In the Family, Part IV

NOTE TO READERS: Before this story is finished you are going to be asked for your help in finishing it so please pay attention.

This is the fourth part of a series. In case you haven’t been hanging on every word here is a brief recap of the previous three episodes.

First, as you have probably and correctly figured out this is a piece of fiction but what you may not have figured out is that a large part of it is based on events in the life of one of our own — a crossdressing friend of mine. Thank you to Susan for allowing me to share.

The characters:

• Joe Adams, junior also known as Susan
• Joe Adams senior, had left the family when Joe Junior was about six years old and was in no contact since. Now recently deceased.
• Nora was Joe senior’s partner for many years. It was her who summoned Junior to his dad’s death bedside in Florida and then helped Joe junior manage the winding up of the estate, a function that left junior with a sizable inheritance. It was Nora that revealed to junior that his father had been a lifelong and very competent crossdresser. Well you can read the rest of the story by clicking on the links to previous episodes.
• Joe III: well we haven’t met him yet.

Now Junior was on his way back home to the Boston area. We pick him up as he passes around Washington, DC. He is dressed as his femme alter-ego, Susan, and Susan feels great. It actually was liberating, perhaps validating, for her to know that the father she didn’t know had also been a crossdresser.

Starting out that morning Susan was not in a rush to get to Boston. A pattern had developed from her days working in DC. As usual she planned a shopping and lunch stop in Christiana, Delaware. She would follow it up with a ceremonial stop at one of her new favorite chain stores, The Ross Dress for Less in East Windsor, New Jersey. Nora had turned her on to Ross shopping or at least Ross trying (eight items maximum at a time). She was curious to find out why that chain so popular everywhere else was keeping itself out of the New England market.

Then she had a reservation at the Hilton in Providence where a final night out as Susan would surely bring her a one-night-stand to top off a most interesting trip.

Her family, Joe’s family, expected her/him home sometime the next morning.

A funny thing happened while Susan was driving. It started somewhere around Baltimore. She was thinking about learning of her father’s crossdressing and how that had caused her dad to be driven away from the family and that he had preferred to stay estranged rather than return and be outed to the son he loved. Susan had always thought that her strong attachment to her mother combined with having an absent father figure had formed the early part of her affinity for crossdressing. Would things have turned out differently for her if her dad had been home with the family?

‘But what if her own crossdressing was genetically derived from her father?’ she mused. ‘What if she had passed on that gene to her own son, Joe III?’ Susan thought of Joe III, the boy now a teenager who was almost universally known as The Tiger or just Tiger. The nickname had come to be to avoid confusion between the two Joes, because ‘Junior’ was already taken and because as a youngster Joe III was just a bundle of energy, tackling anything that came his way. Tiger was a dynamo of an athlete but also accomplished in academics, music and performance arts. But lately Joe had noticed Tiger withdrawing from many of the activities he’d enjoyed in his pre-teen years.

As she drove along It occurred to Susan that even though she had been home she had never been really close to Tiger. When Tiger was in high school and playing Friday night football, Susan had preferred to stay with her Friday night routine of visits to Jacques’ Cabaret rather than attend her son’s football game. “I have important meetings,” he told the family. Tiger said he didn’t mind as he was mostly going to be on the bench, anyway. When they did have those chances for father/son talks the dad held back, knowing he could not tell son about ‘Susan’, about how his true passion was crossdressing and that he really hated the idea of deer hunting. Those weeks every October were really to the Fantasia Fair in Provincetown or sometimes Paradise in the Poconos instead of to a hunting lodge in Canada.

While grabbing a bite to eat in Christiana it occurred to Susan that even though she had been living in the home all along she had not been any closer to her son than her father had been to her. ‘Was it too late to change all that?’ she thought to herself. “I’m heading straight home,’ she resolved. Once the decision was made there was no question of visiting Macy’s, Dillard’s, JCP or even the Ross store. There would be other times for that, she thought. Susan cancelled the hotel reservation in Providence. She figured she could be home by early evening. There would be one important stop to make at a highway service center to refuel and pack way all traces of Susan.

‘I sure hope for his sake young Tiger is not into crossdressing,’ Susan laughed to herself thinking of her son now coming into the middle of his teen years. Once the thought was in her head and as she drove along through New Jersey Susan came to a realization. She had to be a better dad to Joe III, to Tiger. Of course she had been home more than her birth dad had been but was she really connecting with her own son, she thought again. What was he doing when she went out on Friday nights? Could they be playing some sports together? Would it really hurt to give up some nights out for a bit of father-son bonding?

As she drove along through Connecticut Susan reflected that in the last few years her son had seemed to be much closer to his mother than his father. Not that there was hostility between the two males. There was just not the bond that sons need and many fathers crave. They were just two guys from different generations living under the same roof. ‘I’ve got to make that right’, Susan thought.

Despite the stop at a rest area to change back to drab, Susan made good time getting home. At the rest area Susan/Joe had planned to text her wife to say she would be home soon but she forgot. With the ‘Susan stuff’ neatly packed away, evening coming on and the trip winding down our hero made one more stop to pick up a pizza before getting home. He got enough for Tiger as well in case he would actually be home and studying.

Even before opening the door Joe could see the female figure sitting at the dining room table intently studying a computer. ‘Ah, Tiger has a girl over,’ he thought. “Good thing I brought some extra pizza.”

Joe tried the door. It was locked. He could see the girl standing and then moving quickly out of sight. ‘Where is Tiger?’ he thought, ‘probably getting ready to make his move.’ Joe thought of making a retreat but decided to go in and meet this girl. He took out his key, opened the door and walked in. He headed for the kitchen. There he met the female figure who had been sitting at the dining room table.

But with credit to Francis Richard Stockton was she a lady or the Tiger?

You tell me.

Tags: crossdressing, featured, fiction

Category: Fiction