Mouth Breeding

In 1975 I was a 22-year-old undergraduate with an undeclared major and no particular ambition or goal in mind.  I liked to write, so I took a course in technical writing, which led to my first (of several) closeted crossdressing fails.

In my mid to late teens, I had two hobbies – crossdressing and tropical fish. In my post-pubescent teens I discovered lingerie and makeup, and through connection or coincidence, became fascinated with three exotic species of tropical fish - angel fish, paradise fish, and the gaudy and incredibly aggressive species Betta splendens, better known as Siamese fighting fish.  Male bettas are the ones you see in their individual fishbowls, and for good reason. If two male bettas meet in their native environment, they won’t fight if one or the other can flee and hide.  But if there is no escape, like in an aquarium,  they will.  In fact, they will usually fight until one or both of them is dead because, well- that’s what they do.

A male betta looking to get busy follows a rather curious courtship ritual.  First, he declares his intentions by building a floating “bubble nest” with great attention to detail.  The mating ritual is a kind of dance where the male wraps himself around the female and squeezes the eggs out of her like toothpaste, while he releases little clouds of “milt” into the water.  With surprising finesse and gentleness, the male picks up each egg individually with his mouth to ensure they are properly fertilized.  Then, with great care and precision the male places each egg safely in its own protective individual bubble.  If an egg falls out of the bubble nest, he will immediately retrieve it with his mouth and return it to safety – hence the unfortunately lascivious appellation “mouth breeder.” In stark contrast, while the male betta is busy mouth breeding, the female betta is busy gorging herself on eggs, until the male returns to form and closes the buffet with extreme prejudice.  He will then stand guard over (under?) the young until they emerge from the bubble nest, at which point he is as likely as not to eat them himself because, well – that’s what they do.

By my early twenties, I was no longer interested in mouth-breeding bettas, but I was extremely interested in crossdressing. When my technical writing class started, I first laid eyes on the grad student who would be teaching.  To state the obvious, I have a major thing for androgyny, and he was definitely all of that.  He was also close to my age and gorgeous, which made me weak in the knees.  We took an instant liking to each other, sharing looks and flirting, and even dropping some guarded references to crossdressing.  I desperately wanted to just say something about how I enjoy wearing lingerie under my boy clothes, but it would be several more years before I was doing things like that.

From the start of my post-pubescent years through my mid-twenties I made a quantum leap in my crossdressing.  I discovered makeup and lingerie and favored a look and outfits that would make a streetwalker blush! I dressed almost every chance I had when home alone.  I was feeling my oats and starving for attention, but I was also hopelessly shy and closeted. So, given my taste in women, I was absolutely smitten, and all I could think about was finding a way to be teacher’s pet.

Time may not heal all wounds, but in this case, it did because, for the life of me I can’t remember his name or even his face.  What I do remember is he had a common name and a most uncommon look and vibe. It was my very first serious case of love at first sight, and I was all in.  He may not have been quite so dazzled as me, but there was a spark, something very real between us, what I would call the pink fog today.  We would share looks, slyly smile, talk and flirt, and drop some guarded, but unmistakable hints about crossdressing.  Things looked quite promising, and with the naivety of a twenty-two-year-old in first love I was steaming full speed ahead with no idea that I was on a collision course with the iceberg of lost opportunity.

Our final exam was to write a “description of a process or mechanism” - a complete, concise, and detailed explanation of what something is and how it works, or of the process involved in making, doing, or using something.  This would have to be something I knew about, and my expertise was pretty much limited to crossdressing and tropical fish.  I thought about it and saw an opportunity to turn my A into an A+, by conflating the two.  I would write about bettas, and speak to the teacher personally and tactfully, between the lines, and with clever double entendres and editorial comments.  That seemed like a great idea at the time.  It wasn't.

I set to work on my magnum opus with enthusiasm, crafting an objective, serious, witty comparison on the relative merits of mouth breeding compared to the alternative.  When the time was almost up and I read it, I had some second thoughts – "Ok," I had a panic attack, and rightly so.  But I was running out of time, so I went ahead and pulled the ripcord.

As soon as I turned in that paper I knew it was a big mistake. What I had written was basically a silly, trite, overly dramatic, thinly veiled, semi-pornographic crossdressing fever dream.  It was ham-handed and so blatantly homoerotic, in such poor taste, that I couldn’t even make eye contact when I handed it in.  As I saw it, the spell was broken, and that was that.  I never saw him again.

Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young.  I got an A for the class but as far as the A+ I guess you could say I blew it.  The fail wasn't so much making the first mistake as the second - letting it all slip through my fingers because I didn’t have the nerve to at least face him and talk to him – maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought – but at twenty-two all I could do was hurt, and that was what made this such a tragic fail. My opportunity was lost, I will never know.

I wanted to save that paper as sort of a carpe diem cautionary tale, but it was lost, fittingly, when a broken sewer pipe caused a flood in my parents’ basement.

So I suppose the moral of the story is the next you meet a guy you really like, forget the chit-chat, just ask him if he is also wearing panties under his trousers. Do that and I will promise you one thing– you won’t look back like I am years later having to wonder. And if the guy has a problem with your crossdressing you can always just say, well – that’s what I do.

with love and respect to all who read this,

your friend and sister always,

sarafina