Petra is back. Still working on the front.

Voyages en Rose has been exhibiting a very faint and irregular heartbeat of late. Seven posts in eight months, a lamentable showing. Circumstances have conspired however to shake me out of the doldrums and provided some newish feminine fodder, Dear Reader, for pondering and prosing on about.

The recent loss of our friend Ramona certainly brought things into focus. Beyond that, well SCC is in full gear by now. Hooray! I am very much looking forward to participating, starting tomorrow evening, to giving long overdue air time to this other, integral part of me. If you are attending, please reach out or drop a note in the comments section here. It is a wonderful thing to meet blog friends in the flesh, yes? That’ll be me perched on a tall stool or teetering on tall heels where the nice people fix cocktails.

There will in short, be much to write about over the next few days, weeks and months. 

The wardrobe made the migration from attic to its more airy and organized closets in la Chambre de Petra. I did a rather thorough audit of this and that, and am alarmed to note that a few of my more clingy skirts are rather stressed at the seams. Borderline unseemly in fact. I have, it seems, lost a tooth or two in my metabolic machinery, and put on a little curve. Ravages of time I suppose, and approaching 50 as I am, well it is to be expected. In fairness, this a long time coming. I am suitably warned. It is time for me to be more mindful of lifestyle. 

I will be forming a relationship with a consignment shop shortly I fear. In the meantime I will be on the lookout for skinny girls at our conference in the hopes of finding a more suitable hostess for some pretty things that deserve to be worn well.

Life has not been without writing from my adoptive female perspective though. Many of you know that I have been doing the odd product review or fashion editorial for a special friend, Ally, the proprietress of Guilty Pleasures. Ally has been a wonderful source of insight and support. I am quite proud and really quite giddy about the reality that I can and do write with authority about the most intimate fashion category, intimates. Every now and then a smart parcel from a terrific vendor shows up in the mail, and I do my best to find accurate, engaging and honest words about the bras or knickers or tights contained therein. Life is full of surprises. My drawers runneth over. If you haven’t visited, please do. Here is a link to the collected works of your faux fashionista friend. 

Also on the fashion front, I splashed out a little on the weekend on a vendor whose business model and fashion sense has had me drooling in recent months. Rent the Runway is thriving online enterprise where a gal on a budget can take temporary possession of a serious party frock for a fractional fee. Tomorrow, a big box of beauty arrives. There is no godly or ungodly way I could ever justify spending $1,000 ++ on a dress. I can justify the $140 rental expense though. More than this, I have decided that I cannot afford to go without the experience of wearing a truly wonderfully made, current piece of serious pret-a-porter at least once in this life. My little heart is going pitter pat in anticipation.

The Christian Cota (top) will be sported at Saturday’s Dinner Gala, and I plan on slithering into the blue Christian Siriano to attend a wonderful Commitment ceremony at SCC. There will be a good number of couples renewing vows, and celebrating enduring love on Friday. I will be especially happy and honored to see Cindy and Joanne P take new vows. Hopefully the mascara will hold. These will be special nights, deserving of a little extra care and preening. I will surely share notes on the experience and other findings from the life en Femme here shortly.

Happy dressing, and happy everything else wished your way.

Passing

Dear Friends,

First things first. All is well, genuinely so.

The genuinely good things will get only scant mention in this post though. I must share some sad news before all of that. The good things will follow not far behind this entry. All of you with whom I am close, and for those quiet, anonymous and not-known-by-name-to-me visitors may be fully assured that Petra has a bit of happy chatter in reserve. I am anxious in fact to unpack findings from my annual Summer Drabbatical, and sort them out here. I sense that the muse is back upon me. Thank you all for your patience in my absence. And now, as some say, to cases…

The last post on Voyages en Rose in May of this year mentioned a lovely visit with a very important person in my life, Ramona. Ramona passed away on September 1, after a valiant, inspiring and always hopeful battle with a determined foe. Would you mind if I shared a few thoughts with you?  

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I found Ramona at the time my life that I decided to unlock and take full possession of the contents of my own Pandora’s Box. I had long decades of closely guarded curiosity and compulsion about gender behind me and a furtive future ahead. I had an awkward assortment of garments to my name, and a handful of public sorties en Femme that were not complete disasters to claim. The taste of honey felt worse than none at all.

