Ordinary Life

Some like the high road, I like the low road Free from the care and strife Sounds corny and seedy, but yes indeedy Give me the simple life

Give Me the Simple Life Rube Bloom / Harry Ruby

So much of my time being Belinda is in a social whirl;  parties, clubs, mobs of t-girls and other assorted denizens of the demimonde.   There are some exceptions.  I have a friend or two that I quietly socialize with. But all in all, Belinda is a party girl.   I actually have spent very little time out in the world, in daylight at the malls, and the town centers trying to pass as a sweet older lady, who spends minimal amounts of time frightening small children.  The reasons for this can be summarized fairly easily,  1) While I emerge from my house here with an appearance that is decidedly androgynous as often as not,  I am not in the habit of launching a Belinda outing from my house.  I am usually getting dressed at someone else's house (see mobs of t-girls and other denizens of the demimonde).  2) Bathrooms.  I generally am terrified of using the Ladies Room, and as Belinda cannot use the Men's.   3)  Most of my life the thought of going about the normal world dressed as Belinda,  would give me rabbit eyes, and jelly knees.
Reason 3 is pretty much a thing of the past for me now, and for my Saturday of Femmy Fun, 1) was taken care of by staying over a friends, after a party, and dressing as Belinda there in the morning.  The day was as simple as it was significant.   Breakfast,  Strolling in the Park,  Hair Salon,  Check into the Raven in New Hope for a room so I could spend the night there at a fabulous party.  Breakfast was uneventful eating out with friends, something I have done a million times.  The park was lovely, on the Delaware River on a perfect day.  I had a soda, I had a water...  OH I had to pee!  Off to the Ladies with nothing to protect me but a pair of Versace Sunglasses.  Easy as pie.. i entered the stall, some other girls did the same, they departed, I departed.. total stealth.  I did notice that the Ladies though unacquainted, did chat a bit at the wash basin, and that of course reminded me of my FATAL FLAW.  I don't attract much attention as I go about my girly business when I am dressed appropriately.  In this case, I was wearing a long dark skirt to hide my chigger bites. ( i live in New Jersey after all), a pink blouse, and a pink jacket with a pearl pin I got in the flea market  I looked like my grandma I imagine and everyone was smiling and friendly.  In New Hope, when I went to WAWA,  a cop parked next to me, and he smiled and said hello.  That is a first!   Oh right my FATAL FLAW,  my voice.  I have never really worked on it, and when I speak I get made.  This is what I dont want to happen in the Ladies Room as a friendly lady remarks to me about how lovely a day it is.  I have decided to work on a feminine voice, motivated by a desire not to be involved in incidents where friendly women, flee  the restrooms hastily.
Oh right I almost forget the Beauty Parlor.  This is my third trip, to have my hair worked on, but the first time I came as a girl.  Everyone was lovely at the Hair Salon.  My women do talk a bit!  And they talked with me,  about the ordinary things of ordinary life.   And I croaked back in my husky baritone.  There will be more excursions into ordinary life.  I like ordinary life.  This is the real woman's life.  I get all melty just thinking about it, and I am only about a full octave away from it.

Femmephiic? Femmephobic?

"Don't you think it needs a woman's touch to make it come alive?"
Mick Jagger.. Live with Me.

I have lately been thinking about forced feminization fantasies.   These fantasies have always been powerful erotic triggers for me.  In particular before I really wore girls stuff while masturbating, I fantasized about being forced to wear girls stuff.  Recently I have begun to think about the forced feminization fantasy as a dynamic that grows out of two forces.  The first is Femmephilia, a love and desire for things femme, where femme means that which is traditionally associated with women, female interests.  The second force is Femmephobia.  This is a term I found recently on the internet.  Here is a lucid description   Femmephobia is the denigration of things feminine, and this is a cultural factor that is particularly though not exclusively directed at boys and men.
In the typical forced femme fantasy, a boy or a man is feminized by a woman   This feminization is introduced in a context in which punishment occurs  (petticoat punishment), or it is introduced in order to have power over the male.   In either case, the experience is both humiliating and erotic for the male victim.  The elements of femmephobia and femmephilia are intermixed in these stories.   The male is often weak, or naive.  In this way he doesn't have the power to resist his feminization, and in his heart frequently there is a question does he want to, because frequently these actions forced on him are his own secret femmephilic desires.  In fact his desires are so femmephilic that they frequently involve the most uncomfortable or childish or slutty feminine attire.  The sissy is secretly more femmephilic than the average woman, while sharing the femmephobia of other males, which is reflected in his feelings of humiliation, and his need to be "forced" to dress as a girl.
If we were prone to psychodynamic explanations of  fantasies, then these fantasies are a begging to be analyzed.  Does the powerful female represent one's own Id , while the weak and malleable victim represents the insufficiency of ego, which is trapped by the cathexis of a satin corset?   Probably,  but who can afford psychoanalysis.    Instead I am left with my own two cents.  However these fantasies arise, they take on a life of their own.  In my case, I have had numerous interactions with real dominant women, and i know perfectly well that these interactions have not and will not in the future unfold like forced feminization fantasies.
  "I want to be turned into a girl."
"Oh please don't turn me into a girl!"
The Domme is like... "duh.....later".
 So rationally I know these fantasies don't really function in the real world.  I have sort of outgrown them fully realizing that the only force which may be involved in my own feminization is that force you would need to take this pencil skirt from my cold dead hands.
Nonetheless.. give me a good forced femme story...and I am all a-flutter!
Go figure.

Petticoated Re-enactors

"Past times are pastimes"   Marshall McLuhan.

I participated in another tea party.  I think I have been involved in 5 so far this year, so in my social circles tea parties are fairly common.  My tea party took place at an event where there were other elaborate scenes including a pageant for little girls over the age of 21, and an equestrian event.
I have been thinking about such events as tea parties, which from one perspective are sorts of re-enactments of historical events.  I think they are not thought of that way, because most tea parties don't end in a pile of corpses, (unless you go to a Borgia tea party).  My first experience with this sort of role playing was when I attended The Sissy Maid Academy,  no longer in existence, which I described in this blog, two and a half years ago.    It was a transforming experience for me.  I learned about the possibilities of bringing some of these common tranny fantasies to life in a safe and insane environment.
So I have done a lot of them now, and while they are clearly for the serving staff, the realization of a sexual fantasy,   For the mostly  female guests, they are a form of re-enactment.  Some of the ladies wear period clothing, and the elegance, and formality of the proceedings hearken back to a time when there were Ladies and Maids, and good stuff like that.  And for this server at least, the excitement of the event is less sexual than it is good old fashion playing including princesses, and saucy maids.  They latter I guess being missing from most young girls dress up repertoire.   And if you look beyond the tea pots and tables into the larger event, there are lots and lots of adults playing dress-up  in leather and lace, and playing together.   The accepted term in fact for scenes between consenting adults at these event is "play".  And if you move beyond the parking lot of the event and peer into the community that surrounds it,  there are all sorts of people hunched over screens engaged in World of Warcraft, and Second Life, and a host of other adventures beyond my limited familiarity.   And of course in the closets of some number of my fellow fanatics,  the uniforms of old wars, and for a few Star Wars!...  Quite a bit of fantasy it seems to this observer in and out of the bedroom.
For me the tea party is a place where I may meet people who may be interested in pursuing more explicitly sexual  play, but at the party they really only want tea served by adorably dressed maids.   And in that time and place that is really all I want: to be adorably dressed and competent maid and to serve buckets of tea, and sweet and savoury delights.   An example;  just last night I was at a party, and began talking with a charming woman.   She remarked  "Didn't you serve at the tea party?"   referring to the event of the week before.   Small world! ( At least I live in a small world)   I was delighted to converse with her, and she took some interest in me.  (I mean what dominant lady in her right mind wouldn't having seen me walk the walk and talk the talk  ("Can I serve fill your cup Maam?")
And these are truly remarkable times we live in, where you can be a confederate captain, a cross dressed member of the red army,  a sissymaid, or a Wookie.
 If you don't believe me, look it up in the Wookiepedia.

Ananda in this Floating World

Here I go and I don't know why, I spin so ceaselessly, 'til I lose my sense of gravity...  
Patti Smith,  Dancing Barefoot


Sometimes I'm dancing on air, but i get scared. 
 Jagger / Richards,  Can Your Hear the Music


Ananda.    This is a word worth exploring.   Sat/cit/ananda.  existence/consciousness/bliss.  This is described as the subjective experience of the supreme soul,  the Atman, God, which can be achieved by seers in a meditative state.   But ananda is also one objects of the the karmendriyas, the fundamental organs of action according to the Samkhya philosophy that is the basis of yoga.   The karmendriyas are 5.   mouth , hands, legs, anus, and sex organs.  And ananda is what you do with the sex organs.   what Alex  in Clockwork Orange  called  "the old in and out".    So the same word is used for orgasm and the subjective experience of the divine.  
It wasn't long ago,  I wrote about a sexual religious experience so these things matters have been on my mind this summer.   
The week coming promises to be a workshop on Ananda in all its manifestations.   This weekend I am going to a BDSM weekend long event with a dear friend.  Then I am going directly to an ashram for a week of meditation and as it happens a week of studying the Samkhya philosophy.  
The weekend event will include a tea, for which I will have some lovely accessories my Lady friend put together.  So it will be not Tea and Sympathy, but Tea and eat your hearts out you drab sissies!  I am however on the hot seat as my Lady friend requested that I provide a surprise to spice the event up.  Surprises are not something I do well, so I m still mulling over the possibilities.   I have been practicing a little High Protocol service which I will give her as an option.  There is also an age play pageant.   I know she enjoys age play, so I may enter.  At any rate, I think the weekend will offer an opportunity for a fun blog post.  ( I can perhaps surprise her with that)  after I return from the ashram, unless of course i enter the satcitananda of  the uncreated Brahman, in which case the rest of you are on your own.  

