Lucy's Window

By Lucy Stone

This month, it is a privilege to be published in two Tri-Ess chapter newsletters.  While Lucy's Window will continue to be published in the Chi Epsilon Sigma newsletter, it will also be published in Rho Tau's newsletter, which is beginning publication with this issue.

On Cross-Dressing: Blessing or Curse?

Perennially in the cross-dressing community there is a lot of discussion concerning whether being a cross-dresser is the result of a blessing, a curse or even God's practical joke.  Certainly, cross-dressing has impacted and indeed complicated the lives of everyone, both cross-dressers and significant others, reading this column.  Initially, I felt more like it was a curse because, after all, it would be a lot easier, if less interesting, to fit the stereotype of the all-American boy.  However, now that I have achieved a reasonable balance in my life that includes cross-dressing, I have come to feel that it is a blessing.

Our sex, inherited genetic characteristics, and biologically induced effects during gestation greatly influence our destiny from the day we are born.  One characteristic, the need to cross-dress, or at least the inclination, is probably one of the traits that is with us from birth.  Whether we consider this or any other inborn trait to be a blessing or a curse probably is greatly influenced by the way we believe that it has influenced our lives.  Since many cross-dressers have experienced great unhappiness in their lives as a direct result of this trait, it is not surprising there are many who view it as a curse.  If you are one who considers cross-dressing a curse or at least a problem you would be very willing to banish from your life, you also might want to consider the positive aspects of being a cross-dresser.  Then consider how you can enrich your life by taking advantage of the positive side and how you can better manage what you find troubling.  Once I accepted myself and achieved a reasonable balance in my life, I have progressively considered it a blessing.

Certainly cross-dressers have an appreciation for clothes, and I am no exception. I very much enjoy going shopping with my wife.  I love clothes, flowers and other pretty things, and I am no longer too inhibited to acknowledge it.  In fact, a few months ago I finally felt good enough about my self to acknowledge and do something I have longed to do for a long time.  I started my own collection of collectible porcelain dolls, beautifully gowned icons of femininity, which are lovely to look at, and now sit gracefully on a series of glass shelves that adorn one wall of our bedroom.  Not only am I having the pleasure of putting together a collection that seemed so unconventional that for a long time I would not admit my appreciation for these lovely things to anyone, but also I have had the satisfaction of putting together a lovely display area for the dolls.  And a very nice part of my collecting is my wife and mother-in-law are participating and seem to be enjoying it too.

The important point here is that my appreciation of things usually reserved for the opposite sex is not in place of the things more typically considered appropriate for members of my sex but in addition to them.  I very much enjoy my role as husband, father and grandfather in addition to expressing my feminine side as Lucy.  My doll collection is not in place of, but rather in addition to my tools in the garage and the computers I share with my wife in the study.  I enjoy going out with my wife as her husband, but I also enjoy occasionally going forth with her and her mother as another lady.  I have found that the difficult part of being a cross-dresser is achieving a balance, a balance that is right for my wife, Joan, and me.  During the process of coping with the issues that encompass cross-dressing, Joan and I have become closer.  Now that I can maintain a fairly comfortable balance, I feel that I have been blessed to be able to have it all or at least as close as practical.  The ongoing challenge is maintaining the balance, a balance that changes from time to time.  While cross-dressing has introduced problems in our lives, working them out and developing an acceptable balance has enriched us.  As a result cross-dressing has given us more in life, not less, and that would seem to make it qualify as a blessing.

What Is This In Dad's Closet?

By Terri Lynn Andrews

We all, at some time, have lived in fear of what our families will find in our closets if we die unexpectedly.  My wife, Cindy, and I recently read an article in Ann Landers' column about the consequences of not planning properly for this occurrence.  This was one our fears until we each drafted a letter for our children that we attached to our will.  The letter I wrote dealt with my feelings and emotions related to crossdressing.  Cindy wrote from her prospective as the wife of a cross dresser.  I began by admitting that I had been a heterosexual cross dresser since early childhood.  The next section was devoted to providing information on the subject.  I included books and articles that were easy to understand.  Lastly, I apologized for not sharing my feminine personality with them.  The purpose of the letter was not to ask for their acceptance but only their understanding.  In closing, I reaffirmed how much I loved them and how proud I had always been of them.  Cindy`s letter explained how I had told her about my other self and her subsequent feelings on how it has enriched our lives.   We can only guess if they will be angry or understanding.  We believe our letters convey our desire to be considerate of their feelings and to show our love for them.

The Ultimate and Final Purge

By Rachel Rene Boyd

Terri Lynn's article about how she and Cindy are leaving notes in their wills to explain should the unexpected occur touched me deeply.  I have been corresponding with a sister in Maine who was also very troubled by the Ann Landers article.  Betsy is 81 and has been married to the same lady for 54 years.  Her wife doesn't know.  When Betsy read the Ann Landers column, she became concerned that the same thing could happen to her.  She is concerned her wife would be devastated by finding evidence of a femme lifestyle after her passing.  She had been troubled by that thought for several months, and how to extricate herself from the situation.  Recently she developed a heart condition, which is controllable, but it prompted her to make a decision.  As she said,

"Inevitably I came up with the conclusion that there was absolutely no way I could ever subject my family to this kind of disillusionment; they have such a different image of me that the truth would simply shatter them.  So regretfully I decided to bite the bullet.  I have purged my femme things (sigh!) and cancelled my post office box, which unfortunately means that I will no longer be able to receive any crossdressing mail from all you lovely girls."

This ultimate and final purge places Betsy in a very lonely place, unable to even correspond with her sisters.  I am sure she would welcome your thoughts and prayers, even though she never know we care for her.

Bookworm Becky

July 1999

Hi, gals and GG's!

Last November we started off with our first book discussion gathering.  It was sort of a "Book-of-the-Month" discussion group-all who attended had a great time and thought that the session was most interesting.  In fact some expressed the idea that the discussion that the book (one of Jo Ann Roberts') engendered was more enlightening than the book!

Anyway, I'm willing to help work up another book discussion grouping on a Sunday afternoon.  There are only three ground rules.  They are:

1.The material is of relevant interest (translated into English, that means the material would be about crossdressers, crossdressing, transgenderism, or associated subjects);

2.The topic book must be easily obtained; and

3.Participants will follow the 3 R's.  That is, we treat all with Respect, we take Responsibility for our words and actions, and employ Rational thought.  (That latter item is hard in my case-gave up thinking when I got commissioned as "conduct unbecoming an officer.")

There are a number of relevant books out there ranging from Allen's Man in the Red Dress to Bullocks' tome on the origin and history of crossdressing.  I personally like to stay away from "tomes" as they remind me of "tombs" and that's a grave subject we'd rather not dig into!

So you know my e-mail address is beckyxd@hotmail.com.  If you are interested, drop me a line with a recommendation and we'll see about setting up a Sunday afternoon where those of us who are interested can gather en femme and display not only our feminine apparel but also our feminine minds.

Becky

If There Were Only 100 of Us

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, there would be:

     57 Asians

     21 Europeans

     14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south

     8 Africans

     52 would be female

     48 would be male

     70 would be non-white

     30 would be white

     70 would be non-Christian

     30 would be Christian

     89 would be heterosexual

     11 would be homosexual

     6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all

     6 would be from the United States

     80 would live in substandard housing

     70 would be unable to read

     50 would suffer from malnutrition

     1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth

     1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education

     1 would own a computer

     1 would be a crossdresser

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

Girl Talk

The stuff dreams are made of!

By Becky Adams

No, not those types of dreams...but it is interesting that in the past two weeks the subject of cross-dressing, transgender, and dreams have all sort of come together in material I've been reading...and I'm talking the New York Times, Steven Ambrose, and other authors who are not normally associated with our activities.

Ambrose makes an interesting point in his Crazy Horse and Custer.  The young men of the Sioux (he wrote this before everything was politically correct...so his accuracy as to which element of the Lakota Nation he was talking about was not too precise) would derive their nameand sometimes their future lifeas a result of a fast and ordeal which culminated in a dream.  And the winkte, or holy individual who was also a crossdresser in our vernacular, would know so from the dream he had at the end of his ordeal...and how many of us would find ourselves "dressed" in our dreams following a particularly rugged experience?

