last fling en Femme a couple of weeks ago, happy in tan faux-denims, a riotously colored blouse and a light ruffled collar and cuff jacket though, and it did me a small world of good. The same outfit from an earlier amateur solo photo session is pictured here. So nice to be able to take a short visit with a dear friend, enjoy a glass of wine, pound out a few chords on a beautiful piano and just generally occupy a sympathetic social space. I visited with the woman who really catalyzed my journey and was mid-wife at the birth of Petra, the loving and very skilled transformation artist Ramona. If you find yourself anywhere near Atlanta, and feel the urge to dress, I encourage you to reach out to her. I did, back in the day, to great and lasting benefit as earliest posts here and here testify.

Since the recent evening out, I have stormed a shop or two in guy mode and picked up a couple of nice new pieces in anticipation of the cooler days and smoother legs of autumn. The appetite for a good sale remains ravenous even as the thirst for dressing seems more or less quenched.

My apprenticeship at being womanly in the world has radically changed my view of how the world works for women, and works against women. Petra is very present in my day to day things even while her wardrobe is tucked away. Let me tell you here about Petra at the office.

I work very closely with a woman who represents my key vendor. We both have the same broad objective: move large truckloads of product profitably through my network of partners. It is a cooperative, strategic relationship, but there is money at stake for both parties and so the relationship is inherently fraught with tension. Getting along on a personal level helps reduce tension, and makes it easier to represent my narrow business interests.

At least once a week I hear something said in a meeting or on a conference call in the strange, foreign and exclusive language of guys. I can practically see the references flying over or bouncing off her pretty head. In prior times I took little notice at just how desperately the vapid lexicon of commerce leans on sports metaphor. Especially noticeable is the uniquely obtuse and impenetrable claptrap of American football. The campaign failed because we out kicked the coverage. We miss opportunities for market expansion by advancing the ball in i-formation. A strategic prospective client gave the Heisman. This language is now jarring to me. After the meeting, and sometimes employing a white board as a learning aid, I take a moment with her to decipher the code. She eats up this stuff. I am a trusted adviser.

How about travel? We had a three city tour some weeks back with the usual mad dashes between hotels, car rental counters, airport security checks and long walks on unforgiving tiles and moving sidewalks. I entirely understand why her bags are heavier and why luggage gets checked. And shoes? I have done the calculations that go into footwear choices not perfectly suited for the rigors of the day. I used to think of women as being poorly equipped to keep pace with me. I now think of airports as simply being poorly designed.

You see, my calves have felt sore, and my toes have been pinched. I know just how much a skirt can restrict the stride and slow the pace. I have vainly attempted to pull a buzzing cell phone from purse while hauling a bag, fearful of popping a blouse button or two. My pace now changes to accommodate these newly seen realities. I slow down and holster my impatience while in the company of my sisters.

It seems to go both ways. It feels as though I am approached by women a little differently, a little more easily, less guardedly. Quiet, inconsequential confidences are shared. I know more about the personal lives of women I work with just a few months into my newish work than I have known after years together in other settings. I see an ease in the body language and general comfort level of the women around me. When I say “you look great today”, I get a nice smile in return, and sometimes an editorial comment about what a steal the dress was or relief that somebody thinks it is office appropriate. In my more testosterone drenched years such compliments seemed to put people on agenda alert.

I can only conclude that having lived for hours and days at a time as a woman has made me a better man. A man who gets along better with women. Happy to report that, in much of my world, Petra is integrated, welcomed and essential.

And yet, where it counts the most, Petra remains The Other Woman. Here at home. Apologies, dear friends, for the downer note, but it must be said. Mrs. Bellejambes and myself have not made any progress with growing or really sharing the external life of Petra. This is all difficult, and more so for my darling wife than I. Can’t fault her in the slightest. All of my fine print written in invisible ink. She might not have signed the contract otherwise.

While I enjoy the complexity, she wrestles with complication. Where I see reward, she feels risk. And when, on those occasions where I have stood before her in my most womanly form, deep within she must be crying out for a strong hug from her man.

I know quite fully that this leopard will not change its spots (and you know of course how much I adore a nice leopard print), but I do wish for my wife that she had been dealt a simpler hand. I could not wish to be different than I am, there is too much wonder and beauty within to not nurture. Good thing, methinks, that I have learned to slow down and holster my impatience.

Happy times are wished your way.

Now, where was I?

2011-04-09T15:40:00.002-04:00

Enlivened as I have been by a recent flurry of correspondence and some long overdue quality time spent on precious and dearly missed blogs I am newly pondering a couple of questions:

Just what do you make of a Cross Dresser who is neither cross or dressing?

Just what do you make of a Blogger without a post to lean on?

Perhaps an answer will emerge an uncharted paragraph or two south hereof, but the contours our findings are not yet in sharp enough relief to provide any certainty. Certainty is a little dull for my tastes though, and usually illusory too, so join me, my dears, for a random romp through things in general.

Let us start with the whole blogging bit. Many of us, bloggers of allsorts, view this labor as therapeutic. Therapy is intended to attain happy conclusions at some point. If not, perhaps the analysand is working with the wrong analyst. There must come a moment when the patient and physician look at each other a little blankly, declare victory and move a little awkwardly on.

Voyages en Rose managed to keep lively for a little more than two years which, as I look at the ebb and flow of blogs I follow, seems like a median life expectancy. For me, late last year I found neurons not alight and fingers hesitant at the keyboard. Seams of thought formerly rich with gems of observation and sensation yielded poorly, more gravel and less gold. Been there, done that made gains on the delight and delirium of discovery.

What I have written and posted here is a very real treasure for me, and, in its way, a complete one. I am happy to say therefore that I do not feel a duty to add to the blog. Relieved in fact. It has taken quite a while and a lot of distraction to become happily indifferent to my traffic statistics, and accustomed to an absence of life giving comments from dear readers. But I have.

I do miss the achievement of writing though. Much of this I put down to what has been for me a big discovery about the nature of time and task in a corporate setting. My new work requires parallel attention to multiples of concerns where before I was processing things in a more or less serial manner. I find that this fatigues the mind, or at least draws down the reserves of creativity I employed to fuel fits of productivity here.

This is an unexpected thing. Still, I am happy with the trade-off, comforted by the knowledge that I can and will at some point willingly (or otherwise, frog-marched out of the building with a cardboard box in hand) go back to my old lifestyle with the bank account fattened enough for autumns and winters of hoped-for decades of graceful aging and indulgent prosing.

So, happy as opposed to cross. Good outcome.

Now, about the dressing. Nothing conclusive really. It warms up early here in the heart of Dixie. Shorts are a required element of the masculine wardrobe. I am not a competitive Triathlete and therefore have no easy peg to hang clean shaven legs on. To paraphrase Sir Elton, the thatch is back. Bit of a fashion buzz kill I think we can all agree. Yes, I could go with slacks and a blousy top, but the trowelling of concealer shows much like pine pollen on parked cars in the warmth here. Summer’s heat cools my ardor quite typically, and this year is no different. Just a little more pronounced. This absence of urge to dress does not surprise me greatly.

I did work from home one day this week though, and spent a few hours in a favorite dress. This felt wonderful. Nicely natural, all the pleasant, special differences of feel and movement and appearance. Visitors here of the full time female variety know this to be true: It is a treat to wear a pretty dress. To stand a little taller in well made shoes. Everyone else who visits here knows this too I presume. As for people who don’t share our enthusiasms, well, I simply don’t know what they are not thinking.

To each of us our own delights I suppose. Perhaps time away from our delights makes them all the more flavorful when we taste them again. For me, I suspect that I will belly up to the style buffet again at the Southern Comfort Conference in September here in Atlanta. Perhaps we will meet there.

Here, Chez Bellejambes we will be hosting house guests soon. This will necessitate a certain amount of shifting of garments from guest room closets to the dark and lonely confines of the attic. There are hues and silhouettes in my wardrobe from precincts miles away from Mrs. Bellejambes' style sweet spots. Best to get them out of sight, if not entirely out of mind.

Which brings me to matters of the mind, where I will leave off for now. I will want to share with you some observations on just how the periodic transformations of my exteriors have more permanently transformed the workings of my interiors. This is a big topic that I feel deserves its own dedicated and well lit runway. I promise to lean into that post over the next week or two.

I will sign off today with genuine affection for and thanks to you, dear reader for your time here today, and in the past. Today, somewhere, elsewhere, somebody is freshly committed to giving their gender journey a name, a URL, and the sweat of their pretty brow. There is a gifted voice writing fresh and compelling stuff to dazzle and cheer the likes of we. Go find those new gems. Drop me a line when you spot one, would you?

