Holli Cherise's Day Off

I don't know what floats the rest of your collective boats when you get a day (and the house) all to yourself, but as for me there is absolutely nothing equal to being able to wear whatever the hell I want. Sure, I can lay flat on my back and eat nacho cheese straight from the can, or play video games until I've worn down the Wii batteries, but as a cross-dresser I only want to wear myself out by wearing whatever goes with a hot pair of heels.

Typical, and that's no joke. If I had the place to myself for a month, I'd likely spend the entire time en femme.  True, I'd go berserk with depression and loneliness, but that's neither here nor there.  The point is opportunity.  And that's what I've seized today.

So far, my day can be described as follows:

• Leaned up from my comfy spot in bed to kiss Erica goodbye.  Off she went to work, and up I jumped to shower, shave, moisturize, and manicure.

• Threw on some frillies and a white Frederick's dressing robe, then stuck my head into the internet for an hour to see what was new.

 

• Stared at my lovely wardrobe, trying to decide what to start with.  Decided that it'd been ages since I tried most of these outfits on, and so initiated the process of modeling everything I own in front of the a mirror.  (I couldn't help it...!)

• Discoveries: a) some dresses I used to hate have now grown on me, b) some dresses just don't flatter my plain frame, and I have no idea why I've hung onto them for so long, c) I really, really need some sun on my arms and shoulders, b/c my face and neck look like they go on someone else's body, and d) it's almost 11:00! Why am I wasting time playing fashion show when there's so little time??

• Settled on a tight mauve crochet top (to go with the 5" heels) white tights, and a black suede mini. Did my hair up nice in a black bow scrunchie and adorned myself w/ a li'l bling.  Marched myself into the kitchen to paint my nails and have a bowl of cereal. (Hey, 11:00 a.m. is technically morning... breakfast still applies!)

• Sat down to write new blog for adoring fans.

Exciting, n'cest pas?  Well, mostly.  If I can push away all the more interesting alternatives: friends, a real manicure in a nail salon, a light lunch at a sidewalk cafe under an umbrella, movies, girl talk, shoe shopping...

"Please, ladies, no gang signs... just kidding, throw 'em up there."

Or how about instead I spend all that closet time picking out clothes for the weekend, tying my hair back, making myself up, packing a snack bag, then jumping into the car for a lazy weekend with friends who call me Holli because it's who I am?  Maybe getting some actual sun by somebody's pool, earning myself a cute little bikini line, giving in to peer pressure and getting my ears pierced.  Or letting them pick out a tattoo.

"You all said 'pirate skull' right? How does it look? Badass?"

Great.  Now I'm jealous of alternate universe Me.

Ah, but still... life is good. Even in small doses.

~HCP

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

All In Your Head

As a psych minor, I enjoy when people talk about their dreams.  The more unusual the better.  It's fun to analyze.  Our dreams are certainly fascinating, like crinkled up road maps to the worlds of our being, which you have to smooth out if you hope to make any sense of them.  Depending on how well I know the dreamer, I'm usually pretty good at it.  On the other hand, sometimes I have no idea what to think when I'm staring into my own tapestry of patchwork thoughts. Ahh, trees, to where didst thy forest disappear?

Daydreams also interest me.  Fantasies are rife with symbolism, and typically a lot more straightforward than our chaotic subconscious - thus, easier to decrypt.  So when it comes to the things I like to imagine in the car or during a long stretch of mind-killing boredom, I'm most confident about what I'm getting at.

As a crossdreamer, I'm all too experienced in the art of fantasy craft.  I've been at it since the single digits of youth and I don't seem to show any signs of growing tired of it.  There has been an evolution, of sorts, and I'd love to regale you with some of my truly dizzying transformation scenarios (and perhaps I will, eventually), but I've got something slightly more encompassing in mind.  I've been using my knack for analysis on the general basis of crossdreaming fantasies, you see, and I'd like to get some of this down before I forget I even cared that much to begin with.

As it stands, I've browsed the sugar-sweet haze of the fondest of cross-feminine wishes and I've discerned the common threads that connect them in the most telling of ways. Let's see, what shall we start with...?

Clothes

Yep, it's a gimme.  Duh!  Of course, one of the first things a crossdreamer begins to fantasize about is the wearing of clothes.  We saw the women we wished we could be, noting first off how uniquely & expressively feminine their apparel makes them, how their choice of fashion seemed to accentuate the way they felt as women... ohh, yes, just the first stop on a long train ride into Girl World! At this point, it wouldn't be long before we next started envying their hair, their nails, the way they got to wear makeup and jewelry and have pierced ears.

"Wait, what?  I can't dress like that?  Walk like that, talk like that, do any of those things because of the way I was born?  Wow, SO not fair!!!"  But them's social rules, and to fight them you'd have to break them.  With the line drawn thusly and you choosing sides, life becomes so much more difficult - no matter which side you pick!  Become an outcast among your family and friends, or live in quiet desperation.

If only someone loved you for you.  If only there were someone who liked the feminine you...

Accomplices

If only... that girl - the one who likes to wear skirts a lot, and does her bangs in this cute way you've envied ever since she walked into the same class you've been taking together - if only she knew how badly you wanted to be female.  If anyone could teach you how to look your best and put together dynamite outfits and go shopping with you, it'd be someone like her.  And if you didn't think she'd shriek and make a disgusted face and embarrass you in front of everyone after you managed to find the guts to tell her, you both could be friends for life!  Girlfriends, even... maybe?

Ah, well.  Turns out, even the broadest of female minds aren't as interested in our feminine side as we'd like them to be.  Sure, they can be all for gender equality, freedom of expression, tolerance, etc. but unless you're already friends with a lady, in whom you're comfortable confiding, that smart, charismatic fashionista you admire so much isn't usually interested in a relationship with a crossdreamer.  No sense getting all indignant, since after all it is a free country, right?  She's just not that into youuu...'re appreciation for high heeled shoes.

"Well, okay. Then what if I tell my closest girl friends about who I am inside?  Maybe they'll be interested in getting to know me better that way!"  That could work.  Then again, it might blow up in your face, alienating someone who you thought you could trust and sending ripples of awkward emotions in all directions.  But whatever, it's still a dream worth having: girlfriends who share their years of experience with you, coaxing the shy little debutante that you are out of her boy-shell, forming a bond that never feels quite complete unless Little Miss You comes out to play once in awhile. *happy sigh!*

Coercion

The next inevitable phase, and the darker side of "Accomplices."  For some of us (yes, I include myself), this is where we settle for hoping that if we can't get society to accept us as cross-gendered "peers," then they'll appreciate the idea of having us play the part of women against our will.  A bit backwards, I know, but bear with me.

Part of being a woman, from the male perspective, includes degrees of submission.  This is not to say that we trans-people think of women as weak and fragile, bending to the whims of a male-dominated culture... oh, anything but!  Even so - and I'm only going to repeat what I've heard - most women like it that way.  They like being taken care of and having a variety of decisions made on their behalf.  The majority of the ladies in my social circles claim to enjoy take-charge kind of guys.  It's a major turn-on for many women.

Apart from them stand those of us among the gender-variant, who pick up on that submissive vibe and, indulgently, focus on it to the point of training themselves to be not only super-subservient in their feminine persona but also becoming sexually attracted to the idea of being subjugated.  This would seem to oppose the true spirit of feminism, but again, we're at a stage where desperation, social frustration and sexual repression collide at the developmental intersection.

So if you're sure that everyone would just totally freak the hell out if they knew about your secret wardrobe and your desire to step into the role of woman now and again, the only way you're going to get what you want is if someone else gets the same idea - "Wouldn't it be fun if we dressed you as a girl??"

It can happen.  It does happen.

Halloween is a great time for girlfriends to get the mad glint in their eye that says, "My lover, I think it's time you were treated to a fashion makeover."  Consider the fabled Dare (or better yet, the hastily placed Bet!), a spoken contract into that a crossdreamer might enter which, if played right, can place them directly into a binding obligation to allow one or more lady friends to pretty them up to heart's content.

Also, let us not forget the submissive crossdreamer's ultimate dream: Domination.  Believe it or not, there are real, actual people roaming this world who thoroughly enjoy feminizing and controlling people like us.  Herein lies the potential for a win/win scenario.  But... is it worth it?  To trade freedom for the privilege of having a relationship with someone who takes advantage of our every feminine desire and enforces our complete devotion to it?  To many crossdreamers, it certainly is.  Doms, however, aren't what you call "dime a dozen."  They're a special kind of person, and rare enough that they have no use for the myriad desperate cross-dressers throwing themselves at their feet.  That's right, as fantastic as this situation might be it requires ultimate dedication and sacrifice, which kind of defeats the purpose of a fantasy when you can't snap out of it any time you want.  Or... well, I guess that's the point, isn't it?  A fantasy that never ends, whether you want it to or not!?

Anyway, the longer we search the more we learn of the scarcity of people who want to see us en femme.  It's depressing.  Most of us are dreamers, however, and we're not prone to giving up.  So we tune the channels of our imagination to more fanciful stations, giving up on reality altogether and letting our hearts run free...

Magical Mystery

"Screw waiting around for my girlfriend to dress me up in her clothes and make me go with her friends to the movies!  If I had three wishes from a magic lamp, I wouldn't have to wait..."

Eventually, the fantasy/sci-fi lover in all of us takes the helm of our daydreams, wielding a map with definite borders, which we then sail right over into the bright, yawning sky of impossibility.  Maybe this is a euphemism for "settling" but... whatever.  Since we're waiting around thinking of ways for the ridiculously unlikely to occur, we may as well step on the gas.  Twists of fate, wishing wells, gypsy curses, wizard spells.  Well, damn, let's throw a little pretend science in there, what say?  What if I got hit by an alien ray that amplifies my bosoms, makes all my boy hair fall out, and raises my voice into a tremulous womanly pitch?  Or... Oh! How about I wake up one day and my wife and I have swapped physical genders?  Yeah, baby!  If I'm going to live the life of desperation, it'll be TO THE HILT.**

~ • ~ • ~ • ~

/big breath/  Alrighty, then.  That's the way I see it.  I do enjoy breaking things down and categorizing them according to characteristics, so this has been fun and enlightening for me.  Hopefully you got something out of it.

For my next post, I'll toss up several examples of my own fantasies, correlating to the subjects listed above.  Feel free to follow my lead.

~HCP

* come on, don't try to pretend this doesn't actually happen
** eventually, this may lead to voluntary cosplay, a valid form of expression in certain circles where cross-dressing is commonplace, perhaps ultimately a back door one might take which leads to the kind of peace we're all looking for (but don't quote me)

Say Nothing, Act Casual ... pt. 2

(In which Holli brings "desperate" to a whole new level...)

With the decisive neutrality of my two closest girl friends - Erica, my actual girlfriend, and Penny - and their reluctance to entertain the slightest positive thought regarding my cross-dressing, I seemingly at random picked a girl I knew to be my new confidant - name immaterial, for she was brilliant at listening, but contributed absolutely no thoughts to the process (thus having no extensive effect on my trans life).  I began to lean on her for support, as it were, but she expressed no interest in being my enabler.  After almost an entire summer of being sidestepped, I went to her home and tried on some of her outfits without permission, out of some paltry form of revenge.  Her nigh-indifferent reaction to this made me realize I'd placed too much expectation on her shoulders.  We remained friends, but never conversed so much as before.

I find it funny that at college I'd gone from total closet-case to practically unloading my needs on other people and expecting results.  Either my naivete was on a crash course with reality, or I believed altruistically in the dependability of more capable, confident people than myself.  Maybe both.  Poor girl.  Poor me.

And then I met Angel.  Wise, warm, funny, and such a kindred soul I couldn't even know.  I confided in her.  Then... she gave back.  A little too much, perhaps... rather, I didn't have the decency to stop asking. She shopped with me, helped me dress, did my nails (and I did hers), and every now and then my makeup.  She covered for me when I couldn't account for myself to others.  Angel even confided some of the bitter truths peering out from her own closet, feeling it was good for our bond if she added a little of herself to it too.  She devoted herself to understanding me and getting to know me better, unfortunately to the point where she developed a moderate crush on me.  This nonreciprocal love drove us apart for a short while.  Eventually she forgave me for being myopic and advantageous, and I toned down my desperation when we got together.

As it happens, eventually we both found ourselves married.  While I was willing to make time for our relationship as girlfriends, Angel knew that it would never work.  (Ever try explaining to one's newlywed husband about spending time with someone else's husband without tipping him off that the other husband is a cross-dresser?  Me neither, but I bet it's hard.)  We agreed that ours would have to remain a correspondent relationship. It's still difficult to maintain, now a multitude of children have come into her life (she and her husband foster).

Which brings us to NOW.

Despite that Erica knows what kind of a person I am and what I'm inclined to do when the girlie itch needs scratching, we have more secrets between us now than ever.  I accept half the blame for this.  I simply do not tell her things I don't think she enjoys hearing.  This blog, for instance.  My chat room activities.  My board posts.  Purchases.  Private wardrobe indulgences.  In fact, as far as far as she knows I'm just sitting on a great big mountain of repression and doing just fine.  So in reality I'm exacerbating the problem, based on my worried reluctance to set the hurtful truth free.  There have been so many unexpected "walk-ins" in our relationship, I sense how tired she is of them.  I just feel like I'm granting her fondest wish.  Some people do prefer unfamiliarity.

Erica values secrecy.  She isn't just interested in keeping my closet door closed and barred, but she'd just as well forget her own alleged shortcomings.  Unfortunately, she married a person who's totally into disclosure.  If I had a complaint (haha... "if"... ) it would be that she doesn't know how to open up and explore, discuss, analyze, understand the things either of us say and do.  Of anybody I know - and tell me if I'm wrong, please - she ought to be the most interested in knowing everything she can about this irrepressible facet of my being.  Ought to be.  But isn't.  Much like I have to put up with her temper, but at least take time to understand why she's so angry and say how I feel about it.

Does anyone else get the impression that I'm the woman in this relationship?

I can tell the world my secrets.  Sure.  But the list of who I really give a damn about them knowing is pretty short, with her at the top.

That's all for now.  Erica's out and about for another half hour, and I've been girling it up all by my lonesome, spilling the beans to anyone who'll listen.  I think I'll go do the dishes.  And I don't care who knows it.  =P

~HCP