Conquering my Fears One Outfit at a Time

Pants - Guess

Black Top - Converse One Star

White and Black Striped Top - Guess

Shoes - New York Transit

I like the outfit pictured above, when it is cool enough for me to wear it.  It has been so dang hot lately and on this night I happened to be in Las Vegas.  At night, I think it got down to the low 90s.  But inside the casino, they had the air conditioner blowing hard and it was quite cool.  I decided to wear my favorite pants.

I like these pants, because they are very long and they make my legs look great.  Whenever I wear them, I have to wear a certain size heal for them to not drag on the floor as I walk.  The shoes I have on, are just barely tall enough to keep my pants off the ground.

With this outfit I also have one of my go to shirts on.  The black top is a very strategic garment for me.  First off, the arms are longer and they help to hide my larger arms.  Wearing a top like that helps me to feel more relaxed ass it is one less very obvious tell that I can cover up.  The other thing I like about this top is that it just barely covers my crotch.  This allows for me to not have to wear any special undergarments, or do anything special with Mr. Happy.  The shirt cover the barely noticeable extra bits in my pants.

This outfit made me feel very comfortable, which I was looking for as on this evening I decided to face another one of my fears.  It appears to me that if I have never done something before while dressed as a girl I have a notion that I can't do it while dressed as a girl.

This particular evening I decided that I wanted to go down to the casino and play roulette.  My wife and I like to play for fun.  We gamble responsibly, for anyone that really cares.  But I have great fears when I choose to dress as a girl and put myself into new situations that I need to directly interact with the public.  I have had more than one person on this blog that has let me know that they think I get to do what I do in public as I can readily pass as a GG.  To me, nothing could be further from the truth.  Maybe I can pass, at a glance.  But a longer look allows anyone who cares to see, that I am clearly a guy dressed as a girl.  Besides, even if people can't tell from my looks, they can certainly tell from my voice.

For me to go out, dressed as a girl, and interact directly with the public, such as a dealer and other players at a roulette table, was pretty intimidating before I did it.  The long and the short of it, is that it again, was no big deal.  I just went and did my thing, and it went just as good as it ever has.  And bummer for me, no dressing as a girl did not bring me any luck on this particular evening.  I broke evening while Jules lost about $100.

Love ya!

Face your fears!!

Crossdresser as Selfish?

It has taken quite some time to formulate my thoughts about what Paula, from Paula's Place, commented on my wife's post, and then began a discussion on Crossdressers Forum, so I'm sorry for the tardiness of this post.  Anyways here is what she had to say:

"...I suspect that we cross dressers are a pretty selfish self absorbed bunch..." 

I believe that there is nothing about crossdressing that makes the act inherently selfish in and of itself.  What I think makes many of us think that it is a selfish act is that we have many people in our lives that do not want us to crossdress.  They express their desires to not have us do what we would like to do.  The people that ask us to not crossdress are often the most important people in our lives, our spouses.  We love, respect, and want to please these people, and yet we cannot rid ourselves of the desire to crossdress and so continue on with what many people consider to be an abomination.

It is this conflict that manifests itself as selfishness.  If there were no conflict, there would be no selfishness.  For example, if you told your spouse you wanted to crossdress and they said, 'oh my god, I was so hoping you would tell me that because I always thought you would look great in my favorite little black dress,' would it be considered selfish if you then began wearing that dress?  I don't think anybody would think that it was.

But that is generally not ever what happens when someone tells their spouse of their crossdressing desires.  What I assert happens is that their spouse tells them that it is wrong and tells them they do not want them to do it.  Isn't that the beginning of the selfish blame game?

They are the ones who begin the selfishness, by telling us they do not want us to do it, and further that they will not accept us if we do it.  If we tell them that we will continue we then become the selfish ones.  When they tell their friends of what we are doing, their friends tell them that indeed their spouse is being very selfish in continuing to do something that they hate.

If we do not acquiesce to their demands we are labeled as selfish.  Why are our desires any more selfish than their desires?  Could it be because we are the ones that are doing something that is seen as aberrant?

When we say that we love someone, what does that mean?  Will we only love someone as long as they will only do what we want them to do?  Or do we love the actual person?

Cartoon from - Mimi and Eunice

Never Divorced but Married Twice

Wedding day 2005

Today is the 7^th anniversary of when my wife married me as Nadine.   It was a completely symbolic thing mind you, but it was still very beautiful and highly remembered by both of us.  At the time that it occurred, our actual marriage seemed ready to fall apart. 

