Three weddings and a funeral

It was a long time coming, but at at last we got around to it on Thursday. It was back in May 2008 that Claire emailed me wondering if I and a few girls might like to spend an evening at the bridal shop where she works to try on a few dresses.

So, at long last, myself, Julia, Susan and Rosie paid them a visit.

I organised to leave work a little early, so at 4:15pm I set off for home with only minor tingles of nervousness. Strange the things that matter at times like these … still undecided as to what to wear.

Applying makeup gets easier with time … though there is still plenty of room for improvement.

In the end I wear a long black skirt … almost a leg longer than usual … and a black shirt. I have black stockings on but decide I should also take some white ones. And beige. I’m wearing sensible walking shoes (i.e. heels no more than an inch high). And put the new 4.5 inch heel white ones in a bag. My handbag is full of “just in case” kind of things like foundation, powder, lipstick and gloss.

The short walk from the front door to the car is much less nerve racking than it used to be. I’m still waiting for the day when a neighbour will coincidentally be walking by just as I head out. Or for someone to ask my wife who the strange blonde woman is that they see coming and going every so often.

For quite a while now these possibilities have been real … but I’m ok with them – if people ask then they ask, if they notice then they notice. Sally says that she doesn’t mind. I guess, I’m not trying to flaunt the Andrea that is me … but neither do I live in fear of her being discovered. However … there is still a nervousness.

Getting in the car I fight with the sat nav. In the end it sticks to the windscreen without any broken nails. It guides me along a route that I wouldn’t have chosen myself … but the 23 minute estimated journey time is pretty much correct. I pull into the car park at 7:10 or so.

It’s very quiet. A man in a yellow jacket wanders past and then back again.

The plan is to meet Claire at the car park entrance at 7:30 so she can drive us to the shop.

So I have some time on my hands.

I decide against going loitering around the car park entrance.

I mean.

You never know who you might meet at a place like that.

Almost anyone.

Even guys in dresses.

Or skirts.

Fairly soon a car comes through the barriers and I find myself waving to Julia.

I get out the car and walk over … then get into Julia’s car and we sit and talk a while. Neither of us thinking it’s a good plan to stand around the car park entrance.

A small group of kids on bikes wander past, but pay us no attention.

Susan and Rosie arrive pretty much exactly at 7:30.

We walk towards the car park entrance.

Hoping that Claire will be on time … I guess Claire was hoping that the girls would be on time.

And there she is. Being out numbered 3-2 (tg to gg) Claire had more to be nervous about than anyone. But she didn’t show any signs of it.

It’s really nice to meet.

Arriving at the shop Claire introduces us to Cat and, shortly after to Cheryl. All three lovely, helpful, wonderful.

Susan, myself and Julia are the first tgirls that Cheryl and Claire have knowingly met … I think Cat had met a few before.

We look at the dresses on the rails and the fun begins.

It’s another totally new experience for me. The freedom to try on dresses at a shop without having to worry about anything other than what size dress will fit.

I know … it’s not quite the same as a crowded shop during the middle of a shopping day.

But also, it’s not at all like being at home in the bedroom.

The girls make the tgirls feel totally relaxed and welcome.

I know that many people might think that the whole scene is totally bizarre, unreal. Abnormal even. But, to me at least, it didn’t feel that way at all.

First I try a blue cocktail dress. Of course, I needed help with the zipper. And also with some unfastened hooks at the back of the basque. I like the dress a lot … it’s a shame that the zipper won’t fasten.

Julia tries a wedding dress.

Susan a wedding dress.

And tiaras and veils.

And of course, some pictures.

The zipper is undone … but it doesn’t show. The hooks in the basque at least are all fastened – I think.

The evening progresses … and honestly … it was so much fun … with such nice people.

Zippers fastening and unfastening.

I change stockings and put the heels on for a while. But the heels come off as the feet get sore.

I didn’t know that there are wedding skirts. But now I do. Complete with a bodice.

Of course, I can’t do the lace at the back of the bodice so Cheryl begins to truss me up.

“Are you still breathing?”

“Can you speak?”

“Is Andrea turning blue yet?”

The lace is quite tight.

But I can breathe.

And it does hide the tummy bulge.

A glass of wine and some nibbles.

Cakes.

More dresses and pictures.

Very laid back … almost falling over?

These dresses are just the right length for someone that is a ittle over 6 feet tall.

Look – no shoes.

Cheers from Susan, Julia and Andrea.

Complete with headgear.

Almost like three weddings, but no one getting married.

Talking a while towards the end of the evening is really nice.

We talk about gender. TVs. Sexuality. Work. Partners. Families. Life. Self acceptance.

Rosie and Susan and Cat all think that Erotica is a good place to visit in London in November.

Claire, Cat and Cheryl are lovely people.

