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

Say Nothing, Act Casual ... pt. 1

By now, if you've read everything prior to this entry, you may have gleaned that I'm not exactly a public figure.  You don't know my given birth name, the kinds of pets I keep, the specific nature of my work or the name of the town I live in.  I even provided a pseudonym with which we may refer to my wife, and will do the same for any close acquaintances who'll be mentioned in this very post.  My blog is deeper undercover than a Brazilian CIA sleeper agent!

Security matters to the closet TG.  A "free country" it may be, but there are too many circumstances where common knowledge of one's gender experiments will attract unfortunate consequences.  Even if most of us keep low profiles in real life, there's a very good chance that if there's a tear in the veil of secrecy then someone will lose something useful, vital or precious - even all three.

And I acknowledge that I've got a little of something from all three categories hanging on the line, should my bi-gendered activities go live.  Therefore, I exercise caution.  Not only for myself but for the main reason I keep the curtains drawn when I'm girling it up - Erica.  She cannot even describe the specter of dread that haunts her, that someday her parents, extended family, all of our friends, her co-workers, our future children, the Pope & the President will find out that she's married to a cross-dresser.  To clarify, I'm mostly in agreement with her.  My needs are complicated, but not the center of our marriage.  And with the economy shaping up to be what it is, I can't go losing my job because I'm deemed incompatible working with the staff or clientele.  (Or whatever excuse they'd make up.)

It's a lot easier to keep the ol' skeleton under wraps these days.  I have my own house, I get time to myself, and I can shop online (not that I'm sitting on that much extra cash; did I mention the lousy economy?).  But in days past, the life of this secret sister was a real pain in the ass...

CHILDHOOD marks the first moments of my discovery that I wanted to be more like the girls.  But even a 1st grader knows there are some things you just don't tell other people.  Especially your peers.  Don't ask me how I knew, but somehow I got the memo that letting all your classmates learn that you'd rather play house than kickball would follow you around nipping at your ass like an angry shih tzu.

Parents were another subset of associates whom it was wise to keep these things from.  In my case especially, Dad, who rocked with Harley-Davidson, hung out with Jack Daniels, and liked to travel with Smith & Wesson.  Mom was exactly the opposite - fun, warm, funny, caring and yet something made me withhold my questions from her.  Even when she caught me two different times wearing her pantyhose, and even offered to talk to me about whatever I was going through, I dummied up.  Probably the tenets of shame and inappropriateness that most kids like us felt when examining our genders.

ADOLESCENCE wasn't so bad, inasmuch as there was one excellent perk for a teenage CD - self-gratification.  This, at least, was what adults anticipated youngsters to be doing in the privacy of their bedroom.  Whether they approved or not, nobody wanted to walk into the middle of that.  And it's not like they could read my mind and learn which fantasies I was mining from.  They sure weren't gonna ask.

My hormonal spike from grades 7-12 added another demographic to the "Do Not Tell" list: attractive girls.  This was agonizing, since they were exactly whom I would have chosen to open up to.  My fantasies expanded, but the closest I ever got to confessing my desires to anyone back then was my first girlfriend - we'll call her Mallory - who decided that she wanted to dress me as a girl for Halloween as a special exercise in dominance over an all-too-willing amour.  I went on letting her think I hated it, which seemed to inspire her all the more as she divulged details of the sweetly feminine things she'd make me wear.  I'd already lost my virginity to her; I wondered if it were likely I'd be the one wearing the lingerie at some point.

Three months into the relationship, Mallory dumped me.  October was three months away.  Not even close.  C'est la vie, as the heartbroken say.

Curiously, my next girlfriend (and one of my best friends to this day) - let's call her Juliet - had the unprecedented effect of distracting me almost entirely from my pocket obsession with cross-dressing.  I have no theories on this, but I can observe the differences: we were rarely a physical couple, her Christian faith gave me new ideas to think about other than sex and gender, and above all she had so much more to offer as a friend and companion than most girls I knew.  I decided to preserve our relationship's beneficial qualities, even after Juliet broke up with me, by never involving her in that part of my world.  (Currently renegotiating this policy.)

COLLEGE availed a brand new concept that was as frightening as it was exciting - independence!  Not only could I pursue examination of my gender on a potentially social level, but I could majorly screw up my reputation in the process! (Wheee!)  I learned a lot about "give and take" during these years, but not much about accepting status quo.  Never have I revealed my secret to more people than I would over the next seven years, nor would I.  And the beautifully ironic thing is that it barely seems to have mattered.

Some time after I met Erica and we started dating, I gave in to the impulse to raid her closet.  I'd steal the occasional scrunchie or pair of underwear, but later I would convince her to go off to class and let me sleep in her dorm room until she got back.  Halfway dressed, I had no idea she'd forgotten her text book.  I barely got back into bed before she came in - forgetting that I had a hair clip stuck on my head.  She saw it immediately but - bless her sweet heart - believed my story when I said I was going to dress in her clothes to surprise her for a laugh when she got back.  This story worked so well, she actually took pictures when she got back, and her friend down the hall, Penny, who was so amused when she saw the prints, made wardrobe suggestions for the "next time."  The following year, both of them made me over for the proceeding Halloween.  (Score!!)

After all of this transpired, I eventually decided to tell Erica the truth.  I was growing rather fond of her and couldn't bear to spring my big surprise on her years down the road.  She took it well, though I feared her head would explode from bottling up this information without someone to vent with, so I also told Penny, who'd become her roommate and best friend.  They immediately formed a consensus that I should never, ever give in to the desire to dress as a woman again.  (Un-score.)

Next: "Holli goes in-freaking-sane"

~HCP