No More Closets

I was in the closet for a very long time.

Although my interests in feminine things go back to my earliest memories, I did not take up crossdressing until I was 12-years-old. But once I began, I crossdressed at every opportunity, typically whenever I found myself alone at home.

When I was 19, I reached my tipping point and had to let Stana out of the closet. So I dressed en femme on Halloween despite the fact that I had nowhere to go. Unlike today, where there is a Halloween event everywhere you turn, back in the late-1970s, there was not much Halloween-wise for a young adult. I had not been invited to any Halloween parties (I didn't even know of any Halloween parties) and I was too young to go to any bar that might be celebrating Halloween. So, Mom let her “daughter” borrow the car and I visited some friends and relatives to “trick or treat.” (How desperate is that?)

Post-Halloween, I was back in the closet honing my femulating skills while waiting for next year’s Halloween party invitations. I never went out en femme to trick or treat again, but I did get a few party invitations over the years. 

I always attended the parties dressed as a woman, not as a woman wearing a woman’s costume. Invariably, some party-goer would wonder why I wasn’t wearing a costume and I would explain to their astonishment that I was in costume. Post-Halloween, I would be back in the closet again, but at least I realized that all the practice in the closet was not for naught.

Online (via CompuServe’s Genderline), I discovered and joined a local support group in the early 1980s. Now, I was able to get out of the house en femme on days besides the last day of months beginning with the letter O. I attended meetings once or twice per month, always dressing at home and driving to the meeting hall 25 miles away. 

On occasion, the support group sponsored outings – usually dinners at local restaurants, which sheltered us in a private room so we would not to mix with the civilians. I always attended, but being a rebel, I made a point of using the public ladies’ restroom instead of the private restroom that had been assigned to us.

I wanted more and began attending trans conventions, which gave me the opportunity to have the run of a whole hotel for a long weekend en femme. But I realized that I was still in the closet. I just had more closet-space: in my home, in my support group’s meeting places and in trans convention hotels.

I still wanted more, so I became a little more adventurous. On my way to support group meetings, I would stop off to buy a refreshment at a convenience store or fast food joint. Amazingly, no one seemed to notice or care that I was en femme. I was passing or at least, I was accepted and that emboldened me to do more. 

It took 55 years, but I finally summoned up enough courage to go out in public en femme. I decided to make that leap by going to the mall. I dressed en femme, drove to the mall, arrived just as it opened and sat in my car for a half hour trying to muster the courage to exit the car and walk across the parking lot to the mall entrance.

I finally pushed myself and did it and spent the better part of day at the mall having the time of my life. Some people read me, but it was not the end of the world and once I got a taste of the world en femme, I wanted more. 

Subsequently, I picked my days and spent them en femme, shopping, dining, being entertained, enjoying the arts, etc., etc. and I loved it, doing what other women did when they were out.

It all felt so natural to me. I was always feminine. As I have written here before, I was not a female trapped in a male body, rather I was me trapped by society’s expectations of what a male was supposed to be. The “problem” was that I preferred to fulfill society’s expectations of what a woman was supposed to be. 

Finally, I realized I was a woman, who happened to have a male body, but I was not going to let that little handicap hinder me from being the best woman I could be.

And so it goes.

Cavet Emptor: Today’s post originally appeared here in 2011. I rewrote it and reposted it in 2015 and I rewrote it once again and reposted it today.

Wearing father and son outfits from Boston Proper

Mark McKinney femulating in The Kids in the Hall’s 1996 film Brain Candy.
You can view the film on YouTube.