The Man in the Mirror

By Stef Matthews
At least once a month I sit in front of my makeup mirror and carefully apply my makeup. I apply, file and polish my nails. I squeeze my ever-widening waist into the waist nipper and wiggle into a pair of stockings and a skirt. I pull a wig over my thinning, graying hair and then perch myself on top of a pair of too-high heels. All the while never feeling any magical change - of any sort. I have never seen anything in the mirror except me. Yes, the clothes are different from my day-to-day wear, the nails are significantly longer and I am not used to being over 6 foot tall, but nothing has ever changed inside of me. I still see a man in the mirror.

In the past I have spouted all of the "standard lines" like, "I'm very comfortable dressed like this." (Who the hell can be comfortable in 5" heels?) "This helps me to relax" (If you're so relaxed then why are you so nervous, wired and jumpy?) "I need to express my feminine side." (If that was so then why aren't there any noticeable personality changes when you pretend to be Stef?) These are all questions that have bothered me about me. To this day I can't adequately describe to anyone, let alone myself, why I am transgendered. No more than I can explain why I like chocolate ice cream better than vanilla. I just do. I don't "feel" any different dressed as a woman than I do dressed as a man. Regardless of my clothing at any particular point in time I still smoke my cigarettes like a woman, drink beer like a man, cross my legs like a woman and think and talk like a man. When I look in the mirror after my two hour ordeal of getting made up I do see a physical external difference but I don't see (or feel) a metaphysical internal difference.

For me, there is one notable exception to this rule. Like most crossdressers, I tend to have an indescribable fascination with photographs of myself while dressed. I feel a strange detachment from these photos. I don't feel as if I'm looking at me. I know logically and emotionally that they are pictures of me, but I just don't see it. It's kind of like when you hear your voice on a tape recording and you can't believe that it's your voice. You could swear somebody dubbed in another voice. That's the feeling I get when I look at photos of Stef, that can't be me. This is the only time that I don't really see a man, it's the only time that I can honestly see a woman.

There was a point in my life, not too long ago, where I began to really question why I was transgendered. Not the age old, "Why am I like this?", because there isn't a person on this earth that can answer that question definitively (at least an answer that I believe applies to me), and I have not been able to answer this question myself.

(A little side bar here. During my first TG convention, Gala Ball 1994, several of us girls were sitting in my room after the big Saturday night dinner. I had taken off my dress and hair and was sitting on my bed in my robe listening to everybody talk. Suddenly "the thirst" hit me and I had to have a Diet Pepsi (oh no not again!) and as I was especially comfortable at my first event (not to mention that I wasn't feeling much pain) I decided to venture to the soda machine down the hall. I put on a pair of slippers, grabbed some quarters and headed down the hall. On my way back two young teenage boys were coming from the other end of the hall. They were probably only just barely teenagers and started laughing and looking at me as they approached. Right after they passed by me, but before I reached my room, one of them yelled back, "Hey man, why do you dress like that?"

Not being intimidated by a couple of teenage boys, I decided to try to answer them. I turned back towards them and said, "Come back here and I'll answer you."

The mouthy one said, "No way man!"

I said, "No, you asked and I want to answer, just come here so I don't have to yell." They cautiously walked back towards me.

These boys were wearing the typical preadolescent costume of the period, baseball cap on backwards, crew-cut hair, sports team jackets, baggy too-long shorts (and this was in the middle of a really cold January!) and tremendously oversized high-topped basketball shoes. Of course, the shoes weren't tied. When they got closer, but stopped at what they thought was a safe distance, I said "Do you really want an answer?"

Mr. Mouthy said, "Yeah!"

I said, "I'll answer your question if you answer one for me."

"Huh?"

"Why do you dress the way you are?", I asked.

Of course they went into immediate testosterone overload and replied with something that is best left unrelated, in writing anyway. However, I felt I had answered their question to the best of my ability. Why was my choice in clothes any less acceptable than theirs? That's all I really wanted them to understand.

Anyway, back to the story in progress...)

My dilemma didn't stem from the fact that I didn't (and probably never will) know why I am the way I am. It was caused by the let down I felt after all of the work of getting dressed. I didn't really feel any better (if I wasn't in a good mood to start with) or more relaxed or more feminine or more anything. I often felt this way after getting dressed, going upstairs and being insulted by my ex-wife. But here I was with a perfectly accepting partner, free to dress whenever and however I wanted and it didn't seem satisfying. By all accounts, in my twenty plus years of cross dressing, this was as good as it is ever going to get. And yet, I still wasn't happy.

If women are from Mars and men are from Venus, then were am I from? Or more importantly, where am I going? I have never felt (don't never say never) that I was transsexual. I don't have any notion of going full time, no dreams of having any operations concerning my birth gender and don't generally desire to spend two hours every morning getting ready and about an hour at night cleaning up after myself. I actually enjoy being Steve every bit as much as I do being Stef. So what's the point with all this transgenderness then?

I may never know the answer to these questions but at least I have a method of dealing with them now. My hero is, and always will be, Harry Chapin (what, did I just "date" myself?). In my younger years his music, songs and stories helped me understand a lot that I wouldn't have even thought about otherwise. On his first album there is a song titled "Greyhound", this is about a man who is taking a long bus journey and is eager for the end of the trip. When he arrives at the destination he feels a disappointment and then discovers that, "It's got to be the going, not the getting there that's good." In the last 10 years of my life I've realized that I've been on a journey. After all of the good and the bad things that have happened to me I often appease myself with the line: "It's got to be the going, not the getting there that's good." So even now, intellectually knowing that my life is as good as it could be, I need to remind myself that I am still on a journey and Honey, I ain't there yet!


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