Free Form Fantasy pt. 3: Submission

If there's one thing I resent about being a crossdreamer, it's that during a lifetime of emulating women I've been forced to go it alone most of the time.  Lack of materials (clothing), resources (time, privacy, money) and experience (peer support/feedback/counseling) left me no alternative but to rely on my own limited intellect when it came to feeling out the territory.  A creative mind, like water, finds ways around obstacles in its path, even when it must deviate from it's intended course.  This is a recurring theme in nature.  In living organisms, we call it "survival instinct."

At some point, I responded to my pitiful lack of membership in a female society by seeking out women who might find the idea of dressing me as a woman appealing.  I won't try to pass this off as some personal checkpoint, since it never worked in the long run.  But that doesn't detract from the fact that submission to a woman with makeover mania has its own wing in my fantasy gallery.  I'm not alone, either.  Not at all.  A great many members of the crossdreaming culture have the same obsession, to varying degrees.

As I mentioned before, there are dozens of websites dedicated to crossdream fantasies, and in the dominance/submission category there are, again, recurring themes.  Shall I explore these now?  Yes, I shall, beginning on the "vanilla" side:

Friendly Fun For Everyone

I've already written about how Erica and Penny dressed me up as a woman for Halloween in college, and how they enjoyed the process of selecting my outfit, doing my hair, nails and makeup, and showing me off to our friends.  At the time, this was the ultimate wish fulfillment as far as I was concerned.  It definitely inspired a parade of bigger and better possible realities with which I'd learn to tantalize myself, but I would eventually understand that this was the best kind of crossdreaming fantasy, simply because it's the kind most likely to happen.

They're discussing whether to dress up Molly's cousin as a Goth chick,
a French maid, or a Disney princess.  Or, a combination of all three.

The younger the ladies, the more open they are to social perversity, especially in groups.  When this mindset encounters the concept of their gender opposites switching roles, their enthusiasm doubles.  I don't have the numbers to back me up, but I suspect the most frequent occurrence of boys acquiescing to feminine makeovers by their female friends and/or partners takes place during the late high school/early college years.  (Okay, this was how it happened for me, but the theory is sound!)

Honestly, it wasn't hard to find girls in college who wanted access to my feminine side.  True, they didn't want so much access as I was willing to offer, but there were plenty of opportunities to make myself available.  If I was hanging out with some coeds in their dorm room, and my bare feet happened to be hanging off the bed while they were doing their nails, I ended up with a pedicure.  With my long hair, a casual evening of platonic conversation occasionally turned into "fun with curlers."  It was easy to get Penny & Erica to make me over for Halloween, because all I did was demonstrate how easy it would be, effectively giving them permission.  It was basically my idea, but they ran with it.

In short, this is the most common fantasy we 'dreamers have.  It a) involves the people we trust and look up to the most, b) provides a safe environment where risk of consequence rests at a minimum, and c) grants us the ability to openly enjoy ourselves.

Becoming "one of the girls" will also create a lasting bond.
Especially when blackmail photos are used as leverage.

Feminized Agenda

According to crossdream legend, there exists a kind of woman who not only demonstrates a marked curiosity in the average heterosexual male cross-dresser, but has also reached the point of wanting to help that special girl emerge from hiding... at all costs.  In fact, she takes particular pleasure in encouraging her transgendered friend to spend more time exploring her femininity.  Encouragement becomes insistence.  Insistence becomes relentless pressure, which eventually results in the crossdreamer losing touch with every semblance of her masculine gender and spending virtually every waking moment in the world this "sponsor" has helped her build.

Just pray your mentor has good taste.
Or at least watches "What Not To Wear."

This is a very popular fantasy, which I now believe begins to take shape right after a trans-girl realizes that even the most fun-loving girlfriend doesn't have any intention of playing fashion pimp to her femme beau, even on the occasional Halloween.  Wouldn't it be much nicer - and easier - to meet someone who actually wants us to act more like a woman?  Who gently but firmly leads us by the hand towards complete gender renovation?  Who removes our decision-making power so that we're effectively no longer responsible for any lifestyle changes, thus free from the guilt of shocking & hurting the other people in our lives?  This woman would likely be a distant cousin to the yetis of Nepal, since she too is often sighted but never proven to exist.  Ah, well, imagination certainly has benefits.

"Sometimes, me feel pretty too..."

Admittedly, I myself have entertained such lurid dreams, with the additional burden of a libido that has, since adolescence, formed permanent bonds of arousal with the sensation of wearing certain feminine attire - a combination of stimuli that renders me tirelessly attracted to the idea of being in someone's thrall when I'm en femme.  Thorough readers will recall Mallory, who I dated in high school, and how she enjoyed tormenting me with a devilish promise to make me over as a girl for Halloween, which I totally let her believe was akin to my worst nightmare so she'd keep wanting to do it (such a strange relationship, in hindsight).  This is the closest I've ever come to seeing my forced feminization fantasy come true, though it never happened.

The fantasy evolves further once the "dominant/submissive" element is introduced, leading the ever-searching crossdreamer to explore a variety of flavors that include bondage, hetero/homosexual experimentation, role playing, and body modification. Once again I admit that my imagination has ventured this far, but I remain inexperienced, and more than a little reluctant.

As you might have noticed by now, there are no examples of my personal fantasies regarding anything mentioned in this category.  My blog runneth over already, so I'll end on a short, sweet note... And I'm just gonna keep this part vanilla, if ya'll don't mind.

#1 on Holli's Super Girly Fun List: Just Being One of the Girls

~HCP

Free Form Fantasy pt. 2: Girlfriends

I was driving home from work today when I happened to get caught at a red light (as people do).  Usually I consider these moments extremely challenging to my [undiagnosed] ADD-ridden personality, but sometimes they can be opportunities in disguise.  Like when I looked to my left and happened to see a doppelganger.  Not mine, but that of the absolute best girlfriend I've ever had.  I fell prey to mixed feelings, sort of a cross between sick, sad and giddy.  Let me tell you all about her.

Let's call her Sara.

Sara and I met at an unlikely time when I was feeling lonely and desperate, longing to reach out to anyone who would be interested in knowing a transgendered person such as myself.  Perhaps I was reaching the point of ceasing to care who knew, consequences be damned, so long as I was able to finally express myself freely in the company of real, actual people.  As anything can happen to a girl in that state of mind, it was probably lucky I met Sara.

We often found ourselves in the same place at the same time, although neither of us had much reason to acknowledge the other.  In fact, we didn't even know each other.  It was the dawn of the Information Age, when email accounts were novelties and the internet was fairly innovative.  Some of us had discovered chat.  Behold! a "room" "full" of people all "talking" at once, where identities were easily concealed and experimental topics of conversation were bandied about with whimsical abandon.  At once, the most frightening and hilarious thing that could be said about the modern world was the sudden freedom we could all enjoy courtesy of sheer cyber-anonymity!

We met well, I like to think.  From the serial numbers that ran across the screen whenever I'd log in, she deduced that we lived in the same town, so she struck up a conversation.  I cheerfully admitted that I indeed shared her zip code, but balanced interest with caution - my chat identity was female, after all, and despite the privacy I enjoyed I was reluctant to inform my new "friends" that I wasn't exactly who I'd led them all to believe. Moreover, here was a person that much closer in proximity to where I lived - no immediate threat to having my cover blown, but there was now an element of danger to consider.

Pictured: Neither one of us, although
I do admire Penelope Garcia's style.

Sara and I enjoyed finding each other whenever we logged in, and after awhile the only reason I visited that chat room was to maximize the chances of having a conversation with her.  We shared the same sense of humor, and our differences strengthened our respect for one another.  She seemed to value the connection we shared (no pun intended) and made me feel like more of a person when we "spoke."  But because nothing good ever lasts, it wasn't much longer before Sara got tired of the whole chat scene.