Thank you especially to Claire for having the initial idea and dropping me the email and organising everything.

We all had a great time and it was lovely to meet you all.

For me, things like this help me enormously in terms of building confidence. Little by little I feel less and less worried about Andrea in the real world as I get further and further out of the closet.

Several months ago when I mentioned the evening to a friend I remember that she said that if she wanted to try on dresses at a shop then she’d just go to the shop whenever it was open and try on the dresses.

For me, Thursday was a step along that road.

There won’t be a time when I am Andrea 100% of the time. Or at least made up and dressed as Andrea all the time.

Last night Cat said that she didn’t think there are just two opposite sexes … rather that many people are somewhere between the two extremes. And that the way that society bundles all the people that are born with penises into the “male” camp and everyone else into the “female” one doesn’t really accurately reflect how a lot of people really are.

The real me is somewhere between those two extremes. With no desire to move from the male extreme to the female one. More a need to be able to express the femininity without being made to feel shame or guilt.

So anyway … thank you again Claire … and Cheryl .. and Cat … you are all stars!!!

Friday was a different kind of day. Last week a friend died from cancer. He’d been ill a while ago. Had treatment and went into remission. Then … all of a sudden it was back. And in almost no time took him away.

The funeral was Friday morning. Relatives and close family friends.

In the afternoon there was a service to celebrate his life, which I got along to.

Before things started there was a slide show to watch and music to listen to … his life … family. Things to make a person smile or cry or both.

As the pictures changed, the Paul McCartney song Blackbird played.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Song lyrics are always open to interpretation and mean different things to different people.

At that moment, the words seemed appropriate.

The time there was tinged with sadness but also happy memories.

A man spoke about where we came from … why we are here … and where we are going.

But I was unconvinced.

The certainty of eternal life in Jesus.

Once I would have nodded in agreement.

These days I see mostly contradictions.

As seems to happen at all events like this, there is a sense of being in a time warp. Meeting up with people that you haven’t seen for so many years.

Almost everyone was a friend or acquaintance from my born again years. A place where Andrea could not be. Where men must be men. Women must be women. And everyone must be heterosexual.

I would like them all to know Andrea … to accept her as a part of me. But I think many of them could not bear it. And once a thing is told it cannot be untold.

All of them such nice people.

Yet some would almost see Andrea as a demon to be cast out from me.

And yet, people can be surprising at times.

The friend who died had strong beliefs … verging towards fundamentalist almost. And yet he could cope with people that saw things differently. Could see the funny side of almost everything … even sacred things. Maybe he would even have been able to smile at the concept of Andrea in a nice kind of way.

It’s strange how at times there are people that you have known quite well … and then drift away from … and then only realise that you’ll miss them once there is no chance to meet them again.

And oh … Elina … I hope you had a great time in Italy!

A pictorial year in the life of ...

OK, at last, here are some links to some pictures.

I know ... I went a bit crazy and ended up posting way more than I was expecting to.

Part of it is to do with posterity. I thought that maybe one day it will be interesting for me to chart the life and times of Andrea in pictures. To see how the wrinkles develop ... how long I keep wearing skirts that are way too short and who knows what else.

So here goes.

The pictures you reach when you click

• here

were, in a sense, taken on the day that Andrea was born. They were all taken by Fiona Floyd in Portsmouth at the affectionately named Trannie Towers. As I've written earlier in this blog, May 6th 2007 was a really special day. It marked the beginning of a process of self discovery and self acceptance that has made a big difference to me. I'm still at the beginning of the journey and am meeting many, many lovely people along the route.

Fiona has been very influential in the way that I view the whole transvestite thing as it relates to me. For that I will always be grateful to her. Having moved on from Trannie Towers Fiona isn't doing the makeover, dressing and photo service that she used to. But hopefully she will get back into it again in the not so distant future.

I still remember a lot about that day very clearly. The amazement of how seemingly complex makeup was. The surprise at the idea of earrings and a necklace. And that first glimpse in the mirror. I was totally taken by surprise at the emotion that was invoked by this. The surprising sadness that I felt when the makeup came off. The release in meeting other guys that weren't ashamed of the fact that once in a while they like to dress up and go femme. A whole new world.

My favourite pictures in this set are definitely in the short black dress and blond hair . I keep on looking for something just like it in a shop somewhere so I can get one of my own. I posted some of these at TV Chix and someone did comment on how happy I looked. And I was ... and I am.

My wife was very brave in looking at these pictures the same day that I told her about them. I think she was kind of taken aback by the shortness of the dress ... and preferred the ones in the white top and not quite so short black skirt. Preferred is probably the wrong word here.

