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| Image from Clarke Sanders on UnSplash. |
Doing the Christmas shopping shuffle as a transgender woman, often takes a lot of courage and confidence to do it.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have written about my
holiday adventures leading up to the big day. From taking a short trip to
Clifton Mill to view their extensive, festive lighting display all the way to letting
two men load my heavy purchase for me at an Oak furniture store, I stretched the
boundaries of what I was used to as a new cross dresser or trans woman in
public. After it was all said and done, even though I was terrified most of the
time, I was happy I tried it all. I came out of doing the Christmas shuffle
with much more confidence in my girl self than I had going into the season.
In fact, as I have written before, Christmas quickly
outpaced Halloween as my favorite holiday. Why? There were several factors,
such as the length of the season and the creativity I could put into
celebrating it. Plus, for once, I was doing good for others by buying gifts for
them as I shopped. I positively loved it and wondered where the experience had
been most of my life.
If you are a procrastinator and last-minute gift shopper
like I was, doing the Christmas shuffle as a transgender woman is ideal for
you. As you can get lost in the crowds quite easily and no one pays attention
to a single woman out doing her late shopping. Custom made for you to do your
shuffle and head back home.
I was fortunate when my second wife left her bookkeeping job
and took a managerial position at a large bookstore chain. So, at Christmas,
she was very busy and worked many hours. It was easy for me to schedule my
hours around hers, so I had plenty of time to get out of the house and do gift
shopping. I could obsess on wearing just the right outfit to blend in with a
busy world and at the same time, search for just the right gift. Along the way
also, I could stop in and grab a bite to eat at a restaurant and again stretch my
ability to deal one on one with the world as a transfeminine person. Yet
another reason, I came to prefer Christmas over Halloween because I hoped I was
not perceived as a man wearing a costume, or worse yet some sort of drag queen.
As the big day approached, the sky was the limit for me. I
did my shuffle as much as finances allowed and stockpiled my gifts for my special
night where I stayed home with some high-powered eggnog and wrapped my treasures
to go under the tree if they would fit. Of course, my wife was close to being a
professional gift wrapper and I was just the opposite. But as the eggnog kicked
in, I did not care, and besides it was the thought that counted. Right?
Finally, the big day arrived and I was shuffled out. Plus,
we had family connections to visit all day on Christmas day. My thoughts for
once were in other places than doing my precious shuffle which I had learned so
much from. After the day wound down and my wife and I were alone, we opened the
final gifts from each other. Which included a gift for my feminine self. I will
forever remember a nice fancy fuzzy baby blue sweater she gifted me. It was
snug fitting and I filled it out nicely with my new silicone breast forms I received
from a cross-dresser acquaintance of mine who was purging. Naturally, that part
of our gift giving day was the part of the day which was the most anticipated
for me. I was like a little kid, brimming with anticipation.
Every year after the intense transgender Christmas shuffle
was over, I had the chance to sit back and reflect on all my experiences and
what they meant. Without hesitation, I think the confidence I built up from
going out in the world as my trans self was the most important aspect of what
happened to me. I learned what it meant to blend in with ciswomen around me and
survive better than I ever could before. I also discovered the vast majority of
the world did not and does not care about having a transgender person in their
midst. The biggest difference is that back then, we did not have a Russian asset
in the White House leading his blind, spineless party into demonizing a small
portion of the population. Back then, I was merely a curiosity to many people,
especially ciswomen.
When my second wife passed away, the need to do the major
Christmas shuffle went with her too. The only blood family I had left was a
brother and a daughter to worry about at all during the holidays. When I came
out to them, I was roundly rejected by my brother and completely accepted by my
daughter and her family. So, I broke even and even did better when I considered
the relationship, I was able to build up with my daughter, son-in-law and three
grandchildren. I won the family coming out shuffle in a big way.
Even still, sometimes I miss the hustle and bustle of doing
the transgender Christmas shuffle as over the years, I have gone nearly the
entire direction in the other way. It is hard to say what I miss most but it probably having the
financial resources to buy basically as many gifts as I could afford might be
it. Maybe it all came from having a
guilty conscience from sneaking out of our house to join the world as my authentic
true self instead of my old boring male self and breaking the pledge, I gave my
wife that I never would.
Whatever the case, I was extremely selfish and was a contradiction
when I did it to buy gifts for others. I guess it fit in with the whole contradiction
I felt from my deep-set gender dysphoria to begin with. I dealt with it all the
best I could, did my Christmas gender shuffle and moved on with my life making
the most of it.
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