Virtually Feminine - Part 7 - Consequences


Now that I've made my choice, what does that mean? How do I start to come to terms with what that means, and what happens when my ex finds out?

btw, the image is meant to be Julie from HR looking upset, and trying to hide it.

I'm going to mention something that is not really part of my story. I'm adding it as I go back and review what I've written because it will make my later comment make more sense.
I haven't mentioned what I look like in any detail. You know I'm not feminine, I guess, at least, not at this point in my story. Well, about this time I started paying more attention to my diet. I… this is kind of embarrassing to admit… I was quite large. If I was a woman, I would be called fat. Guys don't worry about it so much so I was just 'large’. A big bloke.
I didn't want to be a bloke of any sort, so when someone called me that at work I kind of took it to heart. I've always had a sweet tooth. I was very active, I went to play badminton once a week. But I ate too many sweets while I was driving, and my diet was... well, takeaways and ready-meals. There wasn't much point cooking for one, I thought. I kind of started thinking about how women are. And diets. I read up on this thing called 'the Keto Diet’ and it made a lot of sense. I tried it and I lost weight. A lot of weight. So I kept doing it. I didn't think I was obsessive about it, but people started noticing. Kathryn noticed first. She didn't really need to diet, she was tiny, but she thought she did. She'd tried every diet going and none of them worked for her. She would get cranky and hungry and binge and feel bad
She couldn't believe that I could have magically found the one diet that actually worked.
She tried it, but she cheated on it and ate carbs, a lot. She lost some weight, but she didn't stick with it.

I felt it gave me a level of control over my life when everything else was out of control. I lost 14Kg in 2 months. Then my weight loss slowed, but I continued losing weight. I went from over 100Kg down to about 80Kg. I felt so much better about myself, I'm not sure I can explain it. I will never be dainty, but at least I wasn't a big bloke anymore.
No, I didn't diet because girls diet and I was a girl, not really. But women pay more attention to their appearance, in my experience, and judge each other partly based on appearance.
I think Kathryn was proud of me, if somewhat irked, for some reason. But it made me feel more in control, that was why I did it.

-0-0-

After the first, extremely daunting, experience of going out en-femme and my growing acceptance that this was really who I was meant to be I kind of hit a speedbump. I wasn't clear what the next step was now. Crossdressing was something I did in private at home, with Kathryn and for the meetings. I got better at it, quite quickly, I thought. I didn't overdo it the way some of the Trans women did. Gloria, from the meeting, the one with the beard and sequins? She never met a rhinestone she didn't like. She was like a magpie, the more glittery it was the more fascinated she would be. Kathryn and I called her 'the queen of bling', but not to her face. We were a little bitchy, I guess, outside the meeting, but these people were all _so_ strange, nothing like us, we were boringly normal.

Gwen was about the most down to earth person at the meetings, her partner, Simone, was very grounded, too. The gay boys were flighty, the lesbians were angry (not really angry _about_ anything, just generally predisposed to being pissed-off).
Claire was going all the way. She was still pre-op, but she was in her life trial and said she was so much happier now that she just resented the time she had to spend waiting. She was the young lady that came in late to the first meeting and one of the online chat members that I got on well with.

Claire was blessed, she was petite and lithe, there was no way that you could ever imagine her being anything other than female. When I realised who she was at one of the meetings I got very tongue-tied. I'd chatted with her online and we had got on fine. I had more general life experience but she was further along in her transition. Much further along, it turned out. The surgery was clearly a formality as far as she was concerned. She wasn't just female, she was _feminine_. And pretty.

I wanted to hate her. But I just felt too inadequate for her to notice if I did. If I had a million pounds and I started 10 years earlier I would never be as pretty as her.

The reason I bring up Claire is that she worried me. I was both fascinated and repelled by what she was proposing to do to her body. For her, she made it very clear, it wasn't mutilation it was merely a little cosmetic surgery to make her outside more compatible with her inside. She never wanted her penis, it was the cause of most of the anguish in her life and she had been tempted, so she told us, to hack it off with a meat-cleaver when she was a teenager because the pain of her deformity was almost too much for her to bear.
I hadn't really felt that kind of existential anguish, had I?
Every time I started thinking about it, it was like probing the gap where a tooth used to be, it didn't hurt, exactly, but it was uncomfortable and there was a sense of loss.

