Daniella's Ramblings

Star date February 2015

One of our trans* friends invited us to her birthday party that was to be held at our local gay bar. We were very happy to attend and as luck would have it we had a confluence of events for the kids that would make babysitting easy. We started planning weeks before the event and we were looking forward to the night out.

Then all of a sudden BAM! The kid’s event was cancelled. I was convinced that we were done for and that we would be staying home. But my lovely wife came to the rescue and re-arranged things at the last minute. With babysitting rescued we were ready to rock n roll.

Having the whole afternoon to ourselves meant that we were able to do some pre-party mall crawling, which we did. Unfortunately whilst at the mall I started feeling a bit uncomfortable. It was quite quiet as we had hit the post shopping, pre ‘dinner and a movie’ lull. There were still some people around, but the numbers were small and dwindling. I started to feel a bit anxious and I thought that quite a few people clocked me. I was worried that the place would start filling up with teenage boys soon and did not want to put my wife in any danger or risk any unpleasant encounters so I suggested we leave.

I was unsure of what to make of this anxiety. It was quite a new experience for me. It may well have been driven by the fact that a virtual friend (who lives literally across the world) was recently assaulted by a group of transphobic men, or it may just have been that I had not had time to plan this part of the day properly. Either way it was an irrational anxiety, but anxiety nonetheless. We left before anything bad happened and that made me feel better. We got home and got ready for the party.

The party was themed as a ‘black and white’ party. I decided to wear a sleeveless white cocktail dress, gold shoes, gold accessories and black nail polish (a first). My wife went with a black cocktail dress, black shoes, silver accessories and white nail polish. Given that she is brunette and I am blonde we made an excellent matching pair of negative images of each other.

The white dress was very revealing and rather unforgiving, but I felt good (even sexy) in it and as we were going to a ‘safe’ place among friends, I was happy to be a little risque. In retrospect the dress was very revealing (the photographs showed it to be more revealing than I at first thought). But hey, you only live once!

Too revealing? Ah well, you only live once:

We arrived at the party and had an a lovely time. Some of the usual girls were there but the birthday girl had invited some ‘vanilla’ friends and family as well. It was nice to see that she has the support and love of these people in her life. Some of them did look a bit awkward but I hope they felt welcome. One guest was at the bar when I went to get a drink and he asked me ‘Should I have come in drag?’. I really didn’t know how to respond so I just shrugged and said ‘if you want to.’. Maybe he has an interest, maybe he was a ‘vanilla’ type totally out of his depth, who knows? In retrospect I wish I had been more welcoming of him.

We sat and had some drinks with the usual crowd for a while, caught up with latest events, asked after those who were missing, got introduced to some people we had not met before, all the usual social pleasantries. We then went and got some snacks that our hostess had very thoughtfully put on for us.

Walking towards the snacks I saw a man and a woman dancing very energetically on the dance floor. As it was a gay club I thought  this was a bit odd but assumed they were just a couple having fun. My wife, another girl and I got some snacks and were standing eating them when the male half of the couple came over to me and very clearly asked me to come on to the dance floor. I went, thinking he would then pull my two companions onto the floor. But he had obviously asked me to dance with him! Being somewhat new to the TG social scene I sometimes forget that this sort of thing can happen to me! I was now committed and felt it would have been rude to leave anyway, so I danced with him and his friend for a bit. He started getting a little ‘personal’ and got his body very close to mine. He then started gyrating and grinding into me. Finally he took my clutch bag from me, bent down and spanked his own backside. I now took my bag back and beat a retreat to my companions. He then came over to my friend and tried to get her on to the floor. She declined, he continued, she declined more forcefully so he took her hand bag and danced with the bag. We stayed for a short while and then went back outside. Fortunately my friend rescued her bag without too much fuss. We sat outside and discussed this rather strange turn of events.

Later I felt like dancing so my wife and I went back inside and started dancing. The couple were still dancing and were as energetic as ever. We danced on our corner of the floor and then this guy started moving in on me again. This caused my wife to assert herself and she pushed between us and he seemed to get the idea, eventually… AWKWARD. We carried on dancing and having a lot of fun until we had enough of the smoke machine, so we went outside said our goodbyes and went home. We had a lovely evening, possibly one of our best nights out ever.

Anyway the point of this ramble is that I realised that I really enjoy dancing! Now here is the thing in male mode I am not interested  in dancing. I love watching my wife but I am just not interested in doing it. En femme however I love it. I have been trying to figure this contradiction out.

Could it be that as dance is an expressive act and also a very personal expressive act and that in male mode I feel awkward and possibly a little inauthentic, but in female mode I feel more like my true self, more ‘congruent’; I may therefore be able to better express myself in dance as a female?

Or is it, as my wife suggests, that I see dance as a feminine activity and thus feel uncomfortable doing it as a male? I do not share this view as I am fairly non-sexist and don’t see things in these terms, at least not consciously, but there may be some residual social conditioning going on here.

Or is it that I see dance as a sexual act and feel more sexual en femme and thus more comfortable dancing?

I truly do not know.

In most other respects there is a high degree of correlation between male ‘me’ and female ‘me’. I am after all the same person, but in this respect I feel that I am at polar opposites. This is an interesting revelation and one that I would like to explore further. I would welcome your insights and opinions.