Patterns

Saturday morning, I stopped by my sister's apartment to drop off her Avon order and found her going through a box of stuff from my mother's apartment. (Mom died years ago, but only recently has my sister begun going through Mom's stuff.)

"Here – this is yours," my sister said to me and handed me a stuffed manilla envelope.

"What is it?" I asked.

I opened the envelope and withdrew its contents: five old dress patterns for styles from the mid- to late-1960s.

"What do you mean these are mine?" I asked.

"Mommy bought them to make dresses for you," she explained.

"Huh!"

"She even made one dress for you – this one," she said, as she pointed to one of the patterns I held in my hands.

"She was going to give it to you as a birthday gift. But then she changed her mind because she didn't want to embarrass you."

(Note that although my sister and I are very close, she does not support me much on the trans front.)

"So, she knew," I replied.

"Dad knew, too, and he talked her out of giving the dress to you."

I always suspected that my parents knew and now my suspicions were confirmed.

"Wow! What happened to the dress?" I asked.

"I have no idea," my sister replied, "Let's change the subject."

I don't know what was the next subject because my mind was still on the dress my mother made for me and how my life might have been different if I had only confided in her.

(Caveat Emptor. This is a rerun of an old Femulate post about an event I had completely forgotten about in my old age.)

Wearing Eloquii

Rob Stone femulating in a 1989 episode of television’s Mr. Belvedere. Watch it here.

Aaron Hernandez

Friday night, I watched all three episodes of Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, a Netflix documentary that examines how Aaron Hernandez went from a pro football star to a convicted killer. (I started the evening off watching The Hustle, a comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, but it was so bad that I switched to Netflix after watching about 30 minutes of the Hathaway-Wilson stinker.)

I don't usually watch documentaries or news stories about murderers, but I have some personal connections to the the Hernandez story.

Besides Hernandez being a New England Patriot and me being a Patriots fan, he lived just down the road from me, so his old stomping grounds were my stomping grounds. A friend of mine was his Little League coach and the son of another acquaintance was one of his best friends. The Hernandez family doesn't know me from Eve, but I used to encounter his brother grocery shopping of all places! That's why I watched the program.

I enjoyed seeing nearby places in the film including the grocery store where I used to run into Hernandez's brother, but otherwise, the film presented a very sad story. Besides being beaten by his abusive father, Aaron had to hide deep in the closet because he was a homosexual.

How many of us experienced life in the closet? My parents were far from abusive and never beat me, but I hid in the closet because I thought that coming out to them as trans would disappoint them to say the least.

Older and a little wiser now, I realize that my parents loved me unconditionally and that they would have been ok with my big secret. In fact, I am sure my mother knew about it and tried to meet me half way to talk about it to the day she died.

I so regret not accepting her invitation, but it was only after she passed that I realized what she was trying to do. What a dumbbell I was!

Wearing Chelsea and Walker

Femulating Paolo Ballesteros, Christian Bables and Martin del Rosario in the 2019 Filipino film The Panti Sisters