It's October and Time for Halloween

What are your goals? To pass for friend and foe? To dress up for work? Just to slut it up and party? All of the above?

If you and new to all of this cross dressing, perhaps you have spent a ton of time thinking about those questions already. If not, here are a few hard fought lessons I learned, mostly at the expense of my feet.

Way "back in the day" during my first real Halloween in drag, essentially I learned three things. Mainly, those three or four inch heels I picked out were simply not built for any sort of comfort (for me) and very quickly I was in agony. I also learned the demarcation point in doing a "ha-ha" drag impersonation and being way more serious is shaving your legs. I did shave mine and heard about it for weeks from my cis woman friends. And finally, getting the compliment "you have great legs" does not mean you are one of the rare few men who are naturals at making the external transformation into women. You may have the great legs as many men actually do, but it's what above them that often counts with your broad shoulders.

Regardless of all the warnings, I found Halloween to be a great time to get out and "strut my stuff" at the time in my life I couldn't. Plus I could live vicariously through a couple very effeminate servers on my staff at a couple restaurants I ran. One in particular was cross dressed by his girl friend and looked so convincing, many of my regulars asked when the new female server started. I was more than a tad envious as I was dressed in my old Army uniform.

On the other hand, Halloween was similar to a huge wad of cotton candy to me. After the evening was over, I couldn't figure out how I was going to make it another year until another "fix." How I began to get around all of that is a story for another blog post but essentially marked the point when I began to test my feminine presence in the world.

Over the remainder of October I'm going to try to pass along a few of my Halloween stories. Some scary, some fun and some flat out exciting.

It's All in the Awareness?

Both my "muse" and my daughter commented on my last post, being "guarded" more as my transgender self than at any other time in my life.

Ironically both came up with similar points called awareness. I don't think it is too much of an over statement to say women need to be more aware of more things in their lives than men. I have always said women lead a more layered existence than men anyhow and when you look at a guys' power structure, it's more obvious. A man can lead with his muscle, looks, athleticism and maybe sometimes even his brain and that's it.

Women of course have much more including families, kids and yes, men themselves -trying to beat them up in record numbers. As soon as I was on HRT for any length of time, somehow the world softened for me and my senses heightened. But...

It took me several instances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time to learn being threatened as a woman was no laughing matter.

So awareness indeed is a better word and never one to use just with men. I learned the hard way when certain women would come after me with their claws hidden, sharp and headed for my back.

As I always mention, if you are testing the public waters as a transgender woman for the first time, watch for the dark alleys. Literally and figuratively!

Guarded? or Guarding?

She's "baaaaack!" from the trip to Maine and yes it was beautiful. I now refer to myself as a "Lobstah-Snobsta."

On the trip of course I ran into all kind of peeps in the group who accepted me for who I am, or quite frankly didn't. They got over it. We did meet a woman who was traveling alone whom we became close to and along the way I committed my number one sin-I outed myself to her.

My excuse is once I start adding in my two cents (or more) to a conversation about my previous life, it's tough to separate the gender aspect of it. As I was spending so much time and energy being macho. As a point of reference, she didn't seem to care much but was more surprised and had no idea. (I was flattered.)

All of this carried indirectly into a conversation with a dear friend I call my "muse" Sunday night. She asked several of us what the one word we would use to describe ourselves would be. I thought for a moment and said "guarded."

For some reason I never got back in the conversation enough to say I'm not guarded with her. With the general public though I am. I let them make the first move towards acceptance, or not and go from there.

I suppose it comes from years of early rejection before the public has become more aware of the transgender community. Aware we won't bite and have had our shots for the most part. Plus there is the minority of peeps who flat out find us interesting.

So, I just haven't gotten to the point of merging two distinct lifestyles to let my guard down totally and perhaps I never will.

Thanks though, to all who have encouraged me to do it. It means more than I can ever say!