Living the Life

For all or any of us who have had the opportunity to escape our closets and pursue a dream, this story sent in by Pat to Cyrsti's Condo from Pompton Lakes, New Jersey is sure to impress. From NorthJersey.com  : 


"Pompton Lakes lost its most recognizable citizen when Roger Bowne died at 68. Roger Bowne was a well-known cross-dresser in his hometown of Pompton Lakes.

Roger Bowne was a well-known cross-dresser in his hometown of Pompton Lakes. Mr. Bowne held no office. He ran no business. His name never appeared in the local paper. He kept to himself. What he did was parade around in women’s clothing. He liked miniskirts. The shorter the better. Mr. Bowne cross-dressed in public for 30 years.

Had he lived in a bustling city, few would have thought twice about him. But when you are a 6-foot-3 man and show leg while strolling Wanaque Avenue past the diner and the store that sells bagpipes; or while trudging out of the A&P; or while flipping through a magazine at the library, people tend to notice. “Go up to anybody in Pompton Lakes and say ‘Roger,’ ” said Garry Luciani, a retired teacher and coach at the high school. “They’ll know who you’re talking about.” “He was an icon walking up and down the street all these years,” said crossing guard Carol Brautigan, who, when her children were young, had to answer the question: Mommy, why is that man wearing a dress? “We told them Roger had a family but was a little different, and they kind of understood.”

What's even more amazing about Roger and his story is he made the pages of his local paper when he passed- which evidently he was not concerned about during his life. Which makes his story all the more relevant to us all.


"Mr. Bowne’s legend peaked in 2009 when the magazine Weird N.J. featured him in a “Local Heroes” photo spread. He posed beaming in a shiny pink skirt and black top, accented by a hot-pink belt, matching scarf and bracelets. His pumps were blue. His shoulder-length hair shimmered. Pompton Lakes, a working-class town of 11,000, mostly accepted Mr. Bowne, who was a mystery in some ways. His last name wasn’t common knowledge. Nor was the fact that he was a father and a grandfather, or that he had worked as machinist."

RIP Roger! Hope you were buried in your shortest most favorite mini skirt and a smile on your face that someone else was doing your make up! Go here for more.

Transsexual Muse

"Lou Reed with Rachel"

With the passing of rock icon Lou Reed, finally bits and pieces of his transsexual inspiration Rachel are beginning to surface from sites such as Dangerous Minds :

"The source of inspiration for most of the songs on Coney Island Baby, Lou Reed’s transvestite lover and muse Rachel (Tommy) has always been somewhat of a mystery figure. In all that’s been written about Reed, Rachel is barely a footnote. Despite playing a significant romantic role in Reed’s life and even touring with him during the mid-70s, Rachel managed to keep her private life private. Even details of her death are vague. She is rumored to have died in the early 90s."

Go here for more.

Cyrsti's Condo "Horror Scope"

We "Libra's" have a dreamy "Scope" this week!

"Libra (September 23-October 22): Fall in love and forget the rest. Let yourself get lost in a fantasy and allow your creative juices to overflow from all the sappiness inside you now. If you veer off from responsibilities, whatever. You’ve hauled enough stress for the last few weeks to just let it go. Trust in this week, because if you let it happen, it’ll fall into place interestingly enough."

Sounds wonderful! Creativity, love and fantasy all rolled into one sounds positively dreamy! Excuse me while I go kick my stress to the curb!

Check out your scope here from theFrisky!

A Trans Guy's View of the Rest Room

I was pretty naive and thought for the longest time, as rest room usage goes (no pun intended), transgender women potentially have more issues than transgender guys.

I continue to think that from an emotional viewpoint we trans women do have more potential issues than trans men.  Men consider the restroom an utilitarian place and of course women attach more of a "sanctuary" tag on the room. Many times if someone has an issue of you being trans, they will draw an imaginary line at the door of a restroom and think enough is enough.

As with all transition issues, trans guys do have their own unique set of restroom problems and this morning I read a definitive answer from Trans Man Matt Kailey : 

" A reader writes: “I have read many articles about bathroom etiquette. I understand that you are not to linger around the men’s room. My question is about a situation where there is only one stall in the men’s room. What do you do when it is occupied? “You don’t just want to stand there and wait. If you wait outside of the men’s room, you look a little creepy or like you are trying to pick someone up. So what do you do when the stall is occupied and you are not comfortable or able to use the urinals?”

