Season's Greetings from the DemiMonde

When one has a social life which has a significant component of leisure activities with BDSM people, and crossdresser's of every stripe and ruffle, then the holiday's are experienced like you were the "other woman" again and again and again. Many of my closest acquaintances have another life in what is usually called the vanilla world as do I. (And what flavor is this world? tutti frutti?) So come the holidays, everyone disappears, only to re-appear in January with all new outfits!
"Come on. I know your wife didn't give you that. Shopping for dresses again under cover of Christmas?"

And so to all the orphans out there, the penthouse mistresses, the girls who just put their the weekend wardrobes in the back of the closet. Have a very Merry Christmas, and hope to see you in the New Year.

Ten Signs You are No Longer a Casual Crossdresser

"Everything was fine until they crossed the Macon County Line"

---- promotion for movie of the same name

As a service to the community,

Are you wondering whether your proclivities and obsessions for the female appearance and the female role have reached a tipping point? If so, look at the ten signs below. If you recognize yourself in more than 4 of the signs, then you can be assured that you are no longer a casual crossdresser. You have seriously crossed over sweety, and you might as well stock up on the Dr. Scholls, because those heels are going to punish your feet.

Here they are

1) You can't remember where your tool box is. Your garter belts are in the second drawer of the dresser in the spare room.

2) Its Christmas and the catalogs are coming in. Your mailbox resembles that of a french whore house.

3 ) You couldn't name a single network program. but have seen every episode of Say Yes to the Dress? Friday Night, TLC

4) You no longer have a few articles of female clothing, in fact it has been a while since a majority of your clothes were male. If your wardrobe was an ecology, and if your togs were species, then I believe the word used is supplanted.

5) The waitress at the diner says " thank you sir" You check the mirror. Have I messed up? No silly you are in male mode.

6) You think of yourself as in male mode.

7) A couple of women in the office are talking about the Sex and the City dresses how great Vivian Westwood's dresses are. You want to blurt out, What about Alexander McQueen?

8) It is Christmas, when its safe to shop for clothes in the department stores. You still take advantage of that, but this time you bought 3 bras, and they didn't ask you if you wanted them gift wrapped.

9) You missed the football games last sunday, because there was a luncheon party , and you were seen in that ecru silk dress. I mean it is not only silk, it is beaded. bugle beads!

10) That lovely young woman sitting across from you. You still wish you could see through that blouse.... and check out the tag. Is that Forever 21 or Charlotte Russe?

These are events collected from my own and the lives of a few friends.

They know who they are.

Leela

"Put on a gown that touches the ground

"Float on a river forever and ever" "

Pink Floyd

And why does Devi choose to cause a universe of befuddlement, a universe that includes gender confused along with all those other poor confused souls etc.   The devotees of the Goddess say  Leela, sanskrit for playful enjoyment.  I love that concept.    the religion of my fathers was one where we asked, why did God make us.... and were diligently drilled in the answer,

"God made us to show forth his goodness, and to share with us his everlasting happiness in heaven. " but actually in the day to day... it seemed more like a trial.. and the consequences of disappointing Him...well... they were sort of extreme.

So on the chinese menu of religion I choose one from column B... Leela.

It is just the loveliest idea. And I think if I can align my issues with the grand play MahaLeela

And what better way than a gown that touches the ground. It worked for Emily.

Gender Queery

Didn't the Barbarians put it best at the dawn of time...."Are you a boy? or Are you a girl?

Someone will answer the question, not necessarily you,and then... Then you know what bathrom to use. but when the question is "Am i a boy? or Am I a girl? then the fun begins. Genderqueer. this is the modern view which i didnt grow up with.

The Bugis have 5 genders. Surely we in America can have more. I grew up with the gendered soul... gender as an immutable mark upon the eternal self. And transexuals were stuck with bodies that didn't match the soul. Male and female He made them...

We didn't know that She made them. And She is a lot more playful.

I return endlessly to this question... Who am I?..Who would I be? Illness recently brought it back to me...When you are ill, and lacklustre then I felt that my feminine side was more challenged.. That is perhaps the lustre... but it is more that I am feminine with some people and more masculine with others... and illness cut me off from my normal weekend social life.. and it is harder to find Belinda.. in a coughing, sneezing.. mess in sweatpants.. than to find Bill. But we all end up coughing, sneezing.. and too lacklustre to suit up for saturday night, so what does that mean. Much of my life has been a journey from Bill to Belinda...If I am not making that journey and I have not arrived at Belinda.. then what?

So Is there a fair port called Genderqueer where weary mariners, their silks and satins in tatters can find refuge?

I can pretend so. I put on a dress or I put on a suit.. It is my choice... no? Not looking very butch in my drab..not fooling too many of them in my drag. There is a social world where I can be that. But what about in my heart, in my soul, in my loins?

Can you walk to two ways? Can you talk two ways? What about that soul? Is it gendered?

The androgyne... My hair is long. My body hairless. Small breasts... Thin not given to overly masculine demonstrations except for the occasional know it all asshole of course. The weekend, so my nails are painted but only in clear polish... I am home, and my clothes all came from the women's department, a skirt from a friend, a blouse that I have worn as a boy in NYC.. sort of a few flounces on a plain garment.

Doesn't a nomad need to wander, and every port is a place to go to, and to leave.

Halloween is coming.

What shall I wear?

tintinnabulation

Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Edgar Allen Poe

I haven't had a cigarette in six years, quitting with holiday bronchitis. Generally healthy since, but now I have been sick with respiratory infection for 7 weeks. And after 30+ years of smoking cigarettes, living through my father's tribulations with the wages of this particular vice, I felt a few times a sort of terror, and at least once I verged on an anxiety attack. Luckily my history of mental health is such that I recognized the condition, so I didn't march off to the ER.

Some seek the consolation of philosophy, but it is thin gruel. I prefer the consolations of religion, which for me is meditation, and the reaching out for the divine that I find there.

I wasn't terrified by death so much as by life; the invalid's life. How much of my life is frocking around with younger friends, making up for lost time, creating Belinda. How much of Belinda is dependent upon Eros. After all Belinda arose out of sexual fantasies and sexual desires. But when you are sick enough, there are no desires, only the desire to be well.

For me, throughout my life there have been intrusions, or manifestations. Events subject to interpretation. A sea aged plastic ornament red hearts connected by an arrow found on the beach on Mother's Day, a few years ago... and going way back... insects droning doom doom doom on a hot summer night and falling confused into conversation with my homosexual neighbor (married with kids, so quite a surprise) but that is a whole other story.

So with renewed religion, studying Goddess, Laksmii, Tripura Sundari, Devi... She of many names and modes of worship, there is sometimes, connection. There are the constants, ocean, birds, winds, the constituents of nature, or MAyA. Kinds of a feeling that it is all pretty good, pretty right. In fact I just wrote on the topic just a couple of monthes ago. Butterflies.

So in my battle with depression sleeping poorly ,waking early, I heard something, and I really couldn't place it. Finally I decided that it was sleigh bells... though we are short of snow and sleighs here in New Jersey this time of year. But later that morning, I was reading the Saundarya Lahari... the Flood of Beauty. Reading verse seven,

Kvanat kajci dama .. from the sound of Her belled and garlanded waist...

purostAd AstAm nah. ..... may she be in front of us...

Not all divinities are outfitted with girdles with bells, and I had certainly forgotten this detail, the Goddess manifest in a sound.

Synchronicities. Divine Coincidences. Some of us seem to need them, and blessedly we receive them. Anugraha... Grace. Small miracles which suggest rather than compel. I am never quite sure what to make of them, and not sure that I make of them what I should, which may be the same thing.

Definitely feeling much better now. Going out Saturday Night... returning to old habits, good and bad. Yet it is hard to deny that everything that you hold onto, clear thought,... Belinda.... goes.. and for me the terror wasn't the going, so much as being left behind... the shut-in. But that is for another time.

Nama Laksmii... Nama KAli

Sex Change Hospital

Not fully recovered from my illness, I spent a quiet night watching episodes of Sex Change Hospital. Like almost all TV shows, I wasn't aware this one existed, but once it turned up, I was shall we say in the demographic? Long ago, I knew a drag queen who taught me a lot, and always referred, mildly disapproving, to those sex changes...not the procedure... the people. So watching a number of those sex changes... (they actually show the procedures but blur them, like those private parts were in witness protection). I got to thinking.

Hearing those stories... it is a natural question In the demographic? the audience or the players? and while I have referred to my imaginary vagina, a real vagina is a whole other thing. I am more certain that I will not be on an episode bantering with Dr. Marcie Bower, about when I first realized I was a woman, my year of living as a woman complete, my coterie of shrinks proclaiming (or is it alleging) that I am not a psycho. Nor will I be in Thailand showing a wad of cash, and skipping all the rigamarole. But.... If I could snap my fingers, my wrist slightly limp, and voila... bye bye old friends, and hi new friend, then I certainly would do it. And go back to work the next morning... nobody the wiser.

But on the weekends ..Talk about accessorizing...

So does that make me a transexual. I think the obvious answer is yes. Does it mean that I am unfulfilled with my imaginary vagina? I don't think so. I just think that those genderqueer boyz and girlz are closer to the real then the well meaning doctors, and their sincere and hopeful patients. but then again I don't have a single letter that says I am not disturbed.

Shelter from the Storm

Out of commission for a few weeks with illness. And illness always brings to mind its old friend death. Not to be too melodramatic, but when you smoked cigarettes for 35 years, and then thought you dodged that bullet and the old smokers disease comes along bronchitis, and you can't get rid of it, then you need to see doctors, and who knows what they will say? So a chest X-ray, my first in probably 20 years or so. Like the young doctor said to me.. "who knows some people say if you want to stay healthy stay away from doctors" Amen brother. I dont just preach it. I live it. So showing my tits to a perfectly polite technician, and no one remarking about them. Are they invisible to the vanilla world? Or is everyone just ho hum these days. Anyway to my surprise the x-ray did not reveal imminent death though I sort of expected it. And so it was just a few weeks living the life of the infirm and convalescent.

Boo Hoo. Missed all my kinky birthday celebrations, though I had a perfectly lovely one as pater familas up in Maine on the family vacation. But the real topic is illness and gender right? Since the blog is everything and gender. Well, ill me is not particularly femme, Femme for me takes energy, enthusiasm, I need to feel something. Not just the hollow sloshing of my own effluvia. So I am almost well. My little friend the wren came visiting during the hurricane. I forced him back into the elements.
Its prevail or perish in any world I am familiar with. It looks like Belinda will prevail for a little while longer. Thanks heavens. I must have half a dozen outfits that are barely worn. Full moon on its way, and that means feeling femme, frisky and looking forward to tranny night in King of Prussia.

Ave atque vale.