Stimulus and Response

Oh it ain't no good unless it hurts just a bit
John Cougar Mellancamp


It wasn't so very long ago that I referred to the people in the BDSM world as as the leather people.  I understood them to be kin in the big kinky family, but I thought of myself as separate.  My interests were in role playing, dominance and submission certainly, but I had no particular interest in the dynamic of pain.  At an event I had heard someone say that play was synonymous with pain, and thought that odd.   That was a couple of years ago, and my own relationship with BDSM has evolved.  More particularly, i have played with others and found that there can be much sensuality in giving and receiving pain in an intimate setting.  A Mistress favored me recently with a play date, involving a cane, and well .. there is no way around it.. canes hurt.  But the sensual way that She caned me, the attention to my body, to my reactions.  Well it was very erotic.  When I remarked following the session that the cane was rather painful when delivered to the back of the legs, she remarked that the ritual we were engaged in was called S&M for a reason.  Well said,  Mistress.
These experiences of pleasure at the end of pain parallel my experiences with avoiding orgasm, or more specifically avoiding ejaculation.  I seldom masturbate to ejaculation, and when i do, it is generally because i let something go too far if you know what i mean.  So being unpartnered at the moment, it is actually quite some time since ...  I fairly frequently engage in activity with vibrators, and other feminine fun, but with discipline that does not end in messiness.   I connect that discipline the pain of denial increasingly with a general increase in my sexual awareness.  I feel more often like a girl sexually... even having girly orgiastic spasms on the beach, as I described in the last post.   I have been trying to eat right and exercise lately, using a device in the basement to sprint until I am exhausted, which is taking longer than the initial 35 seconds thankfully.  Of course running is painful... I deal with it best by attending to something else, but today i noticed that running ...well it just made me feel all sexy... sexed up...  aroused.  Oh my!  Is it the pain that is arousing?   Is it the general arousal associated with my chastity?    At any rate I no longer find myself apart among the leather people.  I am the leather people.
I am off to the ashram for religious renewal for a week or so.    I almost forgot to mention for the record, I went to the hair salon and had my hair bleached.  It took 3 hours!  talk about feeling girly!  I had so much foil in my hair that I was picking up signals from Rigel.  This was the final step in my plan for moderate feminzation.   But more on that upon my return.

On the Beach

I am fortunate to live fairly close to a town that at its north end provides miles of fairly empty beach.  A little stroll up the beach, and you can find yourself alone with the ocean.   It is an experience that I have come to treasure more and more.
The ocean....imagine.. it formed 4 billion years ago, it covers most of the earth's surface.
Walking along the shoreline,  over and over hearing the sound of it.  Perhaps this is where the the sacred OM was first heard... the syllable of creation.    A few times now..lying in the sand by the ocean..i have had intense experiences... so intense as to be sexual.
The ancients described material existence as consisting of basic elements,  earth air fire and water.     The elements were alive and compelling at the shoreline... Earth.. turned to grains of sand by the ocean's power,  Air, the endless wind blowing ever shoreward, Fire  older than the ocean... heating my naked skin,  and Water...tasting it on the air.. hearing it,. smelling it,  feeling it... seeing it.. Mother Ocean, Goddess Ocean.
Two aspects of the experience have stayed with me.  First was the feeling of the greatness of this force that I was connecting with.  billions of years old, covering the earth, and that perhaps just an aspect, someone greater.  It was not difficult to realize my smallness, my momentary-ness.  And more i felt as if She was there all around, except for this darkness, or a fear, which was me.  I was that which resisted dissolving into the vastness for now.
The other aspect of this experience was that it was... sexual.  I found myself touching myself, particularly my breasts to enhance my consciousness of Her.  There is no question that the energies experienced in meditation have connections to sexual energy.  I have for a while associated intensity of energy in meditation with habits of controlling my sexual behavior from day to day, particularly refraining from orgasm.  ( Something which is easier for a girl on hormones than what those poor boys go through)   Still, this was an experience more like masturbation than meditation.   Specifically a fantasy of sexual encounter with Devi.  And you can't really say that a sexual encounter with the Goddess who is eternal, all pervading, and all knowing is a fantasy, at least I don't think you can.   At any rate, it is an experience that compels me, and I do want to repeat it.
But I may need to be patient.    Unfortunately,  even the most deserted beach i know is not completely deserted in June, and I need to feel alone to have this experience.  Worse, I spotted a green head fly near the dunes this week.. The foretaste of a horde.    The unforgettable experience of being repeatedly bitten by a swarm of hungry flies could be a kind of fore-play to a creature more splendid than I.   In fact, the only relief at that point is total immersion in the Ocean, though they do seem to have an uncanny ability to keep biting while underwater at least for a little while.  So I have a little time to think about my next encounter.  Being a lapsed Catholic, I am rather startled by the whole thing.  The little boy inside says... "that is not an acceptable way to know God. "  but then again St Theresa who is a better Catholic than I ever was, had experiences that might make a greenhead blush.
So following her example, i shall walk shoeless on the deserted shore, and seek ecstasy, just as soon as the flies leave.

Forever Female

"Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.  Religion is a light in the fog"    Edie Brickell

It's summer time when the sensible retire to the beach shielding their faces from UV with the latest offering from James Patterson, and the unhinged search obsessively for discussions of the gender of the soul on the world wide web.  This offering will not give away any kickers regarding Alex Cross's latest exploits.
Surprisingly the immortal soul would appear to be a rather critical piece of the theological edifice, but descriptions of its quirks and qualities seem far removed.  Not much that rises above the description of a ghost or a wish or a hunch.  There seems to be a fair consensus that it is the type of thing that can get some nasty stains, which aren't going to get "Shouted Out", unless the shouting invokes the term Hallelujah liberally, otherwise there seems to be surprising indifference to what is going to die and what is going to continue.

I not surprisingly am interested in the question of whether the soul is gendered.   I have touched upon it briefly in a couple of recent entries,  Gender Queery , and Case-of-miss-taken-identity where I briefly talked about the biological and cultural side of things, where gender can get quite complicated and crazy.  The question of the soul is interesting because it is a question about essence.  Is gender an essential part of me, which is separate from my body and upbringing?  There is certainly an idea like that common in the transgender community when people talk about being born in the wrong body.  If I am born in the wrong body, then one conclusion would be that my soul has a different gender than my body.

In general,  I have found that religious traditions that teach a single ensoulment,  (they deny re-incarnation), are more likely to ascribe gender to the soul, but there isn't a consistent message.  It seems that the Bible, Quran, etc is either ambiguous or mute on the subject.  The philosophical traditions in which Western Theology grew, generally reflected the cultural norms which were everywhere in the ancient world, which is to say that " boys are better than girls"..nyah nyah nyah.  Having defined a weaker sex, it kind of messed up the even playing field that those immortal souls are supposed to be on,  so in my interpretation, the issue is largely ignored in doctrine.  For a very nice discussion of the issue from a wonderfully sensible Christian perspective,  I found a site which is more about the discussion of the immortality of souls..  Myth-one.com
There it is argued that immortal souls are not gendered, because gender exists to support reproduction which is not a something the immortals want to get involved with.  (Even a low birth rate leads to horrendous population problems when nobody dies)
 On the other hand, the popular view seems to be that if I am to survive death, then I certainly am gendered, and so that is that.   One religion clearly states that gender is eternal, supporting that popular view.  That is LDS, the mormons.  A fascinating discussion of this Gender, Mormonism and Transexuality  shows that while immutability of gender was declared by church leaders  to oppose some ideas in the transgender community regarding the mutability of gender.  These ideas of church leaders are quite consistent with the traditional view of a female or male soul being born in the wrong body.

This morning, I was reading the upanishads to get away from all this gender nonsense, and they supplied the answer without my asking , because the issue is central to the Eastern religious traditions.

naiva strI na pumAn esa na caivAyam napumsakah ....

This is not like a woman, not like a man, and not like a hermaphrodite...

Shvetashvatara Upanishat

and so....  I would perhaps like to envision my real self as forever female. After all i am accumulating a wardrobe that should make it through the first half of eternity.  What?  Souls don't require clothes?  They don't accessorize?  Now what really would be the point of that?   ... but probably not to be....Of course a couple of reincarnations as a tall thin red head...and then I'll hurry on to nirvana,   I promise.  OK I lied.. in the lastest one... well I didn't see it coming, but it turns out that Alex Cross was born a woman.. go figure.