The photos at

• here

were taken on May 26th 2007, again at Fiona's. These were the first pictures of me in hair and boobs of my own ... well OK ... a wig and falsies of my own. I'd spent a long long time scouring the Internet looking for something that I liked. Kind of predictably I like the short denim skirt and black top best. I think you can tell that in the last few pictures I was fairly precariously balanced on a cupboard. I did manage to not quite fall off. I love the shoes. I'm not sure what it is about the flash of stocking tops ... it must be the heat of the spotlights.

The day was special because it was the first time Andrea ventured outside the walls of Trannie Towers. We spent a few hours round at a local pub. I spent quite a lot of the evening metaphorically pinching myself to check that I wasn't dreaming it all. I wore the denim skirt and black top.

Not long afterwards, the photos

• here

were again at Trannie Towers on June 9th 2007. I like the first few best. There's a St Trinians theme evening due at the Surrey Swans at the end of June and that kind of look would be fine for it. I know ... I am showing far too much underwear in the pictures later in the set. It's kind of strange how the photographic moment takes over leaving me surprisingly unselfconscious. And normally I am an extremely self conscious kind of a guy.

My wife still struggles a little with the way I behave. She says I am like a teenager. Well ... that I act like one at any rate. I know that I don't look like one! A lot of the TVs that I know are the same.

The last few pictures are fun ... well OK ... funny. But O like them.

That evening we went to a pub in Southampton (the London Hotel, I think). I wore the outfit from the last few pictures. This was the first time I got to talk with non-TV's whilst en-femme, so to speak.

And finally ... the pictures

• here

... were taken by Nik at trans-femme on June 8th 2008. Tracey did the makeup. A lot of the pictures are just slight variations of each other. I guess that I like the subtle differences. I like the ones with the black hair best. This surprised me a lot! You also get to see the little message on the panties included in the Anne Summers school uniform set. I didn't get spanked, by the way.

So ... that's it for now.

Let me now what you think.

Movies, Songs and Shopping

A few days ago I watched the movie “One true thing”. One of those things that was set to auto-record several months ago and never actually got watched.

There are movies that make me cry. And this is one of them. I think it’s because it seemed to be imaginable and believable. And sad. There is a scene where people are singing “Silent Night” ... a Christmas carol of hope. And yet, there is no hope. Or is there? I found the relationships portrayed between daughter and mother and father had aspects of déjà vu about them. Not in a bad sense. It just meant that I could sense, a little, where people were coming from. Perhaps that’s something we all grow into as we grow older.

Once upon a time life seemed to be more black and white, true and false than it does to me now. In some ways it’s uncomfortable to increasingly feel that there are more and more questions and fewer and fewer answers. But I am realising that I don’t need to know what all the answers are.

A few weeks ago I discovered Simone White. She sings a song that is featured in an Audi advertisement on TV. A little hunting for lyrics courtesy of Google led me to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB36GAPcfvc She has a lovely voice. I haven’t bought an Audi, but I did buy the CD. As well as her voice, I like the music and the lyrics. Her songs make me smile and also make me stop and think. These words are from the song “Great Imperialist State”:

There's a farmer in a distant country working on the land
A hat upon his head and a shovel in his hand
Till the soil plant the seed wait a while cut the leaf
And send another cup of tea to me

I'm a spoiled child of the great imperialist state
I cannot kill my meat nor grow the food upon my plate
I never walked a mile to the well, when the tap runs dry do tell
What will become of you and me

What will become of us, who will give us trust
Will you believe me when I say I never loved profiting from your pain
That I felt shame when I looked the other way

If you’re interested there’s more at http://www.myspace.com/simonewhite.

On a less serious kind of note Saturday is earmarked as Andreas first day out shopping. So if you’re in Windsor keep an eye open for me. I asked Bille about a trip out quite a few weeks ago ... Billie has a lot more experience at shopping whilst wearing a wig and dress and makeup ... We decided March 1st 2008 was good for both of us. So there we are.

Last week I was beginning to have second thoughts. And third thoughts as well, actually. Chatting with a few girls at “Surrey Swans” last night helped reassure me a little. Thank you! Sitting here writing about it isn’t so bad. But I expect that come Saturday I’ll be feeling rather more nervous about the prospect. In fact ... thinking about thinking about it is making me nervous.

I think the nervousness isn’t unusual for girls like me. Most of it, I think, is associated with how people will react. It’s not so much about “will anyone notice I’m not an RG?” If they look or if I speak then they will notice. But, I am assured that most people don’t look. Let me know if you have any hints and tips on all of this ... I’d be very appreciative!

At times I stop and ask myself “why do I want to do this?” And really, I don’t know. No more than I really know why wearing a skirt once in a while makes such a difference to me.
In a way I think it’s that I want the part of me that is Andrea to be less closeted and confined.
Whatever the reasons are ... I think that the approach of Saturday will be full of nervousness and, I guess, fear. But I’m hopeful that the experience will be more than worth the nerves. Just so long as I don’t resort to biting my fingernails!