The 45th Birthday Surprise

Readers: Last month I told you about a chance encounter I had at a music festival up in Canada. I met up with Crystal and Mary who turned out to be old friends from at least ten to fifteen years ago. Crystal and I are both crossdressers. I am a crossdresser who keeps the male and female lives quite separate. Crystal used to be like that but now she pretty freely changes between the two. How that came to be is quite an interesting story. It is a story I wrote from their telling many years ago but it is also one that I had buried on an old computer file until they reminded me of it last month.  Now I would like to tell you the story of

The 45^th Birthday Surprise

Some birthdays have a particular significance in our lives. Becoming old enough to legally drink, 30, the big 5-0, 65 are typical examples. Thanks to his wife, Mary, my friend Doug will never forget his 45th birthday. 

I don’t usually call him Doug but now that he has been ‘outed’ he does not mind. Doug and I have something in common. We are both crossdressers. I usually know him as Crystal. We met at a weekend event called Paradise in the Pocono’s where we found a common bond right away. At the time we were both ‘closeted.’  His wife and my girlfriend each knew about our penchants for dressing but neither were too happy about it and neither partner enjoyed it when we wanted to dress at home.

We also shared the fact that both of us voluntarily limited our crossdressing. This was not so much because our partners demanded it but because no matter how much we were drawn to our ‘hobby’ we loved and enjoyed being with these ladies. In Doug’s case he also had growing children to occupy his time.

However, from time to time we each had to let our crossdressing ‘genies’ out of the bottle. Hence we found ourselves in the company of each other and some hundred other like-minded persons at the annual Paradise in the Pocono’s event.   

That was several years ago. After the event we kept in touch, telling each other stories of our experiences en femme and commiserating about our closet status.

Our contact died out for a while and then by coincidence we both found ourselves at a new CD event in Montreal.  This time Crystal was there with Mary, his wife, and did they have a story to tell me!

This is almost exactly how Crystal told it.

“Last June was my 45th birthday. Mary gave me a present that changed my life. Before, as you know, my life had been one of private feelings and guilt as I had rarely been able to discuss my innermost thoughts with anyone. For almost a long as I can remember I have enjoyed the feeling of wearing women’s clothing and for equally as long I’ve known that is something one just doesn’t tell other people.

“You know that when I was a young teen I used to sneak into my sisters’ room to try on their beautiful lingerie and dresses. I had lots of chances to be home alone and I used many of those chances to dress up and parade in front of their full length mirror. I admired my sisters and I wanted to be as pretty and as popular as they were. I think that is one reason I developed the urge to wear their clothes. I didn’t think anyone had ever seen me although I had a few close calls and I sometimes wondered if my sisters ever noticed their clothes slightly ‘rearranged.’

“After high school, I went away to college and lived on my own and I started to acquire my own wardrobe of slips, bras and dresses. I found a few adult books about ‘drag queens’ so I would  spend some evenings getting dressed, reading my books and working myself to a sexual climax. Of course, all this made me feel very guilty and I often tried to purge my life of these activities but with little success. I finally was able to put aside my dressing when I met and married Mary. She is a very special person — a terrific wife, career person and mother to our three children, Vicki, Donna and David. We had a great life together, so busy with careers and kids and we were always together; even taking each other on business trips. I don’t think that I missed my crossdressing — I truly thought it was a thing of the past. 

“But as you know those crossdressing feelings eventually were awakened and they started to consume my life. I looked for excuses to get away to dress and this put a strain on our marriage. I hated that I was lying to my wife. Trips to the Pocono’s events were explained as annual team building exercises that the company arranged for the ‘employees only.’

The breaking point almost came four years ago when Mary discovered my secret cache of clothes. She confronted me.”

“I was sure he had a mistress,” said Mary.

“I was so embarrassed I almost confessed to the mistress thing but something told me to trust Mary” said Crystal. “I told her everything. She took some time to think about it and then . . .Tell Linda what you told me, hon.”

“I sure spent a sleepless night that night. I had to leave the house to think it over,” remembered Mary, “but in the end I told Crystal that her crossdressing was part of her when I promised to be faithful forever. I said it was a total package and while I couldn’t completely warm to the idea I could accept this Crystal as at least a small part of our lives. But it had to be a part that I didn’t see.”