ISN'T THIS SUCH A WASTE OF TIME? she asked one day, then suggested that we should abandon chatting to give real life another chance, and resume our friendship.

In person.

I panicked.  For obvious reasons.  I convinced myself that any hope for a positive outcome should remain dim, but that I was honor bound to tell her the truth - I wasn't actually a woman, Holli wasn't my real name, and the only thing I regretted was that I foresaw our friendship coming to an abrupt end.  And that's what I did.

OH MY GOD, she typed when I had finished explaining myself and the situation.  Exactly twelve seconds passed, during which I forgot to breathe and began to list the ways I hated myself.  But then on my screen appeared:  THAT EXPLAINS SO MUCH.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN? If I wasn't using a keyboard, there'd've been a stammer.  My heart was a trip hammer in a bone cage.

NUH UH, NO WAY. WE'RE GOING TO CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION IN PERSON.

And that was how I met the real Sara, although it would be awhile before she met the real Holli.  I remember actually feeling stupid, for the first time in my life, that I wasn't meeting somebody en femme.  There I stood in a small town coffee shop foyer, wearing a gray hoodie and a day-old layer of grizzle on my chin.  A complete fraud.  The antithesis of who I'd claimed to be...

As opposed to Sara, who was even more wonderful than I could have imagined.  I won't even try to describe her, but she left two impressions on me.  One was a pang of deep regret that I would probably never be able to date her on account of what she now knew about me, and the other was that it didn't really matter, because I was now outed before this amazing new friend and she hadn't slapped me in the face on account off my deception, turned on her heel and stormed off.  Instead, she proved curious about how I came to be and where this new relationship would take us. "I've been excited about having a new girlfriend with whom I have so much in common," she professed over coffee, "and I intend to meet her."

My stomach did double flips, but before we could get to the point of mutual admiration I had to fill in the rest of the blanks about myself.  Once I started, I couldn't stop.  Every detail about my past, my gender variances and various other vulnerabilities came spilling out.  Everything was on the table.  She could have swept it all up into her arms and used them to her advantage, or tossed it all away like garbage, if she was the kind of person to do so.  Instead, at the end of my ramblings, she took me by the hands and said, "Well, dear, I'm happy to tell you that you're no longer in this alone.  Just let me know when you're ready to introduce yourself properly!"

........

...I can practically hear you asking why I've stopped the story.  "Is there more?" you ask, teeth gritting in anticipation.  And the answer is "Yes."  Also, "No."  You see, the entire account you've just read is a bit of ruthless fiction.  I could go on, but there's really no end to it, nor is it the only version.  If this somehow frustrates you, annoys you, or makes you wish you hadn't wasted all that time for nothing, then... welcome to my ongoing chagrin.  For this is but a sample of the sublime fantasies that spring up whenever inspiration appears in the pleasing form of a woman, triggering the deep longing I have for feminine interaction.  My mind invariably goes to the realm of possibilities, where I smoothly construct "what if" scenarios that appease my unrequited desire to be one of the girls.  In the end it's all a fabrication, because my social circles have never expanded into the strata where there are women who enjoy the company of crossdreamers like me.  And yet it's one of the things for which I've wished most consistently.  Drat it all.

Incidentally, there is one grain of truth to my wonderment in that, somewhere in the world, a woman named Sara actually exists.  Under the alias "Suede" (she enjoyed fashion & it was her favorite material) she met me on the internet when I was in college, and we did wind up discussing gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation on a regular basis.  She lived very close to me at the time, in Baltimore, and offered to have me visit so we could explore my feminine proclivities together.  Alas, I was certain I could never find the way by myself as I've always been cursed with a terrible sense of direction... but that was a flimsy excuse, covering up the more reasonable fear of having to explain my absence to my girlfriend, Erica (if we were even dating at the time; long story).

I have a terrific imagination.  Sometimes I think it's out to get me.  As we shall soon see, next time...

~HCP