Don’t Get Around Much Anymore

What you get when you Google Linda Jensen.

Girls it is really tough being a social events reporter in a Coronavirus world.  There are no events happening that I can report on. There is no one I can get together with to have a chat and to pick her brains about a story.

So I am spending a lot of time cruising through the Internet learning how others are doing. Definitely there is hardly a crossdresser around whose life schedule is not being altered by the virus and the resulting closures and isolations. I think I was doing better than most. In the past year or so I haven’t been going out much anyway. It’s like I’ve been singing:

Missed the support group meetup

Heard they closed the door

Couldn’t find them on Facebook

Don’t get around much anymore

I thought I’d visit the club

But it hurts to the core

They tore it right down

Don’t get around much anymore

Darling, I turned to Craigslist

But they too were no more

I’m not invited on dates

Might have gone, but what for?

So I’m staying home as of late

Don’t get around much anymore

(with apologies to Tony Bennett)

Still I’m not doing too badly. Like today I got up early. My lovely wife is still sleeping but when she wakes she’ll find me wearing a plaid skirt and burnt orange top with a platinum blonde wig, clip earrings and an array of my favorite rings. Yes, a little make up but not too much. She will see this as I take a break from my writing to bring her a cup of coffee. She will smile and ask what time I got up. She will not compliment or criticize what I am wearing.

—Break—

I’m back. Even with the lovely situation I have, I find myself a bit envious of the CD who lives alone and practices dressing alone. She may pick up wardrobe items from on-line catalogues or eBay. Oh, I found another one the other day. It is called Poshmark.com. It is a site for people to resell, similar to eBay but concentrating on fashion. There are so many nice things in my sizes. And the prices are pretty good, not Ross Dress for Less good, but good.

Continuing, the shutdowns are tough for the club gals. I wonder how my friends like Alice, Rachel, Anita, Leah and so many others are doing. Those nights out at their clubs are so very important to them. I hope they realize how important it is to stay healthy. They say even if you survive the virus you can end up with long term lung, kidney and liver problems and even renal failure. Is a club night or two worth that?

Of course the ‘working girls’ will find ways to survive. Those girls are tough. When Craigslist closed them out of the Escort ads they found their way into the Personals. When the Personals were shuttered in many places they list in Craigslist’s ‘Missed Connections.’ Then there are the specializing escort websites. If they want to be found they can be found. But it’s a risky business, for sure.

But do you know who has it really tougher? Being a closeted crossdresser is really tough at this time. I am talking about the gal who likes to dress en femme, get all dolled up but no one from her male world, not even her wife, knows it is happening. She can keep her stealth by limiting her dressing to her business trips out of town. Also she can stay home for a day and while the wife is at work and the kids at school she can drag her suitcase out of the crawl space above the garage and bask in the luxury of femininity for a few hours. A third option is to arrange for a regular ‘boys’ night out’ to play cards or go bowling or watch an NFL game at a sports bar. Only there is no bowling, cards or football being played. You know the drill.

(Do you remember that fabulous Golden Girls episode where Dorothy’s brother had died suddenly?It had then come out that he had been secretly crossdressing for years and years. Apparently he would tell the family that he was going out to play bridge but really it was a night out in drag. Then a rear view of three husky guys dressed in ‘widows’ weeds’ entering the chapel came into the scene.

“Who are they?”  one asked.

“Those are his bridge partners,” Blanche deadpanned.)

For the closeted crossdresser you know how the spare time on the business trip, the home alone time and the boys’ night out are really spent. Perhaps we have all been there. You know how good it feels to have those few hours to become ‘Linda’ or ‘Dora’ or ‘Barbara’. Perhaps you get a thrill from the danger of being discovered and the thrill when discovery doesn’t happen. I know I do.  It is a bit — only a little bit– like jumping out of a plane with a parachute on your back. You expect the parachute to open but there is always that sense of risk that things won’t go as planned.

Now it is tough when the wife is home from work and the kids are home from school for this extended period. It is tough when all those business trips have been cancelled. What about the boys’ nights out?  What can you tell the wife when the sports bars are closed and there are no sports to watch anyway?

The closeted crossdresser has lost her important outlets. However again that is not as important as staying safe, my friends.

I can tell you from experience that there will soon come a light at the end of the tunnel and then WOW! I remember a period a number of years ago when my ‘Linda’ was stored away for a few months.  Our church was planning a special event to celebrate our Centennial. Our men’s club decided to go back to the beard and sideburn styles of 100 years earlier. As president of the men’s club I pretty well had to go along with it. “I have to follow that mob,” said the man during the French Revolution, “I’m their leader.” It’s a personal thing but I just don’t like seeing myself en femme with even a day’s growth on my face. A beard? Sideburns and a mustache? No way!! So it all went into my storage locker.

It seemed like forever before the celebration was over and I could shave. Then I could get back to my locker and when I did – WOW! – It was the best erection ever! Absence did make the heart grow fonder.

All that is preface to say that this social isolation has made it difficult to search up a new story to tell. So I’m reaching way back in my memory bank, back into the last century, back to when the Internet consisted of a number of message boards. Lycos, Alta Vista, Compuserve and AOL were almost but not quite household names to when every phone call you received knocked you off the web.  “What was it like before Apple and Windows, Daddy?”

It seems some TG folks were very quick to catch on to the potential of the Web to improve our communications. Thanks to a chance meeting with one of the pioneers I was convinced to climb on board and get myself a neat not-so-little IBM Aptiva and start lurking on a number of message boards. The message boards helped me learn about a number of support group meetings and how to get quicker permission to attend. It wasn’t long before my trips across the U.S. northeast were intersecting with various support group meetings. 

I remember one trip in the 1990s involving a Friday night singles’ party in Allentown Pa., a Saturday support group meeting somewhere, a gay club drag show in Newark N.J. on the Sunday and the trip was capped off in New Hope, Pa. with The Cartwheel’s famous Amateur Night drag contest on Monday, all before having to be back home for work on Tuesday morning. None of that would have been possible without the explosion of information for the transgender community that came with the growth of the Internet.

So how does that tie into today? In the last 25 years the Internet has just grown and grown. New ways of communicating bypassing the web are also in vogue. We all should be well-informed but so many are not.  Many just get the first few contacts they come across and stop there.

Explore. Explore and explore some more. Use those search engines. They are so much better than 25 years and even ten years ago. You have the time while you site in social isolation. Look around.

With self-isolation time on my hands I recently searched ‘Linda Jensen transgender’ on my Google Chrome search engine. Surprise to me how many of my past articles came up, one series going back to 1998 and the old Queen Mary Show Lounge. Have you ever tried that? Googling yourself?  What did you find?

So that is two messages this time. 1) The closures and self-isolation are probably difficult times for most crossdressers but the goal of a safer community is worth the inconveniences and

2) Use the time to catch up on your web searches. It will be fun and it will be interesting.

Consider your time in self-isolation to be a time of renewal and discovery of things that I hope you will enjoy. Hugs to all, Linda

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Tags: crossdressing, featured

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment