So, with my new found confidant, I started to tell a few other people. I wound up with a small circle of friends that now knew about me. Knew as much as I was letting on anyway.
I eventually found the nerve to dress in front of some of them. It was horrible, but good. I looked horrible, but we were drinking wine, and everything was good. I didn’t have a wig yet, and still had ‘some’ hair, so I tried doing a weird comb over thing that really did not work. 🙂
It was after this session, that it became apparent I’d need to tell some male friends (partly because of how terrible some of my female friends can be at keeping secrets). This was even more nerve wracking, but I got through it. And in getting through it, I had expanded my coterie.
I had never wanted to go outside dressed as a girl. The thought was terrifying. What if people realized I liked doing it? What if I ran into someone I knew that didn’t know about me? What if? What if? What if? Like most anybody that finds some reason to dress as the opposite gender, I decided to try going out on a Hallowe’en night.
At this point, I had told my Mom about my dressing. I was going to get her to make me a costume for Hallowe’en. We went to a local fabric store and found a medieval dress that I really liked, and some purple fabric that I also really liked. The one problem, it was very low cut. I researched how to do cleavage, and wound up using a taping method that worked remarkably well, if you don’t count the pain I was in 4 hours later.
So, I went out that night with a male friend and his adopted daughter. We wandered around the neighbourhood, and I was almost too terrified to actually enjoy myself. Then, about half way through, I overheard two teenage girls say (and they were trying to be quiet), “That’s a guy! I think.” That statement made my night. I kinda passed. They weren’t positive. I also later heard from another friend, that her husband had said I looked pretty good as a girl.
That got the bug in me to do Hallowe’en for a while. It wasn’t every year, but I was getting out and seen as a girl. I wasn’t even thinking at the time, why do I want to be seen as a girl? Protector James quashed any thoughts like that. As Monty Python would say, “Stop that, it’s silly.”