The NYT carried an interesting article by an author, Jim Harrison..."First Person Female: There are Some Doors a Man can Open Only by Being a Woman."  And in this very interesting articlea sort of autobiographyHarrison raises an interesting point worthy of additional research.  He claims that Jung held "...one very troubling idea...of what we [men] have done with our twin sisters that the culture [Ed. Emphasis added] forces us to abandon at birth."  Seen your twin sister lately, like maybe in the mirror or in a dream?

In my own case for years, since I was ten or so, I used to go through these literal nightmares of being "outed."  But once I faced up to the realities of who I really am and accepted myself...and then came "out" to my spouse, the nightmares stopped and I began to live more and more of that original dream...and then revealing Becky to my two older sisters also sort of helped me maybe find that twin...

Interesting things, these things that dreams are made of...

Samantha Says

Dressing Down

Some of the girls feel that it should be all the way or nothing, but that is not my way at all.  Sure, when you go out on the town or to a club meeting it's got to be that way; y'u know, wig, dressy outfit, heels, careful make up job and all that.   And you got to act like and even think like your female personality, but how about the rest of the time?

Well maybe I've got it better than lots of the girls, but my SO doesn't mind what I wear as long as we are not going to a social event or church or something like that; and as long as, y'u know, I'm presentable for the circumstances.

My normal mode is male.   By that I mean that I generally think male, act pretty much male, but I don't want to forget that I am a crossdresser, and enjoy wearing female clothing. (Samantha is never far away).   So what do I wear around the house and working and doing the ordinary chores like grocery shopping or other errands in town?   Actually, except for shoes, my clothes are usually almost entirely unisex or female almost all of the time.   But you gotta arrange it in such a way that you don't appear to be anything else than male when others see you. 

I'm going to tell you my normal dressing schedule in a minute, but first let me tell you about a couple of goodies I have!   For a long time I have had leg vein problems, and although they were fixed years ago, they still can bother me, but we have found a great solution.   Active control pantyhose do the job!  These are a MUST!    Second, in '95 associated with cardiac problems, I had a pacemaker installed.   This isn't a big deal, but it is stuck in under the skin right where a bra strap will hold it nice and firmly, and it can cause some pain if it is jogged around like on a long drive or such.  We found that wearing a sport bra solves that one nicely.  Even a regular bra works, but they are somewhat more obvious and if you wear them all the time - especially underwire types -  tend to puff up your breasts a bit, which can be annoying.

OK.  So, when I get up in the morning, make breakfast, let the cat's out, and make the bed, etc. (my chores) I take off my nightgown and put on a clean fresh pair of pantyhose, then a sports bra and panties.  I like nylon panties and have recently found Hanes Her Way ones with nice wide lace-elastic tops.    After deodorizer, shaving, toothbrush and water-pix, I rub some moisturizer on my face except not on my lips.   I put lipstick on them and then loose powder on the whole face.   I find that Revlon  "pink in the afternoon"  # 25 is exactly the natural color of my lips and after the translucent powder you can't tell anything has been put on them.     A squirt of perfume  - Vanilla Lace or - more special - Shalimar - completes the job.

Next comes a pair of sport socks and slacks.   I use elastic waist ladies slacks, which are otherwise the same as men's  - except no fly and usually smaller pockets.

For a top I have a number of plain blouses and tee shirts which go well in the summer.   Actually I will often use a man's shirt just because it is around.   The difference  - buttons differently - is never noticed.   In the winter I may use a camisole in addition or a short slip for warmth.

As I indicated above, I wear a nightie to bed at night and often in the evening if we are going to be home looking at TV or something.   If it is cool I have several robes to put over it and some nice slippers.  I do not like tight panties at night so I have found several pairs of lace trimmed petti-pants, which I find very comfortable.

Since I have been dressing like this for a good number of years, it has really become my normal habit and is no longer a big deal at all.   In fact I would not be comfortable at all wearing pajamas again at night - unless they were VERY pretty!

Take care of yourselves. Love y'all.

Samantha

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