by Robert Fawn
(12/12/01)
It is the most powerful fantasy of my life as a transvestite. It is
bizarre, as transvestite fantasies often are. It is difficult to
describe, relate, or render understandable, particularly since it
somewhat confuses even me. Few transvestites understand the nature of
their obsession. The fantasy is called "The Suitors."
First, let me ruminate a little about the nature of the beast. Of ways
of viewing reality, a transvestite's is among the most difficult to
describe -- because it is all a fantasy world, a shifting screen of
delusive surfaces. Transvestitism is a long self-absorption. Still,
cross-dressing can answer needs -- deep, personal, and, some say,
spiritual needs. The fetish object upon which transvestitism
focuses -- nonetheless -- is the mirror. It is out of mirrors (the
wide bedroom, the oval bathroom, the coquettish hand mirror)
transvestitism spawns. Therein we first conceive a preference for
the image of the opposite sex. A man sees himself, prefers himself
instead as a woman. A woman sees herself, and vice versa.
Transvestites see a gleam in the mirror. That gleam is a far cry from
the ordinary experience of admiring your own image. We see
ourselves other than as we are. Nor is it true that we despise our
natural sex, the sex we are born with. But the fantasy image is more
perfect. We -- this is the best way I know how to describe the fantasy
life that swallows us up -- experience a life long love affair with
an Alice-in-Wonderland dream of passing through the looking
glass. This may be a problem. I have never regarded my
transvestitism as a neurosis, but sometimes it is simply too
much. (I began, like most transvestites, as a child -- the
cliché of a twelve year old boy playing dress-up in front of his
mother's mirror. Yes, it was too intense.)
Caligula-like, that is how intense the pleasures are. They occur
within an inverted reality. Transvestites do the opposite of what
most people do. Rather than seeking pleasure in pursuit of a male
or female sexual partner -- a lover -- the place where ordinary
pleasures lay -- we look inside. Gazing down, as though through a
funnel, to our mirror reflections. We pursue fulfillment in fantasy
identities.
Not in the world, but in the mirror. Fantasy personalities flood
through. The flood, once begun, shudders through you as unstoppably as
an orgasm. Regardless of sexuality, there are thousands of buried
identities in each of us. Transvestitism is a wild, carnivalesque trip
that unleashes those hidden personas that wait docilely, under the
surfaces, as slippery as water spirits. I will never see them all.
Yesterday is never tomorrow. I am never the same woman twice. I dress
up as Woman. This is truer than saying I dress up as a woman. While I
have distinct fantasies involving special women -- oftentimes movie
stars, Garbo, Janet Leigh, Debra Winger -- I become so many they blur
together. Becoming Woman is becoming a legion.
One last point of clarification, before we continue to "The Suitors."
Do not confuse transvestites and exhibitionists. The exhibitionists
are the most famous of our kind, but, for each of them, there is a man
like me. The man who dresses up in the privacy of a suburban
home. The exhibitionists are merely a species. Transvestitism itself
in its purest form -- is a solo performance. For its thrills are
those of the mirror, of things one can do with oneself and to
oneself. Silk against one's flesh; the opposite sex's underwear;
fake, flowing blonde hair. These are self-sensual accessories. It
is in the privacy of onanism that transvestitism becomes as
obsessive as Hollywood vampirism. Naturally for the public
exhibitionists, the drag queens and such, parading about adds a
thrill. Many transvestites are simply talented entertainers.
Transvestitism, at its root, is still onanism. Exhibitionist
transvestites -- and I admire them -- thrive off the illicitness of
masturbating in public.
In the last few years the fantasy that has given me the most pleasure
is the moral fable of The Virgin-slut and The Suitors. The fantasy
dates back from my childhood. I forgot it for many years. But
memories from childhood often come back as you grow older. This is
one that I am pleased returned.
I usually play the game in the middle of the afternoon. I dim the
lights. Sometimes I put on women's clothes. But -- does this surprise
you? -- sometimes not. Transvestitism is a way of thinking, of
fantasizing. The feminine accessories, so ostensibly important,
only assist a process that occurs in the mind. I enter that
deepest, darkest of places, the most palatial of estates: the
sexual soul. I can do everything through fantasy, pictures in a
shuffled deck of cards. In make-believe, I can wear anything from a
nun's habit to a frail pink nightie with a ribbon under the
breasts. This was the first women's garment I ever wore. I
experienced my first orgasm wearing it. It belonged to my
mother. To touch, feel, smell that nightie again is a delicious
wish: an impossible, unfulfillable fantasy, just like this fantasy
in which men circle around me like horses on a Ferris wheel.
The men are The Suitors.
