Times Do Change: The 1970s

It wasn’t another month before the other Linda told me about her crossdressing life in the 1970s. We both took a ‘pee break’ and that was it. Back to Skype.

Do you remember the early 1970s? It was a time of turmoil in the world. On one side of the world there was the continuing Vietnam war and on the other the OPEC nations were boosting the price of their oil. Both events were causing their own strong reactions in America. Add to that Black power, women’s lib and gay rights and we had a nation, a western world really, in increasing turmoil.

Buried in that my friend Linda was living her own personal turmoil. She was teaching high school classes to kids who were increasingly questioning everything. She was a weekend dad until her fight to have full custody of their son was successful and she became a full-time single parent. That put her on a quest to find another mate. She joined a local group called Parents Without Partners. It was a support group for single parents with a heavy emphasis on social activities such as bi-weekly dances. Linda says her male self was quite popular among the ladies of the group. She also found how important it seems when one doesn’t have a live-in partner that she find one.

All that meant that Linda’s ‘Linda’ was put aside for several years. Her revolving door with a variety of bedmates did allow her to feel and sample a variety of lingerie, she said, but that was about it. She also grew sideburns and a mustache as was the style of the day, so she thought her crossdressing days were behind her.

That is, she thought so until she hooked up with Joanie. Another PWP member, Joanie had two daughters approaching their teen years who spent every second weekend with their father. When that happened Linda would stay with Joanie and her son stayed with Linda’s ever-obliging parents.

Linda says that Joanie somehow must have discovered that Linda was trying on her panties and perhaps other lingerie. “At the time I had some body hair,” said Linda, “As you know that hair grows and sheds. It is possible for it to end up in a pair of panties, caught in the band of a bra or in other lingerie. Finding a curly dark hair where there only should be blonde ones would be a pretty sure give-away that someone else was wearing your clothes.” Linda thinks that some of her ‘short and curlies’ were found in Joanie’s lingerie.

“It could have gone one of two ways,” said Linda. “Joanie could have got angry, accusing me of wearing her clothes and then tossing me out of her apartment. Instead, without saying anything specific she subtly started introducing feminine clothing for me to wear into our sex play, making it seem as if I was doing her a favor. First panties, then the slip, the stockings and garter, heels and even a wig were all introduced on succeeding weekends after a night out at a club dance. It was as if being allowed to crossdress was my reward for being a good boy that evening. It was Joanie that first gave me the idea to use Nair, or perhaps it was Neet, to remove my body and leg hair.”

“You must have thought you were in Heaven?” I interjected. “Think of it. Many CD’s have their lives ruined when a partner discovers their crossdressing. Not you! Not once but twice you are with women who embrace the ‘Linda’ in you.

“Actually, four times but I’ll get to the others later. It wasn’t a one-way street,” countered Linda. “I think Joanie quickly recognized that she was getting the best sex when I was further aroused by my lingerie.

“I think it is safe to say, now that she is gone, that Joanie was a sexual lioness. She knew sex games that I didn’t even know existed.”

“Like?” I asked encouragingly.

“Like she introduced me to the dildo. One evening she had taken off her clothing and lay on the bed while I did a ‘reverse strip tease’.

“You were dancing while putting on lingerie instead of taking it off?” I asked.

“Exactly. So, as I fastened the garters Joanie reached into a side drawer and pulled out a vibrator, not a long one or thick but there was no doubt its main purpose was to stimulate vaginas and clitorises. She started using it right in front of me. Then when I was finished dressing, she asked me to help her with it.”

“Did you?” I asked with fake innocence. I was pretty sure I knew where this was going.

“Of course,” Linda replied, “when I was dressed, I was her puppy dog.”

Readers: I think I should cut out a lot of the details of what Linda told me. You can imagine how it played out. Suffice it to say that by the end of the evening with the help of BOB (short for ‘battery-operated boyfriend’) for the first time Linda had experienced being penetrated from behind and for the thousandth time Joanie had experienced multiple orgasms.

