My Name is Linda, Part 2

I was far from prepared for the feelings I experienced in the aftermath of my personal revelations to the ‘bracoholics’ support group. (Bracoholic: a male with a fascination for the female undergarment known as the brassiere or bra.)

I had gone there with the intention of confessing to others my obsession with bras, an obsession that had started very early in life, well before my puberty years. I had thought the talk would be a ‘one-and-done’ type of thing. Confess all and be cleansed. However I was barely finished recounting my teen years before Angela, the group leader, reminded me of my time limit and asked me to be sure to return for their next meeting. She told me I had made a great start.

It seems a number of other people in the audience thought I had made a great start as well. Some came up to congratulate me and pat me on the back. It didn’t take long for me to realize that those pats on the back tended to rest a little longer than normal on my bra’s shoulder straps and on the strap across my back. Those patters had a unique way of telling me I was not alone. Frankly I enjoyed the feeling.

Flashback: I recall being 15 years old. My first girlfriend and I would spend a lot of time alone and kissing. I would hold her in my arms and rub my hands across her back, tracing the outline of her bra. I assumed that was as much a sexual thrill for her as it was for me. It wasn’t. For her the bra was something she had to wear, not that she wanted to wear. She did not have to wear the bra to support her breasts. Society deemed at the time that once their breasts started to develop girls and women should cover the breasts with an extra layer of clothing. More on that later.

I learned that evening that the support group didn’t really follow the 12-step pattern of helping addicts to recovery. None of us seemed to be under the impression that our obsession/fetish/addiction was anywhere near as life destroying as alcoholism or drug addiction, anorexia or bulimia, to name a few. Those who face up to and conquer those addictions have real strength and my admiration. It seemed to be that we bracoholics have a quirk in our personality that when we turn for help we are not so much looking for a cure as we are looking to understand ourselves and perhaps to bring the obsessive behaviors under control.

Heck, I was there wearing my favorite Playtex True Support bra under my new Ivanka Trump dress (picked up for a song on the clearance rack at Ross Dress For Less). I didn’t want to give any of this up. I did want to understand what brought me to where I was. I wasn’t really looking for a cure as for an understanding of who I was and why I was that way. I decided that I owed it to myself to return for one more bracoholics group session. We at least followed the first of the 12  steps -– acknowledging that we have a problem and how it has affected our lives. And wow did I ever have a lot more to tell on that count.

As I turned my attention to what I should say about the next stages of my life and my obsession I thought back on what I had revealed that first evening, how the fascination of a young boy with his mother’s dressing habits, with the bras and other lingerie in the department store catalogues and eventually on the backs of his female classmates had led to a life-long obsession with the garment. As I tried to think how to move forward it occurred to me that I had left out one very big part of the equation, perhaps the most important influence in my obsession. ‘How could I leave that out?’ I thought. I wonder if any other boys were influenced the same way.

I decided to make it the focus of my next revelation. I wondered if I searched the internet could I find any examples to illustrate my point. I got to work. It took only a few evenings of work to pull it all together. My search engine of choice, Google, provided a treasure of examples that took me back to my youth and to memories of how those same images had helped nurture my fascination with bras. I whipped together a slide show to illustrate my presentation.

I talked with Angela, the group moderator, and she thought it would be a great idea to clear the agenda of the next meeting I could attend so that I would be the sole presenter followed by a discussion of the influences I would outline.

So, on the appointed date, at the appointed time I arrived at the hall to find it packed. Apparently Angela had spread the word that I would be doing an audio-visual presentation. I guess the prospect of juicy photos had brought a lot of the long-time bracoholics out of the woodwork.

It took me only minutes to set up my portable screen and projector and insert the USB key. Then I signaled to Angela.

“Linda here has graciously agreed to continue her presentation about the influences in her youth that helped bring her eventually to us,” she started, “when she finishes I think we will have a discussion about how incidents in your youth have helped bring you here too. Welcome Linda.”

“Thanks Angela,” I replied. “Hi, my name is Linda and I am a bracoholic.”

“Hi Linda,” resonated the audience.

“I don’t think I started out life or even through my youthful years was there ever a time when I said to myself, ‘man that would be fun to be obsessed with bras’ or ‘I want to spend my life admiring, touching and collecting bras’. Nor did I ever say to myself I should have been born a girl. Yet here I am.

“I do think external factors have helped shape my personality but I also think I had control over how much affect those factors had. Let me explain.”

I then launched in to the following power point presentation stopping at a few points to embellish the dialogue and in one case to let the humor sink in.

(Click the icon on the lower right of the Power Point to expand it to full size in a new window. Close the new window to return to this page.)

True to her word after thanking me for the presentation Angela asked for comments and questions.

A number of the older girls recalled similar attractions to the ads. The few younger ones didn’t connect with the concept of magazines but seemed to get similar thrills from on-line ‘window shopping’ at lingerie sites.

There were comments about how tough it was to keep their secret activity to themselves.

“But isn’t that a very lonely life?” asked one of the spouses present?

“Yes, it usually is but let me tell you of a couple of times when I happened on other ‘Sisters in Bracoholism’ and it wasn’t lonely at all.”

Just then Angela stepped in to bring the meeting to a halt. I think she feared my answer would be long and probably a bit erotic. She was right on both counts so I’ll tell you next time how my next presentation went.

To be continued. . . . 

Tags: bras, brassiere, crossdressing, featured

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment