The Woman Makes the Clothes               by: Paul G Jutras

 

From the very start I knew I was different. Even when my mother was potty training me I found that I preferred to go sitting down over standing up. Mom would yell at me that it wasn’t the way men went, but I didn’t care and couldn’t understand why mom was complaining.

It wasn’t until I was six that I truly knew I was different from my male friends. Mom had her complaints when I bit my small feet in mom’s heels and went around the house. Made me decide to only play with her make up when she wasn’t in the house. Feeling like a couldn’t talk to mom about my feelings, I could never bring myself to ask for the canopied bed I wanted when mom asked me to pick out a bed and never got the Barbie Dolls I so wanted for my birthday. I settled for playing with my friend’s Missy’s Barbie collection and inviting her over to my club house for tea parties.

My family wasn’t all bad. My parents ran both a restaurant and a motel. On weekends and summer vacation I spent all my time with mom and the cleaning crew, trying to help them clean the room. Though I was more in the way than anything at that point. It was how I found Puff, my cat who came to me like magic and I talked dad into letting me keep even though he hated cats. He soon grew to love. Puff was an outdoor cat who could disappear for days at a time and often brought use dead mice and birds for presents.

The three of us were as close as a family unit could get and would often go on picnics that included potato sack races. Being friends with the owner of another motel with a pool we got free swimming access since mom hated the ocean salt water and I hated the beach sand. We played many games together in the ocean where dad would toss me over his head into the deep end and I often pretended to play pirates and the diving board as a plank to walk. My friends Missy and Jason often went swimming with me and at that time I didn’t mind exposing my chest since I sometimes saw real little girls with there chest expose. I was like a fish underwater.

As time went by, dad sold his motel and joined the government. Mom and me were left alone and grew as close as buddies can be. Always going shopping, movies and doing everything together. When dad sold the motel the new owner’s cat had kittens and I got the first pick of the litter. Dad was sometimes lucky to come home for a visit 3 weeks out of an entire year.

Mom tried to make up for dad being away so much. I could pretty much have anything I want, except what I wanted most. We had many trips to amusement parks like Santa Village, Story Land and even Disney. Whenever I had to dress up and I asked mom for a skirt and heels mom just ignored my wishes and got me a suit and tie. Would never buy me the purse I wanted. When I was ten, I first learned that sex changed operations were possible and one day that I stayed home from school sick, I had a mid-day nap where I dreamed of going to the hospital and having the operation done.

When mom started to work again for the town chamber of comerance, she was force to dress up. The hamper was always so full of pantyhose, it was easy to raid it for a pair that I would hide in my room so that I could slip in my long pants and winter boots to school. They were so much warmer than the long johns mom would buy me for winter. So much more comfortable. I found myself in school sitting mostly with the girls where I’d borrow there issue of cosmo magazine and we’d talk about hair, make-up, clothes and even boys.

I often was nervous that I’d be discovered in the school bathroom using the stall, but I didn’t really care since I was happy. I was even happier when I started using the school library to try to research how sex change operations worked. Unfortunately the Apple computers didn’t have internet access and wasn’t much luck over the years. I was just lucky I wasn’t wearing a pair when I collapsed in a school field trip and was rushed sick to a hospital where I spent the weekend.

I suffered in silence as comfort as my hair covered body only sickened me. When I tried to shave my body I only ended up cutting up my legs and nearly slitting my wrists open. I only had the Saturday Morning cartoon with the male characters hairless body as some comfort as I wished I could be as hairless as them. When swimming my teenage feminine modesty had me wanting to keep my chest covered with a shirt even if I didn’t have breasts to be modest about.

I tried to fit in with stuff like boy scouts with my friend Jason but wish I could join Missy in her girl scout uniform as she sold cookies.

When I turned 18 it was the happiest time. My graduation gown was the closest thing to a dress I wore since I outgrew mom’s skirts. When returning from my grandparents I tried to explain to mom my feelings that I always felt but she didn’t understand the differences in TG lifestyles anymore than I did at the time. She bought me a series of gay lifestyle books trying to understand me, but only drove me to the brink of suicide. When mom asked me if I still wanted to be a woman, I lied and said no since at that point I would of said anything to end the suffering my was putting me through with her attempts to understand me.

At this point I tried to be the man my parents wanted me to be while I started collage while living at home. That didn’t last long before I started using my own money to go shopping for my own pantyhose to wear sometimes so mom wouldn’t notice her own missing. Once I tried my COMMENDOR 64 computer with a IBM that had internet access I soon learn more about the differences between being Gay, TG and TV.

When I graduated from collage and started to work I tried talking to mom again my feelings. All she had to say was that I wasn’t feminine enough to be TG but agreed to my seeing a counselor. A counselor that was only interested in having me accept my body as it current is and that I couldn’t be happy changing it in any way. Nobody what I said, I couldn’t convince him. With mom dealing with house plumbing problems and more I choose to hold off causing her any more trouble for a short time. I know this truce is only temporary and the future is a mystery.

THE END

 

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