I admired Claire. I envied her beauty and femininity. But I wasn't ready to 'go all the way' like she was. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But the thought that, one day, I could be wholly female… that attracted and repelled me increasingly strongly.

But, increasingly, that left me in limbo. Neither one thing or another. 'Neither fish, nor fowl' as they say.
I had no interest in the stereotypical male pursuits or pastimes. But, I was viewed with suspicion if I tried to tag along with Kathryn to any 'girls only' events. Maybe it would have been different if I was convincingly feminine. But l, at this stage, I looked like a fat bloke in a dress if I tried to dress appropriately.

So, I spent a lot of time at home on my own feeling isolated and sorry for myself.
It was only my online friends in the TG chat rooms and my Second Life friends that kept me sane. Well, kept me from..., I'm sorry to say this, I know it's a trigger for some who will be reading this, but, to be brutally honest… I felt like ending it all sometimes.
I wouldn't, really I wouldn't. I couldn't do that to my kids. But there were days… I don't like to think about them or dwell on them, but they were very dark days. Let's leave it at that. If you've been through it, you know too well what I mean. If you haven't, you may get the feeling I was a bit unhappy. You might tell me to "pull myself together" and think you've done your good deed for the day by giving me some good advice that obviously I hadn't thought of before. Sorry, I shouldn't sneer. I feel a little smug that I survived what could have killed me and all these other people around me didn't even know how much crushing pain I was able to survive, and then that makes me sad because I realise how many beautiful people didn't survive because they didn't have the friends, the family and the support that I have had. Some of them are people I have known, possibly even people that I have overlooked or said the wrong thing to and, although I want to be a good person and help and love everyone, maybe I was as ignorant of them as some people were of me? Maybe my words cut like a knife through their heart where, if I'd only understood what they were going through I could have said the right words and saved someone. Saved them some pain, maybe even saved a life.

I can't kid myself that I'm Mother Theresa. But it does open your eyes to what others may be feeling.

That attitude of wanting to better myself by being a better human being to others began to get me into trouble. Not real trouble but… for example, sometimes, at work, I would go downstairs to the staff break room that had the good coffee machine and sit with Kathryn or one of the pre-sales team and have a coffee and chat. Not very often, but sometimes we needed a break.
One day, someone, I don't know his name, a new guy from another department was being obnoxious about a TG woman who had been on T.V. There was an article in the paper he was reading and he was mouthing off about 'him' being a 'filthy trap'. I should have kept my mouth shut, it's not like anyone was listening to him, but he pissed me off.
I started trying to correct him, saying 'she' whenever he called her 'he' and pointing out that, as she was a lesbian I was pretty sure he wasn't her type.
After a few moments of this he looked at me horrified as if the penny had suddenly dropped and said accusingly "You! Your one of them! A filthy poof! Drinking coffee with decent people, urgh! You've probably given us all AIDS!"
"What _I_ am" I said getting to my feet and storming over to this little idiot "is thoroughly pissed off with your stupid, offensive ranting!"
He was surprised how tall I was when I got near him. He was a little weasel of a man. There's no way I would ever be violent, it's never been in my nature, but I think he could see the fury in my eyes and he shut up as I walked out.
I seriously considered reporting him to HR, but I didn't know his name and I'm not sure I could convey how offensive he was without a recording. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to record someone without their permission, too.
But after that I'm pretty sure there were some whispers about me among the knuckle-dragging element of my company. Given that we wrote a lot of systems used by the Police, and we had some ex-policemen as staff, there was a group or clique of people with conservative views, both with a small 'c' and a big 'C'. I knew that those people would never understand what I was going through.

It was about this time that I broke up with Fee. We'd lasted about eight months as a couple in Second Life. Second Life has this thing where you can declare who your partner is in your profile and it costs you a few hundred Linden Dollars (about 80 U.S. cents, maybe) to dissolve the partnership. It's kind of the equivalent of getting married in RL. The average lifespan of such partnerships is probably a few weeks. Fee and I never did that, it seemed a pointless exercise to us, you can just write text in your profile saying how much you love such-and-such an avatar. You can also put pictures of your favourite 'hang-out' spots with links that others can follow to see where the photos were taken.
We had all that, not shortcuts to our home, but shortcuts to Frank's Jazz bar and some of our other favourite hangouts. My profile picture showed the two of us lying on a beach towel together, with me wrapped in his arms. I know it wasn't "real", but the emotions were real, or real enough.

As I found I was losing my way in RL and questioning which direction I should take I became increasingly irritated by Fee. Bless him, with hindsight it was in no way his fault. He was attentive and loving. His refusal to discuss my RL gender at the beginning now led to an impossible situation, at least in my mind. There was no way I could imagine telling him that I had fooled him for all those months. I'm not even sure I was fooling him. I think he might have figured it out. He may have known from the start but have been too polite to force the issue.
I was a bitch to him because I was scared of how badly he could hurt me when he realised I was male. As I became more female in my own head in RL paradoxically the betrayal seemed more awful.
I was so unfair to him, if I'd only had the courage to tell him he might have, to be fair, he probably _would_ have, been understanding and supportive of me.
Instead I drove him away into the arms of another woman and when I found they had been together, despite his protestations that nothing happened I flipped out.

It was not my proudest moment.

Looking back on it fills me with shame and regret. I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as I typed the words in private chat. "We're through!"
I tried to justify it in my own mind as something noble, that I wasn't good enough for him and a clean break would allow him to find the real woman in RL that he deserved to be with. To be honest with myself, in a way that is only possible with hindsight it was a selfish chicken-shit self-destructive train wreck of my own making. I was getting tired of all the not quite lying through my teeth double-talk, saying 'ex-partner' instead of 'ex-wife' and 'they' instead of 'she' and stuff like that, but I was too much of a coward to come clean about my birth gender. I loved the fact that I could be as female as any cis-girl, and girlier than most of them, in Second Life.
I wrote a long text message, like a 'Dear John' letter, to Fee, but I couldn't bring myself to send it to him. Which was probably just as well for both of us.
I spiralled deeper into depression.
I found I couldn't sleep more than about 3 hours a night. I created an alternative avatar on Second Life that had no connection to me and I would go and hangout at Frank's for a glimpse of Fee in his tux dancing with someone else… and feel like scum.

The lack of sleep and hanging around cyber-stalking our old haunts began to take its toll on me at work. I would find myself nodding off in boring meetings and I would go and nap in my car for 30 minutes at lunchtime to allow me to get through the day.
Kathryn noticed, of course, but she didn't pry too deeply when I told her I'd split from Fee. She seemed to think I just needed time to grieve and get on with the real world. I know she never really understood why I got so much from Second Life. A lot of it was the escapism from RL and all the myriad problems I was building up for myself. Part of it was the clarity, I mean, if I wanted to be female I could just click a button and I was as female as the next avatar. Increasingly though I came to agree with Kathryn that Second Life, for me at least, was a trap. Everything was too easy and too safe, if I was ever going to progress in RL I was going to have to make some decisions and take some risks.

One of the risks I took was dressing as a woman at home now. Not a very big risk considering the blinds on the windows and the fact that I lived alone. Except at the weekend, of course, when I had my kids. I never dressed around them, which was a pain because I had more time at the weekend, when I wasn't working. Every fourth weekend my ex-wife would pick up the kids on Saturday morning and drop them back on Sunday morning. As time went on she would pick them up later and later and drop them off earlier and earlier. Still, once they had left I knew I had the house to myself all day and night.

I know you can see this coming, right? It's obvious to all of you what was going to happen?

