Remembering during the Corona Virus Shutdown
This is a short post, and not even particularly sexy or titillating. However, it is important to me to record this memory because I have for quite a while thought that my interest in transgender women was initially aroused only when I was in my late 30's.
Since I have a health issues, asthma and middle-age in my case, which put me in the high-risk category to have serious complications if I catch the Virus, I've been pretty much hiding from the world, reading books, and thinking about how the world has been turned topsy-turvy in the last 4 weeks. I remembered this incident which occurred decades ago, when I was in college, and it stunned me to realize that I really did have Trans thoughts when I was much younger.
I was probably 18 or 19, and I didn't have a steady girlfriend or really a best male friend, instead I just was one of a group of twenty or thirty people of both sexes who hung out in the same places to drink beer smoke cigarettes, and talk about life, love, academics, sports, sex and politics. One of those people was Bill B., who was a good-looking young man, a former high school football player, a B student, and a bit of an iconoclast who showed a certain disdain for the rules. It was a period when the terms beatnik and hippy were both still being bandied about to describe the slightly odd folks, and while Bill didn't quite fit that stereotype, he wasn't the usual button-down shirt, tweed jacket, khakis and Weejuns guy, either.
One evening Bill and I were drinking with two or three other members of the group, and he said that he'd had a really weird experience; he had gone to one of the bars near the main gate of the Ohio State on High Street, and been picked-up by an attractive girl who took him back to her apartment. They started making-out, it became very intense, and then the girl told him that she was a crossdresser, and not a woman. The thought that he had been kissing a man instantly revolted him, and he got up and left her apartment immediately, and walked back to his fraternity house, where he'd laid awake all night wondering about his own sexuality, and why the crossdresser had been attracted to him.
The discussion droned on for a while, and the other fellows chimed in on how disgusting it must have been, and how they would've wanted to wash their mouths with Listerine, et cetera, et cetera. I can't remember if I expressed such thoughts at the time, but if I did it would've been in self-protection and self-denial mode, because I remember that I felt sexual arousal and a sense of empathy and affection for the girl. I didn't have the nerve to ask Bill where the girl lived, or any details of her appearance, but I wanted to know that. I never did find the right moment to ask him.
I remember now that I had erotic fantasies about the girl, and what might occur if I met her for quite a while afterwards. Subsequently I think that my conscious mind just sublimated the fantasies and the memories, but they remained. I saw Bill at a couple of reunions later, but never raised the subject, and am not sure that seeing him evoked the memory. He died young from some sort of cancer.
It seems oddly upsetting to me that I've been crossdressing for twenty-five years and didn't put two and two together until now. I wonder whether I would've met the girl if I'd had the courage to ask Bill more about how to contact her, and actively pursued her companionship. Finding one person at Ohio State is not exactly an easy thing to do, and she might not even have been a student. Plenty of non-students hang out in the bars on North High on the weekends, looking to be predators or victims.
In any case, it now seems to me that I clearly was exhibiting an attraction to transgender women when I was just a teen-ager. I wonder if would I have become fascinated by the girl if I'd met her, and suspect that the answer would have been affirmative. I also suspect, actually I'm relatively sure, that the realization that I myself am a transgender person would have come to me almost twenty years sooner.
Since I have a health issues, asthma and middle-age in my case, which put me in the high-risk category to have serious complications if I catch the Virus, I've been pretty much hiding from the world, reading books, and thinking about how the world has been turned topsy-turvy in the last 4 weeks. I remembered this incident which occurred decades ago, when I was in college, and it stunned me to realize that I really did have Trans thoughts when I was much younger.
I was probably 18 or 19, and I didn't have a steady girlfriend or really a best male friend, instead I just was one of a group of twenty or thirty people of both sexes who hung out in the same places to drink beer smoke cigarettes, and talk about life, love, academics, sports, sex and politics. One of those people was Bill B., who was a good-looking young man, a former high school football player, a B student, and a bit of an iconoclast who showed a certain disdain for the rules. It was a period when the terms beatnik and hippy were both still being bandied about to describe the slightly odd folks, and while Bill didn't quite fit that stereotype, he wasn't the usual button-down shirt, tweed jacket, khakis and Weejuns guy, either.
One evening Bill and I were drinking with two or three other members of the group, and he said that he'd had a really weird experience; he had gone to one of the bars near the main gate of the Ohio State on High Street, and been picked-up by an attractive girl who took him back to her apartment. They started making-out, it became very intense, and then the girl told him that she was a crossdresser, and not a woman. The thought that he had been kissing a man instantly revolted him, and he got up and left her apartment immediately, and walked back to his fraternity house, where he'd laid awake all night wondering about his own sexuality, and why the crossdresser had been attracted to him.
The discussion droned on for a while, and the other fellows chimed in on how disgusting it must have been, and how they would've wanted to wash their mouths with Listerine, et cetera, et cetera. I can't remember if I expressed such thoughts at the time, but if I did it would've been in self-protection and self-denial mode, because I remember that I felt sexual arousal and a sense of empathy and affection for the girl. I didn't have the nerve to ask Bill where the girl lived, or any details of her appearance, but I wanted to know that. I never did find the right moment to ask him.
I remember now that I had erotic fantasies about the girl, and what might occur if I met her for quite a while afterwards. Subsequently I think that my conscious mind just sublimated the fantasies and the memories, but they remained. I saw Bill at a couple of reunions later, but never raised the subject, and am not sure that seeing him evoked the memory. He died young from some sort of cancer.
It seems oddly upsetting to me that I've been crossdressing for twenty-five years and didn't put two and two together until now. I wonder whether I would've met the girl if I'd had the courage to ask Bill more about how to contact her, and actively pursued her companionship. Finding one person at Ohio State is not exactly an easy thing to do, and she might not even have been a student. Plenty of non-students hang out in the bars on North High on the weekends, looking to be predators or victims.
In any case, it now seems to me that I clearly was exhibiting an attraction to transgender women when I was just a teen-ager. I wonder if would I have become fascinated by the girl if I'd met her, and suspect that the answer would have been affirmative. I also suspect, actually I'm relatively sure, that the realization that I myself am a transgender person would have come to me almost twenty years sooner.
4 years ago
And not yet. 