Affectionately and thankfully yours,

Petra

Easy as falling off a blog

2011-02-13T16:49:00.002-05:00

In the last few years, I have embraced two pretty radical changes in lifestyle. The first was yielding to my lifelong desire to fully explore my gender complexion. The second, and rather recent change, involved taking a “job” after an interesting 3 year stint of independent, home office bound, pajama clad freelancery and tomfoolery.

Guess which change has been more disruptive?

Before leaning in close to give you a glimpse of the bosom of my thoughts on the matter, let me share a thought on disruption:

I am all in favor of it.

If my report cards are to believed, disrupting things has long been a core competency. I had teachers who, with a stronger sense of frontier justice, would have stood me up in the classroom corner from September to mid-June, and suffered fewer headaches. Summer vacation differed from the rest of the year only in so far as the disruption happened out of doors, barefoot, and without the hindrances of adult supervision. Even better, it was not subject to term papers and grading.

But, yeah, without a jot of doubt or a flicker of hesitation, the whole getting a job thing has been more disruptive even than the discovery of “Petra”.

Coming out of solo orbit and splashing down in the Corporate Ocean has been a bigger shock to the system than expected. Many muscles and reflexes are out of trim and the gravity of things feels new. I had forgotten how much of the workday gets lost in overhead – the meetings, con-calls, and sweet mother of pearl the fulminating email threads, spinning in ever widening gyres, ensnaring the innocently cc’d in a gooey, Ebola-like contagion of indecision for the lack of somebody, anybody’s willingness to just goddam well do it.

Oddly enough though, it feels good to be home.

After these days in my new corporate home, and the unaccustomed commute back to my home home, there has not been much left of me other than a desire for stillness. I have been finding stillness and resolved harmonies after the discordance of the day at the keyboard of my piano quite reliably lately. Hence my long absence from the keyboard that describes these Voyages en Rose.

I did however, at the end of this past week, satisfy myself that I could hack through the Gordian knot I was hired to unravel. On Friday, I was able to articulate the plan more or less convincingly to the right audience. This attracted positive notice.

I follow in the path of a parade of capable men and women who nimbly (ed. cravenly?) pirouetted around this problem, leaving it in place, fearing the loss of career velocity attendant on high stakes, high visibility failures. Perhaps I am bringing the required admixture of male and female, the correct tincture of masculine and feminine to the whiteboard. Perhaps I have not yet perceived the real contours of the challenge too. Perhaps I am merely perverse enough to try. I don’t know, or mind much today. I slept like a lamb two nights running, and felt today as though I had some reserves I could share here.

Haven’t much felt like dressing though. I have seen 3 of my skirts on new co-workers. A couple of blouses too, and at least one dress. I am happy to report that I am working with a stylish and attractive lot. None of them quite have my ankles, but that’s a long shot in any room. For the most part though, the gender puzzle which has been so much at the forefront of my consciousness in recent years is much deeper in background just now while I figure out all the other newness.

I suspect in time, that things will normalize. For now though, much of my mind and time will be fully stressed and stretched to cover my new responsibilities. In time, imperceptibly, the stress will diminish, the stretch will ease. One day then, with the problem atomized and right sized, there will be enough time and mind to drape the work, amply, elegantly. The cloth left over will be put to other uses. Stylish and flattering uses I hope.

Just now friends, I don't have an earthly when that will be. Nor do I have much of a thought about what I will want to share with you here in the meantime either.

But you do know I will be back of course, yes? And you do know that I will share. Yes. Disruption is temporary. Change is lasting.

I do hope in the meantime that all of your changes are good ones too.

xxoo - Petra

Head over Heels.

2011-01-16T17:44:00.004-05:00

As much as I love a good long day in a pair of smart heels, and friends, I truly do, it is at moments like these that I am thankful that I am not required to type with my feet.

Yes, from thigh-top to toe-tip, the legs are experiencing what Diana Ross might have called sweet love hangover. Noticing these sensations on my first tentative, padded steps out of bed this morning, and being of a curious disposition, I did in fact conduct a little research on leg musculature. It pleased me greatly to learn that the longish muscle that endows the upper regions of the thigh with its superabundance of fleshy, curvy, callipygian appeal is actually known (to people who did not drink themselves rotten in their freshman year and made it into med school) as the Sartorius.

This pleases me in part because knowing a new thing is good, but more because Sartorius is just an errant spellcheck away from sartorial. If I have a sartorial signature, it is brazen display of Sartorius. Irony walks with me.

I have not witnessed many sartorial or Sartorius displays recently. Three inches of snow in Atlanta last Sunday melted well enough on Tuesday that overnight temperatures seriously below freezing turned our roads into treacherous rinks by Wednesday. On these rinks cars more or less behaved like 7 year olds playing hockey, flailing about in blind mass pursuit of a puck, careering here and there, spinning out and taking the innocent down with them in a knotted mass of shrieking earnest futility. I stayed out of the dangerous game entirely.

Chez Bellejambes was well provisioned, lots of food and drink, an ample cache of aloe infused bathroom rolls and plenty to read. We weathered well. Cabin fever had well and truly set in by weeks end though. Yesterday therefore, I was quite delighted to brazenly bestir myself, emerging from the ice cocoon to take pretty wing in Petra mode for the opening planning session of Southern Comfort Conference 2011.

I plan on haranguing you quite regularly here about your schedule and intentions for September. You really ought to start putting a shekel or two aside here and there. Maybe fight the odd shopping impulse too. If you do these things then the expense of coming to Atlanta and spending a few days or more in the company of so much smart, beautiful, liberated diversity will be more manageable. I implore you, if you have not been able to attend a conference that caters to the CD/TG set to do so. It is an expense though, and we do live in challenging times. I get that. If you are thusly challenged, let me encourage you to visit this page and note that there are scholarships available. You may be in a financial position to qualify for support. Don’t be shy. Don’t be proud. Don’t stay locked within yourself. ‘Nuff said on the matter. Head on down to Atlanta.

But back to heels now which is where I started after all. In the evening I happily pried my tootsies into the purple pump referred to in the post directly prior to this one. The morning wardrobe was perched upon newly acquired and long sought black suede (ok suede-ish) booties purloined from Macy’s for a very faint song. Too embarrassed to say the price really. Well that moment passed quickly enough. $24.00. The purchase pathology is kind of interesting to me though, and I want to share it with you out of a sense of care for your financial well being (which ties back neatly to the whole SCC attendance thing … see how I did that?).

This particular look has been in my gun sites for some time now. A versatile autumn / winter style, matches well with the legging / tunic look, skinny jeans, opaque tights / tailored skirt ensembles. In short, while not an absolute need, this is a shoe that has been more than a want. And on a half dozen sorties through a variety of shops, Nordstrom Rack, Ann Taylor, and DSW included I tried on and discarded stacks of paired suitors like a high maintenance Disney princess. This one pinched, that one swam. This one too tall, that one too low. Too round at the toe there, not sure about that platform. Thwarted time and again.

I kept at the objective though and, finally, finding them just before Christmas, was relieved greatly. As is my habit, I updated my purchase tracking spreadsheet and noticed with no small alarm that these were pair #10. I had unknowingly perched myself on an irretrievably steep slope.

A couple of years ago I polled readers to determine just how many pairs of shoes we possessed. The analysis kicked out a behavioral singularity that graphically displayed a gradual erosion of will between pairs # Five and 10. Past the 10 Threshold and basically one is left only with bilateral amputation, bunions, or bankruptcy as a brake against the desire for more and more shoes. There are zombies amongst us. Take a look around you next time you are shoe shopping. They cannot count how many shoes they own. Or rather, how many shoes they are owned by.

What havoc hath I wrought, what a fool am I. Even with the clear foreknowledge, with certain statistical indicators of a ruined future, my guard dropped, and I blithely stepped past the pointed-toe point of no return. I had barely made a mental note of # 9 only a week or so earlier, the lavish lace classic court shoe from Ann Taylor marked down from $180 to a mere $48, so blind to the charms I have become.

Enough heels. It is time for healing now. Time to mind myself and stop with the shoes for a while. You may think this a fools errand, and you might be right. I feel however that no honest exploration of ones fuller gender complexion is complete without battling against the pretty tide of shoe lust. Pictures at 11 of course. And 12. And beyond.

On a more serious note, a couple of words about the SCC planning session and evening social follow. I made some new friends, people with dazzling lives and minds, diverse interests, abundant charm and beauty. There was time as well with friends that I have met now 3, 5, or 8 times here and there. These acquaintances become more easy and meaningful each time too. The slow sedimentary process of trust building takes time, takes patience. Precious things with a commensurate payoff. A payoff available in the living, breathing company of people. People gotta meet.

