First Impressions

 

Picnic Photo, Liz on Right

Following up on my Halloween post from yesterday, I began to think of all the first impressions I noticed when I first went out in public as my cross dressed feminine self.

My biggest takeaway from the experiences came when I was interacting with men I knew. Nearly immediately I felt a rejection as if I had been excluded from the male club. Later in life, I would figure out I was just experiencing a loss of my male privileges. The better I presented as a trans woman, the quicker my male life went away. When I did, I learned I needed to live my public life with a perceived loss of intelligence and personal security among other things. I just didn't realize in those early days of public interaction exactly what I was experiencing. 

Along the way I also learned how the power of first impressions changes between the binary genders. Men seemed to concentrate on sizing other men up as more or less another threat while women were more accepting. To this day, I need to adjust to smiling first when I meet another woman and not to walk around with what is left of my old male scowl on my face. The problem I have is pre-judging the reaction someone else is going to have to me. You would think by now I would not be so affected by my thoughts anymore but I am. Most likely my thoughts still come from when I first started meeting up with the public. Halloween or not.

First impressions also involve how much confidence you have in yourself. When you can summon the courage to know without a doubt you are in the right place at the right time leads others to believe you are too. In her own way, my wife Liz encourages me to step forward as a confident transgender woman when we are interacting with the public in places such as restaurants. Even so, confidence in public can be a very fragile thing as I found out very early. Even when I was going out under the cover of having a Halloween "costume." 

The more parties I went to, the better I became at refining my outfits. I wanted to try my best to be mistaken for a genetic or cis-woman and not myself. The good news was it actually worked on occasion and the bad news was I needed to wait another year before I could build on my experiences and discover if I could really be able to ever live out in the world as a trans woman. Spoiler alert, I could but the process was to be a very difficult one for me. 

The first problem I had was figuring out which wardrobe I could choose to hide my testosterone poisoned male body. I started the process by losing nearly fifty pounds and finished by undertaking HRT or hormone replacement therapy. When I did, more and more I was pushed out of my old male comfort zone and into a new and sometimes terrifying feminine world. I had to learn all over again the power of first impressions and how to deal with people. 

For the most part, my life experiences now have been positive ones. The problem people I run into often have a negative world of their own which has nothing at all to do with me. I am merely invading their space. 

It is the best I can do!  

The Power of Halloween

 

Image from Danie Franco
on UnSplash

During my life of realizing how deeply my gender issues went, the more important Halloween parties became to me. 

I could say going to Halloween parties dressed as a woman began innocently enough. All I really wanted to do was go out and feel the thrill of wearing a short dress with freshly shaven legs and new silky panty hose. Little did I know, I would experience so much more as the years went by.

My first "costumes" were simply trying to dress as trashy as I could, trying my best to "thrill" my friends into thinking I could be an attractive woman. It turned out to be a process I would go through for Halloweens to come. Dressing to thrill just wasn't enough, dressing to be mistaken for a woman became my goal. 

Even still, my first Halloween party when I seriously dressed as a woman was a memorable one from several different reasons. Ironically, the party happened when I was in the Army stationed in Germany. I was fortunate when I was assigned to work at the AFN (American Forces Radio and TV Europe). Naturally, compared to others with more strictly military duties. I also managed to live in a separate barracks with others assigned to a medical commissary. We had it easy. 

When Halloween rolled around, the people in the medical group decided to have a big party and it was my big chance to put two years of being cross dressing frustrated behind me. Finally I had the opportunity to cross dress again if only I could find the clothes and makeup I needed to look the part, Since it has been so many years ago, 1975, I don't really remember how I came up with all the necessities I  needed to dress as a prostitute but I did. Short mini dress, high heels and long blond wig completed my outfit and to the party I went. I ended up having a great time, which included too much German beer and Jägermeister. Through it all, I remember all the prying hands I needed to fend off from places they should not have been.

The big question I had was, did I do too good of an effort to be attractive? I always considered shaved legs was the deciding point between someone who casually dressed as a woman for Halloween and someone else who was way too serious. Plus, I still had to keep in mind, I still had a year to go in the Army and I did not want to lose my chance for a honorable discharge if someone looked at my "costume" and decided it was too gay. 

It turned out not to matter anyhow. A couple weeks later when my group of three close friends and I got together for dinner (and beer) I ended up being indirectly asked how serious I was about looking like a woman. I blurted out very serious and that I was a transvestite. The first time I had admitted it to anyone. As free as I felt at the moment, putting myself out there could have been potentially very harmful to me as I tried to finish my military service. Fortunately nothing ever came of my letting others in to my "secret" and I served out my time with an honorable discharge. 

From then on, I couldn't wait for my next chance to leave the mirror behind and express my feminine self in the world. Sadly, the only time I could do it was Halloween which I will have plenty of interesting posts about coming up.   

Opportunity or Challenge

Image from UnSplash

During our often long and torturous gender journeys, we often face many difficulties.

The first obstacle we face happens simply because we faced the problem of having no chance to really experience the world as a youth as the gender we really wanted to be. Transgender woman or trans man, both have to catch up with what we missed as a youth. Not being able to socialize with others as our authentic selves really would come back to haunt many of us when we first ventured out from our dark and lonely gender closets. Of course, in the case of trans women, we needed to learn the basics of makeup and wardrobe before we could seriously move forward in the world. 

In my case, moving forward meant saving my meager allowance and adding it to my paper route money (I had a rural newspaper delivery route) so I could purchase my own make up and even was able to buy my first pair of women's shoes. I learned quickly, just having the money was one thing but having the courage to spend it was another. I needed to gather my funds and courage then try to sneak out from where my Grandma lived to visit a nearby Woolworth store which featured (among other things) an intimidating section of makeup supplies. I do not  remember now how I was able to maintain any sort of composure to buy anything but I did and was able to slowly build my own small collection of makeup which I was able to hideaway from prying eyes at home.

It turned out I had faced the challenge of purchasing my own makeup and then had to face the opportunity of how to apply it. I was on my own and had no peer group to question me if I was doing it right. I only had the mirror to rely on. During this time, I only tried once to come out to a male friend of mine who was my age and was completely rejected. So back into the closet I went. The only relief I had that there was anyone remotely similar to me was another young male friend of mine who sued to dress in his mother's clothes. However, before our explorations moved ahead too far, he ended up moving a couple states away and I was alone again.

Much later in life did the challenges begin to disappear and the opportunities began to become very relevant in my life. The days were upon me when the term "transgender" was becoming widely used and more importantly I could apply the word to myself. In addition, my trips into the world became less and less anticipation and more and more realization. Step by step I was learning who the real me was and she felt so natural. 

I was able to keep my thirst for change up and kept finding ways to meet new people (primarily women) who accepted me for the trans woman I was and with them at least, they had never met and had no knowledge of my old male person at all. Challenges became fewer and fewer until it was time for me to consider taking the step and starting hormone replacement therapy or HRT. The changes in my gender hormones provided me with opportunities I had only previously dreamed of. As my skin softened and my hair grew, I was able to present a more natural version of myself to the public. 

Now I look at all my gender challenges as opportunities to grow and do better in life. I ended up living my dream and succeeding in experiencing both sides of the binary gender border. Not always fun but always satisfying. A place I never thought I never could achieve.