Mel's Half Life

[Melanie Sykes]

The latest story in this thread (Episode 4 - More hotel adventures) was added 26th July 2011. This thread now contains 4 accounts of my ventures out and about en femme in the UK.

In a nutshell I'm a UK-based straight CDer and have been for about 30 years, since I was 6 or 7. I'm mostly in the closet - fully in it around my home area, although my wife knows and is accepting to a small degree. Well, anyway, suffice it to say that since I got my driving license many years ago, my CDing life has been mostly spent in the car. Now and again I'd pluck up the courage to go into an empty (but open!) petrol station very late at night, but that was it. I have a great job for CDing, as I travel away from home frequently and it gives me a chance to wear my favourite girly things in the evenings. I know that many CDers are happy to stay indoors, but I would ultimately like to experience a day in the life of a GG - getting up, dressing, doing normal stuff all day and going to bed. Nothing outrageous - just living - but doing it in nice clothes, and, like a GG, being able to go outside when I like. For a long time, but especially since the beginning of this year, I've been getting more and more bold with my outside adventures, and I'd like in this thread to share my experience and observations, principally because you have all very positively contributed to my CDing life and I'd like to give something useful back. Not being much of a philosopher or counsellor, this is all I have to give As usual, feel free to post replies, but I think rather than starting a new thread for each outing, I'll post each new one to this thread.

Anyway, into the first story - more will follow, I promise. For the past few nights I've been staying in a big Holiday Inn, just outside one of the UK's larger cities, Birmingham. In the UK, Holiday Inn's current marketing slogan is "Be Yourself", so I decided to put it to the test. Yesterday I needed to work quite a long way from the hotel, so I decided to make the most of it. I had breakfast en drab but under-dressed as usual, then carried some clothes out to the car - a black pencil skirt, a lovely blue blouse which I'd bought the night before, my black patent Mary Jane heels, and a bra, cami-top and black opague tights, my plan being to wear them back to the hotel after work. I drove the two and a half hours to work en drab, but wearing the heels (I *love* wearing heels!). I always under-dress for work, so I was wearing the heels with opaque black pop socks. Much later in the day when I'd finished work, I bought some food at a supermarket and then found something quite rare - a very secluded spot in the car park where I could change my clothes in relative comfort. I fear that nothing makes one look like a pervert so much as changing clothes in a car, but some things can't be avoided. If you do have a workable suggestion for avoiding this, please let me know! So for the journey back to the hotel I wore a lovely smart business outfit, and it made me feel great. I stopped at a large motorway service station for a coffee, and had the usual argument with myself in the car park for 10 minutes before chickening out and driving off coffee-less. I was, however, determined to go back to my room en-femme.

I should say at this point that I don't wear make-up or a wig, not because I don't want to try it, but because I haven't really felt a strong need to yet. Having succumbed to the addictive effects of wearing fem clothes, I don't want to become addicted to something else too