The true-life story of when I confessed my crossdressing to my favorite cousin.  A bit of irony, but no real drama or excitement.  Sorry about that, but it was a touching moment for me, and I wanted to document and share it anyway.

By Pippa Jane Kingsley

It was around eleven o'clock on a late November evening. We sat in the living room, on one of the two long leather sofas, Emma and I, the television on, next to each other. The reception had finished a couple hours prior and her three little girls had headed along home with her husband, to their home in the suburbs. There were only four of us left in her parents' home now, and we were now all sprawled in the living room, the other two sound asleep, my father in the recliner and her brother sprawled on the other sofa.

That afternoon, we buried her father. Her mother died in April. The house and its contents were now hers and her brother's to wrap up, a task I don't envy them, with all its childhood memories, heirlooms and mementos of their parents and grandparents. Barely a year earlier, my aunt and uncle had finished reclaiming and renovating their home from the Katrina floodwaters, and now it lay empty, except for the four of us sitting a sort of last vigil.

Emma is my favorite cousin, and I'm hers. It's strange how these things happen. We've always lived 1500 miles apart and seen each other maybe once every 5 years or so. We're a funny pair to be favorite cousins, too. I'm ten years older than her. How we bonded as kids, I'll never know. We manage to call each other every so often, and stay close. Another funny thing is how much taller she is than me, about three or four inches. Her parents were both very tall, and her brother towers over me by about a foot.

"Thank you for coming," she said, repeating an earlier refrain, while holding my hand and giving it a little squeeze. "I'm so happy you could come."

We had been sitting and talking together for some while, either here or on the front porch while she grabbed a smoke. Reminiscences, condolences, some family gossip. She said one of the reasons she was staying over instead of heading home was to spend some time with me, and we were doing a lot of catching up. I pulled the little pouch of photos out of my wallet and showed her the ones on the outside, the latest one of my wife, and a pretty good one of my Dad we took this fall on the other side. I put it back in my wallet and started thinking. Inside that pouch were a half dozen or so snapshots of me, dressed and made up. If I was ever going to tell any of my blood relatives, Emma would be the one. I'd been thinking about it for a few years.

"I've got a secret I'd like to share with you," I said. She shifted on the sofa, turing to face me. "Not here, though. I don't want to take a chance that either of them will hear." My father and other cousin were still zonked out, but sometimes people hear things even when they're not fully conscious.

"Alright, let's go out on the porch. I could use another cigarette. Grab your coat."

"No. I'm afraid we'll need some light for this one," I said, definitely piquing her interest.

"How about the bedroom?" she asked, indicating the room down the hall she had made up for me.

We went in. She sat on the foot of the bed while I closed the door and sat down on the side and turned to face her..

I don't remember the exact words. I was in a bit of a daze. I told her about my crossdressing, and started pulling out the hidden pictures and spreading them between us on the bed. She interrupted.

"Oh, Honey," she said, looking earnestly into my face. "I've known several crossdressers. In fact, they became good friends. When I worked in that dress shop in town? We used to get a few rich crossdressers from Houston coming here to shop, usually married. They were good people.  They spent a LOT, too."

I was stunned. Shocked and surprised, to say the least. Had I sensed this about her? She certainly never spoke about it to me before. I'm not even sure she spoke to me about having worked in a dress shop. Yet, something had made me want to tell her for some time now.

She continued, "I was the only one in the store who would wait on them. The other girls? They were old biddies, about the same age as my mother, and would just turn up their noses." She started looking through the snapshots I had laid out on the bed. "You look good. Really good. You look a lot like your mother in this one."

I was probably grinning sheepishly at this point. She stood up and pulled me into a hug. "Oh, baby. Don't worry. I won't tell anyone and I'm so glad you felt you could share this with me," she said while rubbing my back.

We sat down again, and she glanced back down at the pictures. "I hope you don't mind me saying this, but your wardrobe could use a little updating." She went back into reminiscences of her time at the dress shop, telling me about the fine clothes her crossdressing customers would buy and change into, and then how she would take some of them shoe-shopping nearby. "Shoes were the hardest things for them to find in their sizes, but there were a couple of stores that had them." Emma being as tall as she is, she'd know where to find them, too.

"What dress size are you?" she asked me. It turns out I wear about the same size as her mother did, who was about an inch taller than me. It also turns out her mother had purchased several new suits and dresses just before she found out she was really ill, including some she had never worn. They still had the pricetags on. "There are $300 suits from Dillards. She didn't pay that much for them, she loved to shop the sales, but that's how much they were originally." Her mother had also made her promise not to just give them away to charity. Unfortunately, Emma couldn't wear them. She's thinner and taller than her mom was. She said, "You know, I bet Mom would be really happy for you to have them. You have to come back, and bring an empty suitcase."

I put the pictures away, and we grabbed our coats and went on the front porch so she could have a smoke. She asked me more about what my wife thought of all this, and I told her. I told her about how I had had to keep it unseen for so many years even though I had told my wife before we were married, because she thought she wouldn't be able to handle it and didn't want to risk that. I told her how things had turned around the last few years and how it was now. Emma expressed her approval at what a good marriage I seemed to have, and expressed a little jealousy. I told her how jealous I was of the great kids she and her husband were raising, and how well-adjusted they seemed.

A neighbor came over to offer condolences and to offer to keep an eye on the house. Her brother woke up and came out to join the conversation. After a while, we went back into the house, woke my father and sent him off to bed. I changed into my pajama pants and came back out into the living room. Emma was still up. We sat watching something or other on the sci-fi channel and talking a while. When I finally did get to sleep, I had some interesting dreams. I don't remember them, but I do remember they were interesting, and colorful.

This "secret" of mine... It's such a relief to find people in my life I can share it with. And, I never fail to be astounded at how accepting people can be. And my favorite cousin... How cool is that!