I'm confused. Well, more than I usually am, and that's a bad sign. I need Identity, I need a Label to pin my hopes and dreams to. I thought I was a Transvestite, but lately I have found out that is too clinical a word and I shouldn't use it. So I tried being a TV but the rabbit ears kept falling off my head and the satellite dish was just unbearable.

So I became Crossdresser, that didn't help because you can only be a real Crossdresser if you are on a television talk show. I tried Femmiphile for a while, but I'm large and blocky enough I was too often confused with a file cabinet. Dressing seemed to take forever when I was an Eonist, and I kept loosing my balance when I was bi-gendered. Is there such a thing as tri-gendered, it might be more stable.

No doubt about it, I needed professional help. Fortunately help was close at hand, in the form of my wife. Being a physically handicapped individual from a family with a mentally handicapped member, she is in training to be a social worker. There are few people more qualified on this earth to sling labels, acronyms and jargon around. So I went down and found her at her desk, highlighter in hand, staring at a textbook and muttering what sounded like arcane curses, but were actually statistical formulas from her probability class.

"Wife," I began, "I am in serious need. I can no longer live with myself without having a single word that describes my complex need to express my femininity by donning a mop of horsehair, smearing goo on my face, attiring myself in foundation garments with no relation to my physiognomy and perching atop heels so high that only ballet training makes standing possible. In all your reading and research, with your vast experience you must have the answer!"

Her mumbling stopped in mid expression (mathematical expression, that is) and with an angelic look on her face she replied. "That's simple enough. Pulling a massive tome from the pile on the bookshelf, she opened it and said "Here it is. It says here that social workers are 'differently trained', my Down's syndrome relative is 'differently intellectual' and my bad leg makes me 'differently abled'. So you are, of course, 'differently dressed." She turned back and began mumbling again and I beat a hasty retreat to my word processor.

How simple. How obvious. How official. So, there is no more need to devote pages and pages to discussing what our community is to be called. When someone asks, just tell them you are differently dressed. No problem.