A moving situation

Because of my secret life I have hidden much of myself from my family and over the years they have learned to obey the rule that they aren't to visit without prior notification.  This took some time but they learned the hard way to obey my wishes as I have been known to refuse to open the door when they arrive.  Little did they know I was usually in heels and a wearing a wig.

The reason they think I don't allow them to visit is because my place is a mess.  I'm not the best housekeeper but as I have become more and more comfortable with who I am, I like to forget that the rest of the world hasn't changed with me and my house has become a refuge from the world.  On any given day women's items can be found all over my house.  Nail polish and nail polish remover is in all my bathrooms.  My closets are full of women's clothes.  I'm sure if you looked under my bed you could find a bra or a pair of panties.

Now some of these things are easy enough to explain but some things like my breast forms or high heels would be impossible.  That's why I've found it easier to keep my family away as I'm not ever planning to let them know about that part of my life but I also refuse to hide my items in my own house.

That brings me to my problem.  I'm in the process of moving and I needed help packing.  I spent most of the last few weeks getting all my secret stuff together and it is now safe in the trunk of my car.  This week my family is helping me move the rest and I've had a few unfortunate surprises.  My brother found a bra under my washing machine.  My mom decided she wanted to do my laundry and found a camisole in my dirty clothes basket.  My sister found the ultraviolet light I use to dry my gel nail polish and asked where I wanted it packed.  It's lucky she has no idea of its use.

My brother joked, "Do we need to talk?" when he found the bra but I blew him off with the comment that it was from an old girlfriend.

Mom never said a word about the camisole which makes me wonder.  Does she know?  I really don't think she does as I have brought up the subject of crossdressing in the past (as recent as two weeks ago) and her reaction has always been over the top hurtful.  I can't believe she'd be that mean to crossdressers if she knew my truth.

Many parents are blind to the truths about their kids and their kids lie about who they are to keep their parents happy.  Of course we both could change.  There are parents that are accepting of their kids no matter who they are and there are kids that aren't afraid to show the world their true nature despite the negative reaction.  That just isn't for me or my family.

One good thing about this situation is it has given me some ideas for a new story though I'm sure the protagonist will have a much more dramatic ending.  My breast forms are safe in the trunk of my car.  His won't be.

Inspiration strikes and I wrote a quick story called Jersey Girls

You can find the story at fictionmania at Jersey Girls or in the link in the margin.

This story was definitely a spur of the moment.  On Saturday afternoon I was cleaning the house wearing a shirt, a pair of shorts, a wig, a pair of black 3 inch heels, a bra, and my breastforms wearing clearcoat nail polish and dark lipstick.  One thing I like about this outfit is it is easy to transition to a more normal look if someone comes to the door (all I really do is take off the wig and high heels as my shirt is loose fitting and the lipstick is close enough to my own lip color that it is hard to notice - the key is I know it's there).

It's hard to explain the moment when inspiration hits and I'm not exactly sure of how it works.  On Saturday I think it was the combination of wig, breastforms, and shoes that conspired to a genesis thought of 'woman gets guy to wear a wig to transform his hair, then high heels which transform his legs'.  The trope is common in many TG stories as stories are boring without some sort of confict and changing someone against their will is a common theme in many of these stories.  I have struggled writing a story like this as I think I'm too nice so all of mine were about men that wanted to change.  That's why I made the man as despicable as I could imagine with an overwhelming sense of superiority that made his eventual comeuppance easier to write.

I started writing about 1pm on Saturday and before I knew it, the sun was setting on a good 6+ hours of writing.  Father's Day was Sunday and I missed writing it though my brain was churning all day filling in the gaps and fleshing out the story.  On Monday I started writing about 9am and didn't stop until I was finished around 4pm.  The final word length was a little over 5000 words so I was able to write around 300-400 words per hour.

That's fast for me and I suspect fast for most people.  Keep in mind that this time includes editing it for about 2-3 hours though it is hard to judge what part of the process is writing, what part is editing, and what part of re-writing.  I've hesitated to re-read it because I felt the story came together nice though once again I'm not happy with the ending.  It felt tight on my 4th read through though I know I should have set it to the side for a few days for a final re-edit as it is too easy to fall in love with your story as written and a day later I've already found a few holes in the universe I created that I wish I'd tightened.

I don't want to give away too many secrets before the spoiler section but the story started as one where the clothes were changing the man to an entirely different mechanism I like better.  I hope people like it though I suspect I'm going to always wish I'd taken more time.  The problem was this story burst out of me and I felt like I needed to publish it ASAP.  I can't explain why.

