Stolen Car

By Paula Gaikowski

I’m from New Jersey, and of course a big Bruce Springsteen fan. I remember friends coming home from trips “down the shore” and playing the 8-track tape “Greetings from Asbury Park.” I was hooked and continued to be to this day. 

The other night alone with my earbuds, a bottle of Chablis, and about 100 Bruce songs I sat out on the deck and listened alone with my thoughts.

Back in 2008 as many of you know from reading my posts, I came out of my shell and started going out in public as Paula. Business trips took me all over the country and world. I was able to experience so many of my dreams as a woman. I attended dinners, classes, concerts, I shopped and socialized. I was able to spend 3-day weekends living as a woman. I began therapy and was able to talk about and come to terms with my transgender nature.  A bad back in 2018 grounded me and then the pandemic grounded us all.

A little know Springsteen song “Stolen Car” resonated with me the other night. It’s about someone who’s stuck in life with an unsolvable problem.  If you’re brave enough, pour yourself a cold one, grab your earbuds, and I’ll let you peek inside my head. Click the title for a video to the song.

“Stolen Car”

I met a little girl and I settled down
In a little house out on the edge of town
We got married, and swore we'd never part
Then little by little we drifted from each other's hearts

(Getting married will make this all go away, it will cure me.)

At first I thought it was just restlessness
That would fade as time went by and our love grew deep
In the end it was something more I guess
That tore us apart and made us weep

(In the end it was something more, my being transgender that caused us pain)

And I'm driving a stolen car
Down on Eldridge Avenue
Each night I wait to get caught
But I never do

(I go out as a woman, everywhere, and I become purposely careless, I’m waiting to get caught, for drastic and seismic change, but it doesn’t happen)

And I'm driving a stolen car
On a pitch black night

(I’m stealing away as a woman, taking something, I want but they say I can’t have, I am isolated with my secret, in the pitch-black night.)

And I'm telling myself I'm gonna be alright

(Someday, I’ll be a woman I’ll be alright I tell myself)

But I ride by night and I travel in fear

(I do this all-in secret, metaphorically at night, and I live everyday fearing it’s going to come crashing down.)

That in this darkness I will disappear.

(“I” being Paula my true self will be lost)

Wearing Bebe

James Brown, Nigerian femulator

Someday Funnies

Wearing Venus

Comely Todd Matlock turned heads femulating at Mt. Enterprise (Texas) High School in 1981.
Another sample from our Yearbooks Collection

Yearbooks and More

I hope you are enjoying the revived flickr Yearbooks Collection. There have been nearly one million views since the Collection went live on Monday, so it seems to be a big hit.

Since I have unlimited storage, I also posted some personal photos on flickr. They are under three categories: Stana Cosmopolite, Stana Fashionista and Stana Office Girl. I will probably add more categories in the near future.

You can access all the contents of the Femulate Image Library using the links in the blog’s sidebar (under the heading Flickr Image Library.)

Wearing Joie

Lovely Phillip Sacks struts his stuff at Downey (California) High School.
A sample from our flickr Yearbooks Collection.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Rue La La

Wade Barnes femulating at Bryant, Arkansas High School.
A sample from our flickr Yearbooks Collection.

Send in the Clowns

Not a drag queen doing outreach

I have done many outreach sessions at various colleges and universities – typically for Human Sexuality classes. Usually I was accompanied by post-op, pre-op, no-op, male-to-females and/or female-to-males – a smorgasbord of trans individuals.

I don’t know how the professors prepared their students for our appearances, but oftentimes, the students were not expecting us – especially us male-to-females. The students’ questions and comments indicated that they were expecting drag queens and not the ladies that appeared before them. It was a teachable moment and our presentation enlightened the students, who were expecting someone more flamboyant. 

What was the source of their expectations?

The source was the media’s fixation on drag queens, that is, the media’s desire to publicize drag queens with inferences that the queens represent the trans community. My guess is that in many cases, the media does not know the difference or care about the difference between the trans community and the drag community. Their only concern is publishing their story and the truth be damned.

I have nothing against drag queens doing their thing. You go, girls! But I am not a drag queen and have an issue when they are held up as an example of me. So I strongly disagree that “any news is good news” – that the publicity drag queens receive is a good thing for the trans community or me.

Wearing Agua by Agua Bendita

Femulating at Santiam High School in Mill City Oregon in 1993.
A sample from our flickr Yearbooks collection.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Intermix

Femulating at Lakeland (Florida) High School in 1988.
A sample from our flickr Yearbooks collection.

Thank You

Thank you so much for your generosity. 

Reader contributions to the Femulate Coffee Break! fund were sufficient to cover the Flickr Pro annual fee. So I subscribed to Flickr Pro and rebuilt the collection of photos that Starla Trimm culled from online high school yearbooks. The photos represent womanless school events from 1929 to the present – mostly womanless beauty pageants, Halloween festivities, gender bender days and stage productions.

The 4500+ photos are arranged by the name of the school and sorted into 26 albums, A to Z, but not X (there is also an Unknown Location folders for a handful of images whose location are not known).

There are some duplicates in the collection and I am slowly weeding them out.

Anyway, without further ado, click here to access the Yearbook albums.

And thank you again.

Revisiting Henri

Tropical storm Henri was a bust. Contrary to the weather forecasts, it never reached hurricane status and remained a tropical storm as it spent most of Sunday working its way across the Southern New England dumping just 1.8 inches of rain on my weather station. Its winds were not bad and we never lost power, although other parts of the state were not so lucky.

Wearing J.McLaughlin

Femulating at Pike-Delta-York High School in Delta, Ohio.
A sample from our flickr Yearbooks collection.

 

Henri

Tropical storm/future hurricane Henri is heading my way and is forecast to hit my neck of the woods tonight. 

Last time a hurricane hit here (in 1985), we lost power for three days. A lot has changed in the power infrastructure since then, so we may not lose power at all or the outage will be shorter. Nevertheless, my daily posts may be interrupted if we lose power. I already have a post queued up for Monday, but beyond that is in the hands of Mother Nature and our power provider.

And so it goes.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Eloquii

Elijah Wood

Clowns in Gowns

Exhibit A

Exhibit A is a photo of a group of female impersonators (professional femulators), circa 1960. Discounting the glamorous evening gowns, these ladies resemble cisgender females you might see anywhere in the early ’60s.

Exhibit B

Exhibit B is a photo of what is considered 21st Century female impersonators (drag queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race). They more resemble the clowns in Exhibit C than they do cisgender females.

Exhibit C

Is it no wonder that I have no interest in modern drag queens? They are just clowns in gowns, in my opinion. 

I especially dislike it when they appear at Pride events and the ill-informed mass media and/or civilian population mistake them as representatives of the transgender community.

Not all drag queens are clowns in gowns. There are some who are professional femulators, but it seems that the clowns in gowns are getting all the attention today. Too bad.

Wearing Joie

Bob Uecker and Rob Stone femulating on television's Mr. Belvedere.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Kay Unger

David Amaro femulating as Ceca on Slovenia’s Your Face Sounds Familiar.

You can view this femulation on YouTube.