A little bit closer to the present

A quick recap of my early days can be found here, while this post has what I had to say about some of my teenage years' experiences.  Most of my experience during my under-20 years involved a bit of confusion along with trying to overcome the socially ingrained homophobia to which I was exposed regularly.  Infrequently, during this time, I would reflect upon girls/women I would encounter and wish I was not only dressed like them, but also was them.  However, my testosterone poisoning during this time tended to twist these feelings around towards more of the socially "normal" lust.  It was never that simple back then, and it is even less simple now.

Since I was either living at home or living in a college setting (dorm/frat house), I never tried to accumulate any form of female wardrobe, mostly in fear of being found out, but also from not being able to find items which would fit my large frame (this was well before the advent of the internet, as well as the BBW retail stores like Avenue and Lane Bryant).  I would often review what other women were wearing and frequently had to squelch the urge to ask where some appealing article of clothing had been purchased.  While Arianwen's taste in clothing grew from whatever was available towards more traditional female garb like slips, stockings and skirts, her tastes as well as her experiences stayed exclusively in the male body's imagination.

From an experiential standpoint, there isn't much of my gender-variant side to explore here, as the next 20 years or so beyond my high school days, there was always one reason or another not to allow Arianwen to be present in the physical world -- living arrangements, financial insecurity, lack of access to suitable clothing, and (probably foremost on this list) fear of discovery.  However, that would change a bit in my mid-thirties, when the long-term, loving relationship in which I was in at this time, suddenly and inexplicably went awry -- after living together with "Liz" (not her real name) for nearly two years, she asked me to move out temporarily, due to problems she was having with her ex-husband.  For several months, I would expend a lot of time and energy to try and keep our relationship alive while being separated, but one evening I had become so frustrated that I didn't know what to do.

I was driving around aimlessly for a while when I came across a discount department store which was having a chain-wide "Going Out of Business" sale.  I don't really know why I stopped, but I did and wandered around the mostly empty store -- empty of shoppers, that is.  The reason for the emptiness probably had more to do with the fact that it was well after 10pm than anything else.  After about fifteen minutes in the store, I found myself in the Plus Size section of this store.  I found a dark blue satin bra, matching panties (both from Vassarette), and a satin pajama set and took them to the checkout counter.  The entire time I was waiting for the cashier to ring up my purchases, the only thing I kept thinking was, 'I hope that I grabbed the right sizes.'  It wasn't until I was half-way home before I realized that I should have been afraid of being a man buying womens' clothing.  Fortunately, everything that I purchased fit and I wore all of them to bed that night and enjoyed waking up with them still on.

Over the next few months from this time, I was able to try picking up a few more things for Arianwen.  Oddly enough, the fear of being "male while buying female articles of clothing" became stronger with each successive attempt -- when I started trotting out the, "I'm getting this for my girlfriend" line (at a Victoria's Secret store, nonetheless), I knew that I was in trouble.