I am anxious to see the reception and seeing as it is only 5000 words it will most likely get a lot more page views and while I know I could have improved it with another 10 hours of work I think its still a pretty tale.

************

Spoilers:  At the end of the story I really think I messed up by not being clear why the main character will enter a life of prostitution.  I'm also not sure if I made it clear that the woman couldn't do anything she wanted could only use her powers when someone wished for something.  My original intent was that the main characters memories were going to be wiped (s)he'd think she was born to a life of prostitution.  This path seemed to go against the principles that the 'genie' claimed to follow and did little to punish the man as he needed his memories to truly be sorry.  Identity death punishes the innocent so I changed it near the end of my writing process.  This was not a minor change as there are about 5 storylines coming together and a change like this meant changing the wording throughout the story and I hope I didn't miss anything.

I did think about writing a prologue with the (wo)man working the street but everything felt off.  The fact that she didn't have any memories made it difficult and it felt mean to write something about a woman in a desperate situation.

• My first thought was of her smoking a cigarette with needle marks in her arms as she watched the news crawl that the police were presuming that the man was dead before she went out to the streets.  
• I didn't explore the idea of a prologue after I gave the man his memories and that opens up a few more possibilities and makes it easier to be mean.  I would have written it with his sense of superiority as he complains in his mind that he's better than the other women and the fact that the boss is only sleeping with him is proof (similar thoughts the woman had that he killed).  The last shot would be him going out to the street bruised and haggard with track marks on his arms wondering if the woman was ever going to keep her promise and offer him a way out of this life.  In hindsight I'm wishing I had explored this and might for my private copy (I don't like to resubmit to fictionmania as they discourage the practice).

Small Town Journey

After I finished my blog post I realized I never posted the reception to my last story, Small Town Journey.  This has been sitting on my hard drive for a long time that I wrote as a 'what-if' type of story as opposed to my actual life.

The story is of a guy named Steve that is having difficulty in school and finds himself in a situation with many dark thoughts and no seeming escape until in desperation he reaches out.  The rest of the story is how the various characters react, help, and condemn his actions.

The  story is the longest I've put on Fictionmania at 274k which I think translates into about 50,000 words.  I knew it was a risk as most people on the site are looking for something about 4,000 words with a lot more erotica than I ever plan to put into any of my works (this was rated G).  I got fewer responses which was expected due to the lenght but loved the ones that bothered to respond.  Here's a sample:

• An absorbing story with good characterisation. No completely evil people and none lily-white pure. In other words like most of us. This is such a huge work that it seems churlish only to offer a short review but I'm afraid that's what this is going to be.
• All I can say is that I read it at one sitting and found it both believable and enjoyable. It even brought me to tears at one point. There was a feeling towards the end that the writer wanted to get it finished because it became slightly rushed. Perhaps a little less time spent earlier and little more towards the end would improve the flow but that's being slightly churlish.
• This was so well written, didn't have time to complete it in one sitting, but had to come back to it, couldn't wait to finish.  Thank you for a really lovely story Sara! There are very few that keep me reading all the way to the end in one go but this one did.  I should also say that I am agnostic but actually felt pleased with the way religion were portrayed in the story.  I felt a real empathy with Sara in the story, I could really believe it was like a diary extract and it went into good deep detail.  
• Keep up the writing, you have a real talent and I look forward to your future works.
• Hi Sara thank you for a lovly story i was captivated with your story and was pleased with the support group that you presented wish it were so for most of us in the world of gender identity it was nice to read something less blatently sex oriented and more emitional driven and at a point of coming of decision/age as i am wiping the tears from my face and the mascara it was lovely the way you left the coming together of father and daughter be the end. Bravo.
• Beautiful story. I very much enjoyed it as there were many similarities to my life.
• Nicely done. A great amount of detail for a vivid picture. You have a real talent and your effort is clearly visible.

Words like this after so much effort is really appreciated.  The funny things is how much I notice the stories flaws after posting.  A professional site would be much harsher as I've read it a few times since I posted and cringe at every grammar error.  I also really wish I could go back and strengthen the final chapter but I need an editor for advice which is difficult to do that and keep my secret.  For this story it is time to move on.

I still have two much longer works that I really like that are currently sitting at about 40,000 and 120,000 words respectively though I will probably release the latter as two books.  As you can imagine the editing process is difficult.

To get away from it I located a rough draft from my first attempt at writing one of these types of stories that was about 50,000 words.  It's about 3/4 done and needs a lot of work as my writing skill has improved a lot since that time.

I really hope to have all of these published this year as they've all been lingering on my computer for far too long.

Crossdressing, the Bible, and Mom

My stories exist as an answer to the call of demons that exist inside of me.  We all have demons but society likes to pretend they don't exist.  We like to forget that at one time we were much less civilized than we are today.  The action of the human brain is more complex than we can understand and we are alone on the planet in our existential conflict.

Over time we have developed different coping mechanisms like church, alcohol, stories, and therapy but the truth of the matter is none of really understand why were are here or truly understand all our actions.  We like to think that we are in control when in actuality we are the result of an evolutionary process that gave us a few gifts that other animals lacked.  

Humans have a big brain.  We have the ability to speak.  We have hands and thumbs that enable us to make and use tools.  This gave us the ability to dominate the planet but other than that we aren't different than other animals.  Watch a pack of cheetahs chase a wounded gazelle and tell me their actions are much different than a group of 5th grade bullies picking on the class nerd.  Watch a herd of wild horses follow a stallion and tell me you don't see the same type of behavior at any political rally.  We have developed codes and laws to 'normalize' our behavior but the truth is deep down we are just like the rest of the animals on the planet.

In some of my stories a mother figure plays a big role and all of them are based in part on my own mother.  I'm sure all writers do this as our parents affect us more than any other person.  Our parents get the blame them for our problems as we get older and fail to live up to the potential set as a child.

My mother has always used religion as a coping mechanism and it is a topic I try to avoid with her. I know quite a bit of my own self hatred of my demons is due to the fact that she is not shy at sharing her views on anything see sees as deviant behavior.  Last night we had a conversation that started innocently as we discussed the recent revelation that the NSA is routinely violating the 4th amendment.  I made a simple comment that set things off.

'This is why the world needs religion but not as it exists today.'

I knew I was poking a beehive with this comment but what I meant was that society would be better off if the societal norm was to belong to a community organization that was a safety net to help the weak/poor and able to stand up to big government.  The Catholic Church did this to some extent in the Middle Ages though corruption at all levels made it less effective than it otherwise would have been.  On the other hand, the Dark Ages would have been much more dark and much more chaotic without the efforts of the many pious men/women that served the church.

My mom believes in a strict adherence to the church and believe fully that anyone that doesn't believe or is of a different faith is going to hell.  I avoid letting her know that the bible is vague about the concept of hell and it certainly wasn't anything in Jesus' teachings.  Hell as we know it today was mostly a creation of a 14th century writer, Dante Aligherieri, in his book the Divine Comedy.  He leads the reader through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise/Heaven (Paradiso) and this is the basis of much of what Christians believe today though many don't realize it.  All Dante was doing was putting words to church doctrine and codifying the mess of various interpretations of Revelations that arose during the Dark Ages.  Church leaders found that the idea of Jesus dying for their sins was a good tool to get the leaders of Europe to follow the church but the idea of hell/eternal damnation was even better.  As an added benefit they could charge people to get their ancestors out of Purgatory and into Heaven.  It was a nice racket.  

For what it is worth, Revelations was written by a man in in 95 AD that had no relation to Jesus or the early apostles but claimed to have been divinely inspired and the early Christians liked the message and included it in the Bible.  All Dante did in the 14th century was take it to the next level.  I personally hope that by the year 2600 that Dan Brown's interpretation will be added to canon though I know that is doubtful.  The truth is there isn't any difference in any of the three fictions (Revelations, Dante's Inferno, DaVinci Code).

I know I've digressed but I do believe the original church of the apostles was a beautiful idea.  The principle concept was that people should love and forgive one another for their failings.  The words that were relayed to us of Jesus' teachings are a series of beautiful statements that condemn the rich and ask us to help the less fortunate.  On the other hand many people today like to forget that the Bible is made up of two parts, the Old and New Testament.  The Old Testament was written by the Judean people as history from parables to help guide their people after their release from captivity from Babylon in about 538 BCE (as reference - the pinnacle of Judean power was under King David and he lived around 1000 BCE and no part of the Bible existed in his time).  The Bible they created was a living document as books were added and subtracted over the next few centuries until Jesus came along a few centuries later and caused a split in the Jewish faith.

The reason I mention the Old Testament is that is where most of the Bible verses come from that are Christians quote about homosexuality and 'deviant behavior'.  Here's the Old Testament verses:  

Genesis 19:1-11 - Lot offers some men of Sodom two of his virgin daughter's to stop them from 'sodomizing' his guests (I wonder how his daughters felt about this).

Leviticus 18:22 - "Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin."

Leviticus 20:13 - "If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense."