There was a very pleasant surprise seeing about 60 people showing up at 9:00 am on a weekend to indicate willingness to help execute this big complex undertaking. And it was comforting to see Lexi, Blake, Lida, Christy and the rest of the board and committee chairs leading the charge. I encourage you to save the date: Sept 21 – 25. Start planning would you? And if you have figured out how to save yourself from the syren call of the shoe shop, drop a line would you?

Five for ’10, Part III: The Joy of Shopping

2011-01-06T19:56:00.001-05:00

The full time woman has, it seems to me, a life time to develop a signature look, a style sweet spot. I imagine that this is a gradual and glacial learning process, sedimentary layers of progress, a long slow bake of hits and misses. For women inclined to caring about style, the learning opportunities abound. Shopping in the company of friends, and talking about clothes is so much more a socially acceptable, indeed expectable behavior for the fairer sex than it is for the less fair.

Therefore I submit, dear friends, that those of us who come around to possession of a female wardrobe by, shall we say, less than conventional means, are desperately handicapped in the style sweepstakes. As with many things in life, overcoming a handicap takes thought, patience and determination, trial and error, and above all, practice, practice and more practice.

I practiced like quite the possessed young thing this past year. The practice has paid off in what I have to say is the signature achievement of the year for me. I have become consciously competent at knowing what to wear.

Patience is the primary virtue now, and patience pays off at the sales counter. I was impatient once this year. I responded to a swoon impulse and came home with a tunic I love, but dammit, I paid full retail, I still feel poorly about that. The sting diminishes when I consider the following Top Five steals, staples and statements, my best shopping moments of the year.

Up Top: I have a couple of silk shirts for guy wardrobe, and I have to confess that I always feel just a little suspect when wearing them, as though I am engaged in something unmanly, engaged in something unsavory. I don’t have any hang ups about unmanly, but unsavory catches rather in my throat. Rather a shame really, because I quite like the feel of silk. Here the life of Petra is a real bonus. A silk blouse is cool, it glides, no preening, all polish. Mine, from Ann Taylor at a 78% discount from a $90.00 full retail tag down to $20.00. Well made, it will last years and not date. I already have it down to $6.67 / wear. Couldn’t help going back out the next day to grab the purple one.

Down Below: More purple. Purple is a color that feels the same way in my drab wardrobe as silk does. I have purple, I just don’t feel like I fully own it, it is a color that takes dominion over my personality, and so guy me shies away from it. Again, rather a shame, because it is a gorgeous color and suits my complexion well. And again, Petra to the rescue, loving the whole regal vibe that comes along the color of Queens. I extended my license to wear purple to my feet this year, finding in late spring in the clearance racks at Macy’s a terrific, classic closed toe pump with a 3 1/2” stiletto (just my style) marked down to $20.00 from $70 for a 71% win.

‘Round the Middle. It is tough to pick a single bloom from the crowded garden. I am ashamed to admit that I own 18 skirts and all but two of them delight me. As a garment class, my average skirt retails for $82.00, and was purchased for $19.00. I think in hindsight that my first move away from the severely tailored, classic pencil cut into a more contemporary, clingy, knit style skirt was a big step for me. This was the garment that convinced me that I could and should dress young. This revelation broadened my horizons considerably, So hats off to the I.N.C. grey and black bandage skirt, retail $79.00, discounted 72% to $23.00.

On the Legs. It took me until November of last year to finally get around to trousers. This seems, in an odd way, to be a slightly seditious form of cross Cross Dressing. In any event, I wrote about the whole happy ordeal here if you missed it first time around. Having a couple of pairs of smart strides broadens my potential range considerably. Clearly it is not possible to practically and convincingly inhabit la Monde Féminine in skirts and dresses alone. Finding a pair of classic, low waisted, 5 pocket style stretch denims on my first attempt was a huge win. Finding them at $15.00 down from an original sticker of $69.00 was practically a heart stopper.