Jules and I have always deeply loved each other but have also always had a very difficult time of getting along.   Maybe you are familiar with the Eminem lyrics:

“maybe that’s what happens when a tornado meets a volcano”

-Eminem – Love The Way You Lie

That is a fairly good description of our relationship.  Actually have you ever heard the whole song?  If you have, the whole thing gives a pretty good picture of Jules and me.

Maybe a brief overview of our relationship up to this point would be good.  Jules and I first met when we were about 8 or 9 years old.  We swam on the same team.  We began to date when we were fifteen.  We got married at 25 and are still together now at 40.  It is honestly amazing to the both of us that we are still together.  We both agree that it has been the best and yet the hardest thing we have ever done.

We have both been highly emotional and very passionate about our beliefs.  It generally seems as though neither one of us is ever interested in backing down and changing our opinions.  Possibly the one thing that has saved us is our abilities to be highly vocal about our stances.  To be honest, it has probably kept us together but all of our neighbors have probably hated us as they get to participate in our arguments also as we are very loudly vocal.

The summer that Jules and I remarried each other we had been have some real knock down drag out fights.  If you don’t know already my basic life philosophy is to face my fears and Jules’ philosophy is to act like she does not have any fears.   From my perspective, if you face your fears you can watch and laugh as they dissipate before your eyes.  It takes that leap of faith.  Jules has always had a difficult time with that leap.  This has often left a giant chasm between us and many times it almost ruined us.

And so it was in the summer of 2005 that I found myself wishing desperately for Jules to come to me and try and save our marriage by asking me to marry her as Nadine.  I felt as though it was important for Jules to marry all of me, at least in a symbolic gesture of full acceptance of me.  I still wish that I could say that she came to me and in a very heartfelt manner asked me to marry her.

But alas, that is not our reality.  Reality is that I insisted that she do it if she was interested in trying to save our marriage.  I am very thankful that she did do it.  I love her all the more because she was willing to do it.

I had foolishly hoped though that it would immediately change our lives for the better.  Over the last seven years our difficulties have continued but in reflection that year, 2005, was in many ways the worst that things ever were for us.

Since that time things have progressively gotten better and better for us.  Recently, as in the past few months, I have really had a change in heart over how I deal with Jules.  What I try my best now to realize is that I am a highly insecure person and I wish that I had her there always supporting me.  This has caused a great deal of anger within me and I have always tried to use that anger as a weapon to get my way.  It is true that in many ways the way that I have handled myself has brought both of us to this point in our lives, but I can’t help but think that it would have gotten here a lot sooner if I had been different. 

I am the only person that I can force to do anything.

Have you heard the quote:

A person changed against their will

Is of the same opinion still

Very true people.  At least for me.

Love Ya!

Flip Book Outfit Creator

While doing the outfit portion of my July challenge I discovered a big difficulty with putting my outfits together, I couldn't actually look at all of clothes in a very efficient manner.  Most of my clothes are stored in the drawers of my dresser, as shown in this post, and they obviously stacked on top of each other.  If I want to see what I have I used to have to pull out almost all of my clothes just to see what I have.  Now all I do is to flip through the pictures of my clothing items.

I told my wife of my idea and she decided to join me.  We posted up some white paper on the wall, set the camera on the tripod, put on a clothing item, and took a picture.  It did not take nearly as long as we thought it would.

After we were done we printed them out, cut them, and organized them.  I chose to put them together into these groups: dresses, tank tops, tops, bottoms, and shoes.  This is what they look like:

Dresses:

Tank Tops:

Tops:

Bottoms:

Shoes:

What I will then do is to find something I would like to wear and flip through the other books and find something that I think will go with it.  I often try to find a few different options that will work together.  This is what it look like when I put them together.

In total it took probably about 4 to 5 hours to put everything together.  Now that it is done it has helped greatly in me being to put together a variety of outfits which have utilized all the clothes that I own and not just the ones that happen to be in the top of the drawers.

Love Ya!

How to Remove Gel Nails or Reverse Gender Dysphoria

Part A:
I love the nail job that you can see pictured in the photo above.  I got it about a week ago at a local salon while dressed as a guy.  I got a gel nail polish put on and I asked if they could do a french tip in gels and they said yes!!  Woo-Hoo!!

It takes about an hour for the gel polish to be repeatedly layered and cured, with a UV lamp, which gets quite hot btw.  If you get a good stylist to work on you the end results are unbelievably great!  They look smoking hot and they are near indestructible.  The nails in the picture above are shown after a week, doing things like digging in the garden and pulling up weeds, not a chip to be seen; pretty cool huh?

The only problem with them is getting that darn lovely stuff off of your nails.  My first bit of advice to you on the process is, if you need to get it off in a hurry, you are screwed.

