[Closed] Why can't I just be "normal"?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times over the years. Maybe most of us have. “Why can’t I just be normal?”

Brace yourself because this will probably go on for a while. Maybe grab a drink, or just flip the page if you have things to do, like move house.

So why can’t I just be normal?

It would certainly have made things easier when I was younger. Even now. These days I’m very fortunate, but imagine not having relationship issues because your partner can’t accept your feminine side? Imagine living without the dread of being found out by people you love and care for, who would never accept your genuine self. Imagine not anticipating or experiencing the scorn, laughter, anger, ridicule. No fear of violence for dressing the way that feels authentic to who you are. Imagine not worrying about the consequences of work colleagues finding out. Or your neighbours. Or losing people you’d hoped were friends. And imagine not having the dying urge to tear through every women’s section in every shop in the mall!

Over the years I’ve often asked myself, “Why can’t I be normal?” It would be heaven, right?

Wrong. Very wrong.

And for several reasons.

First, this is who I am. My “secret” side is an integral part of what makes me, erm, me. And, after many years, I kinds like me these days. I’m not sure I would like a different me better. A me without the interesting quirks, the fetishes, the desires, the feminine “me.” My crossdressing has been a part of me since before I was even a me. I first dressed from a bag of my older sister’s clothes that I found in the hall closet. I was very young. 5 maybe? 6? I would take the bag into the bathroom, try everything on, and then undress and stash everything back in the bag and into the hall closet. It felt “wrong” and yet it felt nice. I felt like there was a part of me that emerged when I dressed.

Although I was never “found out,” I suspect my Mum probably knew but she was not the type to ever say anything.

I was a bookworm of a kid, and my Dad, working class, gruff, taciturn, explosive temper, was terrified that I would not be tough enough to survive the real world. Being deaf, he’d had his own challenges, so he used to threaten to send me to school in girl’s clothes unless I toughened up. It sounds like the punchline to an old joke about Mum and Dad finding the BDSM mags stashed under their son’s bed. “Whatever you do,” says Mum, “don’t spank him!”

Except it as a little more nefarious than that. Even before I dressed in my sister’s clothes, I remember an incident when I was 5 or 6 when I was supposed to be in a nativity play and the teachers wanted all the kids to dress in tights and tunics. I flat out refused. At age 5, I dug my metaphorical heels in and insisted I would not do it. I ended up playing Santa Claus in blue trousers! But, the reason I refused, I remember clearly, was that it felt “wrong.” Or that it felt instinctively right and I was afraid to reveal my “real” self to the world. At that age? Amazing. I wish I’d had such a keen sense of who and what I was when puberty finally hit.

I blame Adam Ant, of course. No, not really because I was secretly dressing way before he came along, but yeah! It’s all Adam Ant’s fault, with his eyeliner and lip gloss. And Boy George too, although I wasn’t a fan of his music. But really, when I was a young teenager, Top of the Pops was full of pouty androgynous men, in full make-up and glamorous clothes, and girls screaming for their attentions. And Adam Ant. And because I was one of those kids who had to know stuff, I also knew that he was into BDSM when he was a punk, and alt-sex and, well, that punk attitude and kinky sex got my interest in a hurry. So, all of a sudden, it was okay for boys to wear eyeliner and lip gloss, and androgynous clothes. And so I availed myself of these laissez faire attitudes. I was a New Romantic like Visage and David Bowie and God forbid I snuck out in anything but a hint of eyeliner, because I grew up in a rough part of Liverpool and I’d have gotten my arse kicked if I looked much different.

I remember Marc Almond saying that he would get beaten up for wearing suede shoes in the part of Leeds where he lived. Punk aesthetic be damned, I was too much of a coward to get beaten up. Been there. Done it. Bought the black eyes, and I don’t mean smudged mascara. Between my Dad and where I lived, I stuck to what was safe and subsumed my desires until I was old enough to move out. And by the time that happened, New Romanticism was dead in the ground and I buried most of alter self with it.

Most.

But not all. It was like a weed that kept coming back, one that had its roots in me, a bad seed that I couldn’t entirely pluck. And it grew and I plucked and it grew again and I plucked again, and oh my shit, is it really that agricultural dealing with this feminine urge? I desired femme, not farm!

So, despite it all, this remains part of me. I’ve denied it and it has caused me ill health. I have had bussing relationships die because I couldn’t risk exposing my true self. And then in April this year I had a health emergency that really made me evaluate who I am.

I’m 59. My wife is 40. We have a pretty great thing going on. I told her everything before we married because I really liked her. I mean, really, really liked her, and I’d been distraught and desolate before and I had no intention of going down that road only to pull a bait and switch. So I told her. The dressing, the kinky sex, the toys I liked, the lot. (Almost the lot!) And she went, HELL YEAH, BABY! LET’S DO IT!!! So we did it. Almost 20 years ago we got married and we embarked on a blissful journey of peace, fulfillment, and everlasting joy.

I wish!

No, life has this way of sneaking up on you and, between layoffs and family pressures and everyday life, things decayed from an initial honeymoon where we had even attended a cross-dressing party. (My wife wore one of my suits, a fake beard and a strap on, while I looked elegant in all black, with black lingerie and heels and made up like a doll! Thinking back, I should have worn the black leather mini I loved! God, the things we could have done if I’d been bolder. But, you know, life. And eventually things build up and I put on weight and no longer felt attractive enough to dress up and, then I got more depressed and put in more weight and yet my urges wouldn’t go away. But U felt dumb even attempting to satisfy my urges, And so, ultimately, I went on a strict diet. And then my pancreas packed up and went on holiday and I ended up in hospital almost blind, nearly dead, and considering what the hell I would do with the rest of my life.

And what I could do was get healthy (I’ve sensibly lost 100 lbs with more to come) so I can finally be me again. And my wife is absolutely behind me. 100%. Even when I revealed a final snippet of being sexually attracted to the feminine body, even ones with male appendages. And yet here she is, still behind me, supportive, loving, and amazing. Despite it all, our marriage finally feels stronger than ever. And that takes a lot of strength, strength I wouldn’t have if I was only half of who I really am.

So, while lying in the hospital bed considering whether I had a future, I was thinking, “If only I could be “normal,” right? Except, it dawned on me after this long, I finally understood what everyone says. There is no normal. Normal is a fetish prized by unimaginative people. Afraid people. Liars. I live near a town called Normal and I still don’t believe in normal.

Your picture perfect neighbours are normal? Hell no! Who knows what goes on in their heads. And if they are not secret kinksters, then they are either dead already, fetishizing some imaginary dull society, or dangerously in denial.

So, briefly, to address the second part of why the question, “Why can’t I be normal?” Because normal doesn’t exist. Everyone is weird in their own way, and my need to dress in feminine clothing to complete myself, to be authentic, is less weird than the guy down the street who gets home and kicks the dog.

So why can’t I be normal? Because there’s no such thing. Give me weird, give me kinky, give me gender-bending blurred lines, give me a glorious, multi-dimensional matrix of possibilities, a technicolour spectrum, but don’t ever tell me that who I am is not normal.

Toni/Tony