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 Author
INDEX

[Upfront] The Month
[First Person] Choices Made
[Bits & Pieces] Friendship
[Literati] James Joyce
[the Arts] Arch Enemies
[Memoir] An Invitation
[New York Times] Your Mom Wears Combat Boots
[Closing Thought] Contrarian Ideal

[Upfront]
THE MONTH

Choice Points: those points in our journey where we choose between alternates that impact our spiritual and personal destiny. Alpha Omega's Chair, Gloria Fenton, leads off with a story from her journey.

Diane Frank on friendship, shopping, inclusion, and celebrating life while grieving a friend's terminal illness.

Art: A visual walk on the wild side in killer heels.

When did you first act on those deep inner feelings that you couldn't explain? Gloria Fenton shares from her life and invites you to do the same.

Rudy Giuliani has done it and so have I.  A timely point of view written ten years ago.

And more!

Elaine

[First Person]
CHOICES MADE

By Gloria Fenton

I may have only been twelve at the time but, by virtue of how I was dressed and the physical, mental and emotional senses that I felt, the moment I looked into the dresser mirror I saw a woman for the first time. The flesh and bone of my body had not morphed into being female, but who I sensed myself to be had. I didn’t have words for it then, and still don’t.

I had been born male, and raised as a boy, but for most of those first twelve years I was very well aware that there was something different inside me. Inside I was not the boy that everybody else saw and expected me to be. For reasons I had no clue about, I was drawn to things that were only for girls and women.

Some things were physical in nature. I liked the look and feel of wearing lipstick, stockings, jewelry and a fully padded bra. But the experience went beyond that. I felt more right and real in the girl’s things I could only wear for moments, than in anything I wore as a boy.

Somehow I seemed to know and understand things that girls did while I always struggled to know and understand what it was to be a boy. I did not fit in with the boys my age, but was not allowed to fit in with the girls either, because I was a boy. It sounds stupid to say it, but I remember wearing a ring of my mother’s, dreaming of it being mine, and knowing that I felt pretty, and yes, even beautiful wearing it. No boy was supposed to feel such things.

I knew all about feeling alone, and I knew feeling lonely. I knew the shame of not being who I was supposed to be, and the guilt of being different. Though I was only a child, I knew all about a living hell. I lived it every day. There was no way I could tell anybody what I felt without exposing the freak I felt myself to be.

It did not help that wearing something feminine felt right to me as I was not “supposed” to wear girls things no matter how much I needed to. I had no choice but to be a boy and bury this part of me I had begun to hate with a passion.

My daily life was an internal war to survive. I won a few battles and I lost a few. On that one day when I was twelve, I lost the war. It began with a moment of weakness in trying on a bra. As soon as I saw and felt that bra on me, I could not stop. A couple hours later, for all practical purposes, I saw me as a woman for the first time. I had never felt so real, so right, and so complete. For that moment the boy I was didn’t exist. A whole new me was born.

But the end of that war saw a new one begin. And that one was even bigger because the stakes were higher. I had seen and known a new me, but the boy I was, still had to exist and survive. There was no other choice.

Another twenty-six years of battles nearly destroyed both parts of me. My whole life was falling apart and yet neither part would give up.

There was only one choice.

I had to give each part of me the right, and the freedom to exist. Martin had a life to lead, and so did the part I chose to call Gloria - coexisting as one could not survive without the other. I didn’t stop being Gloria when I wasn’t wearing a wig and I didn’t stop being Martin when I was wearing one.

I don’t expect everyone to understand this, but then, they don’t have to. They didn’t live my life then, and they don’t live my life now. I am not an illusion, a fantasy, or a delusion. Martin is real, and Gloria is real. I know that now.

Others need to make their own choices. I respect that, even if their choices differ from mine. I don’t live their lives. I would hope, however, for the same respect for my choices. No one choice will ever be right for everybody, nor should we expect it to be.

The only label I profess to, as Martin, or as Gloria, is that I am a human being. That is all I am and choose to be.

[Literati]
JAMES JOYCE

Excerpt from   A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

(Students at Belvedere College, a Jesuit school, are preparing for a performance in the play the school is putting on for Whitsuntide, the Christian feast of Pentecost)

In a dark corner of the chapel at the gospel side of the altar a stout old lady knelt amid her copious black skirts. When she stood up a pink-dressed figure, wearing a curly golden wig and an old-fashioned straw sunbonnet, with black pencilled eyebrows and cheeks delicately rouged and powdered, was discovered. A low murmur of curiosity ran round the chapel at the discovery of this girlish figure. One of the prefects, smiling and nodding his head, approached the dark corner and, having bowed to the stout old lady, said pleasantly:

-- Is this a beautiful young lady or a doll that you have here, Mrs Tallon?

Then, bending down to peer at the smiling painted face under the leaf of the bonnet, he exclaimed:

-- No! Upon my word I believe it's little Bertie Tallon after all!

Stephen at his post by the window heard the old lady and the priest laugh together and heard the boys' murmurs of admiration behind him as they passed forward to see the little boy who had to dance the sunbonnet dance by himself.

The original BlackBook magazine pictorial.

[Memoir]
AN INVITATION

By Gloria Fenton

As I was growing up, certain things were just a normal part of a young girl becoming a young woman. The physical changes are fairly obvious, but I am talking more about what were the changes in what a young girl wore, and what a young woman wore. As a girl grew up, she began to wear a bra, stockings, high heels, and lipstick. Other makeup and jewelry were used more by a young woman. A girdle or garter belt was part of what a young woman wore.

I remember learning to wear a bra. I remember wearing my first girdle and garter hooks. I remember putting on my first stockings, and I remember learning to fasten my stockings to garter hooks. I remember wearing lipstick for the first time. I remember learning to wear foundation, eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, blush, and powder.

I remember the first times I wore rings, earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. I remember my first high heels and how good it felt as I learned to walk in them. I remember the first time I looked into a mirror and saw myself as a young woman, and remember how complete and wonderful it felt.

I remember the first mini dress and mini skirt I ever wore. And I remember being glad I had learned to wear pantyhose so I could wear my shorter dresses and skirts, and not have to worry about garter hooks and garter gap. I remember filling out my first skin tight jeans, and being glad I had the figure to fill them out.

I remember wearing my first wig. I remember being young and having a rather boyish figure, and then over time seeing my legs and body become very feminine as I wore a young woman’s things. I remember feeling quite plain and then feeling myself become pretty and even beautiful as I dressed as a woman.

For me that process took many years. But then, unlike other young women, I did not start out as a young girl. As a young boy, I had no choice but to live a male life and take the moments I could to satisfy the need deep inside me that I could not explain.

My life was a constant battle for both parts of me to survive. I’m not sure how, but I did survive. I learned to be a young man, and learned many experiences of being a young woman, as well. I guess I have always wondered, based on my experiences, how someone born a girl, but feeling a masculine side inside them, learned to be a young woman and also a young man.

I would really like to hear their stories. I invite a reply.

[New York Times]
YOUR MOM WEARS COMBAT BOOTS

Published: March 9, 1997

By DAVID BERREBY

"So many people get snagged on the details: 'I'm a white Republican male. I have to wear a three-piece suit. I have to eat with this fork.' Forget that! The party really begins when you can throw all that stuff out the window and say, 'I'm ready to experience life.' "   -- RuPaul, in the January issue of Interview magazine.

DRAG queens like to say that anything you wear is a form of drag. After all, when the day ends the yuppie guy trades his power tie for sweats and a cap worn backward; the businesswoman's practical pantsuit and sensible two-inch heels get exchanged for things tighter, clingier, blacker. So why shouldn't businessmen dressed as cowboys in a Houston bar be called, as one fellow drinker put it, "transvestites"? What are clothes, anyway, if not a projection of a fantasy?

In The Man in the Red Velvet Dress: Inside the World of Cross-Dressing (Birch Lane Press, 1996), J. J. Allen writes that the day will come when he can go to any party and get compliments on his beautiful dress. ("After all," writes Allen, a successful salesman and contented cross-dresser in Los Angeles, "a good dress is expensive -- and is a guy so wrong for wanting a compliment on his appearance?") But if the response to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's performance at the Inner Circle dinner for press and politicos last weekend is any indication, Mr. Allen will have a long wait.

[Closing Thought]
CONTRARIAN IDEAL

Group Information
The Alpha Omega Society is a non-profit social support group for heterosexual crossdressers and their wives or partners. We primarily serve Cleveland and nearby Northeast Ohio communities.

Publication Information
This newsletter is copyright 2007 by The Alpha Omega Society. All rights reserved. Articles and information contained in this newsletter may be reprinted by other non-profit crossdresser organizations with advance permission of the author and provided that proper credit is given to author and source. The opinions or statements contained in this newsletter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Alpha Omega.

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