In my fantasies, the women I become wear different faces. But all, all
are passive. Easy, pliable. She can never say no. God must be a
child-woman like her. This is how God's love shines on earth --
indiscriminately. The joy of my perfect woman is how through her I
can abdicate the world. Every man can drink of me. She offers me a way
out. She is free of selectivity, and its ne'er-do-well companion,
responsibility. I am freed through her of animosities, envy, guilt, or
needs such as to avenge myself, to compete, to get ahead. Thus
unburdened, every stranger is a potential friend. I know of no one
whom I would wish ungentleness to. I am the world's pillow. This is a
fantasy of purity, grace, of drinking long. Come love me...relax...The
world is harsh...but ease is as sexual as desire. I heal the turmoil,
wrap my legs around the world's anger and meanness. The men who deal
with the daily pressure of living thrust up into my belly and find the
perfect peace they've sought all their lives.
I part my legs for the anonymous ones. The men -- the men -- The
Suitors.
They come. They feast upon my innocence. Strange, dark men. They enter
into my palace of illusions. These evil men can try whatever they like
-- I am an innocent but I will understand, forgive. They can't ruin
me. I am holier than they: a complete woman.
The room darkens. Shadows splay, produced by an unknown light
source. The suddenness of the change creates a carnival house
atmosphere. Cruel men who crawled from Pandora's box don't need
to chase me. I lay, like Sleeping Beauty -- eyes shut, body
tingling. They come. I lounge in a thin dress, naked underneath.
I lower my eyes. They should expect that by now. A woman should
always...it is like shading a lamp. I have lovers with faces I have
never seen.
My first suitor is a well-known movie star. A motorcycle type, he
usually appears in movies wearing leather. He strips the gear for
me. He kneels in front of me, flexes. He swings his arms up, back,
pumps them like fans swinging above my head. He jumps. Agilely kicks
off his briefs. I smell cologne when he leans over me. His face is as
beautiful as it is on the silver screen, but while he gazes down at
me, looking like a child so eager to please me, something happens.
Spit dribbles from the side of his mouth. "Boo," he says. Then he
attacks.
The next suitor is explicitly cruel from the beginning. He carries a
whip, and calls himself Zeus, the God of Thunder. He doesn't want to
touch me. He circles me, and cynically snarls "Look at the boy
dressed like a girl, look at the man who thinks he's a woman!" He
wants to break the illusion, but I hold on. I feel his nearness like
an overcast sky, and as in a dream, suddenly the wind billows and
transports me to a weird realm where the shadows of trees sway in a
fairy tale forest. This one's presence fills the sky. Lightning
flashes; rain falls. His whip cracks.
The third suitor comes to tell me about myself. He is a priest in
black robes. He kneels, licks my ear, and talks about love and
cruelty. If I would be a woman, I must eroticize the universe. I
should abandon the past and renounce my individuality for a world
where sex is completely uninhibited. I must embody heaven, hell, and
everything in between. He speaks of us creating a perfect world
together. That is a world where any man can relax with me, possess me,
strip me, violently if he so wants. It should be a joy to forgive
cruelty. I should likewise forgive him for what he is about to
do. Then he does it.
The last suitor comes to remind me of the woman I truly am, which is
no more nor less than an image in a mirror. He is the most
unsatisfactory of the four. His hair isn't combed. I suppose you could
call him a man, in the generous sense of the word. He looks poor.
This one's wrong for me in every important way. His personality isn't
particularly flamboyant, nor his face particularly distinctive, nor
his eyes satisfactory -- usually I like eyes lit with a tiger's
fire. He's pudgy. His clothes don't fit, but when I tell him to go
away, he smiles. A little too knowingly.
Somehow I recognize him -- from the mirror. I tell him this is my
fantasy, though he keeps trying to win me with qualities like
charm, wit and intelligence, though in my fantasies only women are
witty, intelligent and so forth. He is really disturbing my
fantasy. I want to be the woman. I want to epitomize charm, not be
charmed. He doesn't get it.
He sits beside me, talking, joking. He somehow doesn't seem to care
that I think he's so average. Then his hands move swiftly to the small
of my back and up my legs. I still don't feel swept away -- not hardly
-- when this one strokes my panties. He pets my softness through
the crotch fabric. I feel nothing. Why do I relax into his arms?
Out of politeness. He begins to parlay his feeble attributes to
their best advantage though. When he palms my sex flower, what is
this feeling, this arousal -- it is the rush an old mistress feels
when her old man wants affection. He kneels, tickles inside my
thighs. Buries his head there without warning me. I clutch his
hair. He knew I would like that. He knows everything I like. I am
sliding into the furthest regions of fantasy again, all flowers,
fawns and femininity, and when he grabs me and puts his head up my
legs I see us as in a ceiling mirror, and he flows over my body and
kisses me. I brush my hair from my eyes for him, show him every
grace, with exaggerated consent. I am as aware of the positions I
assume as a model is when she is being photographed. Even as he
unzips himself, I know how my foot arches, how my mouth parts, how he
sees me, how the folds of my dress cover my sex flower -- until my
least attractive lover enters me with a shudder and groans, "Is it
good?" And I say his name over and over. "Do you love me?"
He is, of course, me. The me in the mirror. Grabbing his ass,
I say, "Yes". "Do you want to see me again?" And I say, "Yes yes," and
my legs fold over his hips like a night flower, a long,
long... yes.