On the Town. It is fitting that my last transaction of the old year should be the most triumphant one. The first (real) Little Black Dress. This is a real threshold purchase, right up there with first knickers, first breast forms, first wig, and other big firsts. The LBD is a totemic item, it is bequeathed with social significance. Light as a feather, yet possessed of a power to stop people in their tracks. This frothy number certainly stopped me in my tracks in late December at Ann Taylor. A strapless cascade of tulle ribbons to mid-thigh, a luxurious merengue of femininity, originally listed at $250.00. For reasons that passeth understanding a small clutch of these beauties survived a seemingly endless series of markdowns, all the way to a mere, laughable $30.00. I happened upon my LBD on a +40% off day, and so picked it up for pennies under a practically insulting $18.00. I won’t have much on when I wear this to a gala evening at SCC later this year, but the dress is bound to be the least costly part of the ensemble. I am still shocked, and delighted to have had such good fortune on such a seminal first find. O, it feels like a million bucks, and I must say, looks rather fetching too. On the model too.

I will close with this thought: Shopping is, for most people, in and of itself, a pretty shallow undertaking. I think though, that shopping has the potential to be something of value and meaning to, well, the likes of we if we apply a little care to it. Each of these Five top moments in wardrobe building were executed in drab, but called upon every ounce of feminine intuition and aesthetic potential that I am capable of finding. It is good to be able to touch those parts of the self, and cater to them, on demand, without all the overhead that goes into actually presenting as Petra. Not quite the real thing, but it goes a long way in between full immersions, yes?

I hope you have great luck in the shops this year. Would love to hear of your best wins too. Comments welcomed always.

Five for ’10, Part II: Great Excursions en Femme

2011-01-01T10:42:00.001-05:00

The first post in this series focused on the fluff between my unpierced ears. Today's is a look back at a handful of highlights, memorable moments of the newly old year, enjoyed in the great outdoors in the fully feathered form of Petra.

I write this guardedly, not wanting to gloat. I recognize that I am fortunate in my relative freedom to get out of the house and away from the mirror, without much in the way of fear or complication. I live in a big city, a relatively liberal one. I have a fashionable cloak of anonymity in short, and if worse comes to worse, I can run from trouble really quite quickly even in tallish heels. At home, my habits are not secret, and while not actively encouraged, at least not fought against.

These are luxuries of chance, not of earned virtue. I recognize that many readers and some of my closest online companions do not have these luxuries. With that said, this past year I continued to push out my boundaries, cross new lines, and discover green new fields. The payoff has been huge. Whatever your circumstances, I encourage you to challenge your own boundaries, to find a way to interact with a part of the real world, presenting as best you can. As the great Marvin G. and Tammy T. sang, "… ain’t nothing like the real thing baby…".

Here therefore, I am taking a look back at some very real moments, and the great, unexpected learnings that came with them. Links to the original reportage contained below too.

Way back in January I attended the first of many mid-day, mid-week musical luncheons at The Heretic, a venerable gay bar deep in the heart of Atlanta’s own quaint and grotty tenderloin district. Apart from the great BBQ, the remarkable guitar and vocal stylings of Miss Edie, and all the joy that a warm sunny January day brings out in people, I just had a hoot chatting about fashion, music and advanced techniques for blowing off a work day with Lindley, and her boyfriend Ian. Unbridled fun. This day, in hindsight, was the first time where my presentation kind of fell off into the background of my thoughts. Being Petra seemed as though it could be an unconscious, natural and accepted thing.

By the time winter had sloughed fully off, I was out in brightish spring hues rifling the clearance shoe racks of nice shop at Phipps Plaza. Myself and another shopper navigated around each other in the tall narrow confines until something caught her attention. Bless Leisl’s curiosity and open heart. Perhaps she was in need then of corrective lenses, but it took her a good long while to twig to the truth that I was a shopper with a difference. She tentatively and politely engaged with me, providing an opportunity for a little CD outreach. She asked a couple of questions that I needed to hear, and work out answers for. This beautiful encounter spawned a three part essay, first of which might be found just over here.

My last outing before the long, drab summer slum-fest was less commercial, more cultural. The High Museum is home to a few gems of the visual arts. It also has perfect acoustics for the crisp clack of heel on hard tile. I was surprised, alarmed, delighted and who knows what else when the nice young lady at the Members entrance kiosk recognized the other me beneath the make-up. This day I saw a couple of my favorite pictures through a different set of eyes. It was electrifying. In fact, some thoughts coalesced for me that day that wound up being the core theme of curricula I developed and delivered to an Art History class last summer. I may have missed the newness if I was in flats.

This year was my first (and god willing the creek don’t rise, not my last) Southern Comfort Conference. I spent the better part of a full week en Femme amongst a massive gathering of TG’s of all sorts, their partners and better than expected grub. Here I was able to lay to rest the last of my fears of Cross Dressing. I came away from SCC more certain of who I am than I was when I first suited up. The first post on the event is here, and more followed. If you have not attended a conference accommodative of your place on the gender expression continuum, do so. Get thee to a funnery, and soon. Let me know if I will see you at SCC 2011.

To round out the list, I still get a kick out of the impulse I followed quite without thinking in Macy’s just after wriggling into the embrace of a great new dress. I did not have to go and stand so brazenly in front of the 3 way mirror. I did not have to turn 360, smooth my contours and strike a pose. I did not have to stop and face the husbands and boyfriends sadly deposited in the soft couches just outside the fitting rooms, turn slowly on heel and vanish, but dammit, I did. A hush descended, and for a brief moment I held the magical power that all women possess at some level. Who could not respect, and not want this power?

Feeling that power, in some measure, is the dividend of our transformations and explorations. It is intoxicating. The intoxication is a feeling I seek, and a feeling that frightened once, but frightens no more. To borrow the parlance of the Heroin enthusiast, I chased the Dragon full of the knowledge that the Dragon might swallow me whole. The Dragon did not. We cohabitate. My parts feel integral. I am without doubt as to who I am inside, and more convinced than ever that my biology (for lack of a better word) is sound.

I wondered for years whether, if I had the opportunity to roam freely en Femme, I would realize a need to change the biology. As it happens, the need is not there, my assignment is correct, and adequate to a very happy and full life. A life made more happy and full by the warm embrace extended to, and granted by, Petra.

Next up, in this continuing Five for ’10 series, five memorable shopping moments. Deep discounts and shallow breaths, great fashion fortune without (much) loss of fortune.

O, and while I remember, do have a Happy New Year.

Five for ’10. A Look Back Blogwise

2010-12-30T07:08:00.009-05:00

It is a well accepted convention in the worlds of media, journalism and here too in the treacherous mountain passes of Blogistan to pause for a moment in late December, and look back over the year. I will vary only slightly from the convention in so far as I will pause for a moment, then flick my hair over my shoulder and put one hand on hip, before looking back.

Now, where the hell was I?

Ah, yes, Dear Reader, in the spirit of providing you with a retrospective view of what I feel to be some of the highlights of this years fun and games here at Voyages en Rose, and furthermore with the view of saving me the heavy lifting of actually writing something new of value, I present the following posts for your grazing and mulching pleasure.

I have pulled these stalks from the stubble field of the past year because I quite like the writing and thinking in them. I think they either have a smart observation or two, or are simply well executed works of word-smithing. Perhaps even both.

In The Cross Dresser on the Ramparts of Change I take a big old swing at placing my personal habits in the context of the ongoing sexual/societal revolution that has been a pretty constant feature of my nearly half-century life.

I wrote Things I like. Perhaps you do too for an audience not interested in matters of gender, presentation and the like. I had a guest post up on Miss Neira’s fashion blog that I expected would drive a little traffic here, traffic that was unfamiliar with matters familiar to you and I. This piece was intended to establish some common ground between me and new visitors. I think it did, and happily, I made a couple of new friends in the process.

I built a metaphor for Cross Dressing Character and exposed it to a sustained blast of 12 g-forces that surprisingly did not shatter its constituent letters and splatter the authors face with goo. That the metaphor is stolen from Shakespeare particularly tickles the author. The author will now stop referring to herself in the 3rd person.

Next up, 5 (un) Easy Pieces is a big departure for me, and an attempt at a structured, poetic exploration of my own long, troubled and really, only recently easy life of Cross Dressing. I am happy with the finished piece, but remember the making, editing and polishing process as some of the most involved, demanding, time evaporating and rewarding moments of my life. Very proud of the piece still.

Lastly, may I commend to you a 2 piece suite that goes to the core of “why”, or at least a part, a knowable part of the why I do as I do themed “The Art of Cross Dressing". (Part 1 and Part 2). The Rubik's Cube is not fully solved, but I do have the pink side pretty much fixed up.

All of this stuff is fairly ponderous. It is the stuff that happens in my cerebral precincts. There is more to life though than the life of the mind though. My next Five for ’10 list will feature the most memorable moments, out in the big wide open, en Femme, amongst friends and the unsuspecting both. The visceral stuff. I am going to have a lot of fun rebuilding those moments in my mind, and look forward to sharing them over the next couple of days.

Thanks, and thanks eternally for your many visits here. You make the writing worthwhile. This I value greatly.

Happy New Year.

Crossing T’s

2010-12-27T13:07:00.009-05:00

Here we are at the start of a lower case “t” transitional week, the strange time betwixt holidays high and a new year nigh.

Christmas was lovely and white here in Dixie, a light blanket of snow lays still on the ground. Enough of the stuff to make a displaced northerner feel nostalgia, but not so much as to make travel a travail or render high heels impractical. For those of you presently ploughed under in the North East, or perhaps recently liberated from a miserable airport in Europe, I hope you are warm at home, or wherever you planned on being.

The big day was quiet and enjoyable Chez Bellejambes, although I must confess that I earned a few Cross Dresser Demerit points with the gift giving. The big hamper of things I picked up for Mrs. B certainly had all the color, cache and cut characteristics desired, but I was positively spastic on sizing. I am a little ashamed, really, someone with my eye and experience should do a little better. We will therefore sally back into the mall melee sometime this week to remedy things. It stings a bit, you know.

General busy-ness with the holidays have kept me away from the blog too, and also from activities that would create compelling new stories to share with you. I did keep a little busy following the ongoing series of guest posts at T-Central featuring the perspective of Cross Dressers and their loved ones. Following my own post, old friends and new names Sally, Aeify, Alice, the indispensable Stana, and most recently from The Wife, of The Cross Dressers Wife fame, all published great efforts. I believe there are another couple of essays yet to come in this series, which I look forward to as much as I enjoyed the warm, welcoming, inclusive and positive tone of the earlier posts.

Going by the comments the essays spawned, it would be fair to say that a few T’s were crossed though. My word, but things got a little heated. If you did not follow along, go spend some time while you have it. Passion is something that is not lacking under our big tent. Strongly held opinions neither. I stayed away from the fracas in part because life is short, but also because of other demands on my time.

Par example, my budding fashion journalistic career. There are a few new posts up at my other home, Guilty Pleasures, which is a lingerie blog for the more mainstream (i.e. non-part time) woman. Recent posts include a brassiere review for newish vendor Top Secret Society, some chit chat about luxury French hosiery brand Gerbe and, most recently, a roundup of Leopard print tights featuring purring entries from Hue and Wolford (ed. amateur model and critic pictured left). I can provide assurances here that none of my academic or vocational advisors ever suggested that I give this line of work a serious look. Well, none of them had my figure either, so there. This work, dear friends, is a blast and a privilege. Perhaps as well, a little cheekily, a little seditiously, these posts auger a day in the future where gender norms and standards of presentation are a little more fluid than they are today.

Other busy-ness comes from clearing the mental deck for a really new and challenging year. It is official that I am going back in to a formal workplace setting after a multi-year, pajama clad consultancy / sabbatical phase early in January. No details here other than to say that the work is something I am genuinely interested in and skilled at, that the work is with people I genuinely like, and that the work is something that I am still young and energetic enough to do well. The office is really close to some terrific shops too.

Part of the mental prep for this new undertaking will include taking stock of yet another year of integrating Petra into the whole me, and vice versa. Much of that work is done via this blog, and so figuring out the extent to which I will be able to do both the blogging and integrating in the upcoming year will occupy much of my thinking this week.

I will have fewer luxuries of time and opportunity in 2011 for the exterior life of Petra. And as much as I have had great good fortune in expanding my range in this past year, the best gains have been in the interior. I understand and love myself better here now than a year or so ago. With that said, I am going to have to be circumspect in my behavior in my newish setting. For example, it will be helpful to periodically stifle the urge to say things like “killer bag, where did you get it?” to smartly turned out clients and colleagues. A fine line exists between personality and liability and it must be walked carefully.

But you know, dear reader, that there is no on/off switch for this stuff, is there? And if there was, I am not sure I would want to fiddle with it all that much. I like the colors, textures and sounds too much. They are integral to me. Subtle adjustments to some of dials can be managed though, and I suppose must be. While I figure out how to tune things for new realities, I do hope you will tune in here time to time to see how it is all going.

I will get a Best of Petra / New Years Frockin’ Eve retrospective of the year posted up before we all turn 2011 later this week. In the meantime, thanks for your shocking, flattering and more welcome than words can render visits here to Voyages en Rose.