Christine: Covid, Cannabis and a Christmas Party, Part 2

Last month I started to tell you the story of Christine. At one time, back in the 1980s Christine had been the go-getting, fireball leader of her crossdresser support group. She was the one with the ideas and the energy. Christine was also the public face of the group. She was happy to meet with officials, restaurant and bar owners and proclaim that she and her sisters ‘had a right to be there’. She also personally met with every prospective member to check out their sincerity and suitability in becoming members of the group and in telling the ‘newbies’ the way things were.

It turned out that Christine had a rather narrow view of the crossdressing world. If you were a male who liked to dress and appear as a woman then yes, you were a crossdresser. Fine. But if you were a male who liked to dress and appear as a woman but also, like a woman, you wanted to attract and make love with males then no, according to Christine you did not belong with her group: go see the drag queens. If you were a male who liked to dress and appear as a woman and thought it important to adopt women’s ways of talking, walking, sitting, and the many other subtle markers that separate males from females then, instead of being a crossdresser, in Christine’s mind you were likely a transexual. Her group was for crossdressers and the wives and girlfriends who accepted them.

She didn’t want gay or bi crossdressers because they would attract admirers and admirers would make the wives and girlfriends uncomfortable, she reasoned.

At first all went well for Christine and her group. Her flock of followers were happy to go along with Christine so long as they had a place to go and be dressed among equals. What happened with those prospective members she turned away? Who knows?

Sometime in the early 1980s Christine started the group’s tradition of pre-Christmas parties. The members seemed to love the chance to get dressed in their finest outfit. One of my first out en femme shopping trips was to a Macy’s to buy my dress for one of Christine’s parties. (Lesson learned: price-wise it is not a good time to shop for a party dress just before Christmas.)

As I look back on those years, I see that Christine’s parties, other than a great excuse to get all dolled up, were small, intimate and boring. I was not the only one who came to feel that way. Some wanted music and dancing. Christine did not. It wasn’t too many years before a group of the gals banded together and arranged for Christine to be shifted from her seat of power to concentrate on TG political action. Luckily her new roll was one she also enjoyed, probably much to the chagrin of the local mayor and other politicians.

The decades passed. Christine found herself becoming less relevant to her CD community. The girls of the 21^st Century found less need to be political and seemed to adapt the mantra “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!”, at least my friends and I did. When the somewhat heavy-set Christine with her thinning natural hair would come into a room — a rare event in itself— we would find ourselves looking the other way. And she could not help herself. She would seek out a likely newbie and lecture the poor girl on her right to be herself and not adopt the ‘Hollywood image’ of a beauty queen. Heck, she even chided me for wearing a Christy Brinkley-style wig, adopting her beauty mark and taping my chest to fashion a cleavage.

‘Be natural!’ she had the nerve to tell me.

I was glad to leave Christine alone and it seems so were many others.

Two events happened in relatively quick order that seemed to drive Christine into further isolation. First where she lived, the government decriminalized the use of pot and other cannabis products for personal use. Like many growing up in the 1970s Christine was an experienced pot user. Now her use became frequent and often alone as opposed to being a usually shared activity. Second, Covid-19 came along and shut down many of the activities Christine might have otherwise enjoyed — going to meetings, shopping, being out and about. She could not get any face-to-face meetings with any politicians. She was left with her Facebook and chat groups. Our old group switched to Zoom meetings but Christine knew hardly anyone. So usually, she would just sit there eating her muffins and regretting that the group did not want to mount a protest that the prohibition against assembly was curtailing the crossdressers’ rights of expression.

Alone and perhaps having had one too many of her special muffins Christine had drifted off to sleep while watching television. She awoke and prepared to move to her bed. She was interrupted by the signal on her phone that a text message had come in. She checked. It was from Carolyn A.

Too drowsy to recall that she had not heard from Carolyn in some 25 years, Christine opened the message. It read: “Search our club on YouTube. There is something just posted that you WILL find interesting.”

“My God!” she exclaimed to herself, “I thought Carolyn must have died. Why is she writing to me now?”

Christine moved to her computer and opened YouTube to search for videos about Gender Dimensions, the club she and Carolyn and others had founded 40 years ago. OMG! Someone had digitized some old VHS tapes and compiled them in a history of the club. This one, covering the first 20 years was called ‘The Christine Years’. The star of the show was Christine herself. She smiled as she sat alone watching images of herself in wigs and high heels. She never was very graceful walking in heels, she had to admit. She seemed to be the only one talking at meetings and the talk was pretty well always the same —‘be yourself, dress the part but no one expects you to act just like a woman. If you are thinking of letting yourself be seduced by a man perhaps you belong in another club. Same if you feel like becoming a woman. This club is for straight CDs and their female partners.’

The film contained lots of images of various pre-Christmas parties, small and quiet. Also highlighted how Christine got a few members together to carry a homemade banner in the city’s annual gay pride parade. That was a big step.

But it was shortly after the gay pride breakthrough that Christine found herself being shuttled out of the club leadership.

Bring on the second YouTube video, titled ‘The Fun Years’. Christine Years/Fun Years: the contrast was not lost on Christine. Even under the influence of yet another muffin, it hurt.

The second video laid out for Christine and apparently the rest of the world to see how the new leadership maneuvered her into giving up leadership of her beloved club. They knew the mayor was setting up a LGBT liaison committee. They went to him and asked him to appoint her to the committee. He agreed but only if she did not have any other committee involvements. He did not want a committee full of divided attentions and mixed loyalties.

‘Perfect,’ they thought. Two birds with one stone.

At the time Christine relished the appointment even if she had to regretfully give up her leadership role in the club she had helped found. It was not long before she realized that the mayor’s committee was more show than substance. Fortunately, she enjoyed the show. But what hurt Christine about the video was how clearly it demonstrated how she had been shunted aside by the club’s new wave and why. In a changing world she had become just too stuck in her views.

The second video ended with scenes of many of the club members at a weekend campout, enjoying the water, the food and drinks and a few suggestive shots of the girls perhaps ‘enjoying’ each other and a few male friends. Whether accompanied or not everyone seemed to be having fun. Everyone that is except Christine. She had not been invited.

Christine shut down her computer and went to bed. She was only half awake and half surprised when her phone pinged the arrival of another text message.

‘You won’t believe what they have just posted,’ it read. Nothing more; nothing less. Of course, the message was from the mysterious Carolyn A. “Heck, the only Carolyn A I ever knew disappeared from the scene some 25 years ago,” Christine thought quizzically. “Who is this?”

Despite her skepticism, Christine made her way back to her computer. The screen came to life, open at the YouTube website and there, ready to go was ‘Gender Dimensions: The Future.’ The first thing Christine noticed was the good quality of the filming, the sound and even the titles. Next, she noticed a despondent young character, not very passable, was being consoled and advised by several of the older gals. Christine recognized two of them as being ones instrumental in easing her out of power. She recognized the younger person, too.

It seems the younger gal was fresh from an unsettling experience at her last virtual meeting where another one of the older gals had given her a hard time and urged her to re-think her life, not in an encouraging way. It had taken all her will power to come to an in-person meeting. Now that she was there, she was encouraged by the positive reception others were giving her.

“Don’t let Christine bother you,” one of the old timers said, “She means well but she is set in her ways and has been slow to realize that times are changing.”

“She thinks crossdressing means being a man in a dress, not dressing to impress,” consoled another.

The third, an old friend of Christine, shot in “you know at one time she was a fireball of ideas and enthusiasm. She helped build this group. When most of us were willing to stay in the closet she dragged us out. But somewhere along the line she stopped being fun and became a bit too political.”

“I think she realized she was not ever going to be as pretty as some of the newer, younger gals coming out. She could not be the belle of the ball, so she went the other way and tried to drag the rest of us back with her,” That was Angelique, as frank as ever.

“Thank you,” said the younger gal, “she spoke with such authority I thought she spoke for everyone. I’m so glad you reached out and invited me back.”

“And we’re glad you came.” The group hugged.

“Is that what they think,” Christine murmured to herself, “I didn’t know how hurtful I was. Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

Her computer screen pinged. It was a chatroom calling. A chatroom she did not remember having. But there in the corner of the screen was a 30-year-old picture of her old friend Carolyn A.

Christine: Carolyn, is that you? Where have you been?

Carolyn A: Never mind. I’m your past. You have got to look to the future. You have done a lot for the trans scene around here but times have changed and others have moved on.

Christine: Why? What did I do wrong? Why doesn’t anyone like me anymore?

Carolyn A: Remember about how you used to tell us how crossdressers had right to be seen and heard? And that we should not be afraid about being out?

Christine: I still believe that.

Carolyn A: I know you do but accepting crossdressing means accepting us in all our variations. We do not have to be cookie-cutter images of each other. If that young lady wants to wear a lot of make-up and she doesn’t quite get it right the first time, then we should help her the second time. Did you know she considered ending her life after your interaction with her?

Christine: No! I feel awful!

Carolyn A: We crossdressers come in many varieties, probably hundreds of varieties. We just cannot and should not try to make all like one another.

Christine Is that what I’ve been doing?

Carolyn A: You are comfortable being the way you are. That’s great. But you cannot expect others to be the way you are.

Christine: You know I’m not that comfortable being the way I am. Starting tomorrow morning I’m going to work on a new look and a new me.

Carolyn A: Tomorrow morning? You better look at a clock because it is tomorrow morning.

Christine: It is? Sorry. Gotta run.

It was going to be a busy day for Christine as she got ready to go to the club’s annual dinner. It surprised her how much she now wanted to go.

At some point in the day Christine realized that she had to contact and thank Carolyn A for being there for her the night before. It turned out she did not have a current email address for her. She did a Google search. Nothing showed up for Carolyn A. She knew her male name. She plugged it in and that’s when she saw it. Back in 2002 Carolyn (in male mode) had died of a sudden heart attack. It was mentioned in the obituary notice how he had been driving on a busy highway with his wife and two grandchildren when he felt and recognized the pain of a heart attack coming on. He got the car to the side of the road, safely out of the traffic as his wife dialed 9-1-1. By the time the paramedics got there he was gone. The police figured he had potentially saved many other lives including his family by his quick and selfless action.

Of course, Christine was puzzled. ‘If Carolyn was gone who was that sending her the links to the YouTube videos? Who was she texting with? She logged on to YouTube. She could not find the videos Carolyn had sent her just the night before. She searched her phone. There was no reference to the texting she and Carolyn had done a few hours earlier.

‘Wow’, thought Christine, ‘I’m going to have to bring a tray of those muffins to the desert potluck this evening.’

And with that Christine was off her computer and on the go. To make a long story short Christine cobbled together an outfit, pulled a formerly loved Henry Margu wig off a closet shelf, retried some of her old makeup skills and got herself to the club’s anniversary party where she found herself happy to see so many like-minded crossdressers. They even had a special 40^th Anniversary award ready for her as their founding president. They had a custom of inviting first-timers to say a few words. Christine recognized the gal she had chewed out at an event a few months earlier, the one who had been considering suicide. Christine cringed at what she might say.

Christine needn’t worry. The newcomer thanked those who had helped her and closed with a salutation, “God bless us, everyone.”

Tags: crossdressing, featured

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment