Hair: A Lament

"Give me down to there.  Hair    Shoulder-length or longer".   MacDermot, Rado, and Ragni.


I have had a  happy seven year relationship with estrogen.  Long undecided about the seriousness of my  gender quirk,  I have over and over been surprised by my need to acknowledge my feminine side.  Hormones were perhaps the greatest surprise to my addled psyche.   First trying herbal stuff and then turning to the internet for the real thing in the form of patches that you slapped on your butt, and let them do their magic.  I didn't notice many emotional changes in my estrogen soaked brain, but i sure noticed changes to my estrogen soaked chest, breasts!   Well golly. I guess that I was rather more serious about my femininity than I sometimes imagined.
That was 2007, and within months I began dressing in public and socializing with other open mined and like minded persons as Belinda.  I was still a closeted cross-dresser i suppose, but i had opened the closet and taken a nice stroll around the house.  There were people who knew me as Belinda, and only knew me as Belinda.  And of course with shaved legs, chest, and breasts,  breasts so sensitive I was amazed,  I began to believe that I was truly trans.  In the years that followed, i grew to believe more in the importance of my Belinda-ness to my future happiness.  When i retired, i pierced my ears and began to grow my hair long, finally coloring my old lady hair at the salon,  among the other ladies old and young.   In recent months I had begun to see a gender therapist, began to see a clinic to get legal hormones, and revealed my transgender proclivities to my siblings and children.    All the signs of late onset transition.
Then whammo!  One week I was contemplating my future, and  then the next I was seriously contemplating the concept of no future.  After a few weeks,    I had a brain operation to remove a meningioma,  and took many weeks to recover, but recover I did and when I finally realized that this was not my final chapter, I once again began to think about the future, but the future wasn't like it had been.   I looked into meningiomas, and realized that prudence dictated that i accept the possibility that HRT had possibly contributed to my illness and I stopped taking estrogen.  When I thought my life might be very short, I felt that gender issues were not necessarily the most important issues.   But things have changed now.
Two months without estrogen have left me with a lot of anxiety.   It has made my beard more hairy, my mind more horny,  just feeling in general more mannish and the hair on my head....
Well brain surgery is not ever the best thing for your hairdo.   And then I began to worry about male pattern baldness, and started noticing that perhaps my hair was indeed falling out.  You can just put on a wig,  right?  like so many of the other girls.  I must have 4 of them in the back of my closet.  Each of us is unique in our history, and our relationship to gender.  I have never felt that my male self was a mask or a shell, hiding my female self.   Rather I felt like I had to create my feminine self, and part of that creation was physical,  breasts, hair, hairless skin which remind me when I look in a mirror at any time that I am of two genders or none depending on your point of view.   I can live perfectly contentedly with old lady hair dyed or not, but I fear that old man hair will make me cry.

But yesterday I think I came upon a solution.   Avodart,  dutasteride.   The anti-androgen that is used as a treatment for hair loss.   I know it is shallow to worry about what is on top of my head rather than what is in it,  but I never claimed to be that deep.   My poor hair may not be what it once was, but I am not going to give it up without a fight.  My order is being shipped as I write this.  Most transsexuals take estrogen and anti-androgens at the same time.    I have decided to practice serial hormonics.

Breasts, Bras and Boys

"Mess with the Goods... You Gotta Pay".

 Tattoed Love Boys  

Chrissie Hynde.

( Photo: Ms. Belinda Lee,  Actress,  1935-1961)

Stage 1:  Bra’s … who wears bras?  Bras are for girls.

At first it was the panties.  Always the panties.  It was that way for years.  I only have one older memory of bras.  I was at my Aunt’s house.  I was in her bedroom fully clothed sitting in front of her makeup table.  My Aunt was better endowed than my mother, and I remember sort of half wearing one of her bras.  Suddenly she was right there.   I don’t remember exactly what was said.. It sort of went like this:
1) She knew I was trying on one of her bras,
 2)  I was embarrassed,
 3) We never spoke of it, and life went on.

 I was in my mid-teens.

Even when I began to expand my interests,   nighties,  full slips,  lingerie in general… I never made too much of bras.  My main interest in them at that time was what they were concealing on the girls I knew.

Stage 2:  Filling a bra with nylons for that girlish figure.

So  bras were only a slight interest, when I began  dressing fully, or at least wearing skirts and blouses, and that didn’t really happen until I was married, which is my mid twenties, but even then.. my wife’s bras didn’t fit,  I mostly wore found items, and bras weren't a big part of it. 

So it was really after my first marriage ended that I began to wear bras at  dress up, I had purchased a few at   Lee's Mardi Gras.  I was in my early thirties.. Iwas slowly becoming interested in my own breasts. 

Stage 3:  I wish I had breasts! 

And things  developed from there.   I was in my fifties when I really began to embrace the bra, especially after my second marriage collapsed.  Then I began to acquire bras that fit better,  Underwire bras, that gave me a little extra lift.  The perfect bra?  satin, underwire to give my pathetic titties a little lift, without padding, so that anything brushing over my nipples.. (like my fingers!) felt great.  I began to wear them to bed!  I just felt totally butch if my chest wasn't encased in a sweet satin bra.

That went on for some time,

Stage 4:  I have breasts! And I love my bras. 

It was only in the past five years  that I began to work in earnest to try to fill those satin bra cups.  Herbal concoctions, and finally my friend estrogen.  

Wait some monthes.. some years, and voila… small but respectable titties.. and bras always with my outfits.
No more bras to bed.  Wearing them during the day and evening like a respectable woman, and really nothing.. nothing made me feel more like a woman than a bra.  

Stage 5:  Flashing the Goods

So this week I was invited to a party.  Not normally my kind of party is was a house party for T-girls and men.  Not a XX chromosome pair to be found anywhere.   I have been interested for some time in trying out some flirtatious fun with men.  They have been notably absent from my playlist, if you don't count sissy boys.  

So... I just thought..  corset, sheer silk blouse.. bra?  well no.. how about no bra.  My assets just visible.. my slightly enlarged nipples.. showing through my sheer printed blouse.   That might interest a man.

So I learned a lesson every girl is knows by the time she is 20.  You want to get a boy's attention,  flash him a little decolletage.   It's really true... simple creatures... very simple creatures.. who knew?

At any rate, I know now what it is to be oogled, and I know how forward men can be.   The party was just getting started when he took me into another room with him, and he told me that he had noticed how nice my breasts looked... He wanted a closer look... and well he wanted more... but this isn't that kind of blog.. and I am not that kind of girl.   Well anyway .. this isn't that kind of blog

So my romance with bras has come full circle, and I have learned the virtues of a sheer silk blouse.

Pheromones Again

A couple of years ago, I was wondering how estrogen might change the way I smell, and whether that would cause otherwise heterosexual men to be attracted to me.

http://harmonybelle.blogspot.com/2009/12/full-moons-pheromones-and-i-phones.html Well it was sort of a weekend of philosophical discussion and t-group sort of activity this weekend, and a post op T-Girl who has been married was asked by a woman who was curious why She used to be attracted to girls, and was now attracted to men. And what the postop girl said was .... "well men just started to smell good" Things that make you go HMMM... or is that HUM! the night before discussion was about knowing yourself, and how it isn't about you, and other things that sound good, but I always wonder.. like " Is everyone having me on?" Be honest about what you want..etc etc.. I mean I think I want to get up now and get another beer, but beyond that.. like whether I want boys or girls.. or maybe just lots of mirrors... well I don't really know. But I do know that my sissy girlfriend who is after all a boy... well She smells wonderful, and I love to ..well I love to smell her. and that means I love to smell him... and that means... gasp! oh double gasp!! I like boys... cause I actually like to touch her where she isn't a her , and smell her.. and in the morning touching her and making her swell.. and the strong unshowered morning smell of her.. and I can only say that the whole experience is just swell. In evening contemplation, enjoying the lime wafting from my my beer. I can entertain the possibility that it all sounds awfully homosexual of me, and I just looked up late onset homosexuality, and they mean like 20 or something, so that is definitely an F in the Introductory Know Yourself. But I forgot... I take hormones! and while Girls still smell great, now boys smell great too, and could it be just that simple... Better Living Through Chemistry. And now I am thinking with this essay I may just be able to cajol the professor into giving me a C-

Full Moons, Pheromones, and I Phones

The full moon occurs on new years eve, and I realized it was coming this morning when i woke up with such powerful femme feelings, a need to touch my swelling breasts, and imagine myself all woman. I love the idea of having a secret cycle which peaks at the full moon, and that it has a reality of its own now, though at one time I consciously cultivated the concept. Woman may not agree, but i feel it is so wonderful to have a cycle, and so I seem to have developed one though it is not so much about fertility, as my feminine sexuality, and also my meditative consciousness. My peak meditation experiences occur around the time of the full moon as well, and of course that makes sense because i chant the pancadaza, the 15 verses, which are the name of Tripura Sundari who is embodied in and rules over the full moon, which contains the 15 Nityas, + Tripura Sundari, on the sixteenth day of the waxing moon, the sixteenth day, the day of the full moon.

see http://www.astrojyoti.com/lunarphasesandthenityadevis.htm for a concise description.

And then there are hormones. Of course, i am a male who takes estrogen, so I don't experience the holy cycle of hormonal changes, rather I just am on hormones, day after day. And I of course love my hormones, and what they do to me, part of my secret self, which is both in the world and out of it. I imagine, and sometimes it seems to me that all that estrogen..well you can smell it can't you? I mean that old gentleman sitting there at the bar, or the coffee shop. Isn't there something about him? something incongruous, and yet.. something... appealing. I have always loved the smell of women, and imagine it works below consciousness, the kingdom of the olfactory. I find ..well it is a little embarassing, but I know a few people, men if you must know, who seem to respond to me, in a way that is almost inappropriate, and I don't think they are particularly gay, nor is the interaction in any way overt, but well maybe it is just me, who can say.

Well ok let me ask my I-Phone Or rather my magic eight ball app. SIGNS POINT TO YES Well part of my journey has been one into fancy, and i the analytic one, the rational one. I don't mind the eight ball's dismissal. After all, the ringtone says "I am he, as you are me." but that can't be! I am she! WITHOUT A DOUBT. That's better. The I-Phone is my Xmas present from my daughters, and well i was never an acolyte at the altar of Apple but.. I love the I-Phone! Who knew? it isn't really a phone that is the secret. It knows where you are, and where the closest pizza is at all times? The Bhagavad Gita and Rg Veda, in Sanskrit no less are there for reference whenever I am in a contemplative mood, and soon it will be telling me what birds surround me, wherever i am, and playing their sweet songs for me. All that and I have only had it a week. Should i download Dress Up and Makeup? or Girl Wars That is listed for Girls only. At any rate the possibilites are endless, of course with a phone full of fab girly apps I will probably need to explore phone security. If it falls into the wrong hands? gasp! i would be mortified.

If only the I-Phone could smell. I think we could have quite a relationship.

Feminized

Hormones. Specifically estrogen. For almost 3 years, I have through the good offices of the global internet market slapped a little patch of pretty on my derriere weekly, and watched the wonderful transformation as my sad male breasts began to blossom and swell. Hidden treasure, unlocked by the chemical key. And what other goodies, were in the treasure chest? I tried recently to do an inventory. The breasts, the slow beard, the little bit of flesh on my scrawny buttocks, maybe a softening of the face, according to someone who has observed me throughout. But what about the mood, what about the mind, the subtleties, the sex!?

The river never slows. Aging, meditation, and estrogen, a lovely way to spend a decade or two. Where one begins, the other ends more or less unknowable. I am calm, opening up, less self involved (o.k. only kidding) , a-himsa-- non-injury, the letting go of aggression, so there is less male aggressiveness, but i can't place it particularly in feminization, though meditation, feminization, they blend together.

What about emotion? A few of the Ladies have laughed at taking hormones, talking about the emotional roller coaster, but i think that emotional roller coasters come with the cycle of hormones, and i take hormones in an a-cyclical manner, though sometimes tuned to the moon cycle, i feel the energy peak at full moon time.

But there is definitely something there that is hard to lasso, I think I look subtley different, and i smell subtly different, and these blessings work a little covert magic. I know that I have acquired an attractiveness for a couple of heterosexual males, that might just be friendliness, but feels likes it has elements of courtship, some lunch friends.

and of course my body feels and smells different to me. The mirror is right there, and we are not playing dress up, and there we are, and we are certainly not very masculine looking with our breasts, and our smoothness of limbs, and desire comes so often so clearly through the chest, the breast, the breath.

In meditation, in quiet moments, energy moves up the spine, and through the chakras. In a sensual mood, energy moves up the spine, and congregates in the chest. If you touch the nipples, then it almost hurts, the feeling that arises and descends into the loins. At that feeling is such a femme feeling, that in imagination, you are transformed, boy no more, fully feminized, without fear (or is it hope) of return.

Is it live or is it memorex? don't know, honey, don't care. It is all there, always was, uncultivated, unrecognized, undermining the tall towers of masculinity. Now She emerges. She is not me, but she includes me. Let's me travel alongside, Queen Estradiol, and i Her devotee.