So, I went to town, practicing my makeup in my underwear, getting my wig right, finally slipping my dress on. I say my dress, I'd chosen to wear Linda's dress she wore as a 'going away' outfit from our wedding, she'd left that dress, the wedding dress and her ballgown when she left. She couldn't wear any of them anymore as she had put on a considerable amount of weight since the kids were born.
On the other hand, I had lost a lot of weight, and Linda was never petite, so they fitted me now, even with a little padding to make my figure more womanly.
My shoulders were a little broad, but not ridiculously more than Linda's. I wouldn't need shoulder pads, though. Not that the dress had shoulders, it was a simple shift dress, quite fitted, in a floral pattern. Nicely lined, with a zip in the back. I'd made a makeshift zip puller from a design I'd seen on the internet and as I pulled up the zip and completed my outfit after 2 hours of prep I felt pretty good. I headed down to pour myself a small, celebratory Old Mott Cherry and Berries cider.
Then the doorbell rang.
Shit.
What was I going to do?
Well, that was easy, I wasn't going to open the door, and then they would go away.
Then I heard "Daaaddd! I need a wee! Let me in Dad!"

The universe hates me.

Well, I didn't have a choice, there was no way I was going to humiliate my daughter by leaving her to wet herself. But I muttered under my breath about my bitch of an ex-wife putting me in this situation, when a bit of forethought would have avoided it. There's no way I would have put myself in the situation where I had to rely on her letting me in to use her toilet.
So, I stood behind the door and let my daughter in. She flew up the stairs to the toilet and slammed the door to the bathroom behind her.
In the meantime Linda pushed my front door open.
"!? W-who? Andy!! What the fuck!" she spluttered as she saw me.
"Hello Linda" I said brightly with a big fake smile on my carefully made up face "Problems finding a loo?"
"Is that _my_ dress!?" she demanded.
"Nope, it's mine (I don't think it would fit you)" I said the last in a stage whisper.
Linda was turning red and spluttering.
Rachael came down the stairs then and headed for the door.
"Come on, Mum, we haven't got time to hang around!" she said in a very bossy way. She looked at me as she went past and said "Why are you wearing a dress, Dad?"
"Long story" I said "and it sounds as if you haven't got time for it now. See you tomorrow?"
"Sure" she said. She shrugged and grabbed Linda's hand "Come _on_ well be late!"
They both headed for Linda's car and I shut the door.

I thought to myself that things went better than I'd expected. Plus, things were always going to come out at some point, so better sooner than later. I hated hiding this part of myself from my kids, but I had thought it was for the best because they were too young to understand it. Maybe it would be better that way? If I could come to an understanding with them now they might not even remember a time when I wasn't this way.
I was more concerned about Linda. She loved to make a drama out of a crisis, particularly if it turned the kids against me. I think she was overcompensating for a guilty conscience. I didn't really have an axe to grind with her. I had grieved for the woman I loved when I realised that she was gone for good and there was now a stranger walking around in her body. Now I just wanted as little to do with her as possible. It made my skin crawl being near her, like she was some kind of undead or zombie.

Linda, on the other hand, seemed to blame me for everything that had gone wrong in her life since she had the affair and decided she could do better than me. A series of lame boyfriends and even lamer jobs. Mostly because she was as lazy as hell and would use her single mum status as an excuse to get out of anything. Plus she had a limit, carefully worked out, of the maximum number of hours she could work and still get full benefits. I think it was 21 hours and not a second more. Linda had always been better at getting what she could than doing what she could.

Nevermind, the damage was done now, how could I do damage limitation? I rang my Mum first…
"Mum, it's me...look, I haven't got time to explain but, Linda came round unexpectedly and found me dressed up in a pretty frock. I've been having some issues with my gender identity and I was trying some things and… well, I just didn't want you to hear it from her first. Oh, and Linda bought Rachael, too. Got to go, more people to ring. Bye!"
I hate answer phones, but it was probably for the best. I think I would have broken down if she had actually answered.

Who should I ring next? I rang Kathryn for some amoral support (sic) while I thought who else I needed to ring. I wouldn't bother ringing my Dad, not that he would be upset so much as because it was none of his business. Plus, he would make it all about him, somehow.
While I was thinking the phone clicked and Kathryn answered…
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's Cathy."
"Oh, hi. I wasn't expecting a call from you today, was I?"
"No...I just needed to hear a friendly voice. Linda came round unexpectedly and found Cathy instead of Andy."
"Oh", there was a long pause, "what happened?"
"Not much, Rachael dashed to the loo and grabbed Linda again on the way out, she was in a hurry. Linda was still spluttering on her way out of the door".
"This might seem like an obvious question, why on earth did you open the door?"
"My little girl was in danger of wetting herself, what else could I do?"
"Let her, it would have been Linda's fault. You were under no obligation. What would have happened if you weren't there?"
"On an intellectual level, I can see your point. Long term it may be worse for my kids that I opened the door...but, when your child is whining outside your front door, you tend to react emotionally, rather than intellectually."
"I wouldn't know, I don't have kids of my own… but, I guess if it was my nieces and nephew then I would do the same. After all, it's a long way to go back home for the loo when they live in New York!"

-0-0-

That night, I got a text message from Linda:
"YOU FREAK! YOU PERVERT! IM GOING TO GO TO MY LAWYER AND HES GOING TO SCREW YOU! YOULL GET WHAT YOU DESERVE!"

I sighed and wrote back:

"If you take the kids away from me, you'll have to look after them and you won't have time to spend with your boyfriend every weekend. Plus, I don't have any more money, so good luck getting more money out of me!"

I thought a little more and added:

"I have gender dysphoria and I'm getting treatment for it. But you may have to expect some changes. If you keep an open mind, I'm sure it will be better for everyone. Especially Kevin and Rachael."

I know what you're thinking; 'there's no way any normal person puts punctuation in their SMS messages like that' - well, I do. Punctuation was invented before emoticons and l33t to add additional levels of meaning to communication via the written word. Some of my friends say I'm really anal over the English language. In my job, that's a plus. I have to write a ton of complex technical details in a clear and concise way.

Oh, and the other question about why I have the balls to say that to her?
You have to understand my ex-wife doesn't really care about anyone but herself. She's lazy and greedy and stupid. Oh, and a bully. She wasn't always like that, of course. But these days it's pointless to ask her to do the right thing, I've found. But you can get her to do the easy thing, the thing that gives her more money or time. If she thinks I'm not enjoying it, then that's a bonus for her. But she wouldn't bother crossing the road just to kick me while I'm down, it would be too much effort for her. Do I sound bitter? Trust me, I have good cause.

I'm pretty sure she won't bother to look up 'gender dysphoria', too much effort.
Also, she doesn't know any of my work colleagues, she doesn't know Kathryn, not that she could say anything to embarrass me to Kathryn.
So… she's unlikely to go after my work or colleagues. That just leaves…
The phone rang, I picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Andy"
"Mum!? Ah" I quickly put 2 and 2 together "Linda rang you?"
"Of course. I just thanked her for the call and put the phone down on her frothing at the mouth. Was that alright?"
"Perfect, Mum. I did a similar thing when she tried to text me to say she was going to extort something more from me."
"You have something left she hasn't already taken?"
"I know, right?"
"What's all this about, love?"
I sighed deeply, this was going to be hard.
"Mum… I don't know how to explain this…" I started.
"You're gay?" Mum asked.
"It's a little more complicated than that…"
"Trans, then?" she asked.
I was poleaxed.
"What do you know about being transgender?" I asked.
"Oh please, the younger generation always thinks they invented everything. People have been confused about which side of the line they were forever. I've known a few transwomen in my life."
"Do you have any advice?"
"Ha! Now you ask for advice when it's too late to stop?"
"Stop?"
"Stop people finding out. I think we should have told your kids and your father first."
"But you hate Dad!"
"I must admit that I would have relished imagining the look on his face! He might have broken the stick up his ass… but he's still your Dad."
"I guess, I'll call him tomorrow."
"Not now? Linda's probably calling him as we speak."
"In which case he'll either ring me straight away or it can wait 'til tomorrow."
"And the kids?"
"Well, I guess that they were going to find out eventually."
"Kids are very resilient. But they can spot BS. Tell them as much of the truth as they can handle."

-0-0-

I told my Dad on Sunday morning. It wasn't a fun experience so I hope you won't mind if I skip the details, I don't like to dwell on, or recall in any way, my conversations with my Dad. He's not horrible, to an outsider it would seem such a banal conversation but there are years of history with little slights where it's clear I've disappointed him and I'm not his favourite child, even though I'm the oldest and far and away the best behaved, the most academic, highest paid, only one who has given him grandkids… the list goes on, and it's all pointless, all the things he said he wanted, when I give them to him they turn out to be meaningless. Apparently giving him another daughter was a disappointment too.

-0-0-

My conversation with my kids was more awkward. Rachael just accepted that sometimes I wore dresses and then ran away to play with her dolls. She came down after 30 minutes and complained that none of Barbie's dresses fit Ken.
Kevin, on the other hand, was surly and didn't want to hear my explanation or discuss it. After dinner he said he had homework and asked to be excused. Which would be great if he really was doing homework. I went upstairs to check on him after 30 minutes and found him playing computer games. I asked him about his homework.
"Finished it." he said.
I asked him if he wanted some help playing his game.
"I don't need help from a _girl_!" he said hotly.
I left him to it. What could I say that would break through the poison Linda had clearly already been feeding him?

-0-0-

Kevin was stroppy with me until I dropped him off at school. Rachael was weirdly bubbly. Often it was difficult for me to get through to her but she really opened up this weekend. She was talking about making cakes together next weekend, which we used to do a lot before the divorce, well, I made the cakes and she picked the spoons.
It was almost a pleasure to see Kevin go for once, his low-level passive aggressive sulk was infuriating.

I drove into work after dropping the kids off at the school gates and entered a shit-storm. Someone had left a copy of a contract for a customer on the roof of their car then driven off. When a member of the public found the document by the side of the road they delivered it to the customer, who was now jumping up and down asking questions about our security. Which was a big deal in our market. The problem was, it was my customer. The thing that saved me was that the document had an accompanying letter that explained it was found between Bath and Chippenham, in a town called Corsham, nowhere near anywhere I would be.
There was a feeling like the Sales Director wanted to gather all the sales staff with pitchforks and drive me out of town.
Eventually the witch-hunt came to rest on the project manager called Dorothy. She'd taken the contract to review what she would be expected to deliver as part of the contract.
She'd realised she had lost the document on her travels and reported it to her line manager, who hadn't shared it with the sales director yet.
Because it was a senior member of staff and they had an accidental security incident that they immediately reported there was no question of her being sacked, but there was mandatory security training for all and a revised process for documenting who had checked out documents.

My boss, Dan, the sales director made it clear that he thought my handling of the documents was shockingly bad even though I had no reason to know anyone had taken it and no part to play in the loss. Anything I said in my defence was taken as challenging his authority and I gave up and went back to my desk fuming.
When I finally made it home I was twitchy and anxious.

I took a long bath, with bubbles and shaved all the bits that should be shaved and moisturised after I dried myself.

I sat and watched a rom-com while eating chocolate ice-cream with reduced sugar while wearing my pink fluffy dressing gown. It felt fantastically girly and I calmed down. I called Kathryn and we bitched about work, and life and male directors.

-0-0-

The next day, when I awoke, I was still feeling anxious. I decided to wear women's knickers under my suit. No one would ever know and it would be a girly talisman to help me hang on to the calmness I felt when I was more feminine.

It was the first time I'd ever worn anything feminine to work.

The traffic was heavy, and I was late.
When I got to my desk there was a letter in a sealed envelope marked 'private and confidential'.
Inside there was a compliment slip with a note saying:
"Please come to the HR office and ask for Julie Stevens immediately."
With more than a little trepidation I went to HR.
I didn't know Julie, but I knew she dealt with Dan.
When I got to the office and asked for Julie, a young woman got up, she looked very serious.

"Ah, Andy… can you come with me?" she said.

Julie led me to the HR director's room, next door to the office. The director was out. I knew this was the room they used for privacy for disciplinary meetings and the like. But only Julie was here and normally your line manager was supposed to be present too.
Julie gestured for me to sit, she perched on the edge of the desk and retrieved a letter from her folder.
She looked down at it, took a deep breath and said "Andy, we've received an anonymous letter accusing you of 'wearing women's clothing'".