Judges 19:16-24 -  "...a crowd of troublemakers from the town surrounded the house. They began beating at the door and shouting to the old man, "Bring out the man who is staying with you so we can have sex with him." The old man stepped outside to talk to them. "No, my brothers, don't do such an evil thing. For this man is a guest in my house, and such a thing would be shameful. Here, take my virgin daughter and this man's concubine. I will bring them out to you, and you can abuse them and do whatever you like. But don't do such a shameful thing to this man."  (Rape my daughters --- please!)

1 Kings 14:24 - "And there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the LORD drove out before the people of Israel."

1 Kings 15:12 - "He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made."

2 Kings 23:7 - "He also tore down the living quarters of the male and female shrine prostitutes that were inside the Temple of the LORD, where the women wove coverings for the Asherah pole."

Romans 1:18-32 - "...God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved."

Here are the verses from the New Testament and they are minor in comparison:

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 - "Don't you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people-none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (Do Christians have the same feelings of anger towards the greedy or drunks as they do for homosexuals?)

1 Timothy 1:8-10 - "Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine"

Jude 7 - "And don't forget Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns, which were filled with immorality and every kind of sexual perversion. Those cities were destroyed by fire and serve as a warning of the eternal fire of God's judgment."

Of all these only Leviticus 20:13 proscribes judgement on deviant behavior.  What many Christians don't tell you is that Leviticus proscribes judgement for all sorts of 'evil' acts.

- Curse your mother or father?  Death (Leviticus 20:9)

- Commit adultry?  Death (Leviticus 20:10)

- Have sex with your father's wife? Death  (Leviticus 20:11)

- Have sex with your daughter in law? Death (Leviticus 20:12)

- Marry a woman and her mother?  Burned to death (Leviticus 20:14)

- Sex with an animal? Both the offender and the animal must die (Leviticus 20:15-16)

- Marry your sister? Banishment (Leviticus 20:17)

- Sex during a woman's period? Banishment (Leviticus 20:18)

- Sex with an aunt? Die childless (though I'm not sure how they'd ensure this) (Leviticus 20:19-20)

- Marry your brother's wife?  Die childless (Leviticus 20:21)

- Eat unclean animals? Defiled (Leviticus 20:25)

- Be a medium or spiritualist? Death by stoning (Leviticus 20:27)

The truth is the Old Testament was a series of socially accepted norms that the leaders of the Judean people gave to their people in order to get them to act in a certain way.  What that tells me is deviant behavior has been around as long as there have been people as our earliest texts speak about it.  It is part of our animal brain.

We have a much better understanding today of how our brains work though we still don't understand why some people deviate for societal norms which brings me back to my conversation with my mom.

Growing up I was indoctrinated into the church and I knew without being told that ideas contrary to the norm were bad and that I was evil for having them.  For me that led to a lot of self hatred that I've yet been able to outrun.  If you step back and look at it from a distance the very idea of a man wanting to be a woman is silly.  I mean ... really?  People are born with either the genetics of a man or a woman.  Why would you want to be something you clearly are not?  It doesn't make any sense and I can't explain it.

All I know is what I feel and that is why my conversation with my mom got so heated.  It went something like this.

Me - 'The Bible has a lot of nice ideas and I might support a church if it were more inclusive with less emphasis on a man that we aren't even sure ever existed.'

Her - 'I have faith and if you gave it a chance you would too.'

Me - 'I've tried mom but my brain doesn't work like that.  I can't believe something I'm 99% sure isn't true.'

Her - '... and besides, gays are welcome in the church.  They choose to live in sin but Jesus would forgive them.  God didn't make them like that.'

Me - 'That's bullshit mom.  I have a gay friend and we've discussed the subject many times.  He's convinced me that he'd do anything to be different but he can't help how he was made.  It is part of who he is and he's accepted it.'

Her - 'I don't believe that.'

Parents rarely see the truth they don't want to see and of course my friend in the conversation was me.  I'm not gay but I am a deviant (I really believe deep down everyone is) and most Christians including my mom would see little difference between what I do and homosexuality.  

This was brought to head the other day when my nephew showed up at his swim meet wearing bright blue nail polish on his fingers and toes.  My brother has shared custody of my nephew and during the day he asked his mom if she would paint his nails like she had done for my niece.  She did it.  My brother was aghast when he saw him and my mom was livid when she heard about it.  Of course I thought it was funny and the comment I made was ...

'I'm impressed that he cares so little about what others think that he is able to do what he wants.'

My brother and mom looked at me like I had two heads.  My mother said she was going to speak to my nephew and tell him that if his mother tried to do something like that ever again to tell her in a loud voice, "NO!"

I lost my temper and yelled at her.  'Mom he wants to do it.  He asks about it all the time and it isn't the first time he's come home wearing nail polish.  He likes it and doesn't need your opinion screwing with his mind.  Let him do what he wants.'

Nope.  I have no issues.

They don't see my nephew's ability to be himself as a blessing.  I look forward to watching him evolve into whatever form of an adult that he desires and he doesn't realize it now but he has a secret ally in me.  I do plan to have a conversation with him that it is not wrong to be yourself no matter what others think.  As long as he isn't hurting others, he is free to act as he wishes and I do hope that whatever he chooses in life isn't hamstrung by the dictates of a society that doesn't want to accept that thoughts in our head are complex.  That the idea of male and female, sexual orientation and gender identification are much more complex than any of us still understand and certainly shouldn't be dictated by a book written a few thousand years ago.

Status of my stories

I wrote my last post as a while ago and the hope was to use this site to post my stories as I wrote them or just rant about events in my life.  I put the first story on fictionmania and it got little fanfare which wasn't unexpected.  It was really a stream of consciousness blog post that needed editing before putting it out as a real story.  I'm also sure that it did a poor job of getting the attention of the readers as most of the first half of the story isn't very appealing to the typical reader on that site (or maybe any site).

I ignored this blog but put up 3 more stories up and gotten good response on most.

The first was the 10,000 word story, The Trial of Stewart, which I wrote in late January.  It was inspired by a friend's divorce and used parts of a magic system that I'm using in an much longer unpublished work.  I was nervous when I posted it as I was worried that I'd get trolled but so far the 11 responses have been really kind.

The second story was Bringing Back Isabell which came to me one morning when I woke up with a stronger desire for a cigarette than normal (read my first blog post if you want to understand why this happens).  To fight it I wrote the outline to a story about a man that was slowly changed into his wife after smoking her cigarettes.  The ending was supposed to be dark but I found myself unable to do it so I went with the happy ending instead.  The final product is about 10,000 words and it took a 3 day weekend in March to finish.  The concept didn't feel great from the start and I posted it in the hope it was better than I thought.  Reader response has been sparse so far with only 2  replies.  I'm going to mark this one off to a lesson learned.

The final story was A Brother's Request and I've been sitting this one for abut two years.  It is a deeply personal short story (1800 words) I wrote during a dark period in my life.  The thought occurred to me that if there is a god that perhaps I will be able to be a woman in heaven.  In my brain I felt I needed to be dressed appropriately and the story is about a man that asks his sister to help.

When I finished it, I never thought I'd publish it.  I know I could never do it without using a pseudonym and it is not much of a stretch to say that the 'coward' in the story is me.  My impetus for publishing it was the recent story of Lucy Meadows, a transitioning woman harassed by a a newspaper that killed herself.  I cleaned up the words and posted it.  The response has been overwhelming and I thought I'd share a few of the responses.  

• I do not often provide reviews, yet this short story is compelling. You have captured the essence of the desperation that many gender dysphoric people are trped in. I commend you for the skill with which you captured that desperation. The story is deeply sad, but intensly true, in its essence. We will never know how many misbegotten souls have taken this path, or some other to assuage their pain. My salute to your skill and sensitivity in capturing this situation.
• Thank you, Sara, for this story. It hit home in a way very, very few stories - CD/TG or otherwise - ever have or possibly can.
• A wrenching, beautifully-written story that moves in a way few other stories at this site ever have. It is wholly appropriate.
• I often visit this site out of a curiosity I don't care to analse too much and I enjoy more of the stories than I ever thought would be possible for me.  This particular story, however, is so far beyond what can normally be found here, excellent as much of that material is, and is a truly and deeply moving account of an inability to meet the expectations of others. It has been said so often that we cannot please everyone; surely we are allowed to please ourselves from time to time?
• Beautiful, poignant and well-written, this story will stay in my memeory for a very long time; thank you for writing it and sharing it with us.

Suffice it to say that I'm humbled by the response.  I know I cried a few times as I wrote/edited the story and it is apparent from the response that the feeling came through in my words.  I know I can't do that too often as a 400 page story filled with raw emotions will overwhelm at some point but it is nice to know I have the ability if I need it.

That's what I've published recently but most of my times has been spent on 2 other stories.  I've got a 100 page story I started last summer and a 400 page book that is about 2 years old.  Both are about 90% done and I'm struggling with a few chapters and as always, the dreaded editing process.  After that I need to figure out how to publish them.  I'm thinking of putting it on this site in a serialized format but I'm not sure I could get the following to make it worthwhile.  There's a few other sites that I might look at as I've put a lot into both and I want to make sure I maximize the audience.  I've found from the stories I put on fictionmania that they get readers for the first week and then lost in the mix.  I'd really hate that to happen to these.