remarkable

—

I actually looked like a young and reasonably attractive girl, as I had always dreamed of being. That night I went out on the streets for the first time, tingling all over with wonder and excitement.

The next few months were just heavenly, since I was able to spend nearly all my free time getting the "feel" of my new role. Then something happened to change all that. I met a girl with whom I fell deeply and passionately in love. Lacking any other explanation, I had come to assume that dressing simply acted as a sex-substitute for me (albeit a pretty unusual one), and one with which I would have to be content. Her love dramatically taught me how wrong I was on both counts. Not only did it bring me more happiness than I had ever known before, but I knew that dressing alone would never completely satisfy me again. Indeed, I was thrilled to think that my adventures in that area were finally over that I didn't need it anymore. Later I was to learn how wrong I was about that too.

At the time, however, I was more optimistic about successfully quitting than at any other time before or, I might add, since. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I cleaned out my closets and without a moment's hesitation burned everything. This, I was positive, was at long last the end. Still, I felt she had a right to know what I had been, so one night I told her. It seemed a tremendous risk at the time; after all, I thought, what girl could ever love a man who had done the things I had? She was baffled, but, as I had assured her I had quit, passed it off as something over and done with and, therefore, unimportant.

But it wasn't over and done with. Far from it, for while dressing had proved no substitute for sex, neither, I found to my discouragement, was sex a substitute for dressing. In the months that followed, true to form, I began thinking about it again. Then reading. But I still managed to abstain from dressing itself... though not in spirit. All in all, it took me about a year to go back, and by this time (for reasons having nothing to do with dressing) I had a new girl – and whole new confession ahead of me, made even worse because I was back at it again. As we were planning marriage, I had to let her know about me, especially since now I knew I could give her no assurances that I would ever stop. She too was surprised, but very understanding.