Friday Morning, day before Halloween

I woke early and decided to stay up.  6 am, 6 hours of sleep. I’d been unable to put down the book I was reading.  

Now I’m back to reading it, a Jasmine Frame detective novel. 

Halloween weekend. It’s the time of year for cross dressers and Samhein.  Our Christmas in a way.  Since Rocky Horror Picture Show I’ve been dressed in some form of women’s garb. Before that I’d worn diapers and witches costumes. Now I’m just thankful for a night when it’s perfectly acceptable for a bloke to wear a skirt.

I’ve worn my kilt and scottish regalia on other occasions but that’s military and masculine garb.

I like the soft fabrics and easy clothing of ladies wear. I remember as a child and young man I was very much into the dandy male wear. A dancer and actor in the making I’d loved wearing a new sports jacket and slacks. But after medicine and the white lab coats I was back to uniforms. Then as a consultant it was the return to a sportsjacks and slacks. I liked wearing ties. They were the one piece of male wardrope where one could express the whimsical and individual. I had a collection of wool ties and ties reflecting fine art. I loved my Rembrandt tie.  

Then one day, 20 or 30 years ago men’s clothing really did seem ‘au drab’.  I loved wearing women’s clothing and enjoying the make up like I was back in the theatre.  No doubt the dissociation associated with trauma and the added even worse trauma of the disclosure of trauma contributed. 

Halloween was the night. There were the ball nights, so called Drag Queen Balls. I did enjoy those. I even had my hair done up and nails for one occasion.  Friends didn’t recognise me till we met on these occasions and I whispered who I was.  It was so much fund to be incognito. 

I felt free and confidential dressed and made up while as a man I felt forever on guard.  I never did recover fully from the appalling trauma I experience decades back when all my civil rights were stripped and I was roundly abused by sociopaths in suits.  I’ve simply never felt safe in Canada since. We only lease our houses from the government and bureaucrats can imprison anyone.  I was released but the lies and the fowl play stayed like Hamlet.  Romeo and Juliet, the Death of a Saleman but my own fault for muy associations.  Out of the country I relax. Often I’ve taken holidays and lived out the fantasy of au femme in some foreign place where no one would recognise me. I always found Joni Mitchell’s song “Freeman in Paris”, playing in my head at those times. There was a lightness to my step. I thought too of Leonard Cohen’s song poem, Lover Lover and his line I want a new face. The sad part about betrayal is it is done by your friends.

Now I don’t care so much and for years I’ve just not thought anything of going out on occasion in a dress or skirt. I’ve enjoyed buying the alternatie clothing.  It’s all exciting and taboo. A whole journey which only others like you have shared. The humiliation and stigmatisation and judgemental attitudes of transphobic shop girls versus those other wonderful women who are simply so loving and helpful. I remember decades back getting the first breast forms and the pocket bras.  I loved the ladies who fitted me and helped me.  Those early days it was all so scarey and exhilerating.  

Of course I talked ad infinitum to pscyhiatrists, counsellors and pastors. I was even exorcised but it didn’t seem to take. There was that whole business of collecting clothes and purging but ultimately the cheap Scottish genes kicked in and I simply moved the women’s clothing to the locker only to bring it back months later.  Finally there was a separate locker or suitcase and on occasion I’d enjoy the repreive from the war footing.  I’d always had to protect and provide.  I’d always had to defend. Defending those who were injred and abused meant I was their ally and the very people and institutions who hurt them hurt me for even associating with them.  I fought bullies in school and at some point past middle age I realized thet it didn’t end.  I actually spent some years seeing a psychiatrist to discuss why I helped the needy and how best I could change to be more selfish like I ought to be. Being empathic helped my patients but certainly did not stand me well with the hierarchy. I’d actually identified and had removed senior doctors, nurses, hospital administrators and even a judge all who had been corrupt, sick but by their evil behaviour hurting others.  I”m thankful for those who had my back but I was usually alone in the fray and the system tooks days, months or years to right itself.  I still wonder what life would be like if I just didn’t care. I asked people not to kill people in front of me but they seemed to take greater glee in the act of killing and the act of doing it in front of me.  

I’ve been most suspicious of smooth operators.  The school yard bullies were stereotypical but the adult bullies looked like lawyers, mayle and female, ‘power suits’ and gentile manners, well groomed and well heeled.  A certain indifference.  I loved Arendt’s description of the Banality of Evil,.

Au femme I didn’t think of such things.  ‘Girls Just Want to Have “ fun was the song that ran through my mind. I tried to get along with everyone and didn’t object or care what people did outside of my contact with them.  It’s amazing but a girl can have coffee with Hitler and he can be very charming and it can be a fine night and that’s all it is.  Once you find out that the person you met briefly socially was a psychopaths then it’s on you to continue the relationship. I walked away but as a girl wasn’t engaged in work or service.  I was in the au femme mode on vacation. The clothing assisted me in the leaving behind of the white lab coat and the sports jacket that had been fashioned on the British Empire Officer’s military jacket.  

When I wore high heels and a white silk free flowing dress carrying a designer bag with only a few possessions, I don’t feel any desire to step forward and stop a fight or a rape or literally get involved with anyone else’s monkey’s and circus.  I had slip on heels on Davie one late night, possibly another Halloween, and was walking alone when a car with 4 jeering angry south asian man circled by me twice.  I was actually afraid.  They’d been beating up gay men and it was in the news and there I was looking like prey and wondering why women don’t carry purse guns, hat pins and wear sensible shoes. I was ill prepared and realized Feminists don’t want ‘women’s rights’ like the ‘women’s liberation' crowd I was part of.  Feminists just want to wear 4 inch heels and blame men for not protecting these little princesses.  I’d done my share as a man of protecting drunk and drug addicted ex’s with bad mouths from the consequences of their behaviour and frankly didn’t like that role. But we’d argued back then for women to have the right to purse guns and I taught women self defence.  Now here I was in these silly shoes knowing I’d at best take two of the four. Au drab I’d consider the odds not insurmoutable. I’d hospitalized three of 7 attackers once and had escaped many a hairy situation but here I was in nylons and fuck me shoes that were not even meant for walking. I was glad they left and later weeks later the police would catch them and I’d recognise them as the very same guys who followed me.  Perhaps at 6 feet tall broad shouldered and proud walk despite the coiffed hair and padded bra and flimsey dress I’d seemed to threatening to these low life low brow cowardly thugs. 

I’ve always missed the one on one cowboy fighting my friend Kirk and I engaged in as children. Later I’d do martial arts and even competed one on one in wrestling one year. I lost and wasn’t interested in belts but loved learning the skills and starting as a teen the oponents didn’t bow. They also carried knives, scars I remember painfully learning to avoid, and usually came with two or three on one.  It was only in my 20’s I began to be shot at, revolvers appearing out of nowhere and shots whizzing through the air from rifles.  I know that anyone who has faced guns has respect for them and those whose world is tv and games don’t.  I’m deeply disheartened that so many Canadian girls are so utterly ignorant of guns, and war and men.  Our military and police have done simply too good a job.  When I was in charge of the dangerously insane wards in jails and asylums I met the people that one one one scared me and I wished that it was a requirement of politicians especially liberal women to spend some time with these individuals so they could leave off their utopian fantasies and join us blokes in real world.

I envy the princess.  I wrote “I want to be a pricness for a day”.  I admire all the good mothers in my life and the great women I know. Transexual M-F go through an interesting phase when they begin to come out, often dressing age innappropriately or like hookers. The first is the appeal of the girl becoming a woman teen and trying out of different fashions, the too short skirt, the obviously not sensible shoe.  The longer one cross dresses and the older one becomes the more appropriate one is. It’s the teens thazt go through a range of styles and fashions till the settle on what works for them We do the same though with less time and less feed back.  It’s the secretiveness that surrounds us. 

Also the young transgendered aren’t dressing up for work but for social life so there’s an emphasis on the erotic. The difference between the celebrity and the whore is subtle and watching men frequently fail in achieving the right balance is a source of amusement.

I’ve not cared to ‘pass’.  I once read a delightful book called the ‘lazy cross dresser’ and realized that women have been cross dressing for a hundred years and most cultures don’t have the rigid differentiation that ours done. In the tropics I was content to wear a sarong or shorts and t shirt. It’s only in winter Canada that I ‘m even considering hose and undergarments.  

Halloween is a fun time. The Parisian and Italian Concubines and the Western Saloon girls and Burlesque all have a flavour of the 30’s flapper party. Mail order allowed all of us to order clothing fitting for home and since we were not going out it’s not surprising that the transgender crowd has robes and night gowns but not a pinafore in their wardrobe.  It’s only late in the game that cross dressers, transvestites and transexuals actually where gender distinct work clothing. My friend the Transexual Diesel Mechanic simply didn’t change from blue overalls to pink overalls. The overalls the girls working with him wear are blue like his and men and women have long hair and earring so for the trades its often only an issue of their choice of underwear and because they don’t want boobs caught in machinery everyone wears the equivalent of the sports bra or binder. No bullet bras in the journeymen and journeywoman world. 

The Transgender ‘clothing’ issue arises in the legal profession and the office where the female stil wears the skirt despite Hillary’s ‘pant suit’. Ironically high heels remained and make up and lipstick feminists refused to go Amish because theyt really didn’t want equality but rather wanted leverage. Their natural sexuality and appeal to counter the male muscle and brawn.  Hundred thousand years of natural selection.  A hundred years of modern society.  Freedom a very recent matter for the masses. The rich and powerful were always wearing women’s knickers one days armour and swords the next.  What mattered was power.  Conformity was the means to survive for little guy. 

The oldest law is the Chinese law of the fish: There are big fish and little fish.Little fish must be fast and numerous.  Parents wanted children of the middle and lower classes to not ‘stick’ out’.  The tall poppy synderome of the Australian world is the one that got chopped off. The elitte by contrast could in their private world do wahtever. As one poor black man said , ‘social workers and police are in every aspect of our lives. We live on the streets or among others.’ Only the rich can live alone in mansions with no one monitoriing their coming and goin.

In Communist countries everyone is an informer. Wealth and power give those that can afford it the Epstein Island experience or as novelist Patterson wrote, the cannibal dinner party experience. The jaded crave new sensation.

Halloween and All Saints Day and Samhein are all about transpersonal reality. This world and these passing cultural fads and fashions are nothing to the reality of life and death and questions of heaven and hell and purgatory.  We mock convention.

I wear a dress. I have no desire to be a zombie or dress as the dead. I’ve seen far too much death. But I’ve not known enough of the world of Jane Eyre and the Bronte Sisters. That DH Lawrence and Somerset Maugham world placed before the responsibilities of adult hood where families are formed and people live in the fish bowl created by their children who are questioned by teachers and bear tales of the house to neighbours and all.  I didn’t have children. I wasn’t policed. I had a dog who didn’t care if I wore leggings or pants as long as we went for interesting walks and he was well fed and I threw the ball. I can throw ball in skirt and heels or jeans.  My dog might have told the other dogs I was a bit queer but he didn’t tell the authorities.

My friends and family have not really understood but have been tolerant.  I’m surrounded by people who like the male me which I’m thankful for. I’ve served well but at the cost of leisure and self.  Dressed in a skirt I am still capable of writing. But I was driving by an accident au femme and stopped. I stood and observed that those already there were doing a reasonable job. I’ve saved so many lives at accidents and stepped in a took charge. But I actually thought I didn’t want to be exposed or dirty my clothes or get involved so only stood back observing. If anyone had done something wrong I’d have stepped in but au femme I was content to stand on the sideline. I’m also old and learning to let the young muddle along. After a while I left and seeing ambulances with flashing lights, adrenaline and testosterone coursing through the veins of the young.  I pulled out and drove on, glad not to be involved except peripherally.  

I don’t want to be centre stage. Most of my life I’ve enoyed the role of the assistant to the king. I used to be my father and my brother’s assistant and even my mother’s assistant and in surgery was sought after as a surgical assistant. I have definitely been in charge.I’m a solo sailor and a captain but I much prefer the militia to the offiial troups, the role of scout to the role of colonel, or simply being one of the crowd. I have been president and vice president but now am thankful to be able to serve. I’ve always liked duty and service and doubt that is affected by my sense of twin spirittedness or clothing.

Halloween is a time to celebrate the dark passenger or the breadth of the Jungian anima/animus/personna and shadow.  It’s a full moon too.  And an American election year. And the unspoken war with Communist Chiina continues while our PM appears more and more stoned but claims now that he’s ill. Everyone is playing the pity card. I don’t wish to. I like Gladwell’s writing on outliers. I’ve been castigated for intelligence, wealth, poverty, clothing, lack of clothing, sexuality, etc.  Judgementalness is a major coping strategy for many. I love the Catholic list of sins and how those with gluttony and sloth condenm those with lust and the avarice condemn all. I’m trying very hard to learn the Franciscan idea of acceptance, of myself and others. 

Halloween Hallow’s Eve.  I’m fay too. Its definitely the time of the year to be fay.