It's easy! Submit your copy by e-mailing it to Cindy Martin here at TGF. Hope to hear from YOU! Over the last year and a few months I've "come-out" twice. Once to me and once to my wife. Of the two, by far the greatest anguish was wrapped up in the first, the greatest joy has come from the second. My story is typical. Between the time I was 9 and 13 years old I spent months at a time living with my grandparents. Because of a kidney operation, and then heart condition, most of that time, for medical reasons, I was confined to the house if not the bed. Before and after bathing, I would rummage through the clothes hamper in her bathroom. I can still remember the pleasure I felt when I pressed some of my grandmother's under clothes against my body. I was always happy to find her panties or my favorite, a girdle, even though they fit me like short pants because they were bigger than my skinny body. At night, I would wait until everyone else was glued to the TV, and then creep into her bedroom, find a panty girdle, put it on, then streak back into bed. I would just lie under the sheets, moving my hips, enjoying the smoothness on my legs and tummy. During one of my raids I was discovered! What are you doing? She asked. "I like the way they feel" was my sheepish reply. "Just don't soil them" was her response and she went back into the TV room. After that, every night I would wear one to sleep in. I remember that I didn't like the one without legs because my "things" would hangout. How I wished that I could always wear the soft, smooth things that girls wore. But this was the 50s and boys were supposed to become men to keep America Safe! In my teens, I had yet another year confined to bed rest, but by this time I had to remain at my parents home so that I wouldn't fall too far behind in school. I would make occasional raids on my mothers things, but they never seemed to hold my attention. Fast forward ten years. I had married the only woman who really interested me in high school. She and I were starting life together and finishing college; she wanted to become a secondary school band director, and I bounced from major to major until I stuck to computer science. It wasn't until I was in my second computer job, and her third school band, that my shameful desires to wear women's under things resurfaced. I was a terrible judge of sizes, and/ or ashamed to get something that the sales person might think was for me, so I went through a series purchases and purges. After 15 years, we divorced. Looking back on it now I sometimes wonder if we couldn't have worked something out if only we had known then what we know now. It turns out that she is a lesbian, and that marrying me had been an attempt at being "normal" yet at that time I didn't even know what a transvestite was, much less what my feelings and desires meant. It's ironic, she could have been the male, and I the female. Talk about your role reversals. It wasn't to be. We were more like room-mates that husband and wife. "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, what a fine Christmas we'd all have" (Don Meredith, Monday Night Football). Over 15 years ago a woman came into my computer store the first Saturday it was open. She was interested in having someone come give a talk about the micro computer to a college class she was teaching. I fell in love with her within minutes of meeting her. We worked on projects together for a year before starting to date, then two years later we were married. I remember that she found my panty hose when we were moving my things into our first apartment. I made a feeble excuse that I used them when I would go hunting in the winter. I thought that our love, commitment, and pleasure in each other would "cure" me of my perversion. It didn't. What was worse, some of her clothes fit me. This time I could buy things my size. What a warped person I was becoming. I was determined not to hold anything from my wonderful wife, yet I couldn't talk of this shameful need to wear female clothes. I am responsible for bringing the Internet into my organization. I got us connected in 1991. That was when spiders still held the trademark on the term Web. In the fall of 1995 I went looking for the term "transvestites" on the Web, and found TGF and Susan's Place. I read and read and read. For the first time I was able to "talk" to someone who had the same feelings as I did, who had had the same type of experiences as I have. I wasn't "the-only-one-in-the-world". Although I'm a stoic Capricorn, I have a sense of humor and world-view that is about three clicks out of phase with most everyone else. Tears have always been just under the surface of my manly fasade. It doesn't matter if something is joyous or tragic, I choke-up, I have to hide the tear tracks. Up to now, my most successful work had been done for a female manager in a department were I was the only male. I've always found that it was better to listen to others and talk things out, to compromise, rather than the my-way-or-the-highway attitude of the corporate male. I figured that this was another manifestation of my weirdness. But what am I? How did I fit into the T* continuum? I read and talked and read and talked. I begin to examine, to really take a look at what I feel, what I know deep down inside. When I added my femaleness into the equation, the things that I discovered on the Net let me began to make sense of who I am. Early in my readings on the Net I came across the Tri-Ess Web pages (http://www.firstnethou.com/brenda/tri-ess.htm) and the crossdressers'10 commandments. I realized that if I was honest with myself, I had to leave her things alone and begin to shop for and buy my own. I saw the pictures of the T* ladies on the Web. I chatted with some of them and their SO's, I read all the how-tos. I bought my own clothes, wigs, and makeup. What would I see in the mirror when I got dressed up? It has been more than a year sense I admitted to myself that I am a Transvestite. I haven't had any desire to commit mass mayhem. I have been able to allow the woman within to be part of my daily life. I've been "underdressing" in panties, hose and occasionally a camisole for almost all of that time. I know that several times my wife saw me in pantyhose. This January (1997) things came to a head. We didn't have "THE TALK", rather we've had a series of small talks. Her first words, as well as mine reaffirmed our mutual love, desire to be together, and need for each other's support and understanding. The first step was my admission that I regularly wear panties and hose. I told her that from the time I was a child I had felt a need to wear women's clothes. She said that "she wasn't ready to see me in a dress" and I said "OK, but I would like her help with my dressing." So now the weekly wash has duplicate bags of hose and a folded stack of her panties and mine. My first "dress" is a unisex cotton gown she bought for me to wear to bed. Just this week (end of March) I've given her copies of "Coping With Crossdressing" and "My Husband Wears My Clothes" to read. Slow small steps are what long journeys are made of. It is difficult to hold back my desire to say to her, "See, this is what I've figured out about me. I'm not unique. I'm not the only one who is like this. It's OK to be this way. It explains a lot about who I am." However it has taken me a year to come to the point of being at peace with myself. I can shorten my wife's journey of discovery, but I must not rush it. I now wait for the next step. I believe that we are given opportunities to grow all through our lives, however until we are ready for a particular lesson we can't learn what it has to offer. Julie H. a work in progress. |
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