One Last Try

By Amanda “Mandy” J.

My last few posts have chronicled the struggles with this side of myself that have been ongoing through most of 2024.  Far from being the impediment to she-time that I feared, the return home of my adult kids and resultant forced abstinence from CDing has largely not emotionally impacted me and life has chugged along quite nicely despite the stash remaining resolutely hidden.  Even when the planets did align, things didn’t go to plan – you can read the full account in ‘Perchance She Sleepeth’ so there’s no need to go over old ground here – and I have since passed over other opportunities to retrieve the stash for a bit of feminine time.

But in my last post – ‘Time For A Purge!’, you’ll recall that I talked about getting rid of things from my stash that were, for one reason or another, surplus to requirements.  And in ‘Perchance’ I talked about wanting to try a knitted dress & boots combo which turned out to be a resounding failure – sad to say that both the dress and the boots were included in the aforementioned purge.  But with space in the stash, a nagging desire to have another go at the knitted dress & boots combo and a temporarily empty house thanks to my son’s return to university and my daughter’s wanderlust for a few weeks, I decided to give the inner woman another chance.

As far as the ‘combo’ was concerned, the news was good.  In fact very good.  After an online search, I found an off-white knitted dress with a roll neck and a pair of knee length boots with a moderate heel in size UK9 (a little bit on the large size but that guaranteed that they’d be a lot more comfortable than my other UK8 shoes).  Both items were soon acquired and a quick try-on at home revealed that they fitted.  That just left finding an excuse to wear them.

That week had been a nightmare!  Resignations & recruitment of new staff and a near catastrophic computer failure in our business (luckily, I have a rigid backup regime so it was just a headache and a time consuming inconvenience in the end) took up most of my time but I finally had a day to myself and, after making sure that there was no chance of being caught in the act by Mrs A, I transformed myself into my far more fabulous alter ego.  And, without trying to sound too self-obsessed, as I surveyed my handiwork in the mirror, I knew that I’d never looked better (or to put it another way, my brows more or less matched, all of my foundation, concealer & contouring had been properly blended, my eyeliner application did not run the risk of me being renamed ‘Amanda the Panda’ and my lipstick had restricted itself to my lips and not encroached onto the surrounding area) and so, after packing essentials – keys, credit card, glasses, tissues & spare nails (for some reason, they refuse to stay put despite feeling firm when checked after attachment) – in my handbag and after a quick check to make sure the neighbours weren’t around, the front door was opened and the sudden chill of the breeze through the sheer nylon of my tights reminded me that ‘she’ was back.  But for how long?

I drove to a nearby town – near enough to avoid a long drive and far enough to make the risk of seeing anyone I know negligible – parked the car and then set about replacing the three fake nails that had already come adrift!  Finally, it was time to hit the shops and, as I waited with other shoppers for the lift/elevator down, I realised that I had lost all fear of being amongst others.  I also realised that I’d lost a further two fake nails since leaving the car so the first job was to find a seat to replace them!

With a full complement of nails once more, browsing was uneventful; I used the self-checkouts to pay for a handbag mirror and then looked for a new pendant and earrings to bolster my currently meagre collection of jewellery.  I found some that I liked but decided to stop for refreshments before buying them.  I’ve been to that coffee shop before and they always serve me with courtesy and without batting an eyelid and, after a tasty mince pie and mug of tea, it was time to return to the shops.

I entered what I thought was the shop that I’d seen the jewellery and as I walked through the shop, a smartly dressed sales assistant, probably in her mid to late 50s, smiled and said hello, then asked me how I was.  I responded and then asked her where the jewellery was and she pointed me in the right direction.  However, on arriving at the jewellery display, I realised that I was in the wrong shop and, as there was nothing of interest there, walked out.  But as I walked away, I reflected on how affirming she’d been.  She knew without any doubt that I was not female in the traditional sense of the word but it didn’t matter to her one little bit.  And then I knew what I had to do.  I turned round and returned to the shop.

