My CD Story, Part 2

... When we last left Amanda... No, just kidding... Isn't that what they used to do in the sitcoms when they had a to be continued episode...

After college, I got an internship in a city away from home. I lived with a girl who I had a crush on. Never made a move on her (too nervous, only came close when we were drunk). However, she went to a different for a permanent job interview. I stayed up all night wearing her clothes, walking around outside in our apartment complex (a huge thrill). There was massive guilt after the rush of course, when after hours, but I try on her clothes a couple of other times when she was out of town. 

I moved to a different city down south after that and had my own place, but only dressed once - at this point I was in my early 20s and really struggling between my CD feelings, a lack of self-confidence with girls, and the feelings of what I should be and do to get what I wanted - a wife and a family. So like I said, I only dressed once - I went out and bought the stuff and came home and dressed. After another long dressed session the guilt got to me again. I threw it all away and went out drinking with some friends. But when I got home, thinking about dressing got to me, and I jumped in the dumpster to get those clothes. Had another dressing session, felt the guilt, and got rid of them for good this time. 

I went to graduate school, which was a lot like college - no dressing. Got a job in New York City and moved there. I started ordering stuff from Frederick's. I would occasionally have dressing sessions, though not all the time. Always ended with the guilt and questions. But I didn't purge - I kept my stuff and expanded my collection over time. I think the lack of purging was my first bit of acceptance that this was part of who I was.

By this point I was in my late 20s and working long hours. Feeling the pressure about marriage from family and from myself, I made a concerted effort to date. some but couldn't find a spark with most girls. I figured I would never have a girlfriend, so I started thinking about taking the first step to really CDing seriously - shaving. I bought more clothes and started dressing much more often, but always in private.

But it was at that point that my future wife reached out to me - she made the first move - again, self-confidence issues and fear of rejection on my part made me paralyzed in this department. I knew her from school, but she lived away. But was persistent and we went out a few times when I was in the area. She came and spent a weekend. There was a big spark between us. We did the long distance thing for about a year and a half - I put my dressing aside when she was there of course, though I would fantasize about being dressed when we made love. A long distance relationship was really the perfect situation for a closeted CD like me who was still struggling with acceptance and so couldn't envision telling my girlfriend about this. Eventually, we got engaged (I did have the guts to propose) and married. I threw my collection away out of fear she would find it. Did no dressing, but I would look at sites when she wasn't around.

About a year and a half after we were married, our first child was born. That Christmas, they flew home early while I was going to drive later. I went and bought some stuff and had a field day, but of course then threw it all away. That happened a couple more times in the next couple of years, during which we had another child. 

After delaying a house purchase for years thanks to get burned by the real estate crash, we bought a house and some property with privacy. When my wife went home with the kids again, I spent a couple hundred dollars buying stuff on amazon and took the dressing to a new level, spending basically the whole time dressed and creeping around the neighborhood at night. I even bought makeup and tried. It was such a 

thrill (pics from that weekend are on flickr - no face pics because my makeup was terrible - I had no idea what I was doing and looked like a cross between a clown and the bride of Frankenstein). Unfortunately, I was worried about being discovered and threw all the stuff away. But I have bought a few things since, which I still have and have hidden away, and that I wear occasionally when she is out. 

To be concluded in Part 3 (all the best movie series are trilogies... Ha... Too much hubris, Amanda ) Amanda's trip to Femmefever

My CD Story, Part 1

So I was able to post this quicker than I thought, but it's very long. I'm copying much of it off an email I sent and am doing it using a phone, so this will be broken up. More to come...

The first urge to dress that I can recall was when I was around 3 or 4 years old. My cousin had come over to our house after church. She was wearing her church clothes, including a pair of Mary Jane shoes. I really wanted to try those on, but knew better than to say anything to her or anyone else. 

Then I can remember being around five. I was a huge He-Man fan (like I said I was always pretty much a boy's boy outside of this) and was going to dress as him for Halloween. My mother was worried about me being cold and so got me some tights to wear under the shorts. I tried them on as soon as I got home. Turns out it was warm that Halloween and I didn't need them. I kept seeing them in my dresser drawer but never wore them again. One day my mom cleaned out my clothes and they were gone. 

Then around third grade one of my friends dressed up as a joke. I felt really funny and knew I wanted to be dressed up too. I used to lie in bed and think about dressing before I went to sleep. By fifth grade, after another friend dressed as a joke, curiosity got the better of me. I started to try on my mom and sister's stuff (she was younger than me and small, but she had some clothes that were way too big for her and I could squeeze into some things). I continued to do this for a couple of years, whenever I was at home alone. With the onset of middle school and those associated changes that teenagers go through, these dressing sessions became more frequent (you can read between the lines here).

From then on, I would dress most times when I was home alone. We had just gotten AOL and I discovered the gender forum and pictures there. I would go to the chatrooms, where I would lie about my age and how I was dressed in order to be flattered. This ebbed and flowed through the years. I really didn't date much in high school and only had one girlfriend who lasted for only a few months. Part of this was due to my lack of self-confidence in general and part was fear about being found out as a CD. Those fears lasted through college and well into my 20s.

Outside of that, though, I was a fairly typical guy - I loved sports (still do) and played all kinds, generally liked things most boys do, drank and partied, and was reasonably popular in school. I look back on my high school days generally fondly. I even thought at one point near the end of high school that I had this CD thing beaten. Then I got my own computer, my curiosity got the best of me, and the next thing I know I was checking out all the sites of geocities. Through college I would spend lots of time in my room looking at sites. Rarely (basically never) dressed, and I'm sure all the time in my room on the Internet hurt my social life, but my lack of self confidence and introversion meant my social life was never going to be stellar anyway. 

To be continued...

Welcome to My Blog & Short Version of About Me

Hello and welcome to my blog. I hope you find it enjoyable and that we can enlighten one another. I look forward to making some new friends and engaging in some interesting dialogue.

Why blog and why do it under my CD pseudonym? 

I view this blog as my own therapy. I'm often full of worry and fear about the future, and this is my chance to write about it. Blogging as Amanda gives me a chance to explore all aspects of myself, including (but not limited to) CDing, and it allows for some comments and feedback from others, with the ability to do it anonymously. So, I guess my question is, why not blog as Amanda? She's a (important) part of me, and this gives me a chance to tell all of my story and explore all of my thoughts. 

About me:

I grew up in a small southern town. Like many (all but a handful) of them, it's socially conservative and very religious - certainly not the type of place where being CD would be very accepted, though it has become more tolerant over the years as it is a retirement area that has boomed in population.  But being a CD is only a part of who I am: I don't think I would have been running around in dresses and playing with dolls regardless. I was actually a pretty regular boy otherwise - into sports, action figures, and the like. Sexually, I liked girls - still do (of all types). Beyond CDing, my difference from other boys in my town was that I was very smart, very ambitious, a bit more introverted and risk averse, and lacked self-esteem and self-confidence. Those things still define me today - except I'm working with people smarter than me now, which is more challenging and entertaining, but very often weighs on my self confidence too.  Up next: my CD story