It's now six months since my 'coming out'. And what a hell of a time its been. When I wrote my first article for this magazine, I'd been out for just a month, and had been suffering from loss of appetite, loss of concentration, and an inability to sleep. All I could think about was the next time I could get dressed up to go out again. Of course, I wasn't expecting such intense feelings to last forever - the initial romance had to wear off eventually, and anyhow, I knew that I wouldn't be able to take that kind of pace indefinitely. But I made the most of it while it lasted, and landed back on the planet after about three months.
But of course it didn't stop there - in fact, coming out was only the beginning. I soon learnt that being 'out' as a tranny is like growing up all over again. There's always another idea to put into practice, another place to go out to, another exciting experience just around the next corner. This constant search for the ultimate can be very tiring - I sometimes feel close to exhaustion, but I know there's no going back. I fear that, in my otherwise-predictable 9 to 5 world, I've become addicted to the adrenaline highs that my new life has brought with it, and I have to keep going on to bigger and better things to get bigger and better fixes; quite where it will ultimately lead is still unclear. On the other hand, I have to say that the experience of coming out has also been very rewarding: after more than thirty years, I finally feel completely at ease with my transvestism. I know that I'm lucky in this respect - many trannies never get to feel this way.
Over the past few months, I've spent some considerable time pondering the age-old question of why I and my new-found friends feel the need to dress as women. Would we still want to do it if was fully socially acceptable? What if everyone wore unisex clothes? Why do some trannies, like me, feel the need to dress up in 'sexy' clothes (whatever that means in this context), while others prefer to dress more modestly? Since most trannies are heterosexual, who are we dressing to attract, if anyone? In common with what seems like the entire population of the world, I've not yet found answers to these questions - indeed, I suspect that each tranny has his own personal set of reasons for wanting to dress up, although there are some common threads.
For instance, I've found that many of my colleagues are attracted by the sensuality of wearing unfamiliar clothes made of unfamiliar materials in unfamiliar colours, but there must be more to it than that, otherwise wouldn't most men feel that way? Mind you, society does such a good job of teaching boys to suppress their emotions, how do we know that most men don't want to wear women's clothes, but won't actually admit to it through fear of being ridiculed by their fellows? I mean, you've only got to see what happens when it becomes temporarily acceptable - the staging of The Rocky Horror Show in Ipswich a few years back might suggest that a large percentage of East Anglian men can't wait for a justifiable opportunity to parade the streets dressed in basques, stockings and high heels!
But what if it did become socially acceptable? I believe that we may not have to wait long to find out - there are signs that, following on the heels of the gay movement, transvestism is gradually gaining acceptance. In fact, I'm willing to wager that, a hundred years from now, the ludicrous categorisation of clothes, hairstyles, perfumes, jewellery, etc. into 'male' and 'female' will have been broken down, and people will be able to present themselves however they feel most comfortable. Presumably, there'll be no such thing as a transvestite, and no need for us to adopt femme names anymore. Now there's a thought!
From "Sally's Learning Curve", Beaumont Society Magazine, Vol 5 No 1 March 1997.