Trick of the Mind - 13 & 14 by Maeryn Lamonte Melanie Ezell's big closet ultimate writer's challenge — Written From The Heart Thanks to Wren Erendae Phoenix for editing/proofing. Thanks to the twelve voters out of my six hundred or so readers. Not exactly statistically significant, but better than the turnout for the recent(ish) referendum on the voting system in the UK. The general consensus is for an increase to 4k postings, so I'll give it a try and do my best to keep up. “Keep the underwear on.” She told me, and I did as instructed, reaching for my jeans and tee-shirt. In next to no time, I was standing in front of the mirror, just a little disappointed to be back in the purple dress, but feeling better with the genuine sensation of soft nylon rubbing against my legs. I rejoined Jen and sat beside her on the bed. “So exactly what do you think you've figured out?”

-oOo-

“Give me a minute to think this through.

“OK, we already know that there are times when what you put on doesn't change in your mind. There was that time with the coral dress, and last night with my white dress. Was there another time?” I started to answer, but she had the bit between her teeth. “Oh yes, that first night when you put your summer dress on for me. That didn't change did it?”

I shook my head.

“So those were the only times you've put on girls clothes since you were hypnotised, and your perception didn't change. First premise then, when your mind doesn't have to do any work it won't. I could say typically male, but that isn't fair. Certainly not in your case.

“Just now we started off with a pair of Capri trousers and a fairly bland top, and your mind changed them into, what was it, a knitted dress, yes?”

I nodded.

“So it's not enough just to be wearing girls clothes, and there isn't necessarily a link between what you're wearing and what you think you're wearing.

“Next you tried on that dreadful thing my Nan gave me, and your mind changed it into something prettier.” Suddenly her eyes lit up. “That's it, the original suggestion was for you to think you were wearing a girl's outfit that took your breath away, so it doesn't matter if you are wearing girl clothes. If you don't think they're pretty, then you're mind chooses something else and puts you in it.”

“So why did it feel less wrong when I was wearing the grey dress, even after it changed into that yellow flowery thing?”

“Give me a minute, I'm still working things through here.

“Then there was that purple party dress, and no surprise when your brain didn't change it.”

“It is pretty magnificent,” I said looking down at myself.

“You're still wearing it?” She looked a bit miffed. “My boyfriend gets to wear my new party dress out before I do?”

“You were the one that gave it to me in the first place, remember?”

“Yeah, but I didn't mean for you to keep on wearing it.”

I shrugged. “I don't have any control over this you know?”

She managed to bury the huff and put her mind back to work.

“Lastly was the red top and the skin tight satin trousers. Once we figured out what you liked, you tried those on and nothing changed. Which means that you don't have to wear skirts all the time.”

“Except I really like skirts and dresses. I think girls look way better in them than when they're wearing jeans and stuff. I mean you're purple dress is way nicer even then those satin trousers, even with that red top, which is really lovely by the way.”

“And that probably explains why you're wearing the purple dress right now. Can I have one more experiment? Take off your jeans and tee-shirt, just for a minute.”

She disappeared behind her wardrobe again as I slipped off my clothes one more time. I found myself idly wondering if fashion models ended up getting friction burns from constantly changing clothes when Jen reappeared, skin tight satin trousers leaving little to the imagination, and that gorgeous red top. I felt myself going weak at the knees just at the sight of her.

“Now get dressed,” she told me.

I did, and I was back in trousers again. Black satin hugging my legs and bum, loose fitting folds of the red top brushing softly against my skin.

“Did I ever tell you you're a genius?”

“I seem to remember you saying something like that a few minutes ago, but credit where credit's due. I'm right aren't I? There's a link between what you think is breathtaking and what I'm wearing.”

“There is when you wear something breathtaking. What about my other question though? Why did it feel less wrong just now than usual?”

“I could be wrong here, but I think that's down to perception and reality. Your body knows it's wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, but your mind insists you're wearing a pretty dress. I think it's putting a strain on you without you realising it, and the only relief you get is when you deliberately do something to match things up.

“I suspect when you wore tights and knickers under your jeans yesterday evening, it made it easier for you to reconcile what you could actually feel with the suggestion your mind was making.

“I’ll get you some more underwear tomorrow and we'll try it out. You can leave them with me to wash if you like, so there's no risk of anyone seeing them in your stuff.”

I helped her pick up the shrapnel from our recent fashion explosion and put it back where it belonged, then we slipped back out of her room before anyone came along to pass comment.

Jen kissed me goodbye. “I think we did pretty good for a couple of hungover zombies. Don’t forget our appointment with Professor Peter’s tomorrow.”

“Two o’clock,” I said and headed off for my room.

-oOo-

I spent the next day wearing a white cotton gypsy dress with frilly neckline and short puffed sleeves. I was wearing Jen’s underwear and tights again and they did help the whole thing to seem somehow less wrong. I was able to concentrate through most of the lectures, but as two o’clock approached, apprehension set in and I had more than one complaint about my nervous jiggling before we were let out for lunch.

So far I’d told only two people about what I was going through, but they were the two people in the world that I trusted to look out for me in all the weirdness and not judge. Now one of them was suggesting I tell a total stranger, and a guy at that.

I met up with Jen outside the psychology department at five to two. We ran up the stairs together, light cotton voile swirled around my legs making me all the more self-conscious about how I seemed to be dressed.

Jen knocked on a door and a brusk “come” invited us to enter. Jen made the introductions and I found myself shaking hands with a surprisingly young man with an evident spark of keen intelligence in his eyes.

He invited us to sit and headed over to a far corner of his room.

“Coffee?” he asked.

Jen shook her head at me.

“No thanks professor, we’re fine.”

Professor Peter’s coffee was apparently a legend in the psychology department, and only the bravest of souls accepted his offer. He walked back towards us stirring a mug full of mud.

“Jen tells me you have a bit of a problem that she thinks I might be able to help with.” I nodded and he continued. “OK, I'm willing to give it a go, but before we get started I need to cover a few ground rules:

“First, if what you have to tell me contravenes university policy in any way, I will be duty bound to report it.

“Second, I am a psychologist not a psychiatrist. That means I study how the mind works and have no experience working with patients so I may not be able help. It also means there is no legal doctor patient confidentiality here so, even if I agree not to repeat anything you tell me outside of this room, should I do so, you will have no legal recourse to prevent me or to seek reparation.

“Third, assuming you’re still OK to continue with this, the more honest you are with me, the more the likelihood that I will be able to help. You tell me half the story, and it’s a bit like me putting together half a jigsaw and trying to describe the picture. It will be at best incomplete and at worst misleading.

“Finally,” with this he paused for a second and looked at Jen, “I’ve come to respect and admire Jennifer for her keen insight. If she says you have a problem and thinks I can help, there’s a good chance she’s right, so if you’re up for it…”

He looked at me and I smoothed out the lap of my dress, took a deep breath and started.

I told him everything. Starting from the evening with the hypnotist, I branched off from that to describe my own peculiar fascination for feminine attire. I talked about my surprise when the trance hadn’t worn off after the first day and how scared I was when Jen had challenged me about what I was wearing. I talked about the Easter break and my parent’s attitude, as well as the incident at my uncle’s house some years before. I talked about Alice and how she had helped me in the past, how I had shared this newest development with her and how she had responded. I covered my depression after I came back to university, my sense of helplessness over the situation, our visit to the hypnotist and what he had said, and finished off with Jen’s recent experiments with dressing me up, and how wearing her underwear seemed to help.

Jen added a few details here and there. By the time I’d finished, I’d been talking for more than an hour and Professor Peters hadn’t said a thing, nor had he shown any sign of reaction. His coffee sat on the table untouched and forgotten and, once I had finished, he stood up and started to pace.

Jen and I sat in silence and waited.

“So from your perspective you are not wearing jeans and a tee-shirt…”

“Right now it’s a white cotton summer dress,” I told him.

“And underneath your jeans…”

“I’m wearing tights and knickers.” I went bright red as I admitted this.

“And this has been going on since…”

“March if you’re talking about the effects of the trance. Jen and I only just cottoned on to the thing about wearing women’s underwear yesterday.”

He paced a little longer, his frown deepening with every minute. Form time to time he would look at me with an expression that had me wondering if coming here had been such a good idea. Eventually he returned to his seat and sat back down.

“OK,” he said, “are you ready to listen to me for a while?”

-oOo-

“Firstly, thank you for being so honest, I can imagine it was difficult given the circumstances, and that you don’t know me. I won’t say I condone your actions, but I have read enough about gender dysphoria to know that it’s not exactly a conscious choice on your part.

“You are the first person I’ve met with this condition, or at least who’s owned up to it, and I will say that I feel just a little uncomfortable with the whole idea. That is my problem though, and I believe I can work with it. I don’t feel it will be necessary for me to discuss what you have told me with anyone outside this room, and you have my assurance right now that I will not do so without your express permission.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. The professor continued.

“If I can address the issue of your desire to dress up as a woman, I believe it does fit in a little with some work I did a few years back on social identity.

“When you look at our society, there are really only two conventional roles that a person can fit into; the two primary gender roles. If we compare them, we see that invariably men tend to be competitive and aggressive, and a good deal of interaction between men involves each one showing off the ways he is better than the others. There is also a tendency to conformity because anything too different may be considered a weakness, most commonly punishable by whoever dares to be difference being pushed down the pecking order.

“With women, the tendency is to be more openly supportive and communicative. Women have more of a tendency to help each other and support each other. It’s a generalisation, so there will be a lot of examples of where this is not the case, but overall it is observable truth.

“The supportive environment is a safer more comfortable place to be, and when issues of self image arise, as they do with both men and women, the guys have to deal with it on their own, whereas the girls will help each other. I believe a lot of gender dysphoria — dissatisfaction with your assigned gender if you will — derives from a person feeling better suited to the opposite role, and since women seem to have the more welcoming, supportive environment, we have more male to female transgender issues than the other way round.

“An individual then having accepted that he wants to be more like the opposite sex, then has difficulty in making the transition. For those who are most affected, nothing will do but to undergo complete gender reassignment. For them the desire to fit into the opposite gender is so strong that they have to become a member of the opposite gender completely. There is evidence of physiological factors in many of these cases too, genetic variations which result in a more female structure to the brain, hormone imbalances at certain crucial times of development, that sort of thing.

“I don’t think that’s true of you Richard, but you strike me as someone who would prefer a supportive environment rather than one where you’re constantly competing. Am I right?”

“I think so. I’ve always hated sports — playing or watching — and I really don’t get too much of a kick out of being out with other guys.”

“So you’d rather socialise with girls, but the only way you can do so is as a man at which point the dynamic changes. A man who approaches a woman generally only wants one thing, and if the girl isn’t interested in you sexually, her reaction is going to be to turn you away completely rather than respond to you as she would to another girl.”

“So you’re saying my desire to dress up in women’s clothing comes from wanting to be a girl?”

“Well, let me ask you. What is it about women’s clothing that makes you want to wear it?”

I thought for a while, “I suppose it’s more to do with the way it looks and feels than anything.”

“It’s pretty? Attractive colours and patterns?”

“I suppose so.”

“it gives you the sense that when it comes to attracting a mate, you can take on more of a passive role. Look good and wait for her to come to you rather than keep challenging the other guys so that you can show off your strength.”

“That as well, although I’d never thought of it that way before.”

“Do you look good in a dress?”

Jen smiled. “Oh yes, he does.”

She pulled out her phone and looked at me. I shrugged, after what I’d told this guy, how could this hurt?

Professor Peters nodded at the image of me in the coral dress. “Very convincing. How did it feel looking that much like a girl?”

“It felt right, like I fit in, but at the same time I was scared of being found out.”

“Because guys tend to reject anything that doesn't fit their tight definition of what it means to be a guy. The more radically different you behave, the more vehemently you are rejected. Whereas girls can try new things and be accepted because it’s in their nature to be supportive, and as a result of that we have half a world full of women wearing trousers — something that would have been frowned upon fifty years ago.

“You don’t really fit in society because there isn’t a place for a guy who wants to look attractive and be passive in today’s world. You try it and you’ll get your head kicked in, hence your fear about appearing in public dressed as a woman. It would go horribly against a man’s pride to chat up a pretty girl only to find that he’s a guy in drag. At the same time you can’t fit into male society because it is so much against your nature.

“Most women can’t deal with guys who dress as girls either. They don’t generally have the ability to understand what would compel a man to do so, because they don’t have any concept of what it means to live as a guy. Generally they feel threatened or insulted by men trying to move in on their territory.

This was a lot to think about. It made a lot of sense and it felt right, but I was going to have to sleep on it for a while. In some ways it felt a relief to understand why I was the way I was even if that was different and unacceptable to most people.

“You’re not alone either,” Professor Peters continued. “Studies are difficult because transgendered men feel they have too much to lose if they talk about their condition, so it’s difficult to conduct an accurate survey, but the estimate on the number of men with gender issues is somewhere between one in twenty and one in fifty.

“There’s not a lot I can do for you in this regard, but I may be able to refer you to one or two psychiatrists who have specific experience in exploring gender issues.”

“Thank you professor, maybe another time. Right now I’m more concerned about what this hypnotist has done to me. I mean I should feel happier about the way things are working out right now shouldn’t I? I get to wear the pretty clothes that fit my personality and nobody reacts because they still see a normally dressed guy. Shouldn’t this be a good thing for me?”

“Actually no, and for quite a few reasons,” the prof replied.

“Firstly, the main point of wearing attractive clothing is to have people notice and complement you on it. You get to wear clothes that you think are beautiful, but no-body else sees them. It’s a waste, and if anything it goes against what you’re looking for because there you are dressed as prettily as you would care to be and nobody seems to think you look good.

“Secondly, you’re still a guy seemingly wearing a dress in public. It affects your mannerisms, and yes I’ve been observing you since you started telling me your problem. It’s not very noticeable, but you do have some slightly effeminate gestures. I think you’re aware of them and you’re worried about people finding out.

“Finally, and this is the big one, you have a major discrepancy between your perception of the world and the reality. It hits you in the face every day when you get dressed and all of a sudden the clothes you put on are not the same as the ones you seem to be wearing.

“All people live with two models of the world. One is based on their perception of what is around them, what they see, hear, feel, smell and taste, and the other is based on their expectations; memory and experience tell them that the world should be a certain way.

“It’s what the brain was designed to do. It records perceptions of different situations and links them to feelings. Good feelings when a situation ended up positively and resulted in safety, warmth and a full belly, and bad feelings when a situation ended up with an unpleasant outcome. It then compares current perception with situations from the past, and reintroduces the feelings of those past situations. So for example, the sound you might have heard just before you were chased by a big scary carnivore, were you to hear it again, you would feel something of the same rush of adrenaline that chase gave you.

“In humans this has become far more complex though, and our expectations of the world far more sublty defined. We expect our loved ones — parents, brothers and sisters, spouses — to be kind, right up until the moment one of them shows an unexpected streak of cruelty. We expect the world to be safe, right up until the point where someone or something threatens our lives. There is usually at least one time in everyone's life when our expectations are built on some false premise, and we find ourselves with two perceptions at odds with one another.

“Are you following this?”

“I think so,” I said, “kind of like you grow up believing your Mum loves you no matter what, then one day you do something that upsets her so much that she can’t get over it, and you have to re-evaluate your whole life as a result.”

“Yes,” he replied, “or from your Mum’s point of view, you have a perfectly normal boy whom you love unconditionally, then one day you find him dressed up as a girl.”

That was a shock. Firstly that he'd made the intuitive leap so easily, secondly that I’d never tried to see things from Mum’s point of view before.

“The human brain can’t cope well with discrepancies like that. You’ve probably come across the grieving process described in terms of shock, denial, anger and acceptance.”

I nodded.

“Grieving is a similar process because yet again you have to change your expectations to fit the way the world is or has become. Sometimes your perception of the world turns out to be wrong and you have to adjust, other times the world changes radically and you have to adjust. The shock is to do with your mind entering a sort of buffer zone where your expectations and perceptions are insulated from each other. Some people get locked into this long term and as a result experience extended periods of denial and possibly anger because they are unable to reconcile what their senses have shown them with their expectations of how the world should be. This is one of the causes of long term depression and I suspect your mother may be experiencing it to some degree.

“The reason why it is so hard to move past this stage is that your perceptions are rarely wrong so it is your expectations that have to change, and since these are tied up completely with who you are, the only way adjust is to allow your personality to deconstruct and rebuild itself. It can be a terrifying thing to face, your entire personality — who you are — shattering into a million pieces or fading into nothing before being rebuilt slightly differently. Many people cannot make that final step without help, perhaps just as many can't do so even with help.

“Of course in your case at present, the discrepancy between reality and expectation is being caused by your senses lying to you because a rather irresponsible hypnotist persuaded your brain to make things up. You are suffering the same symptoms of denial and depression because your expectations tell you that when you put on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt, you should be wearing a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. When the hypnotic suggestion takes over your perception breaks from reality and you have to deal with it.

“Jenny’s idea of having you wear women’s underwear in reality helps a little because it lessens the difference between suggestion and reality, and the few times when you have put on a dress and found yourself to be wearing the same dress have given you some ease from the build up of tension, because, even though you are still dressed as a woman and would prefer not to be, at least you see yourself dressed as you truly are.

“Now if I know Jenny, she’s researched the issue of hypnotism as deeply as I would be able to here, and if she’s found no way to break you out of the trance, if as the hypnotist told you the suggestion has become integrated into your personality, there isn’t a great deal you can do to fix it except wait. It may be that the tension will become so great that it will induce a deconstructive episode, after which things will return to relative normality, but if that does happen it will be traumatic. As far as I know there is no way to induce it artificially, and because of the trauma involved I wouldn’t recommend it in any case.

“In the meantime, although, as I have said, I personally have difficulty with people who cross dress, I would say the best thing you can do is carry on pretty much as you are doing. Unless you go swimming or to the gym, there's little chance of other people noticing what you're wearing under your clothes so wearing women's underclothes will help ease the stress. Every now and again, since you seem to have an unusually understanding young lady by your side, putting on a pretty dress and exploring your feminine side more fully will give you an occasional complete break.”

For the second time in recent weeks Jen and I stared at each other in shock.

“Is that it?” Jen asked. “Is that all that can be done?”

Professor Peters shook his head. “I will consult with a few colleagues who specialise in hypnotism and in gender confusion, if I come up with anything new I will let you know, but for the present a the very least, I’m sorry young man but I think you are going to have to learn to live with this.

“As things go it’s not that far from what you’ve been dealing with in any case. You’ve had to live this long with a break between the way you want the world to be — a world where men don’t have to compete with each other all the time but can look attractive and take a more passive role — and the world as you see it. Now the break is between how you actually dress and how you see it. In each case, your release from the stress has been to dress up in women’s clothes from time to time. There is no reason why you shouldn’t continue in the same vein.”

Another dead end. We thanked the professor for his time and Jen held onto my arm to lead me out of the psychology department.

-oOo-