Everything feels so natural these days. Getting dressed, applying makeup, casting a critical eye in the mirror and packing my handbag. And that’s even before I open the front door and step into the outside world as, to all intents and purposes, the woman I’ve always wished I’d been. Activities that once the very idea of filled me with terror are now second nature. I’ll happy order myself a tea and pastry in a café, ask for a table at a restaurant and even seek advice on makeup from the wonderful sales assistants on the cosmetics counters who have forgotten far more about makeup than I could ever hope to learn. I walk amongst others without a care in the world, even when I spot someone having a sly sideways glance my way.
And all the time I’m smiling to myself for one simple reason – I really am living the dream.
But paradoxically, until recently I had no idea what the dream actually was.
As regular readers will know, I can trace my CDing back to the fateful day around half a century ago when I ventured into my parents’ bedroom and found a pair of my mother’s tights in a heap on the floor. Even 50 years on, I still have vivid memories of that day and I can categorically state that the urge to try them on was not driven by some feeling that, by doing so, I’d magically become a girl. And in the years preceding that day, I never once prayed that I’d wake up the following day as a girl. In fact, I think it was an idea that would have horrified me!
But as soon as I had dipped a toe into the feminine pool, Pandora’s Box was well and truly opened. I quickly became fascinated by the whole idea of ‘sex change’ operations and particularly those who had undergone them. It was the story of Jan Morris that first piqued my interest but people like April Ashley, Amanda Lear and, later, Caroline Cossey that I envied. These were not just guys who’d become women but guys who’d become beautiful women. Did I dream that one day I’d be following in their footsteps down the one way street to womanhood? It was an intoxicating proposition but something deep inside me would remind me, at opportune moments, that this was not the right answer for me.
There was certainly a fear factor in that – Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s was certainly not as accepting of gender variance as it is now. But more significant was the gulf I perceived between myself, a male, and womanhood. Even when I took a deep breath and bought clothes of my own, I never really felt that I was crossing over the divide, just wearing things that made me feel good.
So if there was a dream, it was probably a dream that all of this would just go away and I could be a normal guy with an interest in women for all the right reasons. And for a while, that particular dream came true. I met and married Mrs A and all of a sudden there was someone in my life who looked far better in women’s clothes than I could ever hope to, the past was forgotten and it just didn’t feature in the present.
But as we all know, this never goes away and slowly the urges crept back. And if anything, that heightened the dream that I could be rid of it all because whenever the subject of transgenderism, as we now call it, arose (perhaps by way of a newspaper article, TV programme or just general conversation) I’d feel a sense of panic stirring inside me in case I gave the game away.
It would be 18 years of marriage before the urges got the better of me and I went shopping for a dress, a pair of heels and underwear together with a cheap wig from a party shop. The dream there was quite straightforward – those items were going to make me look like a woman to rival April, Amanda L, Caroline and all of the other trans beauties that I’d become aware of by that time. The reality, needless to say, was somewhat different and so began a litany of buy-wear-purge cycles in which items were bought, worn, failed to live up to their promise and dispensed with out of a combination of disappointment, guilt and fear.
It would be mid-2019 before things finally started to fall into place. I had endured a five year hiatus under threat of the marriage ending but things were boiling over and I capitalised on the absence of Mrs A and our kids to pick up where I’d left off. I took photos and while they look nothing like the Amanda that you would recognise I started to feel that I was at last uncovering the inner woman.
I wouldn’t say this was a dream but rather a persistent wish but for a long time I had this nagging feeling that I wanted, or needed, to know what I would look like as a woman. I’m not talking about throwing on a few clothes and a dab of lipstick but being transformed into the best possible representation of womanhood that was possible to achieve on me. Back in the 1980s, I’d wondered about going to the ‘Transformation’ shop in Euston, London which was part of a specialist chain of shops catering for CDers. They offered what they branded a ‘Changeaway’ where clients could be made up and then spend a few hours en femme but whilst I phoned to enquire a couple of times, I never followed through. But by the early 2020s, I became aware of Boys Will Be Girls, a makeover service in London which seemed to be a rite of passage for all CDers. I was active on Flickr and it seemed like every day another girl would post photos from her session at BWBG and the results were absolutely stunning. If I was ever going to get my question answered, this was the place where that answer would come from.
Even that wasn’t straightforward. I contacted Cindy, the proprietor, on two occasions but got cold feet both times. It was only in August 2021 that I contacted her for a third time and, in a mad moment, booked a four-hour session for £300 (it’s now gone up to £490). In the four weeks between booking and turning up at Cindy’s flat on 21 September 2021, I had panic attacks and doubts about the whole thing and even when I rang her doorbell, I was still not convinced it was a good idea. You can read about my experience in ‘The Magic of a Makeover’ which was actually my first Kandi’s Land post and whilst the quality of the transformation was never going to be in doubt, it was my first taste of acceptance from someone else. Of course, with Cindy being trans herself, that was a given but to be able to sit and just talk to someone both in a feminine persona and about it was transformative.
And that’s really where the dream that I talked about at the beginning of this post was propagated. It wasn’t the moment that Amanda burst onto the scene – the three looks from the day look nothing like the Amanda of now – but it was the moment that I realised that whatever it was that was going on inside me was worth pursuing.
The Amanda you would recognise today emerged in early 2023 and the I related the story of how that happened in ‘OMG , It’s Me’. Finally, I was able to look in the mirror without being either disappointed or seeing the unattainable image of myself that Cindy had created. I was just looking at me and every time I had the opportunity to retrieve the stash, I saw the same person looking back. And then the dreams started coming thick and fast. I dreamed that I could step into the outside world. And when I’d done that, I dreamed that I could walk amongst others. And when I’d done that, interacting with others became the dream. And so on.
But even those don’t really describe the dream that I now feel I’m living but struggled for so long to identify. That dream can be summed up in a few words – the dream to be me – but takes many more to properly articulate.
Paradoxically it’s the realisation that what I’m doing is no longer fuelled by dreams that made me realise I’m living the dream. I no longer need to dream about what it would be like to be in the outside world or dream that I had the fortitude to open the front door and walk out. These days it feels natural and sometimes I actually have to force myself not to do it. I no longer need to dream about having the guts to walk up to someone and interact with them. Once again, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. I no longer have to look in the mirror and dream about what it would be like to wear this outfit for a trip to the shops or dress up in that outfit for dinner. They are realities. I no longer have to dream about what it would be like to traverse that gulf between my life and womanhood. Nowadays that gulf has shrunk to almost nothing. And I no longer have to dream about how happy I could be if I could experience life as the person I’ve always wished I’d been. Nowadays, the experience of that happiness is a reality.
And that’s the thing. I now know that there’s nothing stopping me from bringing any one of those dreams to reality other than my own preferences and needs. Whilst even the most skilled of surgeons could never turn me into a beauty to rival April, Amanda L, Caroline et al, that no longer matters. All that matters to me is that I no longer see closed doors wherever I look; every door is now open and it’s up to me whether I walk through. Some I have long since walked through, others I am contemplating at the moment and others I will never walk through out of choice rather than necessity. And that’s what living the dream gives us the power to do.
