Virtually Feminine - Part 1 - Mistaken identity

Introduction
I wrote this story about personal growth through interaction in a Virtual World largely in response to Dorothy Colleen’s challenge to write something about a 40+ transition. I’m not sure it will get that far, but the characters are the right age at least.
I set it in Second Life, as that’s an environment I am familiar with. I was going to go through afterwards and edit all the references to some generic VR World but I think it gives it a more realistic feel by using the names and jargon from a ‘real’’virtual world that some of you may be familiar with. Of course, I don’t own Second Life ™ , it’s a registered trademark belonging to Linden Lab. I’m not associated with them in any way and the views and people described only bear a passing resemblance to anyone real or virtual.’ All copyrights and trademarks belong to their respective owners and I’m not trying to sell anything. Please don’t sue me, as I don’t have any money. Oh, and if you’re reading this Fee and you recognise yourself, I’m sorry.

Creating the Avatar
OK, I’m not sure how to start this. I guess it begins when I first logged on to Second Life. OK, that’s half the audience gone, right? But this isn’t some techy geeky nerd boy story…. OK, it kind of is, I’m telling this all wrong. Why don’t you let me tell it and make your own mind up? Maybe you can ask me any questions you have along the way.

I guess some later bits of this story will be sort of self-writing, I think I still have the conversations recorded somewhere. That’s one of the great strengths, and weaknesses, of any form of social network messaging these days. But when you are setting up the avatar the first time it’s not that straight forward, nothing is being recorded and you can’t easily go back and retrace your steps, so this account is based on my recollections, flawed as they may be.

So, it suddenly strikes me that some of you might be saying ‘What is Second Life anyway?’. There’s been a lot of stories in the press over the years, most of it in a vaguely mocking tone. Calling it ‘Saddville’ or other abusive terms and poking fun at all the 40-something virgins having cyber-sex online with each other.

That’s not really what it’s about. It’s a virtual 3-dimensional world, that looks like a first person shoot-em-up game. But everyone you meet is not a computer generated target but a 3D Avatar controlled by a real person. It’s a kind of glorified chat room with 3D people instead of little symbols. What are the rules of the game? There are no rules – it’s a bit like real life that way. How do you know you’ve won? The same way you do in real life.

If there was someone winning in real life, it wasn’t me. My wife had left me. My job meant I had to travel for 3 hours a day but it paid too well to give up. I couldn’t move closer to my work because then I would never get to see my kids. But it meant I had no social life. I was a dreadful insomniac so I watched a lot of tv and spent my days in a zombie-like daze due to lack of sleep. I needed a way to switch off or something so I thought I’d give Second Life a try.

I logged on to the website and downloaded the software. When I tried to log on it took me through a startup process where I had to choose; male or female, white or black, this guy or that guy until I ended up with a boring white slightly preppy looking mid-twenties looking guy on the screen. Then it asked me for a name. I had to choose from a list of Surnames, so I went with Weatherwax from the Terry Pratchett books. Someone had warned me not to give away anything, even your gender in the name you chose so I typed in ‘Jez’ – that could be short for Jeremy, Jezebel, or any number of other names.

There was a tutorial where the system took you through various actions step-by-step; from walking, through talking, to flying and teleporting. By the time you finished you had a breastplate of armour, a new outfit, a flaming torch and you could do a hula dance while talking to a parrot and hovering in mid-air and bouncing a beach ball

At the end of the trail there was a block that said ‘Click on me to continue’. I clicked on the block and there was a whooshing sound and my screen faded to black.

Then a new area was shown with loads of other Avatars around you. Only… there was some kind of problem, all the avatars, including mine, looked like grey stunted dwarf women. I mentioned this to one of the other avatars standing around who had a ‘Mentor’ tag on. She told me that we had all ‘been Ruthed’. Apparently the default avatar shape in Second Life is called “Ruth”, every other avatar is a modified version of the Ruth shape, including the male avatars. There was some technical reason for this, something about mapping the pixels for clothing and skins to a generic map. I had no understanding of the explanation so I just shrugged and got on with chatting to some of my fellow ‘Newbies’. There was one avatar called ‘Fee Avro’ who was really interesting. I can’t really explain why, I didn’t save that conversation (I didn’t know how to at the time) but she was funny. More than that she was genuinely witty, coming out with sharp acidic comments about every aspect of Second Life and Real Life. We chatted for about 30 minutes when suddenly she said that she had to go for a Real Life appointment of some sort. We agreed to login again later that night and ‘meet up’ in the virtual world. As Fee left, she offered to ‘Friend’ me, so that we would see whenever each other logged on.

After Fee left, I wandered around for a while and found a treasure trove of free skins, clothes, shapes – all kinds of things. I also found a chair where if you sat on it you would receive game tokens, called ‘Linden Dollars’ or ‘Lindens’ or ‘L$’ for short. 10L$ for sitting for 20 minutes. I had no idea what 10L$ would buy me in the game so I sat my avatar down for a while as I reviewed what Fee had said. As I read the comments it struck me that Fee had assumed that I was female. I guess we all looked female, as we had all been ‘Ruthed’, and neither my name or anything I said had been gender specific so it made sense. I’d had such laugh chatting and bitching with Fee. I knew if I turned up as a male avatar that would all change, I’d had problems before with mistaken identity in other games and chat rooms and I know it shouldn’t matter but it does make a difference. I thought to myself, what the hell – there’s nothing that says that Jez can’t be female. I wasn’t there for the cyber-sex, I didn’t really care what Fee saw in me as long as we could have a laugh together exploring this virtual world. So I went round the freebie island where you could kit out your new avatar for nothing and built a shape and outfit for my new female persona. Then I logged out and went to do some work around the house.

That evening I logged back in and found that Fee was already online. She told me that she had bought some Lindens for real money and then gone shopping and exploring. She asked me if I would like to come join her and see what she had bought. I agreed and asked her to give me a moment to sort out my inventory and get over to her location.

I checked my female avatar was all ready to go and I ‘teleported’ my avatar to where Fee was.

I was very surprised to see Fee looking very dapper in a blue suit and wearing a goatee beard.

“I thought you were a girl!” I blurted out in the chat window.

“Yeah, because of the Ruthing thing, I get it. Nope, just a bloke ☺” he replied. “Want to come see what I found?”
“Sure ☺”

So Fee vanished and sent me an IM message a few seconds later; “Join me in Heavenly Gardens – OK”.

I clicked on OK and my avatar reappeared in a beautiful garden. There were bridges over streams, gazebos, walls, benches and shrubs. Fee started in the direction of what looked to be a hedge-maze.

“Follow me, there’s this maze I want to show you” he typed.

“What are all the pink and blue balls for everywhere?”

“They’re animations built into the furniture, I click on a blue ball and you click on a pink ball and we will sit down on the benches or leans against the gazebos with a specific pose that the garden owner chooses”

“Huh? What does that mean?”

Fee walked over to a bench, there was a ‘ding’ noise and suddenly his avatar was sat in a classic male pose, with the legs apart. “Click on the pink ball to sit next to me” he said.

I clicked on the pink ball and suddenly my avatar was sat next to Fee, all prim and proper with legs crossed at the knees.

“Oh, I get it.”

“Hit the ‘stand’ button and come follow me – let’s see if we can find the centre of the maze!”

Fee’s avatar suddenly was on its feet and walking towards the maze again.

I fiddled for a while to hit the ‘stand’ button and got my avatar up and walking again. By the time I had got to the entrance to the maze Fee had vanished inside. I tried to figure out where he had gone and I realised that I could change the viewpoint of my screen, like zooming a remote camera on a drone all over the place. I took the camera view up to get an aerial view of the maze and saw Fee heading off to the centre. I could see he was going to get stuck, from my viewpoint, so I headed off in the opposite direction and got to the centre a few seconds before he did.

As we both got to the centre our avatars bumped into each other face to face and bounced back.

I chuckled in RL and said to Fee "We look like a couple of bumper-cars!"

"LOL — more like demented Daleks!" he quipped.

"What shall we do now?"

"Do you like to dance?" he said. Before I could answer he said "wait here a second" and his avatar vanished with a whooshing noise. A second or two later I got the "Join me in Heavenly Gardens — OK". I clicked on the button and my avatar vanished and reappeared next to Fee in what looked like an idealised Gazebo. There was a blue ball and a pink ball next to us with the caption "Dance (M)" and "Dance (F)" over each respective ball.

"Stand on your ball" Fee told me as he clicked on the blue ball and struck a dance pose with his arms extended. I clicked on the pink ball and selected "Dance" from the pie menu where normally it would say "Stand" and before I knew it Fee and Jez were waltzing around the screen together. It was cute, to see the two avatars dance demurely round the screen. Music played in the background and Fee and I chatted. I couldn't tell you what we talked about; kids, relationships, jobs. Early on in the conversation I tried to raise the subject of who I really was. I said to Fee that my avatar didn't look anything like me in RL and I was going to go on and explain the confusion but Fee shushed me and said he didn't care, for tonight he was just happy to play on SL and he didn't care who I was or what I looked like. It seemed harmless enough, so I just went along with it. I was careful with pronouns and personal details so as not to break the moment with the realisation that I was a man.
“ I know somewhere where there are a lot more different dances” said Fee. A moment later he vanished with a whooshing sound. I got a message “Join me in Heavenly Clouds”. I accepted the invitation and found myself in a misty area facing Fee. Through the clouds I was standing on I could see glimpses of the ground below. “I think it's supposed to be a nightclub in Heaven” he said. “Follow me” as he turned to stride across cloudscape to a pair of balls, one pink and one blue.

They each had a label "DanceR" over them. I clicked on the ball and before I knew it our avatars were dancing. It was a slow and sensual dance, I know now that it was a rumba, but I couldn't tell a rumba from twist in those days. Fee and I chatted about all life's little annoyances work, ex-partners, money, loneliness... We had so much in common it was spooky, I couldn't remember ever talking to someone like this and having them be genuinely interested in how I felt about things. I felt vulnerable and appreciated, two things I would have thought were poles apart.

Every now and then our avatars would get out of sequence, my character would be dipping as Fee was straightening up. Fee would growl, or at least, he would type "grrrrr" about Second Life's shortcomings and we would move on to another dance. We had romantic waltzes and sizzling Latin dances, none of which I knew the first thing about in real life ( or RL as Fee called it) but it was fun watching our avatars cavort as we typed our chat to each other. The dance floor had filled with dozens of other avatars. The male avatars were all fairly dull, but the female avatars were dressed like dazzling birds of paradise, beautiful makeup, hair and jewellery and dresses that flowed as they moved. I looked at my own avatar and felt strangely inadequate.

Then something happened that changed my view of the world forever. I don't think you can understand this unless you too have had this kind of epiphany. It was such a little thing, but it resonates through the core of my being to this day. There was a dance that Fee wanted to try, but two other avatars beat us to it as we stopped our previous dance and we were left just standing around aimlessly. Fee said "Let's sit this one out!" and headed over to a small bench or loveseat on the side of the dance floor. The seat had a pink and blue ball labelled "sit", so we sat.
The pose that we ended up in turned out to be very sweet, with Fee's avatar massaging Jez's feet. After all that dancing in high heels it seemed like the most natural thing to do. The thing that shook me was that I found I could practically feel Fee's strong fingers digging into my tired muscles and I shivered at the pleasure the sensation gave me. I told Fee how good it felt. I know it was all in my imagination, but it was like a form of self-hypnosis.

My mind was in a whirl, it had been so long since anyone other than my kids had touched me that even this phantom touch was spooky good. I had been starved of adult contact, except for at work, for so long. The fact that it was a man, rather than a woman didn't bother me as much as I thought it should. What did it matter? We would never meet in real life (let's pray he never finds out who I really am, he would hate me so much). I rationalised it to myself that this was just part of the game, like the role-playing in Dungeons and Dragons except, instead of getting bonus experience points for playing a half-elf magic user I would get seduction lessons from an alternative viewpoint, courtesy of Fee. What could be wrong with that?

I accused Fee there and then of trying to seduce me, I could tell he was smirking as he typed back simply "Is it working?"
Truth to tell, it kinda was, not that I could admit that to him, or even to myself, so I just ignored his question and changed the subject - I asked him if he’d like to try a different dance I’d spotted on the other side of the sim.

We danced a few more dances, chatted a bit more small talk and arranged to meet again the next evening.

Virtually Feminine - Part 10 - Thanksgiving
Cathy decides to go ahead with her real life test and live as a woman 24 x 7. Her first public outing is at Kathryn's Thanksgiving Party as an 'honourary American' because she knows how to bake pumpkin pie...

Thanks to Gabi for all her help and support and for proof-reading all this for me. I wouldn't be able to post this without her.

Part 10 - Thanksgiving

I'd driven home as soon as I got back to my car. I don't like staying in London any longer than I have to. I always find it a strange mix of exciting and depressing. Exciting because there are all the shops and shows and museums. Depressing because they're so expensive and I don't feel I fit in. I miss the countryside and greenery of the West Country.

I called my Mum on the way home. It’s ok, I have built-in hands-free in the car, and the journey is two and a half hours on a good day, once you get to the car, so I had time.

It was an odd conversation, a little stilted. Mum has difficulty hearing me on the phone sometimes these days. I’m still not clear what she thinks about me transitioning. She seems to be ignoring it, as much as possible. I haven’t pushed the point, I haven’t shown her what I look like when I’m dressed as a woman. I guess that she will accept it, for the sake of her grandkids, but I can tell she’s bothered. Whether she’s worried for me or worried by me, I can’t tell yet.

I didn’t call my Dad, I generally don’t think to call him. When we spoke after Linda saw me in a dress he tried to make it all about him - how could I be so stupid as to let Linda discover me? Didn’t I realise how that made him look? Why couldn’t I be man enough to let him know first?
Kind of ironic, that last one.
My Dad is probably one of the reasons I have no interest in playing at being a man anymore. He is the very definition of ‘toxic masculinity’ - his picture is alongside the entry in the dictionary.

After I ended the call with my Mum, I drove home with MP3s from my phone playing on the car audio and mused about what I would be wearing to go to work in weeks to come.

I wanted to tell Kathryn all about my appointment as I drove home. But I waited until I knew she'd be out of the office before I called her.

It was quite late in the day by the time I got home and I didn't have to wait long to talk to Kathryn. She sounded nearly as disappointed as I felt, as I described the whole heap of nothing that had changed. She became more interested as I mentioned the support service near Exeter.

“So. Are you coming into work tomorrow as Cathy?” she asked.

“I don’t think I’m quite ready for that tomorrow.” I admitted, “But I think it’s clear that, sooner or later, it’s going to happen”.

“What can I do to help you get to that point?” Kathryn asked.

“You’ve already done so much for me,” I replied. “Just… I don’t know, be patient with me? For a little while longer. I know I can rely on you to stand by me when things get sticky”.

“You know it, girl friend!” Kathryn said

-0-0-

Friday was a drag, after the excitement of the day before.

-0-0-

That weekend I sat down and had a chat with Kevin and Rachael about me wearing dresses in the future. Rachael didn’t really understand why it would be an issue. Kevin was angry and confused. I wanted to ask them not to talk to Linda about it, but that would mean either they told her everything and it drove a wedge between us all or they wouldn’t be able to talk to their mother about something that might be troubling them a lot. I held my tongue. I could explain that their Mum had sent an evil letter to my boss to try and get me into trouble, but really they were too young to understand and trying to get into a battle with their mother through them was not something I would ever do.

Linda might try it though.

-0-0-

On Sunday, I planned to go to town on the roast dinner. I had a new dress, I’d practised my makeup with help from Kathryn, I had a really nice joint of beef, with all the trimmings and an apple pie and custard for dessert.

I seasoned the meat and got it in the oven, prepared the vegetables and laid the table. Then I went to get dressed and made-up before my Mum arrived. When I came back down, I put an apron on to protect my new dress and I carried on getting the dinner ready. The roast potatoes were in when Mum arrived.

She looked me up and down when she came in, but she didn’t say a word about my outfit.

She said, “Hello, Andy,” as she stepped through the door.

Rachael came bounding up then to take over Grandma’s time.

“Grandma! There you are! Come and play with me,” she said.

I went back to the kitchen and carried on preparing dinner. When everything was ready I called everyone to the table.

Kevin came down from his room and gave me a curious look. Then he saw the food on the table and, given his usual priorities, unsurprisingly, decided food first and snarky comments after.

Mum came in with Rachael and her eyebrow raised when she saw the food laid out on the table.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked.

“What? I can’t prepare a fabulous dinner for my family?” I asked “I’m celebrating my first appointment at the gender clinic following the referral from my company,” I continued.

“Your company is paying for all this?” Mum said, gesturing vaguely in my direction.

“Well, I bought the dress, my friend, Kathryn, helped pick out the makeup, but yes, the company is picking up my medical bills. Their health insurance covers Gender Dysmorphia, which they believe is the root cause of my long-term depression,” I said.

Mum considered this for a moment and clearly thought that this was not a subject to be discussed in front of the children.

“Well, this all looks delicious! Can you pass me the potatoes, Kevin?” she said.

The rest of the evening was bizarrely normal.

I didn’t need to bathe Rachael anymore, but she was still young enough that I needed to supervise, and help her dry her hair downstairs with Grandma as Kevin took a shower.

Mum helped me get the kids off to bed. When Kevin had said good night and gone off to his room she sat down and sighed.

“Long term depression?” she asked.

“You know I’ve been depressed,” I answered.

“I’d assumed it was because of the breakdown of your marriage,” she said.

“I’m not sure which was the cause and which was the effect, to be honest. Linda and I were growing apart for years.” I said

“Well, you know I never liked her?” Mum said.

“I know...she changed, she wasn’t that bad when we got together. And I wanted kids…” I said.

“You wanted to be a mother?” Mum asked.

“Ha! Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t really know what I wanted then. I just felt… incomplete, like something was missing?” I said.

Mum looked a little wistful.

“Yes,” she said, “I remember that feeling… Kids… well, children give our lives meaning, I think.”

She looked over at me, and continued.

“Even when you don’t understand them and barely recognise them… you still love them.”

I started tearing up.

“Oh Mum! Stop it! I’m not wearing waterproof mascara and I don’t want to give Rachael nightmares when I check she’s asleep!” I said.

Mum chuckled.

“She’s made of stronger stuff than your Kevin. Girls have to be, I guess, as you will learn, I’m afraid…” she said.

“I think I have to go through this, Mum,” I said softly, “I don’t want to think about how low I got before…”

“Before?” Mum prompted.

“Before I found what has been dragging me down all my life, I think. I’ve never been truly happy, I just hid everything, from you, from Linda and from myself.” I said.

“I knew you were struggling,” Mum said. “But I never imagined anything like this…”

“I’m sorry Mum, I don’t think it was a choice,” I said.

“No. I don’t suppose it was… a Mother has a right to worry that you are doing the right thing for the right reason. And I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on inside your head… But I will be here for you and the kids. I just wish you hadn’t chosen such a difficult path…” she said.

“Not really a choice.” I reminded her.

“What’s the next step, then?” she asked.

“Well, the consultant said that I should start with a social transition, begin my Real Life Test, straight away,” I said.
“What does that mean?” my Mum asked, looking worried.

“Dressing like a woman all the time, living as a woman full-time,” I explained.

“Isn’t that, I don’t know… dangerous?” she asked.

“There is some risk, I guess. I don’t think I’ll be in any physical danger, though. On the job side... I don’t think I’m in danger of losing my job, like you seem to imagine. HR has already made it clear that they will back me at work, my job will be protected because I’ll be a minority.” I said.

I told Mum about Julie and what she said about it potentially being a good move, career-wise.

Mum shook her head.

“I don’t understand the world anymore. But you make a convincing woman. What name will you use? Andi? Andrea?” she asked.

“Er… I go by Cathy, online. A clean break between the two of us.” I said.

“I was going to call you Rachael, if you had been a girl,” she said.

“I know, that’s why I named my daughter Rachael. I never dreamed I might want that name for my own… No, I think Cathy will save a lot of confusion. Catherine for best.” I said.

“Isn’t your friend called Catherine?” Mum asked.

“Kathryn, with a ‘K’,” I said. “She never shortens it to Kathy, but yes, it can be confusing. We have three Andys in the sales team at the moment, so I guess it will be less confusing than that!”

We chatted for a little longer. The tension that there had been earlier had lessened now, and Mum seemed to accept that this was something that I had to do.

When she got up to leave, I rose with her to see her to the door. She gave me a hug, just before she left. I don’t remember the last time my Mum hugged me like that.

“My word!” she said as she let me go “You’re nothing but skin and bone! No wonder you look so good in a dress. But men like a few curves! Don’t get too skinny.”

I snerked, I couldn’t hold my laugh in.

“I think it’s going to be a long time before I date anyone, Man or woman. If I’m confused about my gender and my body, how is dating going to fit in?”

Mum shrugged.
“Sometimes the love of a good man can make everything seem right again,” she said with a smile.

I smiled as I thought about Fee.

“I guess you have a point!” I said.

Mum gave me a look, but didn’t stop to dig into it then. I don’t think she wanted any more revelations tonight, and I think she thought I was just winding her up.

-0-0-

I dropped off the kids at school as usual the next day and headed to work. I discussed with Julie how to make the transition to working as a woman. We agreed that I would continue using the disabled toilets downstairs, I would be given a key. That had the advantage that the room locked, rather than just the stall and it would give me some privacy to change or even shower (there was a shower stall in there too). I would send out an email to the company announcing my decision and Julie would follow it up with an email to the managers highlighting the company policies and offering guidance and training to anyone who thought that they might need it under the circumstances.

To be honest, I was more worried about the assholes who knew that they didn’t need training, they could only ever be in the right because they were white and male.

-0-0-

I drafted my letter, and shared it with Julie to see if she agreed with it. I also shared it with Kathryn to see if she could suggest anything. We ended up agreeing on this:

Dear Colleagues,

I’m sending this email to inform you of something that is intensely personal to me but which will result in some changes at work. I obviously cannot talk to each of you individually and explain everything to you personally so I am writing to explain to you so you won’t hear things via the rumour-mill that may be inaccurate or wrong.

I realise that some of you may still have questions or strong opinions about the issues raised by this email. By all means, drop me an email in return and I will do my best to answer any questions that you may have as honestly as I can.

I have been questioning my gender identity for some time now and I have realised that the depression and anxiety I have suffered from has been caused by the discomfort of being designated as male. Outside of work I have, with the help of friends and family, been identifying as a woman. Unfortunately, this has meant my discomfort at work has been growing. Following medical advice, and with the support of our HR team I have decided to transition to living as a woman full time.

I will still be the same person and this should improve my ability to concentrate on my work as it will remove a major distraction for me as I will no longer have two personas to juggle.

As you can imagine, this has been a difficult decision that I have struggled with for some time. Most of the people I have told about this already have been overwhelmingly supportive, which has surprised and delighted me. I hope that the rest of you will feel the same way, or at least reserve judgement until we have had a chance to work together and you get to know me in my new persona.

I will be leaving work on Wednesday evening as Andy Smith (male) and returning to work on Friday as Ms Catherine Smith (female), but I hope that you will call me Cathy.

Respectfully

Cathy Smith

Bid Manager

Julie shared this letter, along with a letter from the HR team, with the Senior Management team. That was kind of the point of no return for me.

The HR letter had a link to the company diversity policy, pointed out the section on Transgender rights and zero tolerance to abuse in the workplace and reiterated the company values of tolerance.

I got a personal email from the Chief Executive of the company congratulating me on my bravery and asking me to arrange to meet with him next week. I rang his PA, a charming woman called Maddie, who, as his PA, had already seen all of the messages, and arranged a meeting on Monday morning.

The messages to the whole company were scheduled to be sent on Wednesday morning. I’d already booked off Thursday to make pumpkin pies for Kathryn’s Thanksgiving dinner.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday were a bit of a blur.

I dragged myself into work on Wednesday with a feeling of dread and elation. This could all go either very well or very very badly. Possibly both.

My line manager, Sally, had been on the list of people who had seen the draft email. She hadn’t had much to say about it, strangely. When the email went out, the phone on her desk started ringing, the emails started flooding in and she turned to me and said:

“Well, the circus has started, you may as well go now, you won’t get any more work done today!”

“Er… Ok, I guess that you are right” I said. I got up and started packing my bag to leave.

“I’ll look forward to meeting ‘Cathy’ on Friday!” Sally said cheerfully.

I left the building quickly. There was a feeling of being watched as I made my way to my car. I felt like everyone in the company was pointing at me and saying to the person standing next to them ‘That’s him, that’s the weirdo who sent the email!’

-0-0-

When I got home, I took off my suit, put on some yoga pants and a sweatshirt and started packing all my male clothes away. I had already started preparing and many things were cleaned and folded and sorted. I started packing them into boxes and taping them up. I planned to take them to a charity shop, but I thought I would give it a few weeks before I did that. Not that I really expected to ever go back to dressing in male clothes after today, but, hey, I never thought a year ago that I would ever be wearing women’s clothes to go to work.

I took a break for a small steak and a salad and then I started putting some outfits together and packing an overnight bag for Kathryn’s party, and going into work the next day as Cathy.

Because I didn’t have to be up early in the morning for work, I went to bed quite late. I still couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed in my sleep shorts set thinking of all the things that might happen over the next few days, good and bad and in-between.

-0-0-

I woke at 7 a.m. the next day and my mind started whirling, so I decided to get up and start baking.

I took two large pumpkins, cut them in half, scooped out the seeds, smeared the edge with olive oil and placed the halves on a baking tray in a preheated oven for forty-five minutes.

The flesh of the pumpkin steamed in its own juices that were trapped under the dome of the pumpkin half.

I started making the pastry for the cases, I rolled it out, lined the greased pie tins and put in the baking paper and beads to blind bake the cases. When I took out the pumpkins to scoop out the baked flesh I put in the cases.

I scooped out the flesh and blended it in a large plastic jug with a hand-blender, then I separated the puree into two jugs. In the larger one that I had used to puree the flesh, I made up the filling with cream, eggs, condensed milk, brown sugar and a mixture of ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice. The second, smaller jug I experimented with a keto version of the recipe, eggs and double cream were fine, and so were the spices. I used Erythritol instead of sugar and skipped the condensed milk entirely. I put just a little Xanthan gum in to try and ensure the filling had the right consistency after baking.

By the time I had the fillings made, the cases were ready, smelling great and looking just slightly darker than when they went in.

I quickly removed the paper and beads and filled the cases, making sure I made a note of the position of which one had the keto mix. I put them back in the oven and went to have a shower. They would need to be turned down after about 30-40 minutes, but they would take a long time to cook, so I thought I would use the time to start getting ready.

I used hair removal cream all over my body before I got in the shower, which took 15 minutes or so, I was worrying while I was showering about how the pies were doing. I threw on my pink towelling robe when I got out of the shower and I hurried down to the kitchen to check. There was a skin forming on the filling, but it was clear that they still were not cooked. I turned the oven down and went back to getting ready.

I tucked and taped and affixed my prosthetics, every girl needs a little help and I needed more help than most. Then I put on my new bra and panties. A feeling of peace settled over me and I let out a breath that I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. I felt just a little more feminine, my body was starting to match the way it should have always been. I still had makeup and hair to do before I could be seen in public, but I felt more ‘right’ than I had for days.

I went back down to the kitchen to check on the pies. They were looking pretty good now. I pulled up a stool next to the breakfast bar so that I could watch the oven as I had a coffee on the counter next to me and I sat down to wait until the pies were ready.

I tried to imagine myself as a domestic goddess, swanning around in a peignoir, like Nigella Lawson, the thought cracked me up, and I laughed to myself. Linda had joked, early in our relationship, that with my cooking skills I would make someone a lovely wife.

Her loss, silly cow.

I finished my coffee and checked the pies again, they looked pretty good, with some brown patches on top. I didn’t want to overcook them, I wasn’t sure whether to eat them at room temperature or warm them slightly at Kathryn’s, chilled pumpkin pie was too bland to contemplate.

I took the pies out and left them cooling on boards on the work surface. I tidied the kitchen up and then did a quick check around the house. I was going to go into work from Kathryn’s tomorrow and pick up the kids on the way home from work, so the next time I would be home would be with the kids. I didn’t want to bring them home into a messy house.

Once I had finished tidying I went upstairs to finish getting changed and packing my bags. I decided to wear my jeans to drive up and help Kathryn set up and then change into my long skirt for the party.

I loaded up my car, with my bags (including my handbag, I was going to have to remember that from now on), clothes and the pies and set off.

It took nearly an hour and a half to drive to Kathryn’s. It felt a little odd, driving such a long way in my wig and makeup, I had avoided driving any great distance so obviously ‘en femme’ up until now because I didn’t want to have to answer awkward questions if I was stopped by the police for some reason. As I was going to be driving to work every day like this from now on, now was as good a time as any to start getting over my hangups about driving.

When I got to junction 17 of the M4, I rang Kathryn to let her know that I was nearly there and to check that it was ok to park on the road outside her front door for a few moments to drop off the pies and my bag?

“Of course!” she replied “See you soon!”

It took me about 20 minutes to get to Kathryn’s house and I parked right outside her door, with two wheels on the pavement, got out and knocked on the door. Kathryn opened it straight away and I handed her the pies in a cake carrying case, her eyes widened in appreciation.

“Wow, these look great!” she said.

“The one on the top is mine, it doesn’t have any sugar,” I said.

Kathryn’s face screwed up.

“Eww!” she said “That’s a horrible thought! Thanksgiving dessert with no yummy calories!”

“Oh, it has calories, just no sugar. I’m going to have to leave the crust though” I said, then sighed, like the martyr I am.

I handed my case, skirt and suit for tomorrow to Kathryn.

“Right, I’ll go and park and see you in a few minutes,” I said. I was anxious to get away before a parking warden came, Kathryn had told me how difficult they had made her neighbour’s lives.

I parked up in the same place I had before. I got my coat and my handbag, checked the car to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, locked up, double-checked the handle and headed off to Kathryn’s.

It took 3 minutes to drive to where I parked, but nearly ten minutes to walk back. I only had a low heel on my boots, but it did affect the way I walked. It was quite mild for November, about 12 degrees Celsius, but it wasn’t warm and I was glad of my woollen coat.

I felt strangely exposed, walking by myself, like I was in enemy territory, somehow.

When I got back to Kathryn’s house I knocked on the door. It took a long time for Kathryn to open the door, I was starting to wonder if she had heard me. Kathryn didn’t have a doorbell, just a knocker in the shape of a woodpecker. I never wanted to bang it too hard in case I broke something, but, given the layout of her house, if I knocked on the door and she was in the shower on the top floor then there was no way that she would hear me.

Kathryn welcomed me in with a hug and led me inside.

“Is it ok if I take my bag upstairs and go and get changed?” I asked.

“Leave your bag downstairs in the old kitchen,” she said “I’ve arranged for you to stay with friends tonight, so you can take your bag when you leave.”

“OK,” I said, a little doubtfully. I don’t know these friends and I’m feeling pretty vulnerable right now.

Kathryn had transformed her house, she’d shown me some photos online that she told me were taken by a professional photographer for House and Garden magazine. The downstairs was carpeted, had one large sofa and two small ones and bookshelves and lamps. One wall, behind the larger sofa, was dominated by a huge mirror that hid half the wall and had a heavy pewter effect frame. But the vast mirror gave the illusion that the small room was much larger than it really was. I stowed my bag, coat and suit on its hanger in the old kitchen that Kathryn had converted to a kind of cloakroom or alcove, with coat hooks, and headed upstairs with my skirt and handbag.

I got changed in the bathroom that I had helped to tile and I took the opportunity to touch up my makeup.

When I came downstairs to the kitchen Kathryn was running around getting things ready, there was so much food and more stuff cooking in the oven.

“Can you help me? Can you stick this up there? Close to the ceiling?” Kathryn asked. She handed me a packet of blu tack and some red, white and blue tinsel.

“You only wanted me to come to save on buying a ladder?” I asked.

“I’m hurt… there’s also your pumpkin pie!” Kathryn quipped.

We put up some decorations and Kathryn continued to prepare food until we got to 6 pm, then Kathryn said…

“Right! I have to run and get a shower now. Can you keep an ear out for the door and let in anyone who knocks?”

“You don’t have invitations, or a password?” I asked.

“No…” she said.

“How do I know if they are people you’ve actually invited?” I asked.

“Well… if they have an American accent then you can be fairly sure I invited them!” Kathryn said.

-0-0-

No one came while Kathryn was in the shower, I think that she was just teasing me. She took less time than I did to get ready, but I guess she has a significant head-start on me when it comes to looking feminine.

We were chatting in the kitchen when the first knock on the door came. We went down to answer the door together, I stayed behind Kathryn as she let in her first visitor, a guy about our age with a beard and, as it turned out, a Scottish accent.

“Ian!” Kathryn said, “You’re a little earlier than I expected, come in, this is my friend, Cathy!”

“Oh, aye!” Ian said, looking me up and down. He didn’t make any comment, so I assume Kathryn has told him she had a trans-woman at the party. I wondered what she had said and who she had told. “I’ll just go and put these in the kitchen then…” He said, as he indicated a carrier bag that clinked as he raised it. “I saw some of the others coming along behind me…” and with that, he headed upstairs to the kitchen.

There was another knock on the door then. From that moment on there was a steady stream of people, most of whom had American accents. Kathryn’s tiny house seemed full with Kathryn, Island and me in it, by the time there were eight other people it was a struggle to find somewhere to sit down, even with people spread through the living room, Kitchen and Bedroom on the three floors. Nobody seemed to know each other, except for the last couple to arrive; Mark and Jenny, who clearly knew each other - Mark was the American and Jenny had a British accent. Mark knew Ian, apparently.

Most of the conversation in the early part of the evening was based on answering the question “Well, how do you know Kathryn, then?” Which was easy for me; “We work together,” was met with an “Oh, of course”.

Everyone brought food or drink and the large table in Kathryn’s kitchen and every available flat surface was covered in food and drink. There was nowhere to sit down for a meal so Kathryn organised it as a kind of buffet. There was turkey, sweet potato (mashed and fried in chunks like roast potatoes), there were roast potatoes, pasta salad, potato salad, vegetables and several desserts. Someone else had brought a pumpkin pie but theirs was a much larger and more elaborate thing than mine. I found out the person who had brought the other pie was a very imposing lady from New York City, she was tall, with long waves of blonde hair, her name was Carolyn. She kind of reminded me of Blake Lively, but she was in her fifties, I think. She spoke just a little too loud for the environment, I don’t know if she was going deaf or if she was just used to people listening whenever she spoke. I never got a straight answer about what she did for a living (‘this and that, you know’) or where exactly she lived in New York (‘here and there, you know’) but she had an endless source of stories and anecdotes about her friends and Manhattan, none of which meant very much to me, to be honest. The only time I have visited America was to go to San Francisco, well, technically Silicon Valley, to do ‘Due Diligence’ on a potential partner company for the company that I was working for. Carolyn managed to get that story out of me. There was one comment she made, she said “Oh, that explains _soo_ much” when I said how I really like San Francisco, that I didn’t quite understand. But she seemed to be joking. She explained that her pie was a baked mascarpone cheesecake pumpkin pie. Whatever it was, it was rich and delicious. I think mine was a little better balanced between the sweetness and the flavour, but all the food was delicious. I decided early on in the evening that my diet was out of the window.
I tried to stick to soft drinks. I’m not great with social situations and I was so far out of my comfort zone. I wanted to leave myself the option of driving home if things got too boring or too uncomfortable.

But, as the evening went on, everyone was super nice. No one asked me the obvious question. Jenny asked me about my skirt at one point in the evening, but only to ask where I got it from.

We started playing games at about 10 pm, the kind that requires drinking. I gave up then and had a few drinks. The evening gets a bit blurry from around then. I know I got my smartphone out to take some pictures, but they are so blurry you couldn’t make them out, even if I did share them with you.

After about 11 pm people started leaving. I was waiting for Mark and Jenny to say let’s go, but they showed no signs of going. Eventually, it was just Kathryn, Ian, Mark, Jenny and me. It was about 11:30 pm or midnight when we finally left, Mark carried my case and Jenny hung onto my arm, I’m not sure if she was propping me up or I was propping her up, but she was only about 5’6” so I guess neither of us were doing a great job. Jenny was giggling and doing a stage whisper that was loud enough to set the dogs barking as we passed people’s houses. Mark was walking with quiet dignity. It wasn’t far to their house, they showed me to a guest bedroom, where I carefully got changed to go to sleep, taking off my makeup and wig carefully.

I went to sleep, smiling to myself at the sounds of drunken love-making in the room next door.

Virtually Feminine - Part 11 - First Day - Again

Cathy goes into the office dressed as her true self for the first time.

Thanks to Gabi for editing this for me and picking up all my mistakes, and for encouraging me to get on and write.

Virtually Feminine - Part 11 - First Day - Again

I woke up the next morning in a panic as my phone’s alarm went off. I didn’t recognise the room and it took me a moment to remember where I was. I also realised what day it was. My first day at work as Cathy. Shit.

What was I thinking? I wasn’t ready for this!

I needed a month’s preparation, expert help, a team of psychologists and buckets of drugs.

Instead, I had a slight hangover, I was miles from home and I didn’t even know my hosts.

I sighed and started to get up. Jenny had left me a towel. I took my toiletries bag and headed off to find the bathroom. There was no sign of Jenny or Mark. I took a quick shower, with a shower cap. The pressure was rubbish and the bathroom was not as clean as mine at home. I wrapped the towel around me (yes, girl-style) and headed back to my room.

I had unpacked my outfit and left it to hang last night. I checked it over this morning. It looked ok. I wasn’t going to have to try and find an iron, thank goodness.

I dressed and did my makeup. I fussed with my wig and did a final check of my appearance. I had butterflies in my tummy. There was no way I wanted breakfast, not that Mark or Jenny were around to offer any. I sighed and dug out a piece of paper from my bag. I scrawled a quick thank you note. Packed everything and got it set by the door. I put the note on the kitchen table and quietly let myself out.

I made my way to my car using the maps app on my phone, it was quite a trek. Then I drove to the office. It was early, about 8:30 am. The earliest that I had ever seen the office (unless you count the times I had still been in the office and working at 1:30 am after a long day).

I kept my head down and made my way to my desk. I started my laptop and went to get a coffee from the machine. There were no other Bid Managers or Salespeople around this early. There were a couple of Technical Consultants around, but they just ignored me.

I sat down and started going through emails and messages from yesterday, firing off messages to chase contributors to my current bids. I sipped my coffee and my heart rate started dropping back from the humming-bird wings level it had been at. I sighed and relaxed a little, I’d made it through the door, no one had screamed and pointed at me.

As I settled into my normal working day I rubbed my nylon clad legs together and looked at my reflection in the windows across the office. Showing office Barbie with auburn hair typing away. There was a little thrill of triumph that I had made it and a sense of rightness with the world that I hadn’t realised was missing.

Although I was scared and anxious about what would happen as the office filled up, I felt as though a weight had fallen from my shoulders.
Bev came in, she was the first of the bid managers to arrive. She was dressed in a similar way to me. She was a little older than me and looked like a blonde, prettier and more feminine version of me. She gave me a nod of recognition and sat down to start work without a comment.

The other bid managers and technical consultants came in over the next 25 minutes or so. They all did much the same as Bev, or ignored me altogether.

Sally, my boss, came in almost exactly at 9 am. Her desk was next to mine. She came over, placed her laptop on the desk and her handbag next to mine.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, seeing you in the office this early, Cathy” she said.

“Ah,” I said, blushing slightly, “I stayed in Malmesbury last night. Plus, I don’t really want to be walking to the overflow carpark at 7 pm anymore, safety in numbers, you know?”

“Oh, of course I understand that… “ Sally said, “all of the other… bid managers… understand that, I think.”

I think she was going to say ‘women’ for a moment, but I guess the jury was still out on whether I qualified. I was certainly a bid manager though, at least.

“When is your first meeting this morning?” Sally asked.

“I have a bid kick-off at 11 am for the new camera system” I said.

“Any problems I should be aware of?” Sally asked.

“Aside from me being the new girl now?” I asked with a slight smile.

“Hmm…Do you want me to come?” Sally asked.

I sighed.

“I’m a big girl now, I chose this path. Now I have to see how things go…” I said.

Sally grinned.

“I’ve sat next to you for five years now and never really seen anything in you to suggest that you would one day…” she started, then waved her hand as she trailed off.

“It seems so incongruous to hear those words, in your voice now… But you certainly look…well put together!” Sally concluded brightly.

“Er, thanks” I said, not really sure how to respond. “I know it will be a five minute wonder, and people will react, both good and bad reactions. I’m just looking forward to when all this is normal - whatever normal is.”

“Julie asked if you could go and see her in HR when you got in. They want to sort out new photo ID and some other issues” Sally said.

“Sure,” I said, and picked up my handbag. I checked it had my phone and a notepad and pen and I headed off to see Julie.

-+-+-

Julie wasn’t at her desk when I got to the HR office. Dianne, her boss, was there. I worked with Dianne at our previous company. She’d been recruited into the current company, but I’d been made redundant a couple of years later. We’d never been friendly. Dianne had always been ambitious and played office politics.

“Oh! Erm… ‘Cathy’, isn’t it?” she said to me.

“Yes, Dianne” I said with a smile.

“Julie will be back in a moment, she’s just getting coffee. Please, take a seat…” Dianne said as she indicated the seat next to Julie’s desk. A few of the desks in HR had a ‘visitor’s chair’ next to them, as they spent so long with people from other teams sat next to them.

I sat carefully in the chair with my knees together and my back straight. Dianne gave me an odd look, then returned to her office to the side of the main HR office.

Julie turned up a moment later with a tray of coffees, she took one look at me and gave me a big smile.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get one for you, I didn’t expect you to be here yet” she explained as she passed out the coffees to her colleagues.

“It’s ok, I’ve already had one coffee this morning” I said.

“I must say, you look very professional, I love that outfit… Which is excellent, because I have to re-do your photo IDs today” Julie said, “Can you stand over there, by the wall?”

She got up and retrieved an odd-looking camera from a cupboard. I went over and stood by the wall. While I was waiting for her to get the camera ready I quickly got out my small mirror from my handbag and checked how I looked, kicking myself for not checking in the toilets before I came in.

“Ha!” said Julie “Yes, I do that before I get my photo taken, as well… Not like all the men… the only one of them who cares how he looks on his pass is Alex!”

Alex was the obviously gay guy who worked in procurement. He always wore gorgeously tailored suits with loud ties and a broach of some sort. I’d not had much to do with Alex since he joined a few months ago, despite the fact that Procurement was a major contributor to the figures for the costing models. Alex generally got the prices for the comms kit rather than the software that I worked on. Maybe, now that we were both poster children for the alphabet mafia, we would be thrown together more often?