“Joanie was to give me one more experience that shaped the rest of my life,” Linda told me. One evening Linda arrived at Joanie’s apartment to find a guy there who was introduced as an old friend who had dropped by to talk about some troubles he was having.

Linda didn’t tell me what the problems were but she told me the evening did involve a bit of drinking and pot smoking. Perhaps it was a lot of both.

“Were you in drab?” I asked Linda.

“Yes, I was. Joanie and I never took my ‘hobby’ out of the privacy of her bedroom,” she replied. Linda went on to tell me that as the evening progressed and the three got higher and more relaxed Joanie started to cuddle up with Linda.

“While looking coyly and oh so sexily at me,” Linda continued, “Joanie asked her old friend to join us on the couch. I thought he was going to sit beside her and I was expecting that she would be the middle of a three-way and I was okay with that but instead he came over and sat beside me.

“In no time at all Joanie had my belt and fly open and my penis out. Her friend was leaning over giving me head. Then she was on her knees doing him. He arched back on the couch and this is where it got interesting.” Linda paused.

Again, I think I should leave out the erotic details. I’ll just write that Joanie invited the man later known as Linda to join her kneeling in front of her friend. She showed Linda how to give oral sex. Linda got to practice. They moved to the bedroom. Joanie encouraged Linda to try receiving anal sex. After some initial tightness: success. Linda got to feel the intense pleasure of a man stiffening and then relaxing as he ejaculated into her while all the while Joanie was smothering her with kisses.

But that is not the end of the story.

Having enjoyed the ‘gay sex’, Linda had some doubts creep in as to her own sexuality. ‘Was I really gay?’ she wondered.

That was a Friday evening. Joanie must have anticipated the doubts. She was profuse in thanking Linda for satisfying HER fantasy. She seemed careful to point out that Linda had been double deflowered not for her own pleasure but for Joanie’s.

The next evening the table turned a bit. At the end of their regular Saturday night dance party Joanie asked one of their lady friends to join them at her apartment for a drink. Turns out it was all set up in advance. To make a long story short, to the drink was added some pot. The friend joined them on the couch. Oral sex ensued. There was a move to the bedroom where the man later known as Linda had his way with their friend while Joanie played with her BOB. Linda finished. Apparently, Joanie worked hard to orally clean out the juices left by Linda in her friend. The friend seemed to like the cleansing and all ended up satisfied.

Why am I telling you this? One, because Linda told me and two because the incident with the two ladies coming so soon after her first experience with a man convinced Linda that she was not at all gay. It was just sex, after all.

What has that got to do with the history of crossdressing in the 1970s? On the surface probably not a heck of a lot. But wait; perhaps it was a sign of the changing times. In the 1960s and before the common and clinical view of men who desired to dress as women did it for one of three reasons — they desired to change genders, they were gay and wanted to attract other men or they were drag entertainers doing it for money.

In the minds of the times the heterosexual crossdresser did not exist. All that changed when a few champions of the term ‘crossdresser’ put out the concept that a man could be both a heterosexual person and a person who enjoyed wearing women’s clothing and — this is the important part — appearing as a woman. Any old joe could slip on a pair of panties and ‘get his rocks off’. That was just a common everyday transvestite. However, in the minds of our champions of the 1970s it took a special someone with special ‘interests’ to be a crossdresser.

In the 1970s Virginia Prince was the undisputed champion of the term crossdressing. Her short, easy to read, easy to hide books — The Transvestite and His Wife and Understanding Crossdressing — brought a lot of understanding and comfort to Linda. Not surprisingly the same books almost a decade later were bringing the same comfort to me and to my partner at the time.

“I did not get out at all during the 1970s, not even the early 1980s,” said Linda but my secret stash of clothes, make up and even a wig was growing. My sideburns and mustache disappeared. As the kids grew older and were out of the house longer, I had more opportunity to work on my ‘art’. I knew I was going to break out of the closet one day. I just didn’t know when or where.

Her personal breakout happened just as the world entered the 1980s. If you can wait four weeks I will tell you about it then.

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Tags: crossdressing, featured, History

Category: Transgender History