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Got dressed and went out today with wifey, just to do a bit of window shopping and perhaps to buy some perfume for myself. The city centre was very crowded, all the brats were on half-term holiday and Christmas is coming—although you'd think it was tomorrow, not in nearly two months time—it was fairly manic.
My wife and I tend to split up for brief periods—I look at this, she looks at that—and on one of these occasions, I decided to buy my perfume: a big bottle of Carolina Hererra Good Girl. So I went alone into The Perfume Shop (I wonder what they sell? 🙂 ) and asked for their largest bottle and ended up buying a gift set that also had a body lotion and a handbag spray.
She asked for my email address for the discount and I suddenly remembered that the only other time I'd bought in that shop, I was in drab and had given my male email address (which has my full name in it). Well, I wanted the discount, so I gave her the address. She obviously knew I was male but I still felt a little self-conscious giving a male-named email address but, bless her, she did not bat an eyelid! She even got my surname right (it's a bugger if I don't spell it out) but admitted she'd spelt the first name wrong at first—but again, not a flicker of anything to say she wasn't treating me as a woman buying perfume.
Yes, I know. If I was being cynical, I would say that since I was about to hand over in excess of a hundred quid, she'd pretend anything to get the sale, but I think she was a very genuine young woman who just wanted to help. She was a delight.
We didn't stay too long in the city as it was truly hot and crowded and my wife doesn't do crowds very well, but nevertheless, it was a lovely day out.
When we got home, as is usual, I didn't want to let go of Becca, but the dog has to go out for a walk, so I reluctantly changed back to drab(ish) and took her out. However, I enjoyed myself so much today that I got dressed again as soon as dog walk was over and will remain this way until bedtime (still another few hours).
I wouldn't want to dress as Becca all the time, but it would be nice to be able to come home and then take the dog out without changing. Perhaps one day.
Becca
She asked for my email address for the discount and I suddenly remembered that the only other time I'd bought in that shop, I was in drab and had given my male email address (which has my full name in it). Well, I wanted the discount, so I gave her the address. She obviously knew I was male but I still felt a little self-conscious giving a male-named email address
There was a discussion here about identity issues a few months ago. Crossdressers have a legitimate need for credit cards, virtual or VoIP phone numbers not linked to drab you, and e-addresses while we are out and about, so I mentioned that there is an easy way to do e-mail - use a forwarding service.
How this works is that, when someone sends mail to me (stores or whoever), duck removes any tracking links and then sends the message to my normal e-address.
I use duck dot com and when I reply to anything coming in, my outgoing address remains as they know me. Easy peasy. Secure. Free.
@harriette I use my gmail account which uses my ham radio callsign. As far as credit cards, no one see the name these days. It's either tap and go or insert and PIN.
Gmail accounts are easy to set up and can be set up in any name.
Cerys
@dazzler Good points, true, but some people already have more e-mail accounts than can be watched all of the time. Having a forwarding service consolidate accounts saves time and fiddling.
@rebeccabaxter If your wife is happy with you crossdressing and going into town, why do you have to change to walk the dog? Is it in case someone local/neighbour sees you?
How do you get into town? How do you get to the car?
When I started getting out and about, it was under the cover of darkness. Dog walks were done in the dark. I had facial hair back then, but thankfully we had covid masks to wear.
My wife was worried about the neighbours. She didn't want to ruin the relationship we had with them. We get on well with our neighbours.
When I decided that I wasn't going to hide anymore, my wife reluctantly agreed that the neighbours would be allowed to find out. They slowly found out one by one. I allowed myself to be seen, and then went to chat with them in the street. Not one had an issue. No one cared.
These days, I'm out and about almost everyday. I practilly live as Cerys. My neighbours don't look twice when they see me. They don't mention it when we chat, other than to occasionally say "you look good today" 🙂
If you are out and about in the city centre, there is a chance that someone you know might see you. why do you still feel the need to hide away locally? You seem to 90% of the way towards total freedom. The last 10% is a hard step, but if you can make it work, it's the best step you'll ever make.
Cerys
@rebeccabaxter If your wife is happy with you crossdressing and going into town, why do you have to change to walk the dog? Is it in case someone local/neighbour sees you?
How do you get into town? How do you get to the car?When I started getting out and about, it was under the cover of darkness. Dog walks were done in the dark. I had facial hair back then, but thankfully we had covid masks to wear.
My wife was worried about the neighbours. She didn't want to ruin the relationship we had with them. We get on well with our neighbours.
When I decided that I wasn't going to hide anymore, my wife reluctantly agreed that the neighbours would be allowed to find out. They slowly found out one by one. I allowed myself to be seen, and then went to chat with them in the street. Not one had an issue. No one cared.
These days, I'm out and about almost everyday. I practilly live as Cerys. My neighbours don't look twice when they see me. They don't mention it when we chat, other than to occasionally say "you look good today" 🙂
If you are out and about in the city centre, there is a chance that someone you know might see you. why do you still feel the need to hide away locally? You seem to 90% of the way towards total freedom. The last 10% is a hard step, but if you can make it work, it's the best step you'll ever make.
Cerys
It's a softly, softly, catchy monkey approach. There are some people in this village that are the type to bring out the torches and pitchforks for people like us. Most people won't give a fig about it but I have to be a little bit careful.
I don't take too much care about going out to the car, so long as one particular neighbour is not about (horrible woman!) as she would bad-mouth me with the village as much as she could, given the chance. If anyone else sees me going to the car, well, that's fine. If anyone I know sees me in the city, that's fine too; preferable even. If my secret gets out by hearsay, then I can live with that. One thing I'm trying not to do is the equivalent of announcing my cross-dressing by megaphone; some people need to be drip-fed such things.
I have been seen already by my neighbour across the road but nothing has been said and they still talk to me.
Unless something drastic happens, that last 10% will have to be done in fractions of a percent.
One thing that might precipitate an avalanche is that our lovely, ancient, quiet next-door-neighbour is selling up and moving into a warden-controlled flat a long way from here. I am not going to sneak around the new owners because I believe they are a young couple and will, unlike my present neighbour, be up and about much later and I'm bound to be seen by them. This in turn will inform the neighbour next to them and thence to the local bar and so on and so on.
People must already be rather suspicious because I wear red or pink nail polish, my ears are pierced, I wear a lot of rings, a bracelet and a woman's wrist watch. My car registration now ends in the letters CDR. I suppose I am not really all that far from using that megaphone.
We'll see what happens in the next few months.
Becca
I like that approach and, in many ways, it mirrors the approach I have been taking. in some cases I allowed certain individuals to see me in female trousers and tops to begin with, then eventually moved to skirts - it sort of got them progressively aware of my presentation. I don't know whether it was necessarily a good approach, but it has not led to any problems either 🙄 .
Rebecca x
@rebeccabaxter People will only talk for a while, if they talk. If they do talk, it might not be bad mouthing. Once it stops being a secret, all the power is with you. You take the power from the secret. In my case the power of the secret was in my head. TBF, it was also in my wife's head. She was the one most fearful of what neighbours would say. I'd been wanting to tell them for many years.
Even at 90%, you are still much luckier than most. You have a supportive wife. One that goes out and about with you shopping etc. Many would dream of this.
Good luck the the final 10%. I have a sneaking feeling that soon you'll be posting about telling your neighbours. When the secret is out you won't know yourself.
Good luck!
Cerys
@rebeccabaxter That does sound like a good day. My experience of shopping for femme stuff has always been good. Last time I was shopping in Plymouth I came back with some lovely stuff from Boux Avenue and found them to be very helpful.
Anna xx
Hi Becca, That is a lovely story and thanks for sharing it. I hope you get a lot of pleasure from your perfume and body lotion. I hadn't heard of handbag spray before; I'll have to keep an eye open for it.
Although I have a Rebecca email account, I don't have any bank or credit cards in her name, so I just share my male details when needed. It has never detracted from my experience and, like you, I have never seen an eyelid batted! I have found the vast majority of shop assistants are genuinely lovely people who just want to help and treat us well - as you so eloquently say, they are 'delightful'.
My wife also does not do well with busy crowds (half term around here too), so we also ended our shopping trip as things started to get busy this morning. As we pulled up on our drive our neighbour approached to tell us that the very substantial tall stone pillar (adjacent to our property) had been struck by a lorry which had reversed over the kerb, across several feet of grass verge, backed into the pillar, left it at a dangerous and precarious angle and had driven off. An absolutely crass bit of driving. So I was fully en-femme standing outside discussing this with my neighbour, when the local town counsellor arrived with her daughter to take photos and report it to the County Council. She left but then another estate resident arrived to join the party, and another went by ... and yet the total count of eyelids batted still = zero! Don't you just love it when we are totally accepted for the way we present 😀 .
Hugs, Rebecca xxx
PS: The pillar is adjacent to where the local school children congregate to catch the school bus in the morning. I think this catalysed activity because by early afternoon a ring of red cones surrounded the pillar; by late afternoon they had been replaced by robust barriers, and shortly after I received an email to say this had been passed to the Highways Agency for urgent attention. Surprising, an amazingly swift response.
@fembecky Goodness, what an event! Glad that everyone is safe and the local administration and the Highways people have showed good joined-up thinking. I hope the lorry driver is traced and they (or more likely, their insurer) get to take a deep breath at the bill 🙂
Isn't it amazing what you can do as a woman though without anyone giving a hoot? This morning I put one of my cars into my local garage for its MOT and service and collected again it just before dusk. I've had two quite detailed mechanical/technical conversations with a couple of the guys there, both fully en femme. I was treated with the same warmth and to be honest, friendship, the way they do with all their regular customers.
@finallyfiona ... and that is just the way it should be with such conversations - gender doesn't (or shouldn't) affect understanding of technical topics!
Did you ever see any of the Charlie Martin videos on YouTube? She transitioned a few years ago. Before transition she was the expert within her family business on (I think it was) numerical controlled machine tools and all the potential customers went to her for explanations about them. The day she first came into work en-femme a customer was pointed in her direction for all the info on them, but the customer's reaction was "I'd rather have a man explain this to me" ... 😱 👎 [ I think I have got this correct; I don't have time to search for exactly which video this was mentioned in, but they are all still on YouTube I believe].
Rebecca x
Hi Becca, That is a lovely story and thanks for sharing it. I hope you get a lot of pleasure from your perfume and body lotion. I hadn't heard of handbag spray before; I'll have to keep an eye open for it.
Naively, when my wife—who opened the box for me when we got home—said, "You have a handbag spray with this," my first thought was, 'why would I want to spray perfume into my handbag?' Must be a senior moment, turns out it's very small spray containing the same perfume as the big bottle so that you can 'top up' when out and about. Doh, I am such an idiot sometimes!
Doh ditto! Of course that is what it means, I should have realised.
from an embarrassed Rebecca
@rebeccabaxter Becca I thought the same thing when I first read it. Hello McFly!🤣
What a lovely day out Becca! I really like how the shop girl/lady treated you so much like any other woman 🙂 Fingers crossed that you get to do dog walks en femme before too much longer. You know you're secretly working towards that, right? 😉
Big hugs lovely
Fluff xxx
I'm another gmail fan, (and "yet there is more"), cos CDH is linked to another one. A computer nerd mate set up the gmail so it filters all the garbage promos.
Then there is my "normal" male a/c.
Caty.
Oh, I have an email account for me as Becca but I didn't have it at the time I first bought stuff from the shop. If I'd used Becca's email address at the shop, I wouldn't have got my discount as an established member.
I used to use an email address on Yahoo that used a phrase rather than a name but several messages I sent to people were treated as spam because of the nature of the words; this is why I changed to using my real name.
Next time I go in, I will use my feminine email address and buy something cheap to start me off, that way I won't lose much discount but will still be established for a bigger purchase the next time. I might as well, since I'm en femme almost every time I go into Plymouth now.
Becca
Becca -
What a lovely day for you and your purchase sounds amazing.
I only dress at home as my wife doesn't want me going out of the house. I'm okay with that. She does on occasion invite Suzanne over for the day which is nice. Those are usually days when the dog is at daycare as I'm the primary dog walker. I've changed into drab to take him for a wlak and changed back before but it is a lot at times. I hope that changes one day.
XOXO
Suzanne
