On the Other Side

In the Beginning...

By Kim Seabury

Initially, I dressed as a girl because I could. My fantasy life was quite vivid and it expressed it self quite clearly in my love for fashion. Feminity emerges in an number of ways and it evolves over time. I remember the incredible high I would get from trying on feminine dresses of all types. It became an obsession and I remember thinking that I was as cute as any girl in school.

I had my first innocent experience with a boy when I was 14, I remember it as if it just happened only days ago. If I may be so vain, he was one of the better looking guys I had seen. He was about 16, and had a and very strong athletic look to him. I was dressed in jeans and a feminine t-shirt, with my face made up, when I noticed him and his friends down the mall corridor. I didn't think anything of it and turned to walk down the opposite way, when I saw him, out of the corner of my eye, pointing me out to his friends. Reading his lips, he said something to the effect that he thought I was cute. It looked like his friends agreed, wholeheartedly. I could see it in their faces as they nodded their heads.

This single experience was to change my life forever. Up to that point, dressing like a girl was just something fun to do. I had never really thought of guys as being sexy. Quite the contrary, I loved women and every thing about them, so much so, it seemed I wanted to look like them. But here was a guy, who could have obviously had any girl he wanted, pointing me out as if he thought I was cute -- it sent shivers up my spine. I was reluctant to explore those feelings at first, but it seemed that I wanted him to think I was cute. It gave me a fleeting moment of self-confidence that I had not had for some time.

As a boy, I'm sure that this guy would not have wanted anything to do with me. Guys like him were complete jerks and I hated them for it. But here he was, someone that embodied all that I hated, acting as if I held a spell over him. Needless to say, it was a powerful feeling.

I didn't dress up as a girl for about a month after that, primarily because I knew that I wanted to so badly. For reasons unknown to me at the time, I knew that if I continued to sneak around dressed as a girl, I would not want to quit.

It wasn't long before beautiful women in magazines that I had been initially drawn to were becoming my emotional rivals. I remember getting jealous by other girls at school that I thought were prettier than I was.

The feeling was way too strong. I had to try dressing up as a girl just one more time -- it had been much to much fun to just stop like that. I told myself that I was going to let myself do it just once more and that was going to be it.

I had this image of the women that I wanted to look like. I just didn't want to look like a regular school girl, which I normally dressed like, but I wanted to look like an upper classman, maybe even a junior or senior.

I had become pretty good at sneaking around and had aquired, with the intention of returning, a very pretty summer dress, that I had yet to wear. It would work fine. I shaved my legs, polished my nails, put on a sexy fragrence and left my mother's mobile home thinking I was a "pretty young thing". I told myself that I wasn't going to enjoy it too much as this would be my last time. I walked over to the mall, which was just down the street, and began, what proved to be in retrospect, a very interesting day.

I had never been to the mall in a dress before, as I had always gone over as a girl in jeans. In fact, I had never gone out in public in a dress. In any event, I was confident that no one would recognize me as being a boy, but there was something different about being in a dress. It was very exciting -- fortunately, I wore flats, as I was high as a kite.

I'm not sure what I tried to accomplish really, I just wanted to walk around and have people look at me. I was very shallow then, to be sure.

Walking around, It didn't take long for me lose myself in the crowd. More than a few times, I would notice as some middle aged guy would give me the head-to-toe scan. Of course I pretended not to notice, but I loved it. Almost immediately I had forgotten that this would be would be last time.