I woke up at around 7:00 am and thoughts of the day ahead were soon buzzing around my mind. But first things first – I needed to get ready for breakfast and that meant shaving with a blade razor (my usual electric is nowhere near good enough for a stubble free day) and then stemming the blood flow from the nicks. Having reassured myself that I’d avoided the need for a transfusion, I made a start on the transformation.
For my second day, I’d decided on a more casual vibe which would be suitable for breakfast, the second of the two model shows that was my pretext for being away from home overnight and a visit to a local museum which I’d engineered to maximise the time I could spend en femme before returning home. So the skirt was swapped for wide leg trousers which, together with a simple jumper and stiletto ankle boots seemed ideal for the day ahead.
Breakfast was uneventful other than seeing that Basma was once again (or perhaps still) on duty in the restaurant so I had a quick chat with her before returning to my room to pack my belongings and get ready to check out. There had been a few niggling problems with the room so when I handed my keycard back to the receptionist, I mentioned these to her. How things have changed from just a year or so ago when I would have been terrified at the prospect of saying anything other than the bare minimum to those I interacted with. And the receptionist couldn’t have been nicer during our interaction.
First port of call was the model show. I decided to change into flats to blend in more with the other visitors and spent a couple of hours there enjoying the exhibits with little to report other than getting a few smiles (not smirks!) from exhibitors and using the ladies’ loo without incident. On the way in, I’d spotted a few clothing chain shops nearby so decided to make the most of my girl time with a bit of retail therapy.
I made my way back to the car, changed back into my heels and added my long black coat to complete the look and headed to the shops. I have to say that I find browsing womenswear shops one of the wonderful perks of being able to cross the gender divide; I do sometimes do it in male mode but I always feel on edge and far prefer to look as if I belong there. In one shop, I spotted a gorgeous faux fur jacket and just had to try it on. Suffice to say that if I had any excuse whatsoever to wear it, I would have bought it on the spot but, with the stash bag now full and opportunities to use it fast dwindling, I sadly had to return it to the rails.
I visited several more shops, buying a handy set of makeup brushes in one before heading to the final shop where I had the only negative experience of the weekend. A teenage girl obviously realised my provenance and gave me the dirtiest look possible – it was Primark, though, and for those readers not acquainted with this particular chain, high end it most certainly isn’t and it attracts a clientele to match! But let’s face it, if a scowl is the worst we encounter when out, we can’t really complain.
Having finished shopping, it was time to make my way to the museum where I spent a couple of hours walking round, again being treated completely normally by the staff there. And that’s when I had my second wonderful encounter of the weekend.
My fingernails are a bit of a state. Long on my right hand for guitar playing and bitten on my left hand so I use stick on nails when out en femme. Because I tend to lose one or two per outing, I bought a set of 200 in different sizes from Amazon. They’re a deep red colour and quite long which means they’re not the easiest things to put on, particularly when the hand that already has them on then has to sort out the sticky pads to get the other hand ready. But when they’re on, they look fantastic and really complete the look. Somehow, by the time I visited the museum’s gift shop, all 10 were still attached and as I was paying for my purchase, the lady on the till exclaimed ‘I love the colour of your nails!’. I thanked her and said that it was a special weekend for me and people like her really made it perfect. She smiled and told me that she hoped I enjoyed the rest of my day.
And sadly, that was more or less the end of the adventure. UK motorways tend to look like car parks on a Sunday evening so the drive home took a lot longer than planned. I did stop for a meal on the way back but it was uneventful fast food and then finally arrived back at the station car park to change back into drab and return home, hoping that I’d removed every trace of makeup.
-o-O-o-
Epilogue
It’s an expression I probably overuse but what I’ve just accomplished has well and truly blown my mind. I called this little series ‘Living The Dream’ for good reason; the idea of living within an alternative identity for a period is a relatively recent aim but while I was experiencing it, it really felt that I had finally found what I had been looking for ever since the fateful day when I first tried on a pair of my mother’s tights around half a century ago. As I’ve wrestled with the whole idea of having a feminine side over the years, I’ve never been completely sure as to what it is I’ve been looking for – what do the practicalities and consequences of ‘I wish I’d been born a girl’ really look like? But fully living in my feminine persona, even though fleetingly, gave a tantalising view of what the life I’ve always wished had been mine and, dare I say, left me wanting more.
But to suggest that it was all ‘unicorns and rainbows’ would be wrong. Whilst deep down I knew that this was something I both wanted and needed to do, as D-day got closer, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that what I was planning was a gross breach of marital trust. It struck me that this must be what having an extramarital affair feels like – I was after all planning a weekend away with another woman who I have strong feelings for. It’s just that in this case, the other woman happened to be me. It wasn’t that I’d told any lies; the pretext for my time away was genuine and I fully disclosed everything I was planning for my time away. Except the fact that I was doing it under an alias and presenting as female the whole time. I know that I’m not the first to either experience these feelings or do what I did and I certainly won’t be the last but it will shape how I manage this side of my life in the future – a future where her retirement is looking imminent and, as a result, sneaking my stash to the car will become difficult, if not impossible. More than anything, I know that there’s a conversation to be had with Mrs A where on the one hand I can reassure her that being ‘him’ for her remains my top priority but on the other I have to come clean about the evolution of my feminine side. The compromise, of course, will be for her to turn a blind eye to my periodic absences but that may be difficult for her when she knows full well what I’ll be up to and I’m really conflicted about whether it’s fair to put her in that situation.
But that’s a challenge for the future and, for now, I’d rather concentrate on the present. I’ve just had the time of my life being the person I’ve always dreamed of being doing things I never thought possible. I became Amanda, proudly introducing myself as her and living as her for 36 hours. But it was those I encountered who really made it special – the guy on the train ride who struck up a conversation with me, the spontaneous compliments about my outfit from the wonderful Basma in the hotel restaurant and the positive reception for my nails from the lady in the gift shop. And there were many more uneventful interactions with people who were just happy to treat me in the same way that they would treat anyone else. Yes, there was the brief downer from the Primark Scowler but she needs to get a life!
But let’s be real, not one person that I interacted would have been in any doubt about me and I would also assert that the compliments from Basma the waitress about my outfit and the gift shop lady about my nails were made because of what I am, not despite it. Or maybe not – who knows? But who cares – whatever the drivers of the comments were, their subtext was one of acceptance and reassurance. For too long, I hid in the shadows, worrying about all of the hidden risks that I would encounter if I dared show my face to others. It’s taken time for me to overcome those fears, firstly by getting my transformations to an acceptable standard and secondly by doing my best to stop thinking like a CDer and start thinking like a woman and dressing to blend in rather than stand out. But with every outing where no one seemed to notice me and with every interaction where no one seemed to care, those fears gradually evaporated and I was finally able to embrace who I really am, not be embarrassed by it or fearful of other seeing me. Having a foot in both camps means compromise but it also means that I can leave the baggage that goes with ‘his’ life on his pile of clothes and immerse myself in my longstanding dream, albeit fleetingly, not just dip my toe in the water.
Maybe this was the start of a new chapter in my life or maybe this marked journey’s end. It’s difficult to imagine how I could top this and changing circumstances at home mean that even replicating it will get ever more difficult and the irony of the fact that living an honest life as myself requires inherent dishonesty to others is not lost on me. But the fact that I can look back and feel ‘mission accomplished’ fills me with a sense of pride and a feeling that whatever the future holds, I can look forward to it without a shred of regret.
