I Walk the Line

Right, bear with me because I'm writing this with a vague impression of something in the back of my mind but no idea how to commit it into words. So this is going to be rather rambling.

Being a transvestite is bloody difficult. Correction, being a good transvestite is bloody difficult. By "good" I mean one who makes the effort, who's happy to stand up and be counted as a transvestite, and who (and this is where recently I've been failing abysmally) actually cross-dresses. The Good Transvestite walks the line, the line that divides not bothering enough and bothering far too much.

Let me reel off a few more clichés.

The Good Transvestite lives on the edge. On one side is the massed hordes of proto-trannies who never get the urge to take it any further, and on the other side are the transsexuals who want to take it all the way. But the edge is a fun and exciting place to be. Edges are always where things happen. When two environments come into contact you get turbulence, conflict, excitement... life. There are a lot of interesting people on the edge, and even more approaching it from both sides. Away from the edge you get safety and uniformity, but nothing really ever happens.

The trouble is that there, in the middle, seems to be the hardest place to stay. The Good Transvestite who crawls their way up to the edge, fighting apathy, prejudice and self-doubt to become an "out and proud" tranny, faces a big problem. There are slippery slopes in both directions, back down the way they came or onwards into the murky realms of hormones, SRS, and permanent changes of lifestyle.

The Good Transvestite knows that although they'd fantasised occasionally about, say, having a proper set of boobs, they wouldn't be doing it for the right reasons and the novelty would wear off in a few hours, so they hold back. The craving for the "next big hit" (buying girls clothes, going out dressed, passing in public, whatever) has fuelled them all the way to the crest of the edge, so stopping before they go too far down the other slope can be hard.

Before I suffer the wrath of transsexuals angry that I'm implying they're just bad transvestites who couldn't give up on the "next big hit", let me qualify what I'm saying. I think that most transsexuals have a genuine need to do what they do, and you can tell by the huge sacrifices they've made with families, careers, etc.

And also, trannies that shade further down the transsexual spectrum face problems walking their own "line". The medical, legal and social structures in place in this country and elsewhere have great difficultly seeing any shades between "male" and "female". The transgendered person who wants to live a lifestyle somewhere after "man" but before "woman" faces huge difficulties from a society who wants to push them into one of the two available boxes.

But back to the point I was trying to make, and (rather predictably) it's all about me. I "walked the line" for a while, lived on the edge and sampled all the delights that were available there. But then I had to choose: fight extra hard to stay there or fall to the side. Falling "forward" never was an option, because I'm 100% sure I'm not a transsexual. And staying where I was became impossible because, despite Jane's utter support and understanding, the kind of tranny I was 4 years ago just wasn't compatible with a normal happy relationship.

Also, the need to dress has gone away since I've been with Jane. Maybe because I'm with Jane, but I'm not about to test that theory.

In many ways I've "lost" the old Becky, and gone though a bit of a mourning period because of it. I miss the hedonistic pleasures that came part-and-parcel with the particular way I chose to express my tranny side and "live" through Becky.

Despite Jane trusting me implicitly (and me being committed to deserve that trust), I've not trannied solo in over a year, and only once or twice since I met Jane. Going out dressed with Jane is a lot of fun (and she enjoyed it too), but it's strangely different from the pure thrill of going out solo.

When we first met I said to Jane that my trannying was going to be my garden shed, a place where I could retreat to be away from real life for a bit. But to allow Jane to be comfortable with the shed, she had to see inside, and somehow it never seemed right to shut her out after that. And so, unwittingly, my expression of Becky became diluted.

Part of me wants to reclaim that part of my life, part of me realises how selfish that would be. Perhaps the ultimate defining characteristic of the transvestite is selfishness - we want to do these things we do to satisfy our own needs and desires - but I don't want it to define me. So I'm going to have to find a new way to be a Good Transvestite. Giving up on personal short-term pleasures for the greater lasting pleasure of a loving relationship, perhaps that's the hardest line to walk of all.