Women, Darwin, Power, and Cross Dressing

I swear I just heard a clatter of heels and a clacking of back keys. For those of you variously brave, stupefied or morbidly curious enough to remain, I salute you. I sense however that you are thinking … “here she goes again, attempting to pour herself into an intellectual cup size she hasn’t a chance of filling out …”, and I can’t effectively disagree. This will be a bit of a reach, dear gorgeous friends. Lets see if my mind can stretch like so much intellectual lycra and somehow endow this awkward theme with a shapely surface, shall we?

One of the very first things I wrote for this blog was an ancient remembrance. I could not have been more than five at the time:

...I remember distinctly an attractive friend of my mothers visiting. First pair of fishnets I clapped eyes on, and the world came into very, very sharp focus. I wanted to have the beautiful woman in some inexpressible way, but I also wanted the things that made her womanly...

Truly, this siren, name lost to history had made an effort, and did have an impact. Of course she did not set out to hypnotize children - the hypnotized child was inconsequential collateral damage. She did though, consciously and pointedly dress and preen and present for a bigger game. That game I suspect is close to the heart of my cross dressing.

The game, as old as time, is to be noticed, attractive, and desired. The game has been key to the fumbling forward march of our species. We are attracted to the attractive. Not all women play the game. Many contend that it reinforces regimes of objectification and in so doing, limits a woman’s horizons. But the game is played, for fun and for keeps.

I have always been willing to be played, and have hopelessly weak defenses. It’s a miracle that I learned a thing in school with all the distractions of budding, shapely beauty all around. Most of this feminine magnetism was, and remains, innocent and unaware. Always though, there has been just enough highly enriched weapons of mass seduction nearby to confound this confounded boy then, and today still. Such power. Such effortless power.

I must confess to a little envy.

Envy is a famously deadly sin though, is it not dear friends? And power has consequences too, often unintended. My envy is satisfied in part by my cross dressing. Perhaps you feel the same way.

Privately, performing the little rituals of dressing allows us to share in some of the complex and common experiences of womanhood. The fixing of nylon on legs. Pulling on a pump by the heel. Carefully reaching for and fastening a back-clasp or a side zip. Applying a finishing coat to the face, and teasing the hair out just so.

Publicly, if we can, when we display the fruits of these labors, the senses explode. One blends in and gets noticed, both. This cannot be helped. We blend in because the people around us are busy, and nobody is on the lookout for cross dressers. We get noticed though, because invariably, women get noticed in ways that I do not believe men are. For me, this curious combination of invisibility and visibility translates directly into the odd cocktail of feelings I enjoy when dressed.

Tranquil and tingling. Normal and exceptional. Becalmed and alert. Altogether very highly attenuated to life, very much in the moment, and possessed of a tiny measure of that feminine power that has held me in its grip my entire life.

There are drugs out there that some take to find their own electric precincts of experience. I enjoyed, in younger days, many of them and am not judgmental. I always managed to steer clear of over-exposure to settings and circles where they were too freely available. I know pretty well what I am made of, and have a healthy fear of my own propensity for wanting that feeling. Chasing the Dragon I believe is the expression favored by Poppy enthusiasts. Dragons are dangerous, yes.

And so too is power. I felt it one evening en femme when a very attractive woman who is inclined to loving other women leaned into me at the bar, and breathlessly, moistly, privately and directly into my ear told me that she wanted me. I died there and then.

Fear not, I have sacred covenants and many blessings. No wandering from this true path. But O my dears, that feeling of attraction, of desirability, of power was overwhelming.

The couple of glasses of Chenin Blanc did not hurt either I suppose. And perhaps I was to some degree merely the canvas upon which her masterpiece of power was sketched and left tauntingly, teasingly unfinished. Truthfully, I don’t mind. I touched, briefly, that dragon. And what a hit it was. No earthly point in saying I don’t want it again in some measure, pure as possible.

I feel as though I can master it’s addictive qualities. I believe that the pleasure receptors of my brain that are lit so avidly and so brightly by these experiences can be contained within a big, full and necessarily productive life.

How about you?

More, and more lightweight ramblings later this week. As lightweight as 10 denier glossy sheers in fact.

Thanks for your patience. Happy dressing - Petra