(Matt) " I run into this situation all the time. Sometimes I do wait – not outside the men’s room, but just hanging around inside, generally washing my hands or otherwise busying myself. However, if it looks like it’s going to be a while before the guy comes out, I generally leave and either come back later if I can wait, or try to find another restroom if I can’t. When I first started using men’s public restrooms, I learned quickly that you don’t smile at anyone, you don’t make small talk, and, for the most part, you don’t look at anyone at all. But I never did learn what the acceptable thing to do is if you need the stall and it’s occupied. So I just did what came naturally, which was hang around a little bit and see if the guy was ever going to come out, then leave and seek out someplace else if he didn’t.

 Since I wanted to get this right, I just asked a non-trans male friend about the rules. He said that he would not hang around inside the restroom if he didn’t have anything to do there. He said he thinks it would be better to hang around outside the restroom than inside, but if he needed a stall, he would try to go somewhere else or go back to his table or wherever he came from and wait for a while, then go back in. He said, “Nobody wants someone standing outside the stall tapping his foot."

Good advice! I have a couple ways for you to access this post. You can go here  or follow my regular blog links here in Cyrsti's Condo.

April Carrion

A classic beauty to start your week in style here in Crysti's Condo.  Who says Monday has to be a drag?

Cyrsti's Condo Sunday Topic :The Human Side of a Trans Elitist

Such a week kids, but then again aren't most of them?

Topping my Sunday morning list this week is being called a trans elitist, which I guess is another term for trans nazi. Those of you who read my verbage (not garbage) on a regular basis were most likely as amused as I was - or not.

For those of you who don't know,   I in no way consider myself to be any better than anyone else because they may be a cross dresser or stuck in the closet.  My goals have always been to throw out ideas to you if you are thinking about transitioning. BUT, I do consider myself a trans activist of sorts.  In this day and age, everyone is protecting their "brand" and I do believe in protecting the trans brand  and I ended up being called an elitist for doing it as once again as I protested an individual who posted cross dressing fetish videos under the transgender name.

Quickly,  the response came back that I was some sort of "elitist" because of my current lifestyle. I never could connect the dots with her that when someone mislabels and posts a trashy video it hurts me when I try to educate the public on who I am. It can be as destructive with the wrong person as Rude Paul calling us Tranny's or "Houston Ugly" who couldn't even refer to the trans woman student as Mia not Mia/Ryan.  So, I guess if all of that makes me an elitist, so be it!

Hey, can't be worse than being called "just another old guy on hormones" or how about "Cyrsti, you ignorant F--k?." Seriously though, for the amount of traffic we are beginning to see here in the Condo and as outspoken as I am on certain topics, I'm surprised I don't have more "trolls" stopping by. Then again Halloween is over. No candy for you trolls!

Speaking of the OWN show I called "Houston Ugly", it's really "Houston Beauty" I was referring to.

As I wrote in a blog post yesterday, the show features a transgender beauty named Mia (right)
Being the "elitist" that I am, I thought she came across as a serious positive messenger for the trans community -surrounded by cast of reality show clowns.  !!

"Beautiful Ohio" Native

Well, not quite.  The winner of this year's "Miss International Queen" pageant in Thailand this year is yet another gorgeous transgender beauty from Brazil.  We have featured pictures of Marcelo Ohio here in Cyrsti's Condo before but why stop a good thing?  The second picture was taken of her getting her hair straightened proving once again you have to pay the price for beauty, judging from the look on her face.

Trans Beauty in Houston

Ophra's "Own" network has a new show called "Houston Beauty".  One of the students is a transgender young woman by the name of Mia.  The show is causing more than a few ripples in the trans community because Mia is an sex escort to work her way through school.  Some are questioning the presentation again of a transgender woman in the sex industry, particularly a black one. Others of course are pointing out how tragic the situation is that selling sex is the only way out for many transgender youth.

Check out this video on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen and decide for yourself:

Come Play with Gender

A friend of mine passed this along on Facebook and I was fairly certain Crystal Veeyant's work is something many of you would be interested in. This is from her website:


"Crystal Veeyant is the nom de plume of a professional journalist and author who loves writing erotica as graphic and outre as she (?) can get away with. Her decade-plus of storytelling experience allows her to create realistic characters, situations and storylines that help her books come to life in the reader's imagination, which makes the fantasy even more intense and stay with you long after you read the last page story. She delights in telling kinky, edgy tales with shemale, transsexual, transgender and crossdresser characters. Be it sexual dominance, group sex or even pseudo incest, a story by this author is guaranteed to take the reader deeper into his or her fantasies than they ever may have imagined. If you love "gender transgressive" erotica-shemale, transsexual, transgender, crossdresser, sissy, feminization and similar tales, I invite you to explore this all-free site and see what delights await you between the pages of my books.

My books are only available in Kindle type format, but fortunately you don't need to own a Kindle reader. There are free reader applications for dozens of platforms including PC, Mac, iPad and more, plus a cloud reader that works with nearly all browsers. See the FAQ page for more information."

Go here for more.