Julie took her photos and gestured for me to sit back down.

“How’s it all going?” she asked, keeping her voice low, as if to prevent everyone else in the office from listening in. It was a small office, and there wasn’t much chance of our conversation not being overheard.

“Well, it’s early in the day… most people have just ignored me, so far…” I said, with a wry smile.

“Hopefully they are just trying to pretend it’s the new normal until it is the new normal?” Julie said.

“Maybe” I said, with a shrug.

“Let me know if there are any… difficulties?” Julie said

“Nothing so far” I reassured her.

“OK, well… I’ll get your badge to you in an hour or so… Good luck!” Julie said.

“Thanks, Julie” I said, giving her a warm smile as I rose to return to my desk.

-+-+-

When I got back to my desk Nicky and Sarah, the two salespeople, had both come in. Sarah did a double-take when she saw me sit at the desk and Nicky gave me an odd look and immediately went back to reading something on her screen.

I quickly got back to work preparing for the bid kick-off meeting.

One thing I hadn’t thought of was how I was going to get my laptop, my phone, my notepad and various pens, plus the bid folder over to the meeting room. I asked Sally if I could borrow one of the old laptop bags in the cupboard behind us and I packed everything in the bag so that I could carry it easily. Not having pockets was an issue. I had a new respect for the way the other bid managers managed to balance everything in a pile and carry it. I’d never given that much thought to it in the past. I’d always thrown everything in my laptop bag rucksack, but that seemed inelegant now.

I set up earlier than normal, to give myself time to crawl under the desk if necessary, to find the HDMI lead without flashing my knickers in my skirt. Nicky came in first, as the sales lead on this job, then the Sales director, Finance director, CEO and the Development manager.

I had the first slide of my presentation up on the screen, which was Nicky’s cue for her sales pitch:
She explained what the bid was for and, as she so frequently did, she explained how this business was ‘vital to the future success of the company’. What I didn’t expect was her next line, which was:

“I therefore wonder whether it wouldn’t be an idea to consider another bid manager, instead of Andy, as he may be a distraction to the process of bidding!”

I looked around the room like a startled rabbit in the headlights.

Ray, the sales director, was trying not to smirk, and failing. Nicky was watching him for approval. Brian, the finance director, looked a little pissed off. Bruce, the CEO, was watching me expectantly. Simon, the dev manager looked puzzled.

Hmm.

“Gentlemen,” I said, with as much authority as I could muster, “as the only person who seems to be distracted by the sight of a bid manager wearing a skirt is Nicky, perhaps we should continue?”

I launched into my presentation with a detailed plan of the resources and timescales for completing the bid and a spreadsheet showing that the difference between making a small profit and making an exceptional profit (that matched the sales forecast) relied upon the procurement team negotiating a discount for buying a key component in bulk.

Brian and Bruce were clearly impressed with the preparation I had done. Ray looked like he had swallowed a wasp. Simon still looked puzzled.

Bruce signed off the top sheet for the bid resources, giving me authority to request resources from the rest of the company.

I packed up as everyone else left and headed back to my desk. Nicky was in Ray’s office with him. Sally looked at me questioningly as I set my laptop up.

“Can I see you for a minute?” I asked, gesturing to the meeting room opposite Ray’s office.

Sally arched an eyebrow and followed me. I shut the door behind her and sighed.

“So, how did it go?” Sally asked.

“Nicky asked if it wouldn’t be a good idea to give her important bid to another bid manager because I would be distracted!” I said. I tried not to sound too whiney.

“Oh? Really. It’s funny how she never put the request in an email to me!” Sally said “What did you say?”

“I said the only person who seemed to be distracted by a bid manager in a skirt was her, and then I showed them the bid plan and the example cost model with the two costings for that component we discussed”. I said.

“Ha! I bet that made her spat irrelevant!” Sally said.

“Well, yes, but…” I said.

“You’ve made an enemy for life and she will be sticking pins in dolls of you?” Sally guessed.

“Yes, but that’s not the end of it. Nicky never does anything without the approval of a director, recently she’s been buttering up Ray… he clearly put her up to it!” I said.

“There’s no proof, I assume?” Sally said to herself. “OK, let me know if there is more of that. Keep a set of contemporaneous notes, with a list of witnesses. Hopefully, it will blow over.”

I felt relieved. Technically, Ray was Sally’s boss. But, Sally had been with the company for over twenty years, she had shares in the company and her long-term partner was one of the original architects of the command centre systems we sold. Although Ray had the job title of ‘Sales Director’ he was an employee, not an owner - and still on probation. With Sally’s support, I was confident Ray wouldn’t be a problem for me.

“Also,” Sally went on, “give Nicky an outline of the covering letter that you need and a hard deadline of when you need it by. Then write your own covering letter and I will sign it off on her behalf if she doesn’t deliver on time!”

“Argh, I hate this dicking around!” I said, “Why can’t people just, I don’t know, get on with things?”

“Nicky is young, pretty and ambitious. The only way she knows she’s winning is if someone else is losing. You, I’m afraid, painted a target on your back for everyone who needs a scapegoat, by wearing a skirt” Sally said.

“You’re wearing a skirt, too” I pointed out.
“And don’t think I don’t get picked on too! Why do you think there are so few women in our industry? But, I think the rest of the bid managers will back you up, I know I will” Sally said, “I can’t help thinking that one of the reasons that you are dressed this way is to fit in with your colleagues, I noticed you’d changed the diagram for the bid process so that all the stick-men for the bid managers were stick-women!”

“I just wanted to differentiate them from technical consultants and salespeople!” I said “all the rest of the bid managers are female.”

“Well, it made me smile. And now you truly are ‘one of us’,” Sally said “Do what the rest of us do, convince them that even if we don’t wear the trousers, we’re still in charge of the bid!”

-+-+-

The rest of the day went by without further drama. I left at the same time as the other bid managers, which was about an hour earlier than normal for me, and I headed back to Taunton to pick up my kids for the weekend.

Chapter 2 - Falling

I had the soundest night's sleep I had had in a long time, that night, and I awoke refreshed, optimistic and happy. I wasn't in love, don't be silly, but it was almost like... in the back of my mind... I was thinking about how Jez would feel. Writing lines for her as if she was a character in a play. Thinking how to role-play her, in the game.

At work I had the eerie feeling that there was someone else in my head with me, looking out through my eyes and commenting in the voice of a young woman...

Oh wow look at Gillian! I wish I had the confidence to wear something so fashion-forward!

You mean the mousey girl in the tarty skirt?

Don't be so hurtful! You don't understand how much courage it must have taken to wear that today. I think it's great that she's trying something new. Do you think you could compliment her without sounding creepy?

I'm forty-something and she's not even 25! If I talk to her at all she'll roll her eyes and make me feel like a peadophile, you know how stuck-up these girls get!

Hmph! Just because you're a chauvinist and she's having to prove she's twice as good as any man just to get taken seriously!

What! She's so up her own... whatever, that she won't even talk to any of us men. She talks to all the other female Bid Managers, but she ignores me and the Technical Consultants.

She probably just assumes that all you want to talk about is football and boring computer-stuff.

Only someone who's never spoken to me would think I want anything to do with talking flipping football!

Luckily the conversations were all in my head, but it did feel like I was starting to go a bit mad. I don't know how I made it through the day, let alone the long drive home that evening. I popped a microwave dinner in to cook as soon as I got home and started my laptop booting.

I retrieved my dinner when the microwave beeped and sat down to eat with the laptop by my plate. I logged on to Second Life as I started eating. Fee wasn’t online yet, which was fine by me, I needed to go shopping. I didn’t have any spare money in RL so I would have to hit the freebie store.

I’d found a store that gave away stuff for free, there were sections where the better quality items were for sale but they cost Linden Dollars (L$). Although L$ were only in-game tokens they cost real dollars to buy them. Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life, posted exchange rates on their website, to convert US dollars (USD) to L$ and back. I had read somewhere that the economy of Second Life at that time was roughly equivalent to a small country. I’m guessing that was hype, or a very small country. Anyway, the freebie store was a bit like a thrift shop, I guess. Lot’s of rubbish, but a few gems.

Fee sent me a message while I was shopping and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was at ‘Freebie Island’, trying to make myself look beautiful for him! I had no idea where that came from, it just sort of popped out. I guess Jez was a bit of a flirt.

Fee asked if I'd like to come and join him, of course I said yes and soon i had teleported to his side, or 'TPed’ as Fee called it. All around us there were pictures of naked women, I wondered what the hell was going on?

“I thought I'd buy you a new skin” said Fee. “I got one for myself and I thought you should have one too.”

I looked at Fee’s avatar and it was certainly looking a lot better, more like a person than a cartoon. A very good-looking person.

I wandered around looking at all the pictures until I found a very sweet and demure looking face, with just a hint of humour around the eyes (maybe I was projecting some of Jez’s personality onto it).

“How about this one?” I asked Fee.

“You sure?” he replied “It’s only L$100, I can get you one of the more expensive ones with all the different makeup options?”

“Fee…” I said “I don’t even know what L$100 is in real money, you know? How much would it cost in RL?”

“Oh, just a few pennies…” he replied airily.

“This one is fine, it’s very generous of you to offer, especially as I don’t have any linden dollars of my own and I’m unlikely to have any spare cash to get any soon…”

“How come?”

“Well…” my mind span quickly, I didn’t want to tell him that all my cash went to my ex-wife as maintenance… “I’m a single parent and all my spare cash goes on my kids, you see. I’m only playing SL as an escape because it’s free to play and I can’t afford to go anywhere in RL.” Strangely, not a word of what I said was a lie but it made me sound like some kind of lonely single mum.

“Well, a tenner here or there is no problem for me, so the few pennies to see you look pretty is nothing…. Why don’t you get yourself looking good and I’ll find the spot I wanted to show you?”

I’d found a spot where I could open the packages items came in and get a bit of privacy to try things on when I was looking through the free items earlier, so I went there and read the instructions for using my new skin, soon my avatar was naked and looking much more realistic, in fact…

“I have a vagina!” I blurted out in the instant message window I had open to Fee.

“Lol” said Fee “Are you nearly ready?”

“Huh!, I bet you’d like that! Seeing my naked avatar!” I retorted indignantly.

“Hmmm, maybe later?”

“Grr” I typed as I hurriedly added the various layers of clothing to my avatar, undies (simple white bra and panties), cropped tank top and bootcut jean with high heeled shoes. Nothing fancy but it looked ok, then long blonde hair in a thick braid down my back and a pair of glasses.

Why the glasses? I clearly didn’t need them to see in SL… I thought they made Jez look more like me, I’ve worn glasses all my life and I feel naked without them. Plus… I thought they gave Jez’s face more character, she looked too much like a cartoon of a fashion model without them, too perfect.

I took a deep breath in RL as I checked my avatar before I typed “Ready” in the IM window to Fee.

****

When I appeared a second later in front of Fee he had on his new skin and he was well dressed in smart casual clothes. He took a second to respond and then he said:

“Wow, that was worth the wait and the new skin just makes you look amazing!”

“Er, thanks… I’m not used to getting compliments like that.”

“Oh? I’m sure that’s not true, maybe you just blank them out?”

“No… I don’t look like this in RL… I’m older and fatter and plainer. After the separation I kind of let myself go and I was never beautiful to start with!”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

My mind was working overtime as I was conversing with Fee, trying to figure out who Jez’s alter-ego in RL would be like. I didn’t want to break the spell of what I had with Fee by forcing him to understand I was a guy in RL. I wanted to keep playing the role of a woman. I’d often played the female magic user in our D&D campaigns with my friends. It just made sense, tactically to have at least one female character in any campaign and I tended to avoid the fighter class as they tended to have such limited options. Magic users and thieves tended to thrive on their wits, which suited my game play. Plus it led to more interesting role play if my characters were not one dimensional melee fighters. So I realised I needed a back story for Jez. Who was she in RL?

I wanted the alter ego to be similar to me in most respects. The only real differences would be gender specific things, it would make it easier to remember things and stay in character if I didn’t have to lie or make things up. So, as I was talking I was kind of building this mental image in my mind. My ex-wife was about my build, to the point where we would sometimes borrow each others clothes (It’s not what you think). She was 6 feet tall (that’s over 180cm) and looked a little like the woman from Farscape, I think her name is Claudia Black. So if I think of a name for her that will never be released to Fee but I will use as a label in my own head. Let’s call her ‘Cathy’. 6 foot tall, size ten feet and long dark wavy hair. I can tell all the stories about buying clothes in Long Tall Sally and having to buy shoes in Saxon’s that I know from my ex-wife. I wasn’t doing this consciously as I spoke to Fee, but my head was running ahead of my mouth - setting up the role play. I guess my subconscious had been musing over this all day as a lot of things fell into place in a split second. It took a lot less time to come up with this plan than to read about it here!

Cathy was shy around men and self-conscious because of her size and ‘handsome’ rather than pretty features. She lived for her kids and put up with shit from her ex-husband to give them the best opportunities. If I ever needed to think of how she looked I could use photos from my ex-wife. I was _not_ going to pass myself off as her and let Fee see those pictures to establish my bona fides as a woman because that had too many ways of going horribly wrong. Can you imagine if Fee came across my ex in the street and said “Hi!” to her? Too horrible to imagine.
Anyway, all this took less than a second to decide. I chatted with Fee as he led me deeper into the garden to where a blanket was laid out on the ground with a pink ball and a blue ball on it.

“Come and sit with me” Fee said as he sat on the blue ball. The ball vanished and Fee’s avatar sat cross-legged on the blanket in front of the pink ball.

I sat on the pink ball and Jez sat demurely on the blanket.as the pink ball vanished.

“Why don’t you click on the mat and see what poses you can find in the menu?” said Fee.

When I clicked my mouse on the mat we were sat on, a blue menu appeared in the top right of my screen. It gave me 4 options; “Single”, “Couples”, “XXX” and “Options”. I was intrigued, I clicked on “Single” and saw a few different names for seated positions (“Sit 1”, “Sit F”, “Sit M”, “Sit crosslegs” and so on). and a “Back” option. I went back to the main menu then down to “Couples”. The options included all sorts of couply things; “Sit1”, “Sit together”, “Sit leaning”, “Lay”, “Lay together”, “Lay on”, “Sleep”, “Kiss”, “Make out”, “cuddle”.... the list went on to another page, but I got the idea. I went back and chose the “XXX” menu. The list started with foreplay, missionary, doggy and went on over several pages including things that I had never heard of. Hurriedly I went back to the “Couples” menu and chose “Lay together”.

Fee and Jez shifted position until they were lying on their sides facing each other, each propped up on an elbow.

Fee asked me about my day and I started explaining that I was a Bid Manager for a software company. That seemed pretty safe and non-gender specific, particularly as every other Bid Manager in the company was female ( I have no idea why, even my boss was female, which was unheard of in the software industry).

Fee told me he was into 'Land Management’ I think he meant he was a farmer, but he was strangely coy about what he did for a living.

I honestly don't remember what we spoke about in much detail. I remember having to mentally double-check everything I said to see if a girl would say that, or say it that way, but I’m not sure how much attention Fee was paying to what I was saying. After a short while he started playing with the animation menu and before I knew it Fee’s avatar was kissing mine, chastely on the lips.

“Oops!” said Fee “I was just wondering what the other poses were…”

“Ha! You’d better not get any ideas about playing with the 'XXX’ menu!”

“Oh, you saw that one then?”

“I must admit, I’m a little intrigued… I know my new skin means that I have a vagina now, but do you even have a penis?”

“Not yet” he admitted “but I have seen some for sale! It’s just another attachment.”

I pondered that for a while, I didn’t want to have sex with Fee, but cyber-sex in Second Life? That’s just a lame form of cartoon porn, isn’t it? Just two cartoon characters getting frisky on screen for us to laugh at.

“I don’t know how I feel about it.” I admitted to Fee.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, doing ‘it’ with you in SL.”

“Sex? It’s not like you can get pregnant!”

“Hmmph, that’s not the point!”

“What is your point?”

What was my point? I’d watched porn on the Internet before, of course, I was a male adult with a computer, after all. But the idea of making porn, with another person virtually present was… disturbing, somehow. The fact that I would be expected to play the female role was not lost on me either. I just didn’t know if my imagination would hit me as hard with cyber-sex as it had when Fee massaged Jez’s feet that time. I was suddenly hit with a deep wave of loneliness and sadness. I couldn’t really put it into words. I certainly couldn’t explain to Fee, a big part of it was not wanting to lie to Fee, but he had made it pretty clear he didn’t want to hear the truth, he just wanted someone to play the game with. But this was the first adult conversation I’d had in such a long time that didn’t involve kids or work that it was… nice.

I’d missed that thrill of talking and flirting with someone friendly. As a guy with kids, slightly overweight and trapped in a job with stupid hours I felt like I was almost invisible. The only people who would really notice if I disappeared would be my kids if I didn’t turn up at the weekend to look after them and my boss if I didn’t turn up for work.

“Just hold me, for now” I typed, the words appeared on the screen without conscious thought.

Fee clicked on the menu and before I knew what was happening strong arms hugged Jez from behind as the two avatars sat on the mat.

I practically purred as I imagined how Jez would feel, engulfed in the warmth of his muscular arms, holding me close, his stubble against my ear.

We chatted for a few minutes more, I couldn’t tell you what about, and I grew more comfortable. Eventually I said to myself “F*** it!” and clicked on the menu for couples and choose “Make out”.

Fee stopped typing in mid-sentence.

“Mmmm!” he typed.

“Cat got your tongue?” I quipped.

“Mmm, no _Jez_ has my tongue! (in her pretty little mouth!) What brought on the change of heart?”

“Shut up and kiss me, you fool!”

“Hehe, as you command, my dear!”

I just watched the animation for a moment, Jez and Fee looked so happy in each other’s arms.

“Fee…” I started, not sure how I was going to continue “Can we…. just take it slow? I’m not sure that I’m ready for this. I’m in the middle of a shitty divorce and either this means something, like I feel it does, or it’s just pixels on a screen and you’d do better off going to a porn site. Either way… I’m not sure how I feel about this all”

“Shh, it’s fine, I understand, this is new for me too. Let’s just enjoy the animation for what it is and you can continue telling me what a creep your ex was?”

So we chatted into the night, me bitching about my ex, while swapping the gender pronouns - which coincidentally made more sense as most of the things like cheating and leaving me looking after the kids while she swanned off on her holidays were typically what you would expect the guy to do, I realised. All the while, Jez was falling for Fee, and the screen showed to the two of them making out, and I was just going with the flow.

Virtually Feminine - Part 3 - Friends

The next day was a Friday, it was a very busy day at work but I can’t remember what I was doing, it all seemed quite unimportant compared with my new life on Second Life.

I had to pick up my kids from my ex-wife by 8pm, which meant a long journey from work, watching the clock all the way,
I made it with 15 minutes to spare.

My ex-wife had a shark instead of a lawyer, whereas I had a succession of idiots. She originally wanted me to have the kids every weekend and every day of annual leave and bank holiday that I wasn’t working. But her lawyer spotted that 3 nights every week plus 20 days annual leave and several days bank holidays put her dangerously close to parity on the number of nights we had the children. So, at the last minute, as we were preparing to go into the court, she insisted that she must have some time at the weekend with them. I agreed to let her have every other weekend, but she only wanted every fourth Saturday night. Her lawyer had done the maths and figured that would mean I would have to pay over 35% of the normal maintenance payments if she had the children all the time. The move was so cynical, it stunned even me. But I had no one else in my life who meant as much to me as my kids so I took every opportunity I could to be with them.
She also demanded £105,000 cash. It wasn’t a divorce so much as a state-sponsored mugging.

I’d told Fee I would have the kids at the weekend and that I would be in touch when I could.

I picked up the kids and got them home, we had all the normal rigmarole with school uniforms and homework and cuddles and dinner and I got them off to bed. The next morning I got them up and we watched T.V. until their mother came to pick them up at midday. As usual, she was late, and the kids were starting to fret about being held in a state of readiness to go.

As my ex drove off I was left with a feeling of emptiness. I looked around the house, trying to summon the enthusiasm to tidy up and clean and do all the jobs I’d been putting off during the week. It took me less than five minutes to give in and go back upstairs to my room to boot the laptop and login to SL.

As expected, Fee wasn’t online, so I went exploring. At first I went hunting for more free outfits and accessories. As I was looking, someone IMed me; a message popped up in my window saying “Hi there, gorgeous!”. I wondered who it was and I clicked on the user’s name to see their profile. It was some guy who’s English was appalling. Before I could think what to reply I got another message from him saying “Take a look at this!” and a message popped up saying that he had sent me an image. I opened the image out of curiosity and there was a close-up of a guy’s penis. I tried to process that a complete stranger had just sent me a picture of his willy, wtf?

“What do you think of that?!” he asked me. What _did_ I think of that? I asked myself.
“It’s like a penis, only smaller” I sent back.
“Stuck up b!**h!” he replied and vanished with a whoosh. It took me a moment to realise his reply had been in open chat, rather than an IM and everyone nearby could read it.