And so I called Ramona. And so everything changed.

Ramona had, through a seemingly random series of connected events, caromed into the business of helping people like me become acquainted with their inner woman. And my, but she was good. I spent a lovely evening in her care, and for the first time in my life, stepped convincingly out on the town. I cannot describe adequately the impact this had on me. The impact was visible on my surfaces yes, but the internal impact was the thing, the real thing. Tectonic forces shifted the continental plates of my whole self, fertile new plains of undiscovered land emerged, enlarged, virgin and fertile, ripe for exploration.

That exploration unearthed within me a much happier person, much better prepared for understanding and living within a complex and challenging world.

That exploration helped me develop the character to share with my wife truths that I did not have the character to share 17 years earlier when we first met, courted and agreed to be each others everything.

And not trivially, that exploration provided me with experience that was too big, too rich and too damned vivid to not write about.  Much of that experience has been documented here on Voyages en Rose over the last three years in something north of 200,000 words in 227 posts. 340 pages of 10pt thoughts not counting the smoldering 10X heap of deleted detritus and still-borne simile.

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I had long harbored suspicions that I could tell a story but felt as though the risks of working at the craft and failing were higher than the potential payoff of working at it, failing at it, and working again. Becoming “Petra”, I slid into a protective authorial prophylactic that shielded me (the broadly known me that is) from the full weight of those risks. And so I wrote, at a slight remove from responsibility.

The work of writing became a part of my emerging life. It then seeped into the rest of my life. White papers, commercial copywriting here and there, deeper more convincing thinking on the numbers that my clients businesses ran on. Words for money.

By late last year I had leveraged this newly found confidence and attracted an agent. I was offered a good contract to ghost a book for a notable executive on subject matter I had enough familiarity with to ghost well. At this exciting moment, a more sure and certain path opened up; a staff position in a less creative role with my biggest client. I opted for the staff position and returned the book contract. No great or at least permanent loss in my view. The path I am on will allow me to commit to independent creative efforts in a few years. I should have an adequately plump cushion beneath the high wire and my semi-retiring arse by then.

I have Ramona to thank for this entirely unexpected and exciting possibility. I have much else to thank her for, but of all of her gifts and her splendid friendship, this stands out.

And you, Dear Reader, if you feel your times here have been well spent, a quiet salute skyward might be indicated just now.

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In her last year, Ramona found the company of a remarkable partner, Gabrielle. Ramona was giddy, girly, head-over-heels besotted for Gabrielle. What a privilege Ramona enjoyed. Her best times came as her last times.

Gabrielle stands now as the principal keeper of Ramona’s memories. There is a long line of people flanking Gabrielle, all touched and changed in ways great and small by the happy accident of finding Ramona. Finding her, and is so doing, finding themselves.

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Ramona had never been much of church going lady, but this past spring, at Gabrielle’s urging, the two of them popped on smart Easter bonnets, attended a service at Atlanta’s First Metropolitan Community Church and were welcomed with open arms. Gabrielle had been raised, like so many Southerners, in a praise community, and wanted very much to find a place where the best parts of this tradition could be expressed joyfully and freely. More than this, she wanted to share the peace she knew could be found in the best of these places with the most important person in her life.

Ramona surprised herself, and me when she spoke about how much it meant to her to find and be welcomed by this community. When she faltered, they rallied to her side, held vigil and held hands with Gabrielle and others close to Ramona at the end.

Many gathered last Sunday, September 11 for a memorial service at FMCC. The choir sang. The piano rang. Moving tributes were paid. Many of us did our best to present in a way that would have made Ramona proud. She loved animal prints, and so I opted for the leopard sheath that I had worn on one happy day of shopping with her what now seems like forever ago, yesterday or so. I chronicled that day here. Ramona in fact took this picture, and then threatened me with the silent treatment if I did not stop dithering about which perfect skirt I would buy already. We had a busy day ahead after all.

Mrs. Bellejambes attended the service with me. When I told her of the loss and the plans for the memorial, without blinking she asked to attend. She never met Ramona, but recognized that an important person in our shared life had passed, and wanted to mark the moment with me. We will visit FMCC again, together. A final, parting gift into our home from an absolutely gifted woman. A woman I will miss dearly.

See you again here shortly.

Me, Women, and The Other Woman

The thermometer in Atlanta is cresting 90f (33ish for friends of the Metric persuasion). The population of Casa Bellejambes has swelled to a seasonal high with welcomed overseas visitors. My precious wardrobe has migrated to attic, summering privately away from our hustle and bustle for the dormant months. It is a sad ritual, the careful folding and hanging, the last look over the shoulder and, with a slight push on the door, the official end of the dressing season.

I did manage a last fling en Femme a couple of weeks ago, happy in tan faux-denims, a riotously colored blouse and a light ruffled collar and cuff jacket though, and it did me a small world of good. The same outfit from an earlier amateur solo photo session is pictured here. So nice to be able to take a short visit with a dear friend, enjoy a glass of wine, pound out a few chords on a beautiful piano and just generally occupy a sympathetic social space. I visited with the woman who really catalyzed my journey and was mid-wife at the birth of Petra, the loving and very skilled transformation artist Ramona. If you find yourself anywhere near Atlanta, and feel the urge to dress, I encourage you to reach out to her. I did, back in the day, to great and lasting benefit as earliest posts here and here testify.

Since the recent evening out, I have stormed a shop or two in guy mode and picked up a couple of nice new pieces in anticipation of the cooler days and smoother legs of autumn. The appetite for a good sale remains ravenous even as the thirst for dressing seems more or less quenched.

My apprenticeship at being womanly in the world has radically changed my view of how the world works for women, and works against women. Petra is very present in my day to day things even while her wardrobe is tucked away. Let me tell you here about Petra at the office.

I work very closely with a woman who represents my key vendor. We both have the same broad objective: move large truckloads of product profitably through my network of partners. It is a cooperative, strategic relationship, but there is money at stake for both parties and so the relationship is inherently fraught with tension. Getting along on a personal level helps reduce tension, and makes it easier to represent my narrow business interests.

At least once a week I hear something said in a meeting or on a conference call in the strange, foreign and exclusive language of guys. I can practically see the references flying over or bouncing off her pretty head. In prior times I took little notice at just how desperately the vapid lexicon of commerce leans on sports metaphor. Especially noticeable is the uniquely obtuse and impenetrable claptrap of American football. The campaign failed because we out kicked the coverage. We miss opportunities for market expansion by advancing the ball in i-formation. A strategic prospective client gave the Heisman. This language is now jarring to me. After the meeting, and sometimes employing a white board as a learning aid, I take a moment with her to decipher the code. She eats up this stuff. I am a trusted adviser.

How about travel? We had a three city tour some weeks back with the usual mad dashes between hotels, car rental counters, airport security checks and long walks on unforgiving tiles and moving sidewalks. I entirely understand why her bags are heavier and why luggage gets checked. And shoes? I have done the calculations that go into footwear choices not perfectly suited for the rigors of the day. I used to think of women as being poorly equipped to keep pace with me. I now think of airports as simply being poorly designed.

You see, my calves have felt sore, and my toes have been pinched. I know just how much a skirt can restrict the stride and slow the pace. I have vainly attempted to pull a buzzing cell phone from purse while hauling a bag, fearful of popping a blouse button or two. My pace now changes to accommodate these newly seen realities. I slow down and holster my impatience while in the company of my sisters.

It seems to go both ways. It feels as though I am approached by women a little differently, a little more easily, less guardedly. Quiet, inconsequential confidences are shared. I know more about the personal lives of women I work with just a few months into my newish work than I have known after years together in other settings. I see an ease in the body language and general comfort level of the women around me. When I say “you look great today”, I get a nice smile in return, and sometimes an editorial comment about what a steal the dress was or relief that somebody thinks it is office appropriate. In my more testosterone drenched years such compliments seemed to put people on agenda alert.

I can only conclude that having lived for hours and days at a time as a woman has made me a better man. A man who gets along better with women. Happy to report that, in much of my world, Petra is integrated, welcomed and essential.

And yet, where it counts the most, Petra remains The Other Woman. Here at home. Apologies, dear friends, for the downer note, but it must be said. Mrs. Bellejambes and myself have not made any progress with growing or really sharing the external life of Petra. This is all difficult, and more so for my darling wife than I. Can’t fault her in the slightest. All of my fine print written in invisible ink. She might not have signed the contract otherwise.

While I enjoy the complexity, she wrestles with complication. Where I see reward, she feels risk. And when, on those occasions where I have stood before her in my most womanly form, deep within she must be crying out for a strong hug from her man.

I know quite fully that this leopard will not change its spots (and you know of course how much I adore a nice leopard print), but I do wish for my wife that she had been dealt a simpler hand. I could not wish to be different than I am, there is too much wonder and beauty within to not nurture. Good thing, methinks, that I have learned to slow down and holster my impatience.

Happy times are wished your way.

Now, where was I?

Enlivened as I have been by a recent flurry of correspondence and some long overdue quality time spent on precious and dearly missed blogs I am newly pondering a couple of questions:

Just what do you make of a Cross Dresser who is neither cross or dressing?

Just what do you make of a Blogger without a post to lean on?

Perhaps an answer will emerge an uncharted paragraph or two south hereof, but the contours our findings are not yet in sharp enough relief to provide any certainty. Certainty is a little dull for my tastes though, and usually illusory too, so join me, my dears, for a random romp through things in general.

Let us start with the whole blogging bit. Many of us, bloggers of allsorts, view this labor as therapeutic. Therapy is intended to attain happy conclusions at some point. If not, perhaps the analysand is working with the wrong analyst. There must come a moment when the patient and physician look at each other a little blankly, declare victory and move a little awkwardly on.

Voyages en Rose managed to keep lively for a little more than two years which, as I look at the ebb and flow of blogs I follow, seems like a median life expectancy. For me, late last year I found neurons not alight and fingers hesitant at the keyboard. Seams of thought formerly rich with gems of observation and sensation yielded poorly, more gravel and less gold. Been there, done that made gains on the delight and delirium of discovery.

What I have written and posted here is a very real treasure for me, and, in its way, a complete one. I am happy to say therefore that I do not feel a duty to add to the blog. Relieved in fact. It has taken quite a while and a lot of distraction to become happily indifferent to my traffic statistics, and accustomed to an absence of life giving comments from dear readers. But I have.

I do miss the achievement of writing though. Much of this I put down to what has been for me a big discovery about the nature of time and task in a corporate setting. My new work requires parallel attention to multiples of concerns where before I was processing things in a more or less serial manner. I find that this fatigues the mind, or at least draws down the reserves of creativity I employed to fuel fits of productivity here.

This is an unexpected thing. Still, I am happy with the trade-off, comforted by the knowledge that I can and will at some point willingly (or otherwise, frog-marched out of the building with a cardboard box in hand) go back to my old lifestyle with the bank account fattened enough for autumns and winters of hoped-for decades of graceful aging and indulgent prosing.

So, happy as opposed to cross. Good outcome.

Now, about the dressing. Nothing conclusive really. It warms up early here in the heart of Dixie. Shorts are a required element of the masculine wardrobe. I am not a competitive Triathlete and therefore have no easy peg to hang clean shaven legs on. To paraphrase Sir Elton, the thatch is back. Bit of a fashion buzz kill I think we can all agree. Yes, I could go with slacks and a blousy top, but the trowelling of concealer shows much like pine pollen on parked cars in the warmth here. Summer’s heat cools my ardor quite typically, and this year is no different. Just a little more pronounced. This absence of urge to dress does not surprise me greatly.

I did work from home one day this week though, and spent a few hours in a favorite dress. This felt wonderful. Nicely natural, all the pleasant, special differences of feel and movement and appearance. Visitors here of the full time female variety know this to be true: It is a treat to wear a pretty dress. To stand a little taller in well made shoes. Everyone else who visits here knows this too I presume. As for people who don’t share our enthusiasms, well, I simply don’t know what they are not thinking.

To each of us our own delights I suppose. Perhaps time away from our delights makes them all the more flavorful when we taste them again. For me, I suspect that I will belly up to the style buffet again at the Southern Comfort Conference in September here in Atlanta. Perhaps we will meet there.

Here, Chez Bellejambes we will be hosting house guests soon. This will necessitate a certain amount of shifting of garments from guest room closets to the dark and lonely confines of the attic. There are hues and silhouettes in my wardrobe from precincts miles away from Mrs. Bellejambes' style sweet spots. Best to get them out of sight, if not entirely out of mind.

Which brings me to matters of the mind, where I will leave off for now. I will want to share with you some observations on just how the periodic transformations of my exteriors have more permanently transformed the workings of my interiors. This is a big topic that I feel deserves its own dedicated and well lit runway. I promise to lean into that post over the next week or two.

I will sign off today with genuine affection for and thanks to you, dear reader for your time here today, and in the past. Today, somewhere, elsewhere, somebody is freshly committed to giving their gender journey a name, a URL, and the sweat of their pretty brow. There is a gifted voice writing fresh and compelling stuff to dazzle and cheer the likes of we. Go find those new gems. Drop me a line when you spot one, would you?

Affectionately and thankfully yours, 

Petra

Easy as falling off a blog

In the last few years, I have embraced two pretty radical changes in lifestyle. The first was yielding to my lifelong desire to fully explore my gender complexion. The second, and rather recent change, involved taking a “job” after an interesting 3 year stint of independent, home office bound, pajama clad freelancery and tomfoolery.

Guess which change has been more disruptive?

Before leaning in close to give you a glimpse of the bosom of my thoughts on the matter, let me share a thought on disruption:

I am all in favor of it.

If my report cards are to believed, disrupting things has long been a core competency. I had teachers who, with a stronger sense of frontier justice, would have stood me up in the classroom corner from September to mid-June, and suffered fewer headaches. Summer vacation differed from the rest of the year only in so far as the disruption happened out of doors, barefoot, and without the hindrances of adult supervision. Even better, it was not subject to term papers and grading.

But, yeah, without a jot of doubt or a flicker of hesitation, the whole getting a job thing has been more disruptive even than the discovery of “Petra”.

Coming out of solo orbit and splashing down in the Corporate Ocean has been a bigger shock to the system than expected. Many muscles and reflexes are out of trim and the gravity of things feels new. I had forgotten how much of the workday gets lost in overhead – the meetings, con-calls, and sweet mother of pearl the fulminating email threads, spinning in ever widening gyres, ensnaring the innocently cc’d in a gooey, Ebola-like contagion of indecision for the lack of somebody, anybody’s willingness to just goddam well do it.

Oddly enough though, it feels good to be home.

After these days in my new corporate home, and the unaccustomed commute back to my home home, there has not been much left of me other than a desire for stillness. I have been finding stillness and resolved harmonies after the discordance of the day at the keyboard of my piano quite reliably lately. Hence my long absence from the keyboard that describes these Voyages en Rose.

I did however, at the end of this past week, satisfy myself that I could hack through the Gordian knot I was hired to unravel. On Friday, I was able to articulate the plan more or less convincingly to the right audience. This attracted positive notice.

I follow in the path of a parade of capable men and women who nimbly (ed. cravenly?) pirouetted around this problem, leaving it in place, fearing the loss of career velocity attendant on high stakes, high visibility failures. Perhaps I am bringing the required admixture of male and female, the correct tincture of masculine and feminine to the whiteboard. Perhaps I have not yet perceived the real contours of the challenge too. Perhaps I am merely perverse enough to try. I don’t know, or mind much today. I slept like a lamb two nights running, and felt today as though I had some reserves I could share here.

Haven’t much felt like dressing though. I have seen 3 of my skirts on new co-workers. A couple of blouses too, and at least one dress. I am happy to report that I am working with a stylish and attractive lot. None of them quite have my ankles, but that’s a long shot in any room. For the most part though, the gender puzzle which has been so much at the forefront of my consciousness in recent years is much deeper in background just now while I figure out all the other newness.

I suspect in time, that things will normalize. For now though, much of my mind and time will be fully stressed and stretched to cover my new responsibilities. In time, imperceptibly, the stress will diminish, the stretch will ease. One day then, with the problem atomized and right sized, there will be enough time and mind to drape the work, amply, elegantly. The cloth left over will be put to other uses. Stylish and flattering uses I hope. 

Just now friends, I don't have an earthly when that will be. Nor do I have much of a thought about what I will want to share with you here in the meantime either.

But you do know I will be back of course, yes? And you do know that I will share. Yes. Disruption is temporary. Change is lasting.

I do hope in the meantime that all of your changes are good ones too.

xxoo - Petra