She once again smiled as I walked up to her and said that I just wanted to tell her how much I appreciated the welcome she gave me adding that it’s not easy being me.  She continued to smile as she asked ‘why not’?  I said that life gives us roles as a parent and partner and it’s often not easy to be who we sometimes want to be.  She told me that I was very brave and we then talked briefly about the gorgeous clothes in her shop before I thanked her again and she wished me a nice day as I left.

Wow!  Did I really just do that?

I was on cloud nine as I left the shop but, of course, still hadn’t got what I actually wanted to buy – the jewellery.  I remembered which the correct shop was and returned there, found what I wanted on the display and then queued up to pay.  This time the sales assistant was a younger woman but once again could not have been more helpful starting the interaction by telling me that I’d chosen a lovely matching set.  Emboldened by what had happened in the other shop, I commented how beautiful their clothes were which she agreed with.  With a final ‘maybe one day, I’ll find a reason to wear some of them’ I left, hearing ‘have a lovely day’ being called out to me as I walked away.

That was enough excitement for one day so I made my way back to the car, bending down as I arrived to retrieve on of my fake nails which had jettisoned itself on the way out (and then found another on the passenger seat, a third in my coat pocket and a fourth in my handbag), and drove back home, still elated at what had happened.

-o-O-o-

As I wrote this post, I realised that for many (and certainly for every single one of my co-contributors) this is old news and despite all of the so-called ‘anti trans rhetoric’ we hear so much about, most people we encounter will realise that under the exterior, we are just human beings trying to live an honest life and will treat us exactly as they’ll treat anyone else, regardless of how they feel about the headline trans issues which are a major talking point these days.  And as I found out today, respect for what it means to be a woman is rewarded in spades by the community we aspire to.

Maybe I should feel disappointed that the first lady did not tell me how good I looked as a female or the second lady didn’t call me madam or some other feminine epithet.  But the truth is that had they done so, it would have had a hint of fakeness about it because my provenance as a biological male was never in doubt and, indeed, I actually outed myself to the first assistant, not that it was necessary.  But as I interacted with both of those wonderful sales assistants, I realised that it didn’t matter one little bit because they were both accepting me for exactly what I was – a trans person in some shape or form – not for something I was trying to be but could never be.

So is Amanda back?  The short answer is yes but there’s a longer answer too.  As I said above, the constraints I have lived with this year proved to me that I no longer need to indulge in what I think of as ‘mindless’ CDing – sitting around in women’s clothing for a few hours at home for no other reason than to sit around in women’s clothing for a few hours.  It distracts me from other priorities in my life, there’s always the feeling that I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go and I have found that the law of diminishing returns means that I often don’t feel it worthwhile going to all of the effort of transformation, and the considerable undertaking of clean up at the end of it all, just to admire myself in front of the mirror a few times.  Added to which, the current opportunities are only temporary and by Christmas the house will be full once more.

There’s also the issue of respecting the spirit of Mrs A’s DADT concession.  Yes, at a fundamental level the fact that she doesn’t want to hear anything about it does give me freedom but I’m well aware that the thought of me venturing out of the house did not feature on her radar in any shape or form when she gave her blessing.  I do have to look after my own needs – one of the points I made when confessing for a second time was that being able to occasionally express my feminine side would help me be a better husband for the rest of the time – but equally I do have a responsibility to respect the marriage and Mrs A’s expectations within that.

But what I experienced in this outing really helped to reawaken my feminine side.  Perhaps I’m getting closer and closer to understanding who I really am; I’ve come to love the duality of my personality but had previously done my best to hide one side of me (in particular by avoiding direct contact with others), even when my appearance left no doubt that the feminine side had come out to play, so to speak.   Equally, though, I don’t need to be atop a pair of stilettos or fully made up to see life through my feminine lens.  It’s true that those motifs are essentially for others to see me in that way but they’re not prerequisites for self-identification.

So what that means is that the stash won’t see the light of day nearly as often as it used to but when it does, it’ll be with the purpose of showing the world how proud I am to be me.