Method one-
- soak cotton balls in acetone
- place cotton balls on nails
- wrap nails in tinfoil
- leave for 15-20 minutes
- use plastic scraper to gently scrape polish off nails

Method two-
- soak finger nails in small bowl of acetone for about 15-20 minutes
- use plastic scraper to gently scrape polish off nails

Method three-
- sand tops of nails with a coarse file

- soak finger nails in small bowl of acetone for about 15-20 minutes
- use plastic scraper to gently scrape polish off nails


Method four-
- go see a professional

When I removed the polish from my nails above it took me about 90 minutes total, and it was not my first  rodeo people.

Part B:
Reverse GD.  Please keep in mind that I have spent a sum total of 1 hour of my life in a therapists office (I went with my family one time, which did not go so well.) So I know nothing of what I speak other than my brief readings on others blogs.  Much of my life I have had waves of desire flood over me, compelling me to do a variety of things normally reserved for women.  Once I stopped trying to ignore them and began surfing them as I do currently I noticed something else.

Like many  I have often pondered the idea that maybe I should have been born a girl.  I like a lot of traditionally feminine things.  It would be a pretty big, involved, glorious list, if I were to make it.  I think that these thoughts were part of what scared me about trying to paddle out into the surf in the first place.  But "lucky" for me I was able to face my fears.

What this has created is who I am today.  And today I just took off my nail polish after about two or three months.  More significantly maybe is that I cut my nails way back to totally normal guy male length.  This was brought about primarily because of work concerns but also because within the last couple of weeks I have had extremely strong reverse feelings.  Instead of dreaming of having long pretty awesomely painted nails, I was dreaming of having short little unpainted nails.

And now I have them.  Oh and how I missed them.  I so missed them.  I missed being able to type with the speed I am currently and not have pain in the ends of my finger tips.  I enjoy being able to dry my ears with a piece of tissue without jabbing myself with my killer dagger nails.  I will also appreciate not having to worry about viciously but confidently scratching the hell out of myself.

So reverse gender dysphoria?  I honestly don't know.  I just know it's always the same.  The grass always seems greener over on the next hill, but I'm afraid to try.  I face my fears, try it out, and then think, hmm... maybe the other way is better after all and then I mosey on back to where I came from.

Love ya!

An Outfit & Final Tally On My July Challenges

Top - Guess

Pants - Guess

Shoes - New York Transit

I got an opportunity to wear jeans the other day as it was cool enough where we were.  Of course I wore my favorite pair of jeans.  I think I wore this outfit out to dinner.  This particular evening we stayed at a casino in the San Diego area and were eating at the buffet.  The food was okay but the decadence of it all was fabulous!

To recap what I challenged myself to do for the month of July:
             1 - two outfits per day - and use them to create an outfit binder
             2 - do my eye makeup everyday - documented in the outfit binder
             3 - practice putting on eyeliner everyday - documented in the outfit binder
             4 - exercise every morning and every night
             5 - a compromise with smoking cigarettes - no smoking before 8 pm and then only 1 - 5 times


Well how did I do?
             1 - I did this almost everyday.  I ended up with 79 outfits in my binder!!!
             2 - I also did this almost everyday.  I got 30 pictures of my eyes.
             3 - I also did this almost everyday.
             4 - This one I was less successful on; I probably have a 75% success rate.
             5 - Uhh, nope totally blew this one.

In the end I am fairly happy with myself.  I think I put too much on my list and in the future I think I will concentrate on one thing at a time.

I am really happy with the results of my outfit binder.  I used it to help me pack more efficiently for our last trip.  I took pictures of my outfits with me on my iPad and then had a clear idea of what I had with me to wear.  I also like the pictures of my eye makeup, but I should have taken better notes about what I did to document it better.  Overall I am pleased with my exercise routine.  I did more walks and yoga then I have in a long time.  More importantly I maintained my weight while eating a bunch a crap this month.  If you are interested in my weight, I am currently 156lbs and am 5'9".  Pretty good huh?

Smoking - well I blew that challenge, but in all honesty I don't think my heart was in the from the start.  I am not going to give up on this one, but I don't know yet when I am going to try again, maybe next week actually.  I'll let you know.

Another thing that I think these challenges did was to prompt me to do some other things.  I emailed my friend B about this website.  I also talked with both M and C about my crossdressing, which was rather unexpected.  These three people were also the first people outside of my wife and my sister that I have told. Another thing is that I created a clothes flip card device to help with choosing outfits.  I'll share more about my flip cards later.

Okay, too much already, gotta go!

Love ya!