The Transvestite thing.

The Transvestite Thing
This requires some explanation, not least to myself.
I dressed up a few times in women’s clothing when I was in my teens and early twenties. It was mostly for fancy dress parties. My sisters would help me and they’d really try to make me look like a girl. I remember, once, on my mum’s suggestion, using small apples for breasts. I really liked it, because I looked really good and it was a total babe magnet.
One time, when I was first at Uni, I went to a party with my sister’s sixth form friends. I wore a Victorian dress which we got through my mum’s connection with the library theatre. My sister had made an elaborate robot costume. It turned out it wasn’t a fancy dress party after all. They had just told a few hippy kids that it was, for a laugh. I snogged so many girls that night. They were all really interested in me.
I didn’t dress up as a girl all the time, but these were interesting times of hippies, glam rock, punk, electronic and new romantics. So I guess I passed my late teens and twenties looking quite effeminate. It was cool to have a splash of makeup, some dangly earrings, big hair, an off-the-shoulder blouse.
If you had asked me if I was a transvestite, then, I would have said “No.”
The next part came much later. I was in my forties. I was a grown man. I was working part-time, in the second hand book trade, whilst being the main carer for my kids. I got a chance to take a stall to a festival. It was a chance for time off from the kids, as much as anything, a bit of “me time”. I deserved it really, I’d been suffering from depression and quite a few bad things had happened in my life. Everybody seemed to agree that it would be a good experience, so I went. It was pretty boring. I was tied to the stall nearly all the time and everybody else seemed to be having a party. I did get to meet some nice people, but I had quite a restricted view. Across the road from me, there was a shop selling Indian dresses for a tenner.
If it hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gone looking for it and it wasn’t as if I felt a mystical pull, or anything. It was pretty much that it was the only interesting thing that I could do. I bought a dress and wore it to work the stall. I wasn’t going for looking glam, or anything. I was going for the comedy man-in –a-dress look. I felt it was getting into the spirit.
It was a good move, basically. People were nicer to me and hung began to hang out. Some young girls came by and offered to do my nails for a quid. It was really nice, because they were taking it all very seriously. They were learning a skill which was connected with their identity as girls. I think it was good for them to do a man’s nails, because they were confident about being more experienced than me. They had a whole little kit with glitter and sequins and stuff and they really went to town.
It kind of went on from there. People came by and gave me little accessories. Two women I knew from home came and finished the job by doing my hair and make-up. But here’s the thing. They didn’t really dress me up as a woman, they dressed me up as me. I had a little goatee beard, for one thing. I didn’t look like a woman. I just looked pretty.
Later on, I shut up the stall and we went dancing. I really love dancing. I’m not inhibited about it at the best of times, but the clothes made it a different experience. Maybe it is because you look outrageous, you feel you can be outrageous. But, really, I think it is to do with femininity. There are moves I wanted to make which worked much better with this feminine statement going on. Also, I was with a couple of girls who also enjoyed dancing and it was a shared thing. If I had been dancing as a man, I would have been somehow dancing against them, but here I was truly dancing with them.
Here’s an interesting thing. We were just having fun and fooling about. It was a glorious thing and we didn’t need anybody except for ourselves, but I also think we were doing it for attention. Really I can only speak for myself. I was just grateful to have some friends and go out and party and everything I did was just to relish and enjoy life. I didn’t set off looking for attention, or not in any conscious way. But I did like it when it happened and I think the girls did, too. Really we were just dancing in a bubble and I really felt more myself than I had felt in a long time.
But the last part of the evening was a lot of fun, too. Because we met a lot of nice people and got to treat them very badly. It felt like we were fending them off, but we also really encouraged them. We ended up asking them to show us their arses. It is amazing how many of them did (more than 20, at a guess). I really think that was one of the most enjoyable times of my life. I have never laughed so much, nor experienced such comradeship. Maybe I’m weird, but it beats a night out with the lads for me.
So. Nothing happened. Tomorrow was just another day.
But I went back to the festival the next year and the Saturday night was branded the “Camp Ball” and cross dressing was encouraged. I went to some Oxfam shops and got a little gold thing, with a hoop neck. I’ve got the figure for it. It was a tube, very clingy, with no back on it almost to the arse. It went with a male figure, emphasised it really, but it had a feminine statement. It was a bit slutty but it was party wear. I wasn’t representing woman kind and I wasn’t pretending to be a woman. I wore a wig with it, though.
I had a new job by then and my boss came to the festival as well. She took a photograph of me and pinned it on a notice board where all my customers would see it. This is how I became a transvestite.
Nobody was ever unkind to me about that photograph, although I did get some unkindness over another, which was published in a book. Maybe they had a point. It was a recipe book. But I became famous as a transvestite and so I stand with my transvestite sisters.
The thing is that I continue to be amazed at the kindness and understanding my customers showed me over my transvestism and I unashamedly exploited it to make them confront other prejudices. If they could accept that somebody like me could be a decent person, then maybe they would be more willing to accept other differences. I think it worked.
But that isn’t really the whole of it, is it? It is about sexual identity and I never found that particularly easy. I have found it difficult to be a man. Many things about me are not typical of my sex, including my image of what I should look like. At the same time, I enjoy being male, in many ways, and I don’t see why I should have to be “in a box” just because I have a penis.
Fuck it, I don’t know. But can’t you see that I am striving to be the best human being that I possibly can? Yes, I know you can. Thank you. It means everything.