“Haha! I don’t know what you said to him, but I am _so_ glad you managed to get that creep to leave” came up in a message from ‘Lovely Angel’.
“He sent you pictures of himself too?”
“Ha! Yes, and the same picture to every other woman here too, I’d bet. Wtf? Does he think that’s going to get him a date or something?”
“I think he’d need a bigger worm as bait if that’s what he was fishing for!” I replied.
“ROFLMFAO - so, what are you looking for?”
“My boyfriend likes to take me dancing so I was looking for formal wear so I look pretty for him.” I explained.
“How much of a budget have you got?”
“Budget? What is this ‘budget’ thing of which you speak? Freebies or nothing, I’m afraid!”
“Ah well, that narrows it down some… you’ve tried Freebie Island of course?”
“That was the first place I found”
“Have you tried Free Dove, Gnubie and New Citizens Inc?”
“Not yet, I’ve only recently come on SL and I don’t know where everything is.”
“Oh, ok… well, follow me then!”
With that she vanished and I got an invitation to TP to her new location. Lovely showed me around all kinds of fabulous places that it would have taken me months to find on my own and I got so much stuff my inventory must have been groaning at the seams.
“Isn’t there anything you want to get?” I asked her after a while “I appreciate the help, but I don’t want to take up your day.”
“Hehe, don’t worry about it, I love to take little newbies under my wing. Maybe one day you’ll do the same for someone else who’s looking lost!”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“So what do you do in RL?” I asked her?
She told me how she worked for a software company in the South-West of the UK in the Sales and Marketing team. I asked her a few leading questions and as I built up a picture of her in my head I started to get a bit panicky, thinking she might be one of my colleagues.
“Err, are you Sarah?” I asked her, at last, feeling it was better to ‘bite the bullet’ before things got out of hand.
“Who?” Lovely asked.
“Sorry, I just thought you might be one of my colleagues at work…”
“I don’t work with anyone called ‘Sarah’” Lovely replied.
“Phew!” I said “that’s just as well, it would have been too freaky to bump into someone from the office in SL!”
“I know what you mean!” said Lovely “No one in RL knows that I’m a stripper in SL!”
“Huh?”
“I strip for cash in SL, it’s just pixels, right?”
“Er, right...How does that work?”
“Well, it’s just another camping spot really, you get paid for standing in the same spot for a few minutes - L$10 per minute. The only difference is… your avatar must be female and at least semi-naked. Do you want to come see me dance?”
I agreed, a little too stunned to know what else to do and that was how I ended up at Benny’s Bar and Strip Joint.

A guy shouted out “Hi Lovely, how’s it going?” when we arrived.
“Just showing some fresh meat the grinder we call home!” she replied as she led me backstage to the performers’ changing room where a bunch of pretty girls were wandering around in a state of undress.
Lovely changed into a sexy nurse’s costume.
“The trick is to put on one outfit before you take off the other” she told me “that way, you’re never actually naked in public!”
“But, it’s just pixels, right?”
“Well, yes - I guess. But I still feel uncomfortable showing more flesh than I want in public!”
“Says the woman who brought me backstage to a strippers’ changing room, no offence ladies.” I said the last hurriedly to the other avatars around us. There was a chorus of “None taken!” and one “Mutual, I’m sure!” from the rest.
“Snerk” Lovely replied by IM instead of in open chat. “If you’re going to make comments like that you need to learn to carry out your conversations in IM, so no one else can eavesdrop!”
“Sorry” I replied in IM.
“Hmm, ok - you probably need to try this to understand… most sex in SL is in people’s heads. The naked avatars help some people visualise it, but the fact that there is actually a real flesh and blood woman talking to them is enough to get some of these guys off.”
“Get them off? You mean they’re all wanking?!”
“If I’m doing my job right they’re cumming, not just wanking, and they tip me!”
“So… it’s a form of prostitution?”
“Grrr!”
“Sorry, I’m just trying to understand!”
“No, I guess it’s a fair question, you are a noob after all - it’s… well, I guess it’s more like those sex lines? Where a guy sees an advert for a scantily clad lovely but he actually gets through to a librarian with a headset and never knows it. She's fully clothed in a call centre, he chats for a moment and then pays and goes away. Or rather, she takes his payment details first, chats, and he goes as soon as he can to stop paying.”
“Er… ok, I don’t know anything about that stuff”
“Snerk, little miss virgin knickers. I don’t either, IRL, but I saw a film once, a romcom, and I’ve picked up the idea from the other girls here.”
“So… do you have to audition or anything?”
“Well, if one of the others vouches for you then you’re in, basically. We add your name to the list, then you can camp on a pole, a tip jar will rez and the punters will pay you via the tip jar, that way the club takes a cut.”
“So they automatically take something like an agents fee?”
“Lol - ‘agents fee’. You’re not performing Shakespeare out there, although, Lord knows, some of the lines you hear were old when Shakespeare was alive!”
“Can I watch what you do?”
“Sure! That’s what I brought you here for, I’m kind of proud of our little club and I felt like showing off for you, a bit.”

Ok, I thought that was a bit weird. How many girls try to show off to other girls by stripping in front of them? Nevertheless I followed Lovely out and took a seat in the audience. Lovely got up on stage and clicked on a stripper pole and soon she was whirling around and sticking out her butt while trading snarky comments with the other girls on stage.

Each time a new punter came through the door all the girls called out to greet him (sometimes her).
“Hi TurkishSexGod, how’s it hanging?”
“Georgie! I haven’t seen you in an age! Come take a seat by me, sweety!”

Lovely opened up a group chat in IM with me and two of the other girls. I didn’t know, at the time, how she did that but soon we had a private chat going.
LovelyAngel > This guy wants me to leave the bar and become his sex slave
JazzyJustine> And he’ll pay you for this? How many Lindens?
LovelyAngel> Pfft, as if - he expects me to do it fer lurv, ffs
JazzyJustine> What’s in it for you?
LovelyAngel> He’ll pay for my bondage gear… No wait, lol - he wants me to supply my own bondage gear!
JazzyJustine> Tell him you’re Benny’s bitch already!
LovelyAngel> I’ll tell him _you_ are _my_ bitch. At least that will get him to finish quickly and leave.
AshlynnDuprieve> Can you tell him to be your sex slave? There can be good money in being a domme.
LovelyAngel> Really? And how did you come by the snippet?
AshlynnDuprieve>
LovelyAngel> lol

This stuff went on for a little while - I tried to chip in with a comment from time to time, but I was so scared of being outed and a little freaked still that I had thought Lovely might be a colleague. Even if she wasn’t a colleague it was a little freaky to think that someone I walked past in the street could be a stripper in SL.

After about 30 minutes of listening in on the girls bitching about the punters, which gave me a fascinating insight into the relationship between strippers and marks - most were despised but a few, who gave tips when they could and were respectful when they couldn’t, were treated as friends, I got an IM from Fee. He invited me back to the garden. I made my excuses to the girls, said good night to Lovely and thanked her for her help and then TP’d to Fee. Lovely sent a parting IM after I TP’d - “Look who’s got a hot date tonight! I’ll try not to be _too_ jealous!” and sent me a ‘Friend request’. I didn’t have to think long to click on the ‘Accept’ button and Lovely was the second name in my Friends list after Fee.

When I appeared in front of Fee he had a new outfit and looked better than ever. He triggered some HUD thing he just got and I got a request to give permission for my Avatar to be animated. I clicked ‘Yes’ and Fee engulfed Jez in a hug as Jez melted against fee, Lucky girl.

Fee led me off into the garden and we made out for a while. I’m not going to recount everything we typed to each other because, looking back over some of the snippets of text I saved from them I realise that it is meaningless drivel, unless you were there. To Jez, and, I guess to me while I was playing Jez, they were the sweetest endearments. To read them again now they still make my heart flutter. To an outsider, someone who wasn’t us, it could seem like a couple of adults pretending they were teenagers and he was trying to get into her pants and she was trying to keep him out, but not too hard…

Fee always said, if women didn’t want men to try and get into their pants they shouldn’t keep such interesting things in there.

We finally gave up when I was starting to fall asleep, my responses were getting further and further apart as I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I’ve no idea where that came from, normally my insomnia would keep me awake into the small hours.
We said good night, and I crashed into a dreamless sleep.

*-*-*

The next day I slept in late and my kids were returned to me in the afternoon. My ex dropped them off early, as usual. I cooked a Sunday roast and my Mum came to join us for dinner and help me get them to bed.

Then I spent the evening making sure their school uniforms were ready for the morning and preparing what I could for their lunch.
I got them up in the morning, got them to eat breakfast, got them dressed and finished preparing their packed lunch. I did all the little things parents have to do for small children (have you got your books, have you got your homework, have you got your shoes, are you sure?) and dropped them off at school. I wouldn’t see them again until Friday.

At work I was getting that strange feeling like someone else was watching what I was doing from behind my eyeballs, and commenting. I started noticing what shoes and fashions my colleagues were wearing and wondering if I could put together a look in SL based on what I was seeing.

I started realising how sad my life at work was, how few friends I had there. I mentioned this to Anne, the PA of Chris, our development manager while I was sat outside his office waiting for him to finish a phone call so that we could review the latest cost model for a bit of development work.

“What do you mean?” she asked me.

“Well, it’s my birthday tomorrow, and I bet no one here knows or cares.” I said sadly.

“Ha! I think you may be wrong!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Wait and see, wait and see…”

Before I could ask her any more I got called in for the review.

*-*-*

That evening I got home at about 8pm after a long drive and I plugged in my laptop and started the bootup process before I got a microwave dinner and popped it in to cook. I was logging on to SL as my dinner cooked and I ate at the table with my laptop next to my plate as I went hunting for new outfits for Jez.

Fee came online at about 9pm and asked me what I was doing. I hadn’t realised how late it was getting and I wasn’t ready to present my new outfit to him. I’d figured out, with a few pointers from Lovely, how to save a folder as an outfit so I could quickly change and I swapped back to a simple jeans and tshirt outfit so I could hurry to meet Fee. He asked me about my day and I kind of fobbed him off with a general reply about my boring work and then I perked up as I told him about hunting for shoes. He laughed and told me that I should get a long dress and he would take me out dancing again. We chatted and explored for a while and then he had to go.

As I was about to log out Lovely came on line and asked me what I was doing. I explained that it was getting late and I needed to be at work in the morning. She said, “OK, but there’s something you might want to do before you sleep… let me TP you”

I appeared in front of Lovely and she was dressed as an angel. A slightly slutty angel in a short white dress, but the wings and the halo were a dead give-away.
“I know you aren’t ready to join me at Benny’s yet”
“Er, no… I guess I need to talk it through with Fee and see what he thinks of it all…”
“Does he _own_ you?!” Lovely asked sharply.
“Don’t be absurd! But if he started stripping and didn’t tell me I would be a bit upset!”
“Oh girl, you’ve got it bad! Don’t worry, it affects a lot of noobs this way at first.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Hmm, it’s kind of hard to explain, but I’ve seen it before. I can sort of remember it when I first came on but it wasn’t so bad in those days… It’s kind of intense, you know? You let down your guard, because you’re safe at home in your bedroom all alone. And then, before you know it, you’ve given your heart to some ‘playa’ who’ll just trample on it.”
“It’s not like that, Fee’s not like that!”
“Really? I hope you’re right, but what do you know about him, really?”
I was stumped, I knew next to nothing about him and, thank god, he knew exactly _nothing_ about me.
“Nothing” I typed back simply “But, he knows nothing about me either, I’m being careful.”
“Oh sweety, no one is that careful when they first start… before you know it you have real feelings for them and then things get messy. I’ve seen people come online for the first time, fall in love, partner in SL, meet IRL and end up with one of them stalking the other until the police get called in, and all this took place in 2 weeks!”
“But…” I thought about it for a moment, she was right, I guess. Jez was falling for Fee and taking me with her. Who knew how far down the rabbit hole things would go before I straightened the mess out in my head?
I started again “But, Lovely, I _lurv_ him (giggles)”
Lovely “Snerked”, “Yes, I’m sure you do, and that’s what worries me… promise me you won’t meetup in RL?”
“Lovely, I think he lives in Kent, and I can absolutely promise you he won’t want to see the real me in RL after he’s got used to seeing Jez’s skinny butt in SL! I’ll be careful, I’m really wary of meeting _anyone_ in RL, even you!”
“Good, not that I was going to offer - but you’re learning. Anyway, I found a camping spot for us, sit on the pole on the left and I’ll sit on the pole on the right…”
“My left or your left?”
“They’re the same left you doofus!”
“Oh, I must be blonde in SL!”
“:-P”
We both sat on the poles and our avatars started dancing. A message appeared over each of our heads with a countdown saying we would be paid $L10 in 10 minutes, 9mins and 50 seconds, and so on.
“Ok, so what are we being paid for?”
“Beats me, this place is deadsville, I never saw anybody else here. One of the girls at Benny’s told me about it. I just leave my AV here to get some free lindens.”
“Yeah, but it’s got to be coming out of someone’s inventory somewhere? What if they IM me and ask for it back?”
“Don’t give it to them?” Lovely suggested. “Look,” she continued “Don’t sweat it, this is how people buy ‘traffic’. SL records how many people spend how long in an area and the more ‘traffic’ they have the higher up the rankings their adverts appear.”
“Huh?”
“They’re just using you to push their advertising, honey, like guys have done with pretty girls for centuries. Shake your tush, take the dough, and smile - it’s that simple, don’t overthink it or make it more complicated than that. Now… leave your PC running, turn off the screen if you want, check in in the morning, accept the cash and have a good night’s sleep, you’re welcome.”
“Thanks, Lovely, I don’t know what to say, my first steps in stripping!”
“Don’t flatter yourself! This is just camping, now get to sleep girl, we’ll talk soon.”
“Good night, Lovely .”
“Good night, Jez .”
I left the laptop running and went to bed. That night I dreamt I was Jez, dancing round the strippers’ pole.

*-*-*

The next morning I woke up and hurried to get ready for work. I couldn’t remember why my laptop was still on when I saw it, at first. When I checked what was running I found that Jez had been booted off the pole for inactivity, but I had L$20 in my account. That and £2.80 would buy me a cup of coffee in Starbucks, as my friend John would say.

*-*-*

When I got into work I found a huge chocolate fudge cake on my desk and a card from Kathryn. Kathryn was a project manager, an American, who worked with Chris’s team. I guess that’s what Anne was trying to tell me. I rang her up and thanked her profusely and asked her to come round to my desk and have some cake. Once she and I had had a slice each, I offered it round to my other colleagues, I got a few knowing comments from some of them.

The rest of the day went by fairly uneventfully. I knew that Kathryn and I were normally two of the last people out of the building, we were both single, so I cleaned the plate and the knife she had left on my desk and I went looking for her.

I found her finishing up her work. I gave her back her stuff and, taking a tight rein on my courage, I asked if she would like to see a film that week. She grinned wryly and said that she always felt weird going to the movies by herself, but she really wanted to go see the latest Pixar movie.

“Won't that look a little weird, two grown adults going to see a kids film?” I asked.
“Not if we go to the evening show, all the kids should be in bed!”
“Ok, I'm up for that, let me pick you up on the way from work and drop you back home after”
“But you live miles away in the opposite direction, that makes no sense. I'll drive myself and meet you there, then I can drive myself home afterwards”
“Ok, I guess that makes sense. What day works for you?”
“It will have to be Thursday, because we have the ICCS proposal to get out on Wednesday evening.”
“Oh yeah, me too, ok Thursday it is, I'll buy the tickets on the way home tonight so we don't have to queue.” I said, with a slight question in my voice.
“Excellent idea! Ok, well… I'm packing up now… I'll see you tomorrow?”
“Sure, i need those numbers for the labour element.”
“Good night then!”
“Good night, Kathryn”

I left, with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step. I had a date in RL for the first time since the divorce, 2 years ago. Still, there was something… odd about the conversation. It felt like there was something I was missing.

Virtually Feminine - Part 4 - Home

That night, as I was driving home, I played through the conversation with Kathryn in my head. I didn’t know whether to be excited or nervous. But something about Kathryn’s reactions made me cautious. I like going to the movies, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not exactly ideal for a first date for two adults. There’s limited opportunities to sit and chat, and get to know one another, which is a pretty fundamental part of dating. I couldn’t imagine touching a work colleague in the dark in a potentially inappropriate way without clearly understanding how she stood. I wasn’t sure whether it was a ‘date’ date or just two colleagues going to see a kids film together.

Meh…

Still, it would get me out of the house, and that could only be a good thing.

I got home, slammed a microwave dinner in and fired up my laptop. I finished putting together my formal outfit that Lovely had helped me with and ate my dinner while I waited for Fee to show up. He was late and I was getting anxious when he finally came online.

“There you are, darling! I was beginning to worry!”

“I’m so sorry, Jez. Something unexpected came up.”

“Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“No, nothing like that… it just took me longer to get away than I expected. How was your day? Where are you, do you want to TP to me?”

“I’m at the camp fire, and I’m all dressed up ready for you to take me dancing, like you promised. Hurry up and get changed! It’s my birthday in RL so you have to be nice to me :-P”

“Why didn’t you tell me! I would have got you a present!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you, silly. Now get changed and your present to me can be your company on the dance floor.”

“As my lady commands! Give me a moment and I’ll TP you.”

It didn’t take Fee five minutes to get ready. He sent me a message asking me to join him. He had a classic James Bond-style tuxedo on, I had a gown designed to look like it came from the red carpet at the recent Oscar’s ceremony. I appeared on the edge of the dance floor at Frank’s jazz club.

Fee greeted me in open chat, and made sure everyone there knew we were a couple as he led me out onto the dance floor. He found two dance animations side by side, one pink ball and one blue ball and he stood waiting on the blue for me to join him. I quickly clicked on the pink ball and we started dancing to old Frank Sinatra tunes as Fee started to chat to me over private IM. I’ve never really listened to Frank Sinatra before that night, but dancing in Fee’s arms to ‘The way you look tonight’ and ‘Someone to watch over me’ was just so romantic.

“Your tux is very spiffy.”

“You look stunning, my dear.”

“Good job we’re not in RL then,” I said ruefully “I can’t dance and there’s no way I could look this good.”

“I love the woman inside, the one you’re only starting to let me see. I think you put yourself down too much, I’m sure you are beautiful in RL, too!”

I didn’t know what to say to that, I thought sometimes that Fee had figured out that I was only playing a role in SL, and then he went and said something like that.

“Oh, I’m going to a film with someone from work on Thursday”

“Should I be jealous?”

“It’s a female colleague, so I think you’re safe.”

“That’s alright then!... I know I have no right to be jealous, I know this is just a game to you…”

“No. It’s not that. It’s just, complicated… there’s things about my life, things about me, that mean you and I will never meet in RL.”

“I understand, you have your kids to protect and the business with your ex sounds horrendous, I’m not surprised you are protecting yourself like that. But I can still be here for you, if you’ll let me?”

“Oh Fee! I don’t know why you want to waste your time on this broken down old has-been… I really don’t deserve you!”

“I don’t know what I could have done to deserve you, so that makes us two undeserving sinners together. (kiss)”

Fee and Jez danced the night away, our private chat got more and more ‘mushy’ through the night and we stole virtual kisses as we danced. It was getting late, maybe after midnight, when Fee asked if I would like to come with him to see something he wanted to show me. I said ‘sure’, because I couldn’t imagine going to sleep the way the thoughts were whirling through my head still. We stopped dancing and Fee TPed away with a whoosh. A few moments later I got a message to join him, I clicked on the link and the club vanished, to be replaced by the most amazing sight. Fee stood in front of me, still in his tuxedo, in a grotto or cave, with stalagmites and stalactites, a stream ran down the middle of it. The light had a greenish tinge, but it wasn’t dark.

Fee led me a short way deeper into the cave to a rug on the floor with a number of scattered cushions all around. Beyond his shoulder I could see a small building, either a temple or a shed or summer house of some kind. Fee clicked on the rug and a pink and a blue ball appeared. Fee lay down on the rug, with his arms held in an inviting manner and the blue ball vanished. I clicked on the pink ball and jez sank into his arms.

“I’ll get my beautiful dress all crumpled!” I said, the formal dress that moved so nicely while I was stood up looked ridiculous now I was lying down with various panels sticking out in different directions, some of them apparently intangibly sticking through Fee and me.

“Take it off, then.” Fee said “It’s not like there’s anyone else here to see us.”

“Ha, so that’s your game!”

“You want to play it with me?”

“Grr… well, maybe a little…” I clicked on the skirt of the dress and detached it. I was still wearing the hose and undershorts, they were called ‘glitch pants’ in the inventory, so it looked like I was wearing a glittery body suit.

I clicked on the rug to see if it would let me control the animations. There were the usual ‘Sit1F’, ‘SitM’ stuff, an ‘XXX’ menu, ‘Couples’ and, at the end, a button labelled ‘Story’. I clicked on it and there were 4 buttons; ‘Kiss’, ‘Closer’, ‘Denouement’ and ‘All’, I clicked on ‘All’. Fee and Jez started moving into a tighter clinch. Unlike other animations when Fee and Jez had made out, this one was almost like watching a scene from a movie; instead of just kissing the two avatars moved against each other and their hands roamed over each others bodies as they kissed. The movements were not repetitive and they appeared to build towards a greater level of intimacy as I watched. There was a moment, when it felt voyeuristic to see the two avatars in this way. Then there was a moment of disorientation when my viewpoint changed and I began to think of Jez as being ‘me’. It’s very hard to describe. I didn’t vanish into the game magically or any of that nonsense. It was like, if you’ve played any kind of video game, particularly a first-person shoot-em-up for any length of time you begin to talk about “he shot me” or “I got him”. You see the game, the battle, from the viewpoint of your character on the screen.