“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “That is pretty well exactly what my wife said to me when I told her. Why can’t more women see it that way?”

Crystal went on to recount that in many ways this made their relationship stronger but in other ways it created new stresses.

“With this new liberty, occasionally, late at night I would sneak out of the house to visit a local bar for crossdressers. There I could relax, flirt a little and meet other crossdressers. Of course there were also the weekends in the Pocono’s and one great week at Southern Comfort.

“So that’s the way we were for several years. With the burden of secrecy lifted, our life together improved, we started doing things together again and from time to time. Mary would discreetly step aside to let Crystal come out. But Mary stayed with her resolve to not meet my other self.

“Then came my 45th birthday.  Mary said she was going to make it special for me. For a while she kept me in suspense. Then a few days before my birthday Mary told me that she had arranged for us to be alone so that she could spend the evening with ‘Crystal.’ What a great surprise! I was so excited I could hardly wait for the days to pass.

“The afternoon of my birthday, Mary volunteered to help me pick out a new outfit for the occasion and we had a great time at the mall pretending we were buying an outfit for a friend. We settled on a black silky cocktail dress and we bought some new jewelry to complement it. I talked Mary into getting a new dress as well. 

“Back home I started the ritual of getting ready for an evening in drag — bath, shave, moisturizer and make up. All the while Mary busied herself in the kitchen saying that she didn’t want to meet Crystal until I was totally ready so I was under strict orders not to come downstairs. Once I thought I heard other voices but Mary said she was only trying to find some music on the radio. I took what seemed like hours getting my makeup just right and then putting on my new dress. When I put on my newly styled blonde wig and looked in the mirror I could hardly recognize the beautiful person looking back. 

“I called down to Mary to ask if she was ready to meet Crystal. She said she was but asked me to wait a second while she turned off the lights. Then ‘okay,’ she called and I started down the stairs, nervous but happy to finally being able to share ‘Crystal’ with Mary.

“As I turned the corner to our living room, the lights went on and the room exploded in shouts of ‘SURPRISE’. Now that was an understatement as there in the room was not only Mary but several of my neighbors, my sisters and my children. I was in shock and I wondered how Mary could have set me up for such embarrassment. I turned to retreat but my way was blocked by my neighbor and good friend, George. I wanted to die. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to hide.   

“However it soon unfolded that these people were there to help and accept me, not to ridicule me. It seems that all the while I thought I was living a secret there were a lot of people that knew about my crossdressing.  When Mary had left the house after our talk, she had met George who had asked her why she was upset. She went to George and Sally’s and told them that she’d just learned a new side of me but she couldn’t tell them about it. ‘Did it involve women’s clothes?’ they asked. 

“Astonished, Mary said yes and they went on to say that they had known about it for some time, that apparently I hadn’t always been too careful with my curtains when I was dressing at home and I’d been seen leaving home en femme. They had conspired not to say anything to Mary because I otherwise seemed to be an ‘all right guy’ and they didn’t want to hurt her.

“Then a few months later when Mary was out with my sisters they revealed they had known all along that as a teen I had been ‘borrowing’ their clothes. On one occasion they had even hidden in a closet to watch me dress up. Fortunately I guess that wasn’t one of the times I had ended the session by masturbating. 

“Eventually, Mary learned that almost all who were close to me already had known of my crossdressing. However, no one was saying anything to anyone else. She had decided to take a chance and get everyone together to help end the ‘secret that wasn’t’ so she planned the party. It turned out to be a great evening and I got lots of compliments on my make-up and my new dress.

“Now my life is open to all my friends. They have all made it clear that they’ll accept me as ‘Doug’ or as Crystal. Strange as it seems, I rarely do dress in front of my friends but they know what I’ll wear to the Halloween party. Mary and I have resumed our great life together, we are planning to travel a lot and she says I’m to be sure that I always bring along something for Crystal. We’ll go out at least one evening as two lady friends. Could life be any better?”

I doubt it could be any better. Crystal, Mary and I spent the rest of our time together reminiscing about past events. We laughed when we recalled how Crystal and I had been friendly rivals for the ‘Princess of the Poconos’ title. Crystal won that year but my turn would come.. 

We parted with the couple inviting me to visit them as Linda. “Why not,” they said, “Crystal can have friends, too.”

Tags: closeted, crossdressing, featured

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment