Christine, Covid, Cannabis and ?

I think it is safe to say that there is hardly a person in the world whose life has not been affected and altered by the events around Covid-19.

Take Christine for example. I first met Christine sometime in the 1980s when we were both taking our first steps ‘out of the closet’ and learning to identify ourselves as crossdressers which meant at the time that we were genetic males who enjoyed dressing and trying to pass as females but had no desire or practical ability to change our genders.

I was taking hesitant and guarded steps out while Christine took the ‘bull in a China shop’ approach. Shortly after I met her, Christine was on a path to divorce, estrangement from her children and loss of her job. Apparently, her employers did not take kindly to having one of their technicians show up at work wearing a skirt, blouse and at least a bit of makeup. Halloween okay but this was April!

I had to be impressed with Christine when she told me how she had plucked/tweezed out every one of her facial hairs so that she would not have to shave during a week-long trip to the west coast. I tried to copy her but gave up after perhaps twenty hairs.

It seems Christine had embraced the new-found freedom unemployment and single life gave her. She threw herself fully into the role of building our small support group, building relationships with the local LGB community, helping ‘newbies’ out of the closet and creating social situations for our growing community of hetero CDs. Naturally, Christine was elected president of the support group, a position she cherished and held for many years.

After a decade or so of work, the awards started to come Christine’s way. She was honored by the local LGB folks by being selected as Gay Pride Parade Marshall. Apparently, she had been a finalist for a Virginia Prince Award.

That all being said I was no big fan of Christine. She worked hard but I did not appreciate her rather narrow view of what a CD should be. I did not like her man-in-a-dress look. It seems that to her crossdressing meant putting on a dress. It didn’t matter about things like how we talked, or walked, or sat, or posed. I once encountered her in a local mall. I heard her before I saw her as she clomped along  with heavy steps in her two-inch heels. On that occasion I was glad to be in drab, so she did not recognize me.

As we moved into the mid 1990s Christine’s seeming intransigence about things transgender seemed to grate on other people, too. A new group of activists came into the group. They saw the need to open the group to a little more fun. When Christine balked it seems they engineered a coup d’état and she was soon out of the leadership position she loved.

As we used to say it was a ‘smooth move’ how they eased Christine out of her presidency. They told her she would be more useful and too busy doing full-time liaison with the politicians, police and the gay community. While at first, she was happy to take on a new role, Christine soon recognized the coup for what it was. She did not take the perceived snub well. She attended some social occasions and she continued to be the groups liaison with the now ‘LGBT’ leadership, a task that no one else wanted but sadly her phone was not ringing very often.

I had moved away from Christine’s town by the time she shifted from activist leader to ‘has-been’ but thanks to their very active Yahoo group I had a lurker’s view of her decline and fall. Funny thing was Christine did not seem to recognize that her best days had passed, that the CD world had moved on from her view that the only real CD was a heterosexual man in a dress, one that did not have to alter his voice, shorten his stride or sit up straight.

Some of us found it ironic that as her ‘shadow’ declined in the CD community the local gay leadership chose ardent heterosexual Christine to be an honorary marshal of their Gay Pride Parade. She had her moments.

I’ve seen almost nothing of Christine in the last ten years. Not many people have seen her but we hear snippets here and there. That was until recently. Then came this story.

Covid hit Christine and her community hard. It was not that a lot of people got seriously sick. Some did with tragic results. But I think there was statistically a daily one in ten thousand chances of meeting an infected person. I think it was kept to that ratio because their authorities stepped in and closed offices, businesses, commercial enterprises and effectively shut down social lives. Everyone was to stay home and meet virtually if they met at all. I don’t think I have to tell any of you how that would have affected a crossdresser’s life. For some it meant more time at home to ‘play in her closet’. But for Christine it meant being cut off from the remaining social contacts she had. She found herself becoming bitter at her isolation. Unfortunately, on many of the zoom calls and chat rooms she visited her bitterness came through loud and clear. On Zoom once she apparently berated a young and not so passable newbie who had lamented the lack of in-person social occasions. “What does it matter to you?” Christine blared out, “no one would want to talk with you anyway.” To their credit the rest of the group had jumped to the young CD’s defense and the group leader had dropped Christine from the meeting.

Coincidentally, like many other states and countries, where Christine lives, they decriminalized the use of marijuana and other cannabis products just before Covid hit. That means you could not be charged with a crime for simple use or possession of personal amounts of cannabis products but, for instance, it was still illegal to operate a vehicle while under the influence of the drug.

Over the years Christine had been a casual pot smoker. Now her occasional visits to pot shops had her trying various oils, medicines and edibles. All was good and this soft-core drug use seemed to ease (or was it ‘mask’) the pain of her loneliness, the pain of her feeling that the character Christine was no longer relevant to the rest of the world.

Sometimes her thoughts would take a weird turn. This story will be about one of those times.

Christine had thought about making an appearance at ‘her’ groups annual Christmas party. She had received a complimentary invitation. After all, she had got the tradition going back so many years ago and even now with the parties having outgrown the small restaurant venue she favored and now filling a hotel convention room, she felt a special connection to the event. It was also going to be the first event after two years of Covid shutdown. She liked that her friends the mayor, who had recently come out as gay, and the Deputy Police Chief would be there. However, she thought the group was playing with fire in welcoming ‘admirers’ to attend the event. She thought open displays of affection between some CDs and their admirer friends would turn some other CD’s and their wives against the group. It was a view she had steadfastly held since the 1980s. “If you are crossdressing and gay then you are not a crossdresser; you are a drag queen,” Christine always said. This year, like so many others, she would stay away.

So again, that evening Christine sat home alone, hoping but not expecting her phone would ping a message, watching TV and nibbling on a couple of her latest cannabis-laced brownies. The brownies were relaxing for Christine and soon she fell asleep.

It was not going to be a long sleep. At her age Christine’s body did not giver her the luxury of long sleeps. Age plus the lingering affects of the cannabis meant that sometime during the night she woke up needing to pee and a bit hungry. Having taken care of those needs Christine was feeling wide awake. She decided to head to her computer. Perhaps there would be someone interesting in one of her chat groups, she thought. Or perhaps someone will have posted a link to something new or interesting on YouTube. She had no idea what was about to happen. . . I’ll tell you about it next month.

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Tags: crossdressing, featured

Category: crossdressing