In a similar way, I was beginning to see Second life, and in a strange way my relationship with Fee and the real person behind him and, by extension, the rest of the real world, from the viewpoint of Jez.

“Ah, you found the Story mode…” Fee said.

“What is the story?”

“I’m not sure, I didn’t play it through to the end, but it seemed intriguing to me when I found this place earlier.”

Fee rolled over on top on Jez at that moment and his movements looked as though he was undoing buttons.

“Intriguing? Riiiiight” I typed back, mildly amused. “Oh, what the hell, it’s only pixels, right?” I removed the top of the dress as if Fee had succeeded in undressing Jez in the way the animation suggested. Jez’s nipples were now clearly visible, but her bottom half was still covered. Jez rolled over on top of Fee and the animation showed her starting to undo his shirt.

“Oh my…” said Fee, as his jacket vanished. As Jez worked her hands down his body and got to his waist the shirt vanished too and he was naked to the waist.

“How far does this animation go?”

“Er, I’m not sure… We can stop if you are uncomfortable?”

“It’s not that, not really. It’s not real, right? Just us looking at an animation together…” Jez started working on the imaginary buttons on her waist as Fee started kissing her neck. I was starting to get a little turned on by it all. “It’s just, well, I don’t know how to put this delicately… Fee hasn’t got the equipment to go much further, has he?” I blushed in RL as I asked.

“Well, if Jez keeps doing that…” Fee said as Jez’s hands were moving down his body now she was down to her knickers and hose, “then you’re going to find out soon!”

Fee’s trousers vanished, then his shoes.

“Fee” I said, “you can lose the socks too, nothing sexy about a man in his socks!” The socks soon vanished too. Pretty soon the two of us are down to our underpants and knickers. As the animation makes Jez take down Fee’s underpants I am shocked when they suddenly vanish and a moment later a large erect penis suddenly appears in front of my avatar.

“Too much?” asks Fee.

“Let’s put it this way… if this was RL then I wouldn’t let you within 10 feet of me with that deformed monster. I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to do any real damage with that to Jez, though!”

“Snerk. I was afraid I might offend you…”

“Offend? No, it’s cute that you thought you needed to buy a strap-on for your Ken doll. I trust you didn’t model it on yourself?”

“Er… no, not exactly”

“Oh?”

“No, mine is bigger in RL…”

“ROFLMFAO!” as I hit return on the comment my avatar suddenly spasmed into a crazy laughing animation and a bizarre braying noise came out of my speakers. “What the hell?” I typed.

“Ha! You triggered a ‘gesture’” Fee said. I guess that’s the SL equivalent of spurting milk out of your nose when you laugh!”

“Eww”

“Still cute though”

The animation had restarted and Fee was naked, with an erect penis, kissing his way down my body and tugging at my knickers. I gave in and clicked on the option to take them off. They vanished, along with some of my inhibitions, and I decide to watch and enjoy the show as the two beautiful avatars gave Fee and I a show. It was just a little disorientating to identify with Jez and take the female role in this. I thought to myself what the hell, it’s not real - think of it like sharing a flicker book cartoons of stick men humping. How amusing is that going to look?

“Mmmm” Fee said, as his avatar buried his face in my newly bared nether regions.

“Eep!” I typed “you might buy a girl dinner first!”

“Chuckle. I thought all women liked foreplay?”

*-*-*

I want to draw a veil there. Not out of prudishness, nor shame. We were both adults and it was just an animation in a computer game, after all. I kept telling myself that as I got more and more aroused by what I was seeing on the screen and what Fee typed in the IM message box. It’s just… I can’t imagine how I can express to you in a way you can understand how much it affected me. Sex is very intimate. This, what I later came to call ‘cyber-sex’, was, in its own way, just as intimate as any physical act. Fee and I played out our roles, as lovers do, making up the words as we went. What started as a lark or a game became something much more intimate and affecting.

Whenever I have made love to a woman in the past (there have only really been two women that I have been so intimate with) I have kept my mouth shut and let my fingers do the talking.

With Fee, I had to find the words to express those feelings. I had to be much more explicit in what I was doing and why in order for us to build a story, build a fantasy together. It was in some ways, more intimate and more fulfilling than actual sex. Except for the physical release of course. And that was easily handled for both Fee and I by a visit from Mrs Palm and her 5 lovely daughters.

Without wishing to sully a beautiful moment of intimacy with such a tawdry thing, we both masturbated as we typed our fantasies out to each other, one handed.

-*-*-*-

Wednesday was a disaster of a day from start to finish and I want to gloss over it and move on. I woke with a smile and I couldn’t remember why, I was tired, but happy. Then I remembered why and I began with the second thoughts - what the hell were you thinking, what will he think of me, what do I think of him, what do I think of me, what the hell was I thinking!...

Over and over, round and round in a circle, sapping my energy.

I dragged myself into work and remembered that I had to finish the proposal I’d been working on for a month. The problem with my job is that everyone promises to meet their deadline and they all lie. Everyone down every stage of the proposal, coming up with the design, agreeing the prices, documenting the contract clauses, everyone; they all think that their bit is the most important and that they therefore have the right to be late as it can’t go to the customer without their bit. Each one is only a day or so late, but my job is to pull everything together. And that means, on the last day I have to do 5 days worth of work in one day. And that means, every proposal leaves the bid manager working until stupid o’clock to finish everything off.

Kathryn stayed late with me, the proposal was for work that she would be the project manager for. We were tired and punch-drunk when we left, at about 10pm and made our way home. We said goodbye in a friendly way, but nothing more than that..

I had pizza delivered at work for Kathryn and me to eat while we worked, so I didn’t eat when I got home. I watched 30 minutes of TV and went to bed at about midnight.

-*-*-*-

I slept in a little later than normal on Thursday, no one was going to complain after the extra time I put in yesterday. I rang our sales administrator on the way in to check that they had all the copies of the bid and the courier was picking them up on time.

The day was a bit of an anti-climax after all the excitement yesterday. I couldn’t really focus on anything new so I just made sure all the paperwork was in place and tidied away, ready for us to pick up again if we were short-listed.

As the day wore on I thought more about my upcoming date with Kathryn. I wasn’t sure that dating a co-worker was a great idea. However, with my life, where else was I going to meet a woman? I was driving, working, sleeping or looking after the kids. Not much time for socialising.

I rang Kathryn at 5pm to check everything was still ok. She confirmed that it was and we arranged to leave the carpark at the same time to drive to the cinema. It seems daft that we drove 25 miles to a cinema, but it was handy for the motorway and on my way home. If I’d known the area around work better I would have suggested somewhere closer, it would have been less distance and I could have offered her a lift, maybe got invited in for coffee afterwards…

I hastily shut that thought down, time enough for that if and when I found that there was something real between us. I still couldn’t help feeling that there was something a little ‘off’ about this date.

We got to the car park and parked up. We went and stood in the queue and bought our tickets. Kathryn was like a little kid, she wanted popcorn and a big drink. The film was good, a typical Pixar movie, with gags for the grownups as well. Kathryn grinned like a fool and got teary eyed at all the relevant bits. Even my eyes got a little misty sometimes.

At no point did she touch me. All the way through the evening there was no real flirting, In fact, there was less flirting than she normally did at work.

When I suggested that we go for a drink together after the movie before we went our separate ways she said that she was really tired and that we’d get together again at work.

So we said goodbye, which was awkward, no kiss, no handshake just… walked in separate directions to our cars. I was getting this weird vibe, so I didn’t push it, I just took my lead from her.

I let her leave first and then followed her to the motorway, I flashed my lights at her at she took the turn to head North and I headed South.

I had 30 to 40 minutes driving to think about what had happened as I drove home. I couldn’t figure it out. It was the strangest date I’d ever had. Was I so out of touch? This was the first date I’d been on since my divorce, maybe that was how grownups dated now, but I didn’t think so.

I felt kind of out-of-sorts and dissatisfied with life when I got home. I got out a microwave dinner and started up the laptop as it cooked. Maybe Fee could cheer me up?

I started eating as I logged in. The moment I got online I got a message from Fee.

“Baby! How was your day? Can you come over?”

“My day sucked… Sure, I would love to see you.”

Fee sent me an invitation to join him and I TPed over. I appeared in someone’s living room. There was a sofa, a chair and a log fire.

“Welcome home!”

“Huh?”

A message came up “Fee Avro would like to animate your avatar - OK?”, I clicked on the button and Fee and Jez hugged and kissed hello.

“Mmmm” I said “That makes my day so much better! Now… what’s this ‘Welcome Home’ about?”

“I rented a home for us!”

“Huh? You can do that? Of course you can do that, this is SL, you can do anything, right?”

“With a little money :-)”

“How much money?”

“I get it as part of my monthly stipend and a little extra, nothing really.”

“Nothing?” (It’s really hard to get across the idea of being sceptical in SL, but I think Fee got the idea).

“It’s just a little money, my love. Nothing to worry about.”

“Why do you need to rent a home, though?”

“Well...er...Privacy?”

“Privacy?”

“For when we… when you and I…_you_ know...”

The penny dropped for me.

“Sex?! You got a place so that I would have sex with you?”

“Er… yes? We could… if _you_ want to…”

Hehe, I could have so much fun with this, men are so easy!

“So you just _assumed_ that I would do THAT with YOU!” I said in mock fury.

“Sorry”

“I only have one thing to say to you!”

I paused…

“YES!” I said

“Yes?”

“After the day I’ve had? Yes, some sweet loving from someone who cares for me would...be just what the doctor ordered.”

Chapter 5 - Passing time

I'm not quite sure how best to continue telling this story. There were so many parallel streams of my life set in motion after my birthday, each of them so separate from each other that they almost felt like they were happening to different people at the same time like some weird version of synchronicity.

I found myself going from a humdrum, if busy, existence, to a busy whirl where I started to lose track of things unless I wrote them down.

I got myself my first smart phone with a keyboard, at about this time, and I kept notes and a calendar on the phone to help me keep track of my life. The smartphone also allowed me to talk to Fee while I was at work. I found a Second Life client app that would run on the phone. I couldn’t see the graphics, like I would on a PC, but I could send instant messages.

My life split into 4 paths with two protagonists, according to the notes on my phone.
From 8:30am to 8:30pm every weekday I worked or travelled for work.
Every weekend from Friday night until Monday morning I had my kids, Kevin and Rachael - they were the thing I worked for, my reason to keep breathing, my life. I would tell you all about them but… you probably aren’t interested in them, if you are reading this story. Also, I’m not very comfortable sharing personal information about my kids with (let’s be honest) complete strangers on the Internet. So, if it ever seems like I’m glossing over aspects of my relationship with my kids, like they aren’t important to me, then it’s because I’m deliberately leaving them out of my recollection.

But, I will admit, the rare times at the weekend, when I didn’t have the kids, or work, to worry about… in those time Jez began to blossom and have fun. In RL I scarcely remembered ‘fun’.

Every 4th Saturday and for 2 hours each other Saturday, while my ex’s parents had “grandparent time” with my kids, I spent time in Second Life with Fee at our home or role-playing in one of the many scenarios that Fee found around SL. He would tell me to take a little money from him and get the best medieval outfit I could, then he would take me to a castle ball set in medieval England, or some American’s fantasy of knightly courtship. Or he would take me on balloon rides over the African plains, watching elephants and giraffes. Or riding in Nemo’s Nautilus or any one of dozens of fantastic fantasies.

But the most surprising and fulfilling fantasy of all was when we just stayed home…
I would dress for him, and tease him and he would respond in the most delightfully ardent ways.

I can’t help smiling to think of the times we shared, making sweet cyber-love…

In the evenings, after work, Fee wasn’t always around (I wasn’t always around, either, my work regularly ran late, after 10pm). We didn’t stress about it, like some other couples on SL, we knew that, although we hadn’t pledged exclusivity, neither of us wanted to spoil what we had.

Fee normally went to sleep at 11pm, as he had to be up early. I found it increasingly hard to sleep at all, I would stay awake until 2am or later, almost as though Jez’s life had become a kind of waking dream for me. That left me with an awful lot of time in SL when Fee wasn’t around, and a girl can only spend so long hunting for bargain virtual shoes.

I would hunt for locations, like the ones Fee had found, I found a fabulous gardens with underwater grottos and ‘adult’ animations. I found venue after venue with every imaginable type of music and dancing.

As I wandered around SL I made friends, almost without thinking about it. Most of the people I spoke to were female, I didn’t need another man in my life as I had Fee. Also, they, like me, were often searching for shoes and romantic venues and the same faces started showing up whenever I was around. I met Saffy Capaldi at Frank’s Jazz club. She was dressed in a couture scrap of fabric that plunged here and there and would not have worked in RL unless it was stapled to her body. She moaned to me that all the men avoided her and I moaned that I had to beat them off with a stick. I always dressed very demurely at Frank’s.

“Maybe the men are intimidated by you?” I suggested to Saffy.

“But, I’m a pussy cat!” she complained.

“A pussy cat dressed like a tiger on the hunt! Have you _seen_ your avatar? Sometimes, with men, less is more!”

“Maybe you’re right… unless it’s boobs, then more is always more!”

I had to concede that point!

In RL Saffy was a 40-something housewife in Wales with Fibromyalgia and ME. Her husband had left her with 3 kids and just gone off and left her. We had a good bitch about ex’s, and we had a certain amount in common. But Saffy grumbled it wasn’t fair that I had a good man in SL and an ex who took care of the kids sometimes in RL.

-o-o-

I met Rifyanka at a BDSM club playing heavy metal and goth music. I was only there because the shop on that sim was selling killer black and red boots at a bargain price. Riffy was like a force of nature, she brought out my wilder side and got me to put together a ‘Neko’ (cat girl) outfit, that Fee enjoyed later, but that’s another story.
She took me to the ‘Hysteria’ sim and we walked through a post-apocalyptic landscape together until we found a playground and we played on the see-saw.

In RL Riffy was a nurse in the Netherlands. One evening when we were both drinking wine in RL after work while our avatars lounged on beanbags in her SL mansion, she told me she had been attacked by a colleague after work one night. It was the most difficult conversation of my life, for many reasons. I know female acquaintances in RL who have been pressured into sex or sexually abused in some way. But nobody had ever been so open and so graphic and matter of fact about being raped. Riffy explained all about her date rape experience and expected me to understand because we were both women and, in her experience, most of her female friends had been put in the situation where they had a choice to either give in to sex or risk the situation escalating into actual violence instead of some thinly veiled threat.
I have never felt less of a man, because I knew I should have told her I was male in RL before the conversation and I knew I could never let her know I was after the conversation. I'm not going to describe the details of what she told me. I couldn't make up a story horrible enough to compare and I will not ever discuss the details of her real story, even with names changed to protect both innocent and guilty parties.
The only thing I will say is some men are animals who should be locked away. And women, GG or trans, all women eventually grow to understand that some men see us as prey, just because of our gender.
Hmm, that's very telling, eh? That I identify as female now. Sometimes I'm not sure which side of the line I am.

-0-0-

Then there was Ute Beavoir, also known as ‘Beaver Girl’. For some reason she was bizarrely fascinated with beavers and Canada, she sent me an RL photo of herself with a stuffed toy beaver, I have no idea why. She was young, in her early twenties, I think and her life was a mess. She only came online when her real-life boyfriend went drinking without her. After a few weeks of chatting with her she told me she was now at a friend’s house having run away from her boyfriend and the town she grew up in with her parents. Her boyfriend was very possessive, jealous and border-line abusive. She wouldn’t tell her parents where she was because she didn’t want her boyfriend to find her. I felt sorry for the parents of this wild-child so I tried to convince her just to send them a text message to let them know that she was ok, but not to talk to her boyfriend. She vanished from Second Life for a week or two. The next time she came online I had to talk her out of taking pills with alcohol, she was drunk and feeling depressed and felt no one cared if she lived or died. I told her, of course they do… I did, I loved her as a friend and she shouldn’t do anything she would regret in the morning. It was a very intense 40 minutes of conversation carried out in online instant messaging. She would stop answering for minutes at a time. Eventually I talked her down, she agreed to drink some water and go to bed.
I spoke to her a few days later and she was earnestly apologetic. A few more days and she had a job and a new boyfriend and she was back to being her normal ditzy self. I never really understood what was going on, was this some form of self-indulgent drama, a game? Or was she really on the brink of suicide and I talked her round. For a part Turkish German citizen she had extraordinarily good English, especially considering how drunk she seemed to be. You could never be sure in a virtual world who you were talking to in real life. Who was on the other end of the conversation?
But this was a thing in Second Life that I have noticed again and again. People, myself included, are very guarded in the real world. Second Life is a virtual world, you aren’t really there, it’s not real, it’s just a game, and so you can’t be hurt, you can always delete the account and create a new avatar and nothing you said or saw really matters. You are sat safe at home in your own bedroom, so you relax and are more open than you would ever be with anyone in real life.
The only problem is… it is real, they are real people, that you are talking to so openly in your bedroom, and there are more ways to be hurt than physically.

-0-0-

And, every night before I went to sleep, I set my avatar dancing on the stripper pole to earn a few Linden Dollars. Every now and then, when Fee wasn’t around and I needed a little extra to afford an outfit for him I would work at Benny’s Bar, my avatar dancing on stage for tips. I found that private IM messages to punters could get you a massive tip. I say ‘I found’ it was Lovely Angel who taught me. Punters would start the conversation in a private chat window, while their avatar sat in the seats gawping up at the girls on stage. It wasn’t difficult to conceive that the young (and sometimes not so young) men behind the avatars sat at home in a semi-darkened room, typing one-handed as a real-life woman chatted to them, fuelling their fantasies. Even a tip of few hundred Lindens represented pennies in the real world, where sex chat lines would be pounds and could be subject (so I learned) to bizarre rules.
There were no such rules in SL, it was the wild west, and any topic of conversation was fair game.
A typical conversation might start like this:

RandomPunterBoy> Gosh you’re hot

Jez Weatherwax> Thank you <3 - I’m not anywhere as near as pretty as the other girls, but I’m happy to take a compliment, why don’t you sit down here in front of me by my tip jar and tell me more about what you look for in a woman?

RandomPunterBoy> What kind of knickers are you wearing?

Jez Weatherwax> Can’t you tell, you naughty boy, this dress is far too short to hide them :-P

RandomPunterBoy> No, I meant in RL

Jez Weatherwax> Oh, I never wear knickers in RL…

There would be a pause and then RandomPunterBoy would pay a few Lindens and vanish. It would make me smile to think of a pimply faced virgin youth cuming prematurely at the thought of a real woman he would never meet in RL ‘going commando’.

And talking of RL, that brings me back to Kathryn and an entirely more embarrassing relationship.

You may remember, I said I was unsure of her motivation to date me. I found out the week after my birthday. She had heard from Anne that I had tiled my bathroom before Kevin was born and that I still had the tools She had thought that if she went in a date with me, she could convince me to help her with her 'feminine wiles’. Then she spent a little time with me and she realised I was a nice guy who would probably help her out if she just asked nicely, so she did. Once I agreed I got friend-zoned so fast I seriously wondered how I could have ever thought there was anything more between us.

She invited me over to her house for dinner so that I could see what she had in mind. She gave me the address and I used the sat-nav on my phone to find it. It was a few miles away from work in the town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire. Malmesbury is weird, part of the center of the town is kept as a kind of museum of British architecture by the local planning department. I found that Kathryn’s house was a ‘listed building’ which meant she had to keep the front of it looking like it did 200 years ago.

So there was no parking, the house had a front door straight out onto the pavement.

I parked about quarter of a mile away and walked back to the house. I knocked on the door (there was no doorbell. It took a while for Kathryn to open it and I was beginning to wonder if I had the wrong place. She let me in wearing shorts and a scruffy T-shirt, her hair was tied back in a rough pony-tail and she looked smudged and bedraggled. As I stepped through the door I could see why, the room beyond the door looked like a building site, with broken stone flags on the floor and furniture stacked in a haphazard fashion to give access to the work going on.
Kathryn gave me the tour, it didn’t take very long. The downstairs consisted of a large room and a small alcove for the old kitchen, a bit like a covered porch to the triangular area at the back of the house that let light in. Normally there would be a back garden, I guess, but the area was a triangle of concrete approximately 10 feet on each side. There was a tiny steep set of stairs against the back wall of the main room with no banister or protection to stop you falling. We went up, with Kathryn leading the way. I knew I was friend-zoned, but it didn’t stop me enjoying the view as I followed her closely up the steep stairs, her pert denim-clad bum scant inches from my nose.
As we got to the top of the stairs I was introduced to Joe, Kathryn’s pug. She explained that he was too frightened to go down the stairs to the living room now since he had had a nasty fall a couple of weeks previously. The dog was clearly a lot smarter than he looked, because the stairs were so narrow and so steep they were little better than a ladder.
The room we came into from the stairs was in chaos.

‘I’m putting a decent kitchen here” Kathryn explained. She pointed out where the work surfaces, sink, oven and hob would go. There was a table and 2 chairs already by the window looking down on the street at the front of the house.
‘So, we won’t be cooking here tonight’ I said with a smile, looking at the space where the kitchen would go.
‘No, we’ll get takeaway, what do you fancy?’
‘Is there a Chinese in town?’
‘Sure, we’ll walk down in a minute’
Kathryn walked over to the stairs up to the next floor and headed up…

The top floor of the house was in stark contrast to the rest of the house. It didn’t look like a building site. The room was dominated by a massive bed with an overstuffed duvet in bedding covered in a delicate floral pattern in blues and pinks. The carpet was oatmeal and fluffy and the room seemed like a very feminine retreat from the rest of the world. The room was clearly right under the roof and the eaves sloped down sharply over the bed. There was an en-suite bathroom in a tiny room off the main room.

The sloping eaves took much of the usable space away from the room. There was a bath in there but it was of a peculiar design. Very short and very deep, almost like a shower tray with delusions of grandeur. The taps were on the end furthest from the outside wall with a shower attachment so that the tallest part of the ceiling was over it. Which was good, because there was no way even Kathryn would have been able to stand at the other end, with how the ceiling sloped.
Kathryn showed me the tiles she had already bought. They wouldn’t have been my choice and I could tell they were going to be a bitch to fit. They were larger than normal and thicker too. I did ask her if she wouldn’t like something smaller, which would make it easier to tile the awkward space, but she was adamant that these tiles would look perfect once they were fitted.

We climbed back down the stairs and went to get the takeaway. I felt very over-dressed in my work suit when we were queuing in the take-away. Our conversation was a bit subdued until we got back to Kathryn’s house but it livened up once we sat down to eat. Kathryn insisted on trying some of my duck and I had some of her beef. I took off my tie before we went to get the food and I took off my jacket before we ate. Kathryn told me about her family in New York. I told her a little about my family and how I didn’t get on with my Dad.

-0-0-

The next day Kathryn was busy in the evening so after work I went to get a few bits I thought we’d need.
I gathered together my tools and some clothes ready for working the next night.

-0-0-

My mind wasn’t really on work the next day I was more interested in the tiling. I knew Kathryn didn’t really have any romantic feelings for me, she had managed to make that perfectly clear on the preceding Tuesday, without being obnoxious about it. But there was a kind of chemistry or connection between us, I just couldn’t figure out what it was and it was distracting me. Maybe it was just that I hadn’t been very social for several years, since my ex-wife walked out (walked out isn’t quite right, she conned me into hiring a van and helping her move all her stuff to a rented house. I was a sucker whenever the kids were involved).
It was really hot that day, I remember, and I was very glad of the air conditioning at work.
I met up with Kathryn at lunch time and we agreed to meet at her house. I had to park in roughly the same place as before and I knew it would take two trips to get all the items from the car to the house. I had several large heavy duty carrier bags to carry things like the tile cutter and spacers in. I managed to carry my folding work table as well and my working clothes. I had to put the table and some bags down when I got to the house in order to knock. It took a long time for Kathryn to open the door, but given the layout of her house I guess she had to come down two flights of stairs. We didn’t waste much time on pleasantries and I did another round trip to my car to get my toolbox and some other bits.

When I got back to the house I asked Kathryn where I could change into my working clothes and she said I could change in her living room as she took a bag up to the bathroom. I quickly stripped down to my underpants after she went up the stairs. It felt odd, being almost naked in a woman’s house after so many years being married and then being alone. I quickly pulled my shorts and t-shirt on. I also put my sandals on. I guess I took my cues from how Kathryn had been dressed on Tuesday.

She called out ‘Are you decent?’ as she came down the stairs.

We went upstairs and started work on the bathroom. There's nothing quite as tedious and fiddly as tiling. Tiling round the taps in particular took a ridiculous amount of time. I'm sure your eyes are glazing over as you wonder why I bothered to record this, but I'm getting to the point honestly. While I was working and chatting with Kathryn about nothing in particular I began to realise I wasn't chatting as Andy, I was chatting as Jez. Just two girls working together. How was that any different to chatting as Andy? Well, it's kind of hard to explain. I wasn't putting on a high pitched voice or discussing makeup (don't be ridiculous). But, whenever I've hung out with a woman before, there has been this tension. Are you going to make a move? What does she think of you? What are you doing to impress her?

This evening it was different. Kathryn had already friend-zoned me hard. Plus, I wasn't sure about my own sexuality or gender now, what with Jez and my boyfriend (Jez’s boyfriend?) We just kind of settled into this steady rhythm of chatting and working cooperatively together. I was better at the cutting and placing but Kathryn was better at spreading the grout. It was very hot and sweaty and there was very little room in the tiny bathroom so it got bizarrely intimate, very quickly. But that didn't stop us working. We took a break for dinner after an hour. We had take-away fish and chips and got back to work as quickly as possible. I don't know how we got onto the subject but Kathryn started telling me how one of her managers got sexually inappropriate with her. Coming so soon after my conversation with Riffy, I knew what she was talking about. But it was like Kathryn didn't want to admit to herself that he had done anything wrong and she had been the victim. She kept making excuses for him, saying she must have been sending mixed messages and she still liked him.
I wanted to hug her and let her know that she wasn’t alone, but I felt ashamed of my gender, that had treated her so shabbily.
So we sat there in awkward silence for a moment…
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ I asked with a wry grin. I knew Kathryn despised tea and would only drink coffee.
‘We should have some beer’ Kathryn said firmly.
‘I have to drive home tonight’
‘That’s ridiculous, stay up here tonight, there’s no way it makes sense to drive a hundred miles home and then drive back…’
‘75’
‘What?’
‘It’s 75 miles, or 80, maybe…’
‘Whatever, drink the damn beer’
‘Ok?’
She got two bottles of Budweiser and we sipped from the bottle as we continued working.
‘Thanks’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘Not making a big thing out of it’
‘You won’t tell me exactly what ‘it’ is, although I can put two and two together, if you want to forget about it, that’s your choice. I won’t take that from you.’
‘Are you gay?’
‘What!? Where on earth did that come from?’
‘I don’t know. You’re not setting off my “gaydar”, I’m from New York, so I know gay when I see it. But you’re not… don’t take this as an insult, you’re not putting the same pressure on me as a guy would normally.’
‘Well, you made it very clear that you aren’t interested in me that way.’
‘That wouldn’t stop most guys…’
‘Jeez, full of yourself, much?’
‘I did say I was from New York. But seriously, you fancy me but you’re not staring at my tits.’
‘I wouldn’t be that obvious about it.’
‘You don’t have a girlfriend’
‘Is that a question or a statement? Have you been stalking me?’
‘Dammit, be serious for a minute. I like you, I do, but not like that… and I don’t understand it. You’re not gay…’
‘Er…’
‘You are gay?’
‘It’s… complicated’
‘You have a boyfriend?’
‘Not in real life.’
‘Well, that’s an unexpected answer...If not in real life, then where? Enquiring minds want to know’
I squirmed.
‘Second Life.’
‘The video game?’ Kathryn stopped to think for a moment ‘So, you have a gay boyfriend in Second Life?’
‘Ha! Fee is absolutely hetero.’
‘But...you’re a guy, he’s a guy...oooohhh! He doesn’t know you’re a guy?’
In a small voice I answered ‘No.’
‘You play a female in the game?’
‘I have a female avatar, yes. It’s quite common, I saw figures showing that 15% of female avatars have male users and 5% of male avatars have female users.’
‘But most of the time other users spot the GIRLs straight off?’
‘Girls?’
‘Guys In Real Life, a lot of games have them.’
‘Ha, most guys don’t give a shit, they just want a body to lie there and take it…’
‘A lot like real life, then?’
‘I’m so sorry, Kathryn, I didn’t mean to imply that I had any insight into what you suffered…’
‘Hmm, I think you have more insight than I knew into what it means to be female. It would explain a lot.’
‘What do you mean?’
Kathryn checked off points on her fingers ‘I like you, I really do, but I don’t want to have sex with you, I’m very comfortable talking to you about things that I wouldn’t normally discuss with a man, we work well together - you don’t do that guy thing and take over..’
‘Hey, it’s your house, your choice, I’m just here to help.’
‘Exactly, most guys I know would take over from the little woman and tell her what she actually wanted all along but didn’t know it. And then expect sex as a thank you.’
‘Well, if you’re offering…’ I said with a smirk.
‘Ah, so you’re Bi?’
‘Honestly, I don’t know what I am. I’d just like a hug in real life’ I said ‘I’m pathetic.’
‘Ah, Fee doesn’t know you’re a guy, so you can’t turn up in real life for a weekend of fun and frolics?’
‘Oh good god No!’ I said with feeling ‘If he didn’t kill me on the spot he’d…Well, I don’t honestly know what he’d do.’
‘Has he offered to come and see you? In real life?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘So it’s real love?’
‘Pfft, with a pixel doll and a fucked up guy.’ I said bitterly.
‘But, you love him?’
I didn’t say anything, I didn’t move.
‘You do, don’t you?’ She persisted.
‘I…If….If I were a real woman in real life then regardless of how either of us look we would get together.’

Out of nowhere it suddenly hit me, how miserable and pathetic my silly fantasy made me and the tears started flowing.
‘Oh, I’m going to need more beer for this…’ said Kathryn and she headed for the fridge.

——-

That night we got very drunk and Kathryn quizzed me about every detail of my second life. We got out her laptop and I showed her Jez, she saw me say goodnight to Fee as she looked over my shoulder and I showed off some of my shoe collection.
‘There’s more to being a woman than having an extensive shoe collection’ she said primly ‘But those black and red boots are gorgeous’.

I slept on the sofa in the living room and Kathryn slept at the top of the house. We couldn’t use the shower, as the grout wasn’t dry, but neither of us was too smelly and I borrowed some of Kathryn’s deodorant as I had forgotten mine. It was a spray one, Impulse, but not too floral - citrusy.

When she came down finally for us to go to work I looked her in the eye and asked her calmly ( beseeched? Begged? I'm not sure what the right word was) to keep Jez between the two of us.
'Of course! Don't be silly. Who would I tell and who would believe me?’
'Who would care, you mean?’
'You have such a downer on yourself, Andy. I kinda hope hope to spend more time with Jez. Don't take this the wrong way, but she's way more fun to drink with!’
Kathryn flashed a cheeky grin and we headed into work...

Virtually Feminine - Part 6 - The Choice


This chapter starts telling the story of how I came to a point where I had to make a decision about my life. I’m sure you guys are way ahead of me, considering where I’m posting this story, but believe me when I tell you it wasn’t that obvious to me…

Kathryn knew my secret. Which was two people more than I was comfortable with. I was more comfortable staying in denial and convincing myself that it was all pretend in the game I was playing.

So, in the interests of full disclosure, and for those of you who haven't read the rest of my story so far… Hi, my name was Andy and I am a trans-woman called Cathy.

And if you think that glib little statement was easy then you have no understanding of the sheer magnitude of personal growth, of fundamental life changing realisation of the underlying causes of so much of the growing dissatisfaction in my life that I had to go through. And you don't understand the cost. That statement could cost me my children, my job, my friends, my family and, if I am not careful, literally my life.

So, heavy stuff, then.

Then why does saying those words feel like I'm laying down a colossal burden?

Obviously I've been getting advice about all this. I thought, by now, I would be talking to some kind of therapist. It turns out, in the UK, the waiting list for gender issue referrals is measured in months or even years. So that hasn't happened, yet

Let's recap a little on what's been going on since the last time I wrote something down.

Kathryn knew my secret. In fact in those first few days she was more convinced that I was transgender than I was. I was convinced that Jez was just a feminine role I was playing in a game, just a character, not me and not real.
Kathryn was convinced that Jez was the tip of the iceberg, with a whole woman buried inside me. She committed herself to revealing to me who I really was and facilitating my transformation from ugly duckling to beautiful swan. Of course, she didn't tell me this, I would have run as fast as possible if she had told me that then. Our relationship was complicated. She was clearly fond of me. I… I'm not sure how to describe how I felt about her, it was very confusing. I would have been her lover, I think, if she had permitted it, I found her incredibly attractive both physically and mentally. I shy away from saying I worshipped her as that implies that I felt she was divine somehow. It was, with hindsight, more like a crush or the hero worship of an older sibling. She represented what I thought I wanted but what, I came to realise, was really what I aspired to be. A modern, independent, successful woman.

We were 'thick as thieves’ as they say. We would meet for lunch and relished the opportunity to work together whenever we could. Obviously people noticed and I'm sure there was gossip about us becoming a couple. We never were, not in that sense. Kathryn took the dominant role in our relationship and I was left the submissive role.

But what about Fee? I can hear some of my more attentive readers ask.

My relationship with Fee, which had been a source of fun and the first genuine positive human contact (apart from my kids and my mum) since my separation from my ex, became more complex after my conversation with Kathryn.

I tried, initially, to keep things as they were. But, as Kathryn and I began to explore my feminine side in RL (more on that later) I began to wonder if Fee had done this to me? He had, by his own admission, seduced me. His actions had moulded Jez to become his creation, his dream girl, his possession.
Jez began to push for more say in what we did, what she did. Fee confounded my growing disquiet with his role in making me Trans by seeing my growing independence as a wholly positive thing and telling me again and again that he was delighted to see me coming out of my shell and revealing the intelligence he always knew was there and wished I would unleash.
He genuinely loved me and wanted nothing but the best for me. Increasingly I felt guilty about using him, blaming him and hiding my secrets from him.
Fee knew I was keeping things from him, but he assumed, if he was patient, when I was ready I would tell him everything.
As our relationship changed over time so did the nature of the cyber-sex. I don't want to go into shocking details, I know I shocked myself with some of the things we did in the virtual world and how they made me feel.
As I came to accept my feminine nature and Fee’s gentle love, I gave myself free rein to enjoy his enjoyment. I delighted in his pleasure, dressing Jez to meet his every fantasy and pushing his boundaries. I would send him sexy messages at odd times and leave him in no doubt what I wished I could do to and for him. By learning about how to please Fee, I began to learn what it was that pleased me. That wasn't something that had ever occurred to me before. I had sex with women and delighted in my ability to bring them ( well, both of them I ever ended up in bed with, I'd only actually had a sexual relationship with the woman who relieved me of my unwanted virginity at University and the woman who became my wife ) sexual fulfillment. But I never really thought about what I liked. Fee would ask me about my fantasies and then try and fulfil them in Second Life. At first I would recall what women had said to me. But as time went by I began to find what really pushed my buttons, and it surprised me to find that it wasn't anything I expected or had experienced before. I loved putting someone else in charge, being submissive. I found there was a power to it, giving your trust to someone, all your faith that they could take you where you wouldn't dare go by yourself.

I grew to love Fee, and he professed his love for me.

It was bitter-sweet, because it was built on a lie. But the lie was becoming the truth and the sweetness outweighed the bitterness.

Oh, and one thing that we tried was gender-swapping, in Second Life a sex change was a click of a button. I'm not sure which one of us suggested it. Alright, I'll admit, it was probably me. I was trying to work up the courage to tell him the truth and I wondered how Fee would react.
I think it may have started with me talking about how girls had so many more options in Second Life than guys. Fee pointed out that it was just like Real Life. I said something about how more choice made it harder to look good and easier to look slutty or stupid. I think Fee laid down the challenge that we should each create a gender-switched avatar to better understand the point of view of each other, or rather, I guess he always has sex on the brain, just like a man, two avatar looks, one for public use and one for the bedroom.
When we presented our avatars to each other I felt weird. It was difficult for me finding male clothes and looks that didn't look like a stereotypical gay man or butch warrior. I opted for a blue suit and, for the bedroom, boxer shorts. I felt underdressed and ugly.
Fee looked amazing. Shorter than Jez, blonde and with bigger boobs. Her ballgown was exquisite and her stockings, suspenders and pearls outfit for the bedroom was deliciously feminine.
I took Fee dancing, and we had a great time. Both of us had private messages proposing cyber-sex, Fee had proposals from male avatars (mostly) and Jez had messages from (mostly) female avatars. We shared the messages with each other and Fee chuckled about what a shock the guys would have when they realised he was a guy.

We tried out our new avatars in the bedroom that night. It allowed us to try some animations that previously wouldn't have worked. Girl-girl, boy-girl, girl-boy and boy-boy. I found the only one that disturbed me was boy-boy. Fee thought it was odd, and to be honest, so did I. I went along with it to see the animations but it wasn't as enjoyable as the other options, I still don't understand why to this day.

Fee didn't really mind either way. He found girl-girl titillating. He seemed keen on boy-boy but sensed my uneasiness. I don't think he really cared as long as there was some form of porn on the screen and he could 'chat’ with me.

So our relationship went through some ups and downs, but I didn't tell him my secret and it ate at me as Fee’s calm and gentle love supported me.

-0-0-

Kathryn invited me round to her place several times in the weeks following the tiling. She always told me it was to help with the house but it became increasingly obvious that she wanted me to explore my girly side. If she wanted me to paint then she would find a dress for me to wear to keep the paint off my suit. She would paint my nails, initially with clear varnish then with colours and give me nail varnish remover and pads to take it off before I came into work the next day.
When we had finished the jobs Kathryn picked out we would cook together in her new kitchen, which was a sheer joy. I love cooking, my mother used to be my school dinner lady and she worked as the head cook at an old people's home. Neither of my siblings really inherited the joy of cooking but I loved it. I could cook a full roast dinner with all the trimmings, and I did, every weekend I had the kids. They loved my dinners and thanks to being brought up with real food from an early age they were not fussy eaters.
Kathryn taught me a few specific American things, like cherry pie and chocolate fudge cake. I asked her about pumpkin pie as Hallowe'en was getting closer and she gave me her mother's recipe. But a lot of ingredients were not available in the UK, like canned pumpkin for one. But that came later.
After dinner we would sit and watch romcom dvds on her laptop, with it perched on the coffee table, Kathryn didn't own a TV.
One time we were watching a film called 'It’s a boy-girl thing’ where a boy and a girl swap bodies. In one scene the female actress playing the part of the male character decides to go to school without a bra because it was too difficult to put on. Kathryn paused the film.
'I bet you could put a bra on, it's not _so_ hard’
'Really, how much do you bet?’
'I’ll make you a real cherry pie from scratch if you get it on and you make me bread-pudding if you can't’.
Well, cherry pie is my kryptonite, especially the way Kathryn makes it. Bread pudding is ok, but it's time consuming to make and you need a lot of stale bread (not mouldy, just dry).
'Your bras wouldn't fit me…’
'I have a friend's bra here that would.’
'Don't think I'm not wise to what you're trying.’
'Whatever do you mean? ‘
‘I’m sat here watching a romcom with my BFF in a dress with nail varnish on. It's one glass of wine away from the alcohol and peer pressure my mother warned me about!’
'So you’ll do it then?’
'Where’s my wine?’
Yes, I managed to get the bra on without too much trouble. The pie was delicious the next week and I took the dress home with me 'to wash’. I wore the bra home under my suit.

-0-0-

Dressing as a woman bothered me. I was happy to think of myself as a kind of 'honorary woman’ when Kathryn was around and 'Virtual woman’ in Second Life. But I knew I looked like a middle-aged guy in a dress when I relaxed at Kathryn's and I would have been mortified if anyone else who knew me came round and caught me looking like that.
I figured I needed help beyond Kathryn's pressuring me, in a playful way to be sure, but still pushing me.
I made an appointment to see my GP. I arranged to work from home so I didn't have to take the day as leave, I also managed to get my annual glucose tolerance test done that morning as well, partly as an excuse for time off work and partly because my Dad has type 2 diabetes and so I need to get checked once a year. I arranged to have the GP appointment after the final test of the glucose tolerance test (you have to hang around for a couple of hours for your body to metabolise the glucose after fasting from the night before). I could have had the appointment in the middle of the test, but I wanted the option to run out in tears if it all went wrong. I'm not sure what way I thought it would go wrong, but… I don't know, I just had this feeling of dread hanging over me.
So, feeling a little light-headed from the fasting and the anxiety I found myself in a GPs surgery talking to a pretty doctor from the Indian subcontinent.
'Well Mr Clarke, what is it that brings you to us today?’
'Well…’ I started, struggling to articulate my problems, let's face it, it was ridiculous, I was ridiculous. I started to feel really anxious and I noticed I was beginning to hyperventilate. I struggled to calm myself and just get the words out…
'I’m having some issues with my feelings about gender…’
Once I got the first statement out it became easier to talk. I said that it was hard to articulate and hard to admit to myself but that I was coming to the realisation that there may be an underlying cause to the mild depression I'd been suffering for the last couple of years. One of my friends had helped me see that I may have some gender issues and I would like to be referred to a specialist who could help me sort out what my issues were.
I obviously hit all the buzzwords and offered a clear request for help that the GP could cope with. She assured me that everything I had told her would be confidential and that she would request a referral from the local GIC, she told me that there were limited resources, especially these days, and that teenagers and young adults naturally would have priority. She also gave me some leaflets, including one for the Beaumont Society and a printed list of weblinks.
I don't think the doctor knew quite what to make of me. I wasn't dressed as a woman and I don't look girly or gay or anything. I think she may have thought I was like a hypochondriac, thinking I had something because I read the symptoms on the internet. As I left her room it struck me what an embarrassing and personal stigma it could be if my friends, family and colleagues found out what I had just revealed to this stranger. Yet it didn't really bother me. Sooner or later, if I continued on this path, complete strangers would be able to tell at a glance that I was not a typical guy.
So, I went home to work over my internet connection. It would take 80 minutes or more to travel to the office and even longer to come back. I'd already wasted a significant part of the day waiting for the glucose tolerance test so I was going home to get some work done, otherwise I might miss deadlines at the end of the week.

-0-0-

That night, after I'd finished working, at around 8pm ( I'd carried on working while I ate, microwave dinners are not much hassle to prepare) I started looking at the list of links. There was so much information I felt like I was drowning in it. The more I read the more I realised how out of my depth I was and how much I needed a knowledgeable guide. Kathryn was great, she would always be special to me. But I don't think she knew any trans people, even in New York, and she really didn't know how to navigate through the NHS.
I started lurking on one or two of the forums to try and figure out what the etiquette was. There wasn't much traffic, no one was discussing anything juicy and everyone was being quite guarded.
One newbie started asking stupid and insulting questions and everyone just vanished except one person called Gwen who just weighed into him, clearly getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated that this troll deliberately didn’t ‘get’ what she was saying.
Eventually I couldn’t stand it any more, I typed;
CathySmith> hey newb, stop trolling, some of us have some confusing issues in our lives right now and we’re looking for some answers from other people who have dealt with these issues before us, why don’t you stop wasting our time with your narrow-minded BS and go and watch the footie like the next stereo-typical straight guy?
NewSexGod>You should leave these sickos to someone who knows what to do to them. I’ve read the bible so I know what God thinks of all you PERVERTS!
GwenLoveheart>Oh Cathy, thanks for sticking up for me, but I’ve been dealing with idiots like him longer than he’s been alive, bless his poor, deluded heart. I’ll IM you later :-)

Oops. Should have kept my mouth shut, or whatever the forum equivalent was. Never mind. Gwen and the newb kept on going, but I got bored pretty rapidly as the newb started frothing at the mouth and repeating himself. I haven’t had much time for god botherers in a while. My dear old Dad forced us to go to CofE Sunday school for years, then turned around and got into Druidism, hermetic magic, tarot and crystals. My brother dated a girl from the baptist church for years, until she gave up god and ran off with a hippie. I’d gone to the Methodist youth group for a while, because they had a badminton court on a Saturday evening. But the BS and hypocrisy of it all just left me feeling empty.
In my late 20’s I found a tshirt with the Epicuran Paradox on it, which solidified my thoughts on the matter - “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able, nor willing? Then why call him God?” But I still respected people who genuinely had a faith and still strove to make the world better for everyone else and held themselves to higher standards than they expected from everyone else. I didn’t have time for idiots who knew they were right and everyone else was wrong and believed that gave them special privileges to be assholes.

-0-0-

The day after, when I logged into my laptop, I found I had a message from Gwen reaching out to me. It was strange, how nervous I was to respond to a stranger, who presumably was trans, reaching out to me. It kind of felt like it was a milestone, admitting that this thing, whatever it was, was real. The message was very short
‘Hi, sorry I didn’t have time to talk yesterday.
I understand that you are a new user on our forum and you may have a lot of questions. I’m happy to help in any way I can, but I am not a trained counsellor, just a ‘fellow traveller’ who may be a little further along my own personal path than you are.
Welcome to the forum
your loving sister, Gwen’

Sister, eh? That’s a thought, I’m seriously thinking about joining the secret sisterhood of trans-women. What would that mean? I guess responding to Gwen might be one way to start finding out. I started typing my reply.

‘Gwen, I don’t really know where to start… This is really hard for me to admit and if you weren’t an anonymous stranger who I will probably never meet I would probably be running out of the door now. I’m beginning to realise that the feelings I’ve had for many years, about not feeling comfortable in my own skin, being awkward with strangers, wary of men and generally not fitting in, may have something to do with gender issues. I’m not ready to say I’m a trans-woman, yet…’

I stopped and re-read the last sentence. Was that really true, still? Was I kidding myself the longer I dragged this process out? I continued typing…

‘But I have to admit that I am discovering a feminine side to my personality that I cannot deny any longer. I’ve approached my GP for help, but she says the waiting lists are very long. Can you help me identify my options while I wait for a referral to the GIC? Yours Cathy’

Gwen’s reply came back startlingly quickly.

‘Cathy, can we chat? Do you have Skype or something? Gwen’

Hmm, did I have Skype? I wasn’t going to use Andy’s Skype login for this. I used the email address I’d setup to sign in ‘CathySmith’ on the forum to create a Skype user on my system and emailed the details to Gwen.

The connection request came quickly.

Gwen had a picture of a Teddy Bear with a pink bow around its neck as her profile picture. I had the default blank head. She didn’t offer to video call or voice chat, she just used messaging.

Gwen> Are you in a safe place?
Cathy> I’m at home
Gwen> Alone?
Cathy> Yes, I live alone except when my kids are with me. Most of my friends are 80 miles from here
Gwen> That sucks!
Cathy> It has its benefits, at the moment.
Gwen> So you are going through something at the moment?
Cathy> That’s one way of putting it.
Gwen> But… How to put this delicately… You’re not stressed out by some other major life event?
Cathy> Work is hard, raising my kids is hard, dealing with my ex-wife is hard, life is hard
Gwen> That sounds… depressing?
Cathy> Yes, I have mild depression, since the divorce
Gwen> Do you want to tell me more about her? Why did you split?
Cathy> I don’t know! I was working so hard for us, for the kids, trying to do everything I could. Long hours, good job, I did the cooking, changed the nappies, cleaned the toilets, I don’t know what I did wrong. We went to marriage guidance and she

I paused before I typed the next bit I was thinking. It still filled me with shame and anger when I thought of it. I added an ellipsis on the end, hit send and carried on typing

Cathy> She complained in the sessions that I didn’t make love to her anymore. So I took the day off, bought her flowers, cooked a meal and we made love that night. The next day she told me that she only did it to make me feel happy and it felt like rape to her.

Tears were flooding down my face now. I’d just told a complete stranger one of the most awful things that happened to me in my life. That accusation finished my marriage. I found out afterwards that she had been coached by someone at her work (she stocked shelves in the local DIY store in the evenings). I found a plan, some of it in her writing but none of the words were hers, on how to force me to leave so that she would get the house and be free. She’d left it screwed up in the bin in our bedroom when she left, along with an empty packet of birth-control pills. She’d left it for me to empty, I don’t think it was deliberately cruel. I just think she was too stupid to realise what she was doing. But it cut me like a knife. Let me explain, she had insisted that I had a vasectomy after my daughter, our second child, was born. It hadn’t been particularly comfortable and it had left me with less of an interest in sex afterwards, mostly because of the discomfort. So the pills just confirmed that she was having an affair, or seriously thinking about it, before she left me.

Gwen> Why would she say that?
Cathy> To hurt me? I don’t know, she was getting coached on how to drive me insane by her lover, I think.
Gwen> She was having an affair?
Cathy> She never admitted it in the sessions but she was taking birth control pills after my vasectomy
Gwen> That’s normal, though, isn’t it?
Cathy> 2 years after the all clear? No. I found their notes.
Gwen> What notes?
Cathy> When she left, she left their notes on how to drive me away in the bin
Gwen> What?
Cathy> Screwed up in the bin in our bedroom, in her writing and someone else’s, notes like: Make him leave, drive him out, keep the house
Gwen> You’re kidding me?
Cathy> I have a copy - I gave the original to my lawyer.
Gwen> So you got a ‘Good Divorce’ if there is such a thing?
Cathy> No. My lawyer kept changing, and each new one would be lower down the ladder and take longer to ‘read into’ the case. Her lawyer was a shark, who didn’t care about right or wrong
Gwen> So, she got the house?
Cathy> No, I had to sell the house and give her £105K cash, and pay maintenance on the kids
Gwen> Shit. That sounds like a really bad deal. Were you that rich?
Cathy> Not after the divorce, I had a few tens of thousands to buy a house.
Gwen> But you had a good job?
Cathy> Had? Yes. But I got made redundant and I had to take a new job on a lower salary.
Gwen> I think I’d be depressed after that
Cathy> I feel like there’s something wrong with my life. I did before the divorce. Like I was being made to suffer someone else’s life. I kind of hoped, now my ex isn’t here that I could find my life again.
Gwen> Ah, hence why you are looking to see life from the distaff side!
Cathy> Are you a language professor in real life? Because that’s a pretty obscure use of English
Gwen> You got it, though?
Cathy> Er, yes, I think so. As much from the context as anything else.
Gwen> Clever girl! I’m so sorry I don’t have more time to spend with you this evening, but I have other things I have to do, I’m afraid.
Gwen> You are going to be alright, aren’t you? You would tell me if it got too bad?
Cathy> I’d tell you or my friend, Kathryn
Gwen> Cathy and Kathryn? That’s not going to get confusing, at all!
Cathy> ikr
Cathy> I’m sorry for dumping all this on you
Gwen> I asked
Cathy> And I let the flood gates go. I don’t know why, I’m normally very reserved.
Gwen> Sometimes a good cry is very therapeutic. I think you were overdue for one, from what you’ve told me
Cathy> tip of the iceberg, in some ways
Gwen> Really? Oh my. You sure you will be ok?
Cathy> I have at least one good friend I can count on
Gwen> and me. You can count on me, I’m in your corner you know
Cathy> Thanks
Gwen> Make sure to hug your kids. That makes all life’s ups and down come into perspective. I’ll be in touch. It was nice to meet you
Cathy> You too, Gwen. Goodnight
Gwen> Goodnight

-0-0-

So, Kathryn, Gwen and Fee all pushing me, as gently as possible, in the feminine direction. Except Kathryn, sometimes her ‘gentle push’ came like a drop-kick. But she was the only one who knew me, as Andy and Cathy, and she still spoke to me. So she was my lifeline.
Fee was oblivious to my struggle, just like a man, but he was in many ways the most relentless.
Gwen was concerned that I had so few friends that I could talk to about my issues, she gave me some contact information for local support groups. I was too nervous to just turn up at one of these meetings either as Andy or Cathy so I just contacted some of the group members that Gwen recommended on the forum and introduced myself as Cathy.
They weren’t ‘real’ friends like Kathryn, but somehow these tentative relationships felt more real than my relationship with Fee. That was beginning to feel more like pure escapism.

-0-0-

Through it all I carried on with the routine of my life. The workload in my job was insane and it was not uncommon to be in work until 10pm. Which didn’t leave me much time for even virtual socialising. My kids took another big chunk of my time, on average 3 nights a week, or more if I had annual leave to use up.

So, progress was slow. There was no prospect of getting a quick referral for counselling. I was too scared to go out in public as Cathy, or even to a support group, in case I met someone I knew. I wasn’t sure what to do next…

-0-0-

After 2 or 3 months of this glacial progression it struck me - it was clear what the inexorable progress was leading towards. It was time, time to ‘man-up’ and face my future (the irony of this phrase was not lost on me).

I had a choice to make; either skulk around dressing in private and occasionally with Kathryn, playing with the forbidden fruit of being a man in a dress. Or admit to myself that many of the fundamental truths about myself, who I really was, were… wrong.

I told Kathryn that I was going to go to a support group, specifically to meet Angela, one of the people that Gwen had introduced me to. I asked if she would come with me?
Kathryn was happy to come, but she wanted me to think carefully as this was a big step. Was I going to go dressed as a man? Which might insult some of those in the group. Or would I go ‘En Femme’ (look at me! Down with the lingo) as Cathy and risk outing myself to any passing stranger who recognised me. Plus embarrassing myself terribly, I hated the way I looked, there was almost nothing feminine about me physically. I was tall, my hair was thinning, I was too broad across the shoulders, my feet were too big and I was still not as slender as I wanted to be. The only thing going for me was that my ‘moobs’ were probably at least an ‘A’ cup.
Kathryn asked me ‘Didn’t you wear some of your ex-wife’s clothes?’
‘Er, yes - these jeans are from Dorothy Perkins’ she left them in the wardrobe when she left because they were too small for her.
‘Well, you can’t be that far from _a_ female’s size then?’
‘Well, no. You are correct that Linda is a similar size to me, 6 feet tall and about the same weight. More of her weight is on her hips and breasts, but yes. The only problem is that she has been mistaken for a transvestite in the past…’
I’d timed it perfectly, Kathryn had just taken a swig of her coffee and nearly choked in her effort not to spray it over her desk.
‘WHAT!?’ She nearly screamed when she got her breath back.
‘Didn’t I tell you that?’ I smirked ‘My friend Martin was walking through town with his partner when she turned around and pointed out Linda in the crowd, she thought Linda was a transvestite, Martin nearly died laughing trying to explain’.
‘Why the hell did she think your ex-wife was a guy?’
‘Have I shown you photos?’
‘No.’
‘Hmm, Well, she is my height, My weight, she has size 10 feet and her nose is… quite large. Oh, and she wears quite a lot of makeup these days.’
‘Why did you marry her?’
‘I’m finding it harder and harder to remember… she was sweet, she had legs for days, she was a different person then. I thought she looked like Aeryn Sun, the Peacekeeper from the TV series “Farscape”?’

It sounded weak, even to me. I really did struggle to think why I married Linda. I’m beginning to think I was desperate and she wanted me. I think we kind of sleep-walked into it. Also, I had wanted kids. I had talked Linda into it with all the other bits, 2.4 kids, suburbia, the house and cars, etc. But really, I needed a woman because I wanted kids and she was there. Willing to take my money and raise our kids, for a while, anyway.

‘How about if we go to the first one and just lurk outside to see who goes in?’ I said.
‘Ah, you want to case the joint first, get the lay of the land?’
‘I know it’s chicken, but this is scary shit’
‘I guess, for me the worst that could happen is that they could start calling me a ‘fag hag’’.
‘They do that already, since you’ve started spending time with me.’
‘Really?’
‘No, not really, I guess. No one’s gives a sh____ whatever about me. It’s not that they are broad-minded, they just don’t care.’

There was a pause while we both considered the apathy of our work colleagues.

‘Er…’ I started ‘what would it take, to make me look like a passable woman, do you think?’
‘Polyfilla and a corset?’ Kathryn smirked.
‘Bitch!’ I said and stuck out my tongue at her.
‘Are you seriously going to go for it now’ she asked.
‘I think I have to at least think about it.’ I said softly.
‘This is getting real, then?’
‘It has been real for a while, I just didn’t understand what it was.’

We spent the rest of the evening searching for wigs and forms and pads on the internet, getting increasingly freaked by what was available and how much it would cost.

‘You know, you don’t need any of this stuff to be a woman’ Kathryn said.
‘Huh?’ I replied.
‘Well, look at me… I’m not wearing a skirt, I don’t have much makeup on, my sweatshirt is baggy enough that you can’t tell if I’m wearing a bra.’
‘Sorry, Kathryn - I hate to tell you this, but I doubt you’ll be passing as a macho man any time soon’.
‘No, silly - I mean a pink Sweatshirt, women’s bootcut jeans, pink trainers - it doesn’t scream “girly girl” but it would be feminine’.
‘I’m trying to figure out the “flags” that other people see that would change the way that they treat me, how I feel I present myself. And I _know_ I have a whole bunch of stereotypes in my own mind about the difference between men and women, and a bunch of that is unconsciously why I’ve known I was different and now I want to explore my gender more...er, I’m rambling, right?’
‘Did I glaze over? Yeah, I don’t really understand what it is about being a woman that interests you. You’re not gay, are you? And if you were, you wouldn’t need to wear a dress to get a guy. Alex in procurement is gay as anything, and he has a new boyfriend whenever the old one gets fed-up with him.’
‘Yeah, I’m not an Alex, that’s for sure. I don’t have his confidence, his flair or his callousness’.
‘I don’t think he’s callous, just a bit superficial…’
‘I don’t really find him that attractive. That’s something I found in Second Life, playing with Fee. I have some weird ideas about what I do and don’t like.’
‘Oh? don’t stop there…’
‘Er...Ok, I know I can trust you to be discrete. I don’t like boy-boy - boy-girl or girl-girl I like - I don’t really mind if I am the boy or the girl, but boy-boy just doesn’t excite me. How weird is that?’
‘Ha, they could write books about you!’
‘Cheeky mare!’
‘But seriously, for a moment. I know you have a feminine side. You don’t act like a typical male around me, or Fee. But you fake it at work. How does that work? Are you a woman pretending to be a man, a man playing at being a woman. What does ‘Being a woman’ mean to you anyway, it’s not just makeup and dresses, you know?’
I sighed.
‘It’s very hard to put into words. The more I’ve thought about this the more little things through the years have started making a new kind of sense, like a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces that you made into a picture when you were 6 and then you throw them up in the air and when they land they make a different picture, but the pieces fit better.’
‘Go on, this is interesting, but I’m not sure I understand what you mean, or what it means to you’
‘Ok, well, turn it around - what makes you a woman?’
‘Ha, I notice you didn’t say ‘Girl’ - 10 points for personal growth!’
‘I thought we were being serious?’
‘That is serious, it’s the unconscious ‘putting down’ of anything feminine that most men do - you’ve stopped doing that, I notice.’
‘I think I only ever did that as a form of protective colouration, I’ve always felt women were better in some way.’
‘We are. Is that why you want to be one?’
‘It’s not that simple. I can never have what you have…’ Tears sprang to my eyes. ‘You have no idea what you have, how hard it is to keep pretending and hiding how I feel.’
Kathryn gave me hug and I tried to pull myself together.
‘Ugh, I’ve always cried too easily’ I said ‘and the boys used to pick on me for it and call me a “cry-baby”. One more of a thousand things that mark me out as different. If you draw a line and put all the female things on one side and all the male things on the other then I find the things I like, my interests, my predilections are all on the female side - except for the gross physical characteristics of my body. So as a simple answer to your question? What makes me a woman? Everything, except my body. And that’s the one thing that everybody else sees. It’s the thing that stops me being included in conversations with the women at work. The thing that makes the mothers of the other kids at swimming lessons shun me. The thing that keeps me so isolated and alone because I don’t give a _fuck_ about beer and sport and leering at bimbos!’
-0-0-
After my little meltdown Kathryn decided that I needed more specialist help than she could give. She eventually talked me round to going to the meeting. She also convinced me that I should present as female, but not overwhelmingly so. I wasn't keen, at first. I'm not sure why the idea made me so uncomfortable, it was clearly the direction my life was heading in, but the idea of meeting unknown members of the public looking like… well, a man in a dress, filled me with dread. I would be embarrassed and humiliated and I would alienate the very people I wished to emulate.
Kathryn pointed out that she had never been mistaken for a man, but she regularly wore jeans and a sweatshirt. I still had a pair of Linda's jeans bought in Dorothy Perkins. She'd given them to me when her ass got too broad to squeeze into them anymore and they were the comfiest jeans I had. The material was softer and stretchier than my other jeans. Kathryn talked me into buying a turquoise hoodie and a pair of light grey cross trainers from the online store she used. I also got a camisole top and some more underwear.
Kathryn arranged to meet me at my home the evening of the next meeting.
-0-0-
Kathryn turned up as expected with a suitcase on wheels towed behind her, which wasn't expected and probably got the neighbors curtains twitching.
I helped her get it into the house and she started unpacking. I'd already removed all my body hair the night before, which was a significant job in itself requiring electric trimmers, bottles of hair remover and two razors. My skin had felt excruciatingly sensitive all day. I'd had the closest shave I could get this evening.
Kathryn had bought all the clothes I was going to wear tonight and a bunch of other things. She sent me off to strip and put my knickers and bra on and then come back. She handed me a pair of breast forms I recognised from the internet.
“Wow, Kathryn, these things are expensive, I wasn't going to invest that much yet” I said.
“Well, money is tight at the moment, so it would be nice if you could pay me back for them. Tell you what, pay me for the boobs and I'll give you the wig as a gift!”
“Wig?” I asked.
Kathryn delved into the suitcase and brought out a carefully packed wig and an odd looking head made of polystyrene. She pulled the wig from its packaging and I could see that it was a dark red or auburn colour that went quite well with my naturally dark coloured hair and pale skin. It was a lot more vivid than my natural hair although it looked a lot more natural than many of the women with dyed red hair. The style was a long bob. It was lovely. She put it on the head that was clearly some kind of wig stand and straightened it to show how it would look.
Kathryn fixed the forms to my chest with some special adhesive then she had me remove my knickers and we fiddled with the gaff she'd brought to try and minimize my manly bulge. Then I replaced the knickera, put on the Dorothy Perkins jeans and a camisole top and Kathryn started work on my makeup. The makeup was a joint effort, she did the painting and I did the face pulling, gurning as she instructed to ensure things went as well as possible. Kathryn did try to explain what she was doing with foundation and mascara, but I must be honest, I couldn't take it all in. Then once she had finished I carefully pulled the hoodie over my head in a way to avoid disturbing the face she had painted on me and she worked on my wig. A final touch of lipstick and the look was complete. I studied myself in the mirror with some trepidation. I had dressed in women's clothes before, as you know. Either in stealth, not trying to look like a woman but just knowing the ordinary, possibly unisex, things I was wearing were identifiably _female_ clothes, such as would be worn by a lady. Not _mens_ clothes, despite appearances, or for fun, behind closed doors in feminine items.
But this? This was the first time I was intending to head out into the world unmistakably dressed as, appearing as, _presenting_ as, female.
So I studied myself, I was pleasantly surprised. I was no beauty, heaven knows, but neither was I masculine.
Kathryn had kept the makeup very subtle, My eyebrows were the only permanent change, I guessed, but they were still present, just trimmed and shaped with a little bit of plucking. I could probably get away with them tomorrow at work if only because I was a middle-aged guy that no one would be looking at too hard.
My face was never very masculine, but now it appeared like a softer version of itself. Nothing screamed male. I had mascara and a light pink lipstick. Not bright red, that would scream I was trying too hard, just the kind of thing my ex-wife used to wear during the day.
My height was the thing that would mark me more than anything else. Paradoxically, it was the one measurement that Linda and I always had in common.
I had a difficult time making it out of the front door. Kathryn was understanding, but she threatened to scream if I didn't go through with it tonight, after all the planning and effort she had gone to. For her sake, and mine… well, Cathy-me, if not Andy-me, I took a deep breath and stepped out into the evening air and headed to the meeting with Kathryn.
-0-0-
The walk from the car to the meeting was another step I had to overcome. I felt like a furtive spy behind enemy lines with all eyes searching for me, but Kathryn just linked her arm through mine and pointed me in the direction of the meeting.
We got to the door and I dithered about actually going in. This was the final step, once I went through that door then it would be real. People would know, my secret would be out and there would be no controlling it anymore.
Kathryn knew my reluctance. But she didn't drag me through the door. I'm not sure if I wouldn't have preferred her doing that. She left the decision up to me.
She looked at me with understanding in her eyes, held out her hand and said "I'm with you. I have your back. I know who you are and I've got your back."
These simple and heartfelt words gave me the courage to step through the door.

I'm not sure quite what I was expecting but it seemed a bit of an anti-climax. There were a couple of very camp boys on one side, a small group of clearly lesbian girls on the other side and a couple of people in the middle. Two women of a less than certain age were at the front in skirts and cardigans, looking like they were taking the evening off from whist and the church committee. The people in the middle were… different. No two were the same. One was a guy, with a beard, in a sequinned evening gown. One looked like a lesbian with a stick-on beard. One looked like a very masculine woman in an out of date and too short, too tight skirt suit. As we dithered in the entrance one of the older ladies at the front called out in a surprisingly deep and strong voice - "Ah, newcomers! Don't be afraid, my dears, grab a cuppa and take a seat!"
Everyone turned to look at us. The gay boys turned away quite quickly, the lesbians took slightly longer and the other group were, well, varied. The guy in the dress watched us the longest, but even he was not staring long enough to be really off-putting. I guess people were being well behaved.
Kathryn and I made our way to get a cup of coffee each from a small table of refreshments. There was a pot saying "Please donate 50p per cup" on a sign. In the pot was a few pounds in small change. I put a pound in and we made our way to seats in the middle. A young woman came in as we sat down and hurried to get a drink. She seemed to be the last person expected to arrive and the two older ladies started handing out printed sheets, saying "Take one and pass it on" as they did.
I looked at the sheet and it was a bizzare kind of newsletter. It was covered in fine print news stories cut and pasted from the internet from around the world and around the corner. I noticed a story about President Trump hounding gay and lesbian veterans in the U.S. and an announcement that Lily was having a baby and there would be a collection next week. There was a page of URLs for information for the LGBT community. I didn't have time to read it all. The taller of the two women called us all to order.
"Alright everyone, let's get started! It's lovely to see some new faces tonight… I hate to put you on the spot but I think you should tell us who you are and why you are here. I know it's nerve-wracking but you are among friends here and we are in no position to judge you unfairly So, start as you mean to go on, think of it like ripping off a plaster, it's less painful once you've got it done quickly!" she said, in a voice that was at odds with her appearance.
Kathryn stood up and said "I'm Kathryn, I'm here to support my friend tonight."
I looked at her and smiled, glad that she had broken the Ice.
I stood up, took a deep breath and said quietly "You can call me Cathy, I'm struggling with gender issues at the moment."
The woman who came in to the group after us said "Welcome to our group, I'm Claire…" which started the rest of the group going and we got a round of welcomes and at the end the older lady said "...and I'm Gwen, I think we met online, dear". Then she got on with the rest of the meeting.
I didn't know quite what to expect, but whatever I had expected, it wasn't this. There was no dishing of juicy secrets about how to pass as a woman or how to spot a fellow lesbian. Gwen started off by giving a roundup of the local news with information about helpful clinics, horrible council bosses, local shops and churches who were openly anti-gay, petitions to sign to protest anti-gay organisation. It only took about 30 minutes then there was a coffee break where we kind of mingled. Claire came and introduced herself. One of the gay guys said "Hi" to me and one of the lesbians introduced herself to Kathryn, she thought she shared a keep fit class, but Kathryn explained that she lived 80 miles away so it was unlikely. Then, after coffee, Gwen's partner, Sally, gave a brief talk on employment legislation and what HR teams should and shouldn't do with LBGTQ+ employees. Which I found interesting, but a little daunting. I didn't think I was quite ready to face the HR girls en femme yet.

-0-0-

So, now I knew, or at least, I had admitted to myself and others, who or what I was. Ultimately, it wasn’t a choice in that regard, just a growing acceptance of something that I think I must have known for years. The real choice was - what I was going to do about it? What would my next steps be?

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'".

Virtually Feminine - Part 8 - Forced out


Andy's meeting with Julie takes an unexpected direction.

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'".

Part 8 - Forced out

"So.." said Julie with a heavy sigh "How do you want to deal with this letter?"
"What do you suggest?" I asked with a sinking heart.
"I despise this kind of hate crime!" Julie said "This is a copy of the original that I took as soon as I realised what it was. The original, and the envelope it came in are in a plastic bag. I don't know if the police can still use it as evidence but I'm happy to back you on whatever action you choose to take."

My mouth hung open. I'm not sure what I expected but I felt like this conversation had just taken a detour through the looking glass.

"So… I'm not in trouble?" I ventured.
"Why would you be in trouble? You didn't send this hateful letter. Frankly, whatever you do in private outside of company time is none of our business. It's not as though you were trying to put the company into disrepute, or anything is it?" Julie said.
"No! Not at all. My ex-wife barged her way into my house without an invitation and found me dressed…" I petered out.
"As a woman, yes. It's ok. I hate to be indelicate… is there something you would like to inform HR about?" Julie asked. She looked truly concerned for me.

My throat felt tight, but… maybe… maybe this was the opportunity to come clean? I'd been stalled for months. I kind of knew where I was heading but I had no map of how to get there. Maybe this was a silver lining with all the trimmings?

"Oh god" I muttered to myself "here goes nothing". Then louder to Julie I announced "I've been having gender issues for some months. I've been to my G.P. but the waiting list for adult referrals is ridiculous. I've been seeing a support group. Reading online and talking with some close friends. I… I think I'm Trans. I think I have gender dysphoria and it's been the cause of my depression".
"You poor woman" Julie said "I thought it must be something like that. My cousin came out as trans last year. The first we knew was when she tried to take her life. I know that I can't fully understand the pain that you are going through, but I do sympathize. But, this letter might be the ugly duck that laid the golden egg, as far as you are concerned!"
"I'm sorry? I have no idea what you mean by that?" I said.
Julie looked very pleased with herself. She said "Because of my cousin, I have looked into HR, personnel law and our medical benefits. Tell me, Andy, how long have you worked for us now?"
"Five years, roughly".
"Aha! I guess you didn't know that gender dysphoria is one of the conditions covered under our medical plan?" Julie said.
"I can honestly say it never occurred to me to enquire." I said. I thought to myself 'This could change everything '.
"I've looked into it and the cover is capped at £150,000 so as not to discriminate against F2M transitions, so you should be fine. Frankly, no one ever expected us to need to claim. But I guess your condition is more common than we thought?" Julie said with a smile.

That was the closest anyone other than Kathryn and the support group had ever come to calling me 'normal'. I smiled back.
"I guess it is!" I said "and I'm your first guinea pig for the process?"
"I think so" Julie said "Unless someone is keeping it confidential with Dianne being the only one who knows."
"Is that an option?" I asked.
"Of course, like all medical treatment. If you are sensitive about it we can keep it on a need to know basis with the HR director only." Julie left the implied question hanging in the air for a moment before she continued; "but, you should know, trans is one of the categories of people protected under our diversity policy. If you come out, you will receive the full protection of the policy and the HR team. I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but it could be a very canny career move to be openly trans at the moment."

We talked for another two hours. Julie had to go away and come back with some documents and papers. I won't bore you with the details. Partly because it was a bit of a blur and I'm not sure that I remember them all myself. But the upshot was that Julie would provisionally register me as Trans for now, and inform Dianne, the HR director, but no one else. I would then be referred privately for treatment and, depending on the report from the doctor, they would discuss further options. I had to sign a declaration for Julie, so HR had a legal record of when I informed them of my status.

"For now, I'd like you to continue using the male toilets, if you don't mind? Or the disabled toilets on the ground floor? They're unisex." Julie said, she looked sad that she couldn't wave a wand and grant me access to all things feminine, but I was already sitting to pee most of the time now, it just felt more comfortable to me. Even if I was using the men's loos.
Doing anything else would risk a lynch mob, I'm pretty sure.

Julie gave me a copy of the declaration.
Then she got more serious and took up the copy of the letter again.
"I'm sorry to go back to the thing that started all this, but, what do you want to do about this letter? Do you know who it's from?" Julie asked.
"Well, it's clearly from my ex-wife. I'm guessing that she hasn't gone to her lawyer with this because he would have had to advise her not to do it… I'm guessing the best thing I can do, what will piss her off and not hurt my kids, is to ignore it and carry on with my life." I said.
"You're more forgiving than I would be, I think. But, I guess you must have loved her once?" Julie said.
"I guess, but I can't remember why. As far as I'm concerned my wife is dead and there's a soul-sucking bitch walking around in her skin now." I said.
"Now, now - you know sitting on the fence is not good for you, why don't you come out and tell me how you really feel!" Julie said with a chuckle.
"She's still the mother of my children?" I asked.
"Hmm, for now. Maybe you will be their other mother someday?" Julie asked with a smile.

-0-0-

Later that day I managed to tell Kathryn what had happened with HR.
"That bitch!" she exclaimed.
"I don't know, she seemed quite nice. But it did give me a turn at the start" I said with a smirk.
"Not Julie, you doofus, Linda!" Kathryn said with a pained roll of her eyes to underscore her point.
"Well, I kinda figured out Linda was a bitch sometime during the divorce" I said reasonably "but, yes… even by Linda's historically low standards, this is shit. I'm just happy something good seems to have come from it".
"I'll say, it never occurred to me that our company medical cover would be able to help like that. But it will mean more people will know. Is that what you want?" Kathryn asked.
"Well…" I sighed "I don't really see it as being any of their business, really. But, on the other hand, I can't deny that it will be nice… to be able to be my real self. For so long now, I've felt like a liar and a cheat. At first for pretending to be a girl, and then for pretending not to be a woman. It would be nice to just be… me, I guess".
"Whatever that is…" said Kathryn.
"Well, I'll admit I'm still a work in progress, but, aren't we all?" I asked.
"Ooh, how deep you are, now you have a little feminine insight!" Kathryn laughed.
"I'm kind of looking forward to discussing things with a gender specialist, you know? Someone I can open up to" I said.
"...and not be judged? I must admit, I'm a little sceptical about that, given the company is paying their bills" Kathryn said.
"I'm trusting medical ethics to keep me safe, I guess. Plus, Julie genuinely seemed to be on my side, she has a family member who is trans…" I said, trying to be vague enough not to drop anyone into the shit, including me.
"I'm guessing you're not going to say anymore than that, even if you know…" Kathryn said, musing.

I mimed locking my lips and throwing the keys.
Kathryn changed the subject.

"Are you coming as Andy or Cathy to my Thanksgiving party?" she asked.
"Am I invited? I am very British!" I said.
"As long as you make pumpkin pie, you can be an honourary yank" Kathryn said.
"Well, if I'm expected to bake, I better come as Cathy, I don't want people to think I'm gay!" I said.
Kathryn rolled her eyes again. "You don't have to wear red, white and blue or dress as an Indian or pilgrim or anything, just jeans and a t-shirt is fine…"
"Denim skirt and cowboy boots?" I asked.
"Err… ok, I guess…" she said.
"Don't worry, I'll find something… appropriate" I said.
Kathryn looked a little concerned, but I was getting better at dressing thanks to all my practice. I had a long 'old gold' dark yellow skirt, a white blouse, a boxy Tweed jacket and some flat suede boots that, combined with the skirt, might disguise how tall I was. It would all be quite autumnal. Especially with my Auburn wig. I was quite looking forward to it.

-0-0-

There wasn't much else exciting that happened between that invitation and the appointment with the specialist. Linda didn't mention the letter at all when I picked up the kids and there were no other incidents. Swimming lessons on Saturday, sandwiches from 'Loafers' sandwich shop, watching Doctor Who in the evening, everything was very normal.

Kevin claimed to be doing homework most of Sunday, but we both know he was playing on the PC in his room. Rachael followed me round as I did housework, washed and ironed their schools clothes (and sewed on buttons and repaired them, how did Linda let their clothes get in this state, this wasn't damage from one day?)

Rachael 'helped' peeling carrots and other things when I started cooking dinner. She left me in a heartbeat when my Mum rang the doorbell.

We had a nice Sunday roast dinner. I told Mum I had an appointment with a specialist in the week but I didn't get a chance to go into detail. I was quite aware that Linda wasn't above pumping the kids for information on Monday night.

I ironed my suit and shirt while I watched TV that night after Mum helped me get the kids to bed and then left. I made our sandwiches for the next day and put them in the fridge. Doing them in the morning would be better, but getting them both up and into school so that I could get to work on time was difficult enough without putting the pressure of preparing food on me as well.

There was there usual running around shouting for the kids to hurry on Monday morning then dropping them off with a last kiss and driving off leaving them to walk into school.

Linda complained a couple of years ago that she didn't get a kiss at the school gates anymore, I don't insist, but I offer, and they still want a hug and a kiss.

Then work… the week seemed to drag. The appointment was on Thursday. I didn't have a lot of information, just an address and time.

Virtually Feminine - Part 9 - the Appointment


Andy gets his first appointment following his referral.

Part 9 - the appointment

Thursday seemed to take forever to arrive and then, when it finally appeared everything felt rushed.

Of course, my big problem was whether to go as Andy or Cathy.

The appointment letter gave no indication as to which was expected. I decided to play it safe and go as Andy. I was being referred to them as part of my employment as Andy and my legal name was Andy, so… they should meet Andy first.
Then I spent days second guessing and over thinking what message that would send and whether they would think I was taking it and was a fraud.

In the end, I decided to go as Andy in fairly unisex clothing but with knickers instead of underpants and a ladies leather rucksack with a change of clothes and makeup for Cathy.

It may sound trivial to you, but choosing what to wear was increasingly becoming a minefield for me. I stressed out so much about unintentionally 'outing' myself, but I needed a touchstone or token of femininity to remain calm. I felt suffocated if I just wore traditionally male clothes now. I felt I had to have something frilly, lacy or pink to hang on to as proof that I was female inside.

I'd taken the day off for the appointment, it was a private appointment but it was in an NHS hospital in London. I’d driven into Hammersmith and parked in the Kings Mall. Normally I would have then taken the tube to anywhere in London (I'd never drive in Central London), but Hammersmith was the nearest tube stop to the hospital, so I walked. It was quite a trek - note to self, never attempt this journey in high heels! I’d never have found it without Google maps. Kathryn, bless her, had offered to come with me but I had told her 'I'm a big girl now!'
"Not so big, anymore" she said " you must have list 30lbs!"
"Three stone, actually, but who's counting?" I said.

As I went into the waiting room I caught my reflection in a glass door. I looked like a non-descript middle-aged guy. Boring.
I guessed my life was about to get more interesting.

I went into the waiting room. It was quite busy and then were males and females of all ages. I couldn't tell for sure if any of them were here for gender-related issues, although one lady looked like she may have started as a man. There wasn't any one thing I could put my finger in, just a general impression. I wasn't going to be rude and stare, or ask.

I got called in with a curt ‘Smith?’ from a nurse. She took me to a room and started going through some details to check I was the right Andy Smith. Another person, the nurse called her a ‘phlebotomist’ came and took some blood samples. The nurse took my blood pressure and asked some general questions then I was asked to go back out to the waiting room.

After about 15 minutes a young women, smartly but casually dressed came out a called ‘Smith?’.
She introduced herself as Dr. Boobyer and showed me to her office. She winced as she mentioned her name.
“I know, I couldn’t have made it up!” she said “It’s even worse because it’s my husband’s surname, I took it before I got into this field of medicine”.
There was something very human and disarming about how embarrassed she was by her name.

“Right,” she said, once we were sat down “I see you’re a private referral, you’re very lucky, the waiting lists can be horrendous. Have you read the leaflet? Do you know what to expect?”
“Not really, it’s all happened fairly quickly, I’ve been waiting for months on a GP referral then my HR team said that this was covered under my company scheme” I said.
“OK. Well… Don’t be afraid to ask if you don’t understand anything, just let me know if there are any words or terms that you don’t understand and I’ll try and clarify it for you. If you have any questions that I haven’t answered before you leave, for heaven’s sake, let me know. It’s much easier to answer them quickly now. Please take notes, if you’d like to. I’ll let you have some leaflets and things when you leave, but this is about exploring how we can help you and what’s best for you”.
“OK” I said.
“We’ve taken some samples and run some tests to establish your basic levels of health. The nurse asked whether you were a smoker and you told her, ‘no’, correct?” the doctor asked.
I confirmed this.
“OK, we have a note from your HR team that you’ve officially informed them that you have been having ‘gender issues’ and dressing as a woman outside of work. We’ll take the date of that official notification as the start of your real life trial, if that’s what you want to do?”
“Real life trial?” I asked.
“Well, I’m assuming, if you are already dressing as a woman outside of work that you’re serious about socialising as a woman, given that you have asked your HR team to be referred here?” she asked.
“I’ve been trying to pluck up the courage to progress that way for months now…” I admitted.
“Are there any particular reasons why you shouldn’t present as female in your workplace?” she asked.
“Aside from the obvious?” I asked.
“Ms. Smith, I am not going to insult your intelligence or your need to be a woman. The fact that you are here, and you’ve spoken with your GP and your HR team shows that this is not some idle fancy. We are not going to do anything drastic until you have been through some guidance and counselling and until the second appointment, at least. We won’t be prescribing blockers or hormones or any of the things you read in some of the more fanciful stories in the media. I’m assuming, from all the information we’ve gathered so far, that your next step will be a social gender role transition?” she said.
“Social?” I said, confused.
“Living your life in the role of a woman,” she explained “Tell me, are there any particular reasons why that would present a problem?”
“I would need to expand my feminine wardrobe!” I said with a small smile.
Dr Boobyer laughed. “Yes, of course. But you are happy to go ahead and you have friends and family who will support you?”
“Yes, I think so…” I said.
“Good, I know this will be quite a step, but it's been my experience that for someone at this stage in the process that this is best done decisively. You will know within a week or so whether this is the right step for you or whether you have had a narrow escape and you will go back to cross-dressing occaisinally and having a more feminie side that you let out sometimes” the doctor said with a smile, “I will give you the details of a service that will monitor you and provide support back home”.
“A psychologist?” I asked.
“A Psychiatric practice” she said “they can provide you in-depth help, not just psychological therapy. They can help you understand yourself better and recognise if things are getting to be too much for you. I see that you have been suffering from depression?”
“Yes, I was… but, since I’ve come to recognise my feminine nature it’s not been such a problem” I said.
“That’s not uncommon. A lot of people struggle to admit to themselves what the causes of the stresses they are living under are. Once they acknowledge them and deal with them more effectively, they can often be much happier!” she said, "So… do you have any questions for me?"

This left me reeling a bit. This referral was going to mark the start of my transition to womanhood and, rather than an in-depth discussion and drilling into the reasons for me feeling this way and explaining how best to proceed it just felt like a line drawn in shifting sands, a formality to be dealt with as expediently as possible.

"Er?..." I began "I have so many questions that I don't know where to begin" I said, lamely.
"I know dear… if it's any consolation, I know that this referral is not what you were hoping and waiting for. But until you actually make the decision to actually be a woman, out in the world, there's not really much more that we can do to help you. It is an enormous step, I know, but anything else is dependent on you deciding what side of the fence you wish to be once and for all. If you want to be a woman in the privacy of your own home, each day, then that's your choice. We don't need to do anymore, just get you to talk with the psychiatric service, to address some of your causes for the depression. Anything more than that will fundamentally change how you interact with the rest of the world, legally, medically and socially. Legal lags behind social and medical. Medical… well, we need to see. I don't want to promise miracles, because there aren't any magic wands, but these days there are treatments that can make your body seem more feminine, how much more feminine you need to be depends on you. We don't go further than you need to be comfortable in your skin. Some trans women don't need any medical intervention for that, some need complete GRS and cosmetic surgery. Social changes are not our department, I'm afraid. We can't change how your friends and relatives interact with you, that's largely down to you, I'm afraid. From what I hear, you've already got contacts in the trans community and some friends who can help there. I'm sure they will be more effective than I could be?" the doctor paused for breath here and waited for me to nod.

"I can give you a 'carry letter' that will ease the way with your bank, local government and the police, should you be stopped for speeding, for example. As I mentioned, the legal interactions lag behind the social. You can tell everyone you are a woman today, but changing your name and getting updated legal documents is a tedious process. Your support group will probably be able to help you there. I'm sorry to say that you will probably find it hard the first few weeks, you will find out who your real friends are, they may not be who you think. Your HR team will have their own policies for toilets and dress codes, I'm sure. My advice for 'public appearances' and public conveniences is 'be discrete' until all else fails and then act as if you are entirely in the right, even when you feel you aren't." she continued "Well, here are the leaflets, here is the letter, and here is a copy of your referral to the service. I wish you luck and we'll see you next month".

And with that, I was dismissed. She turned back to her computer and I got up and left. I made my way back home in a daze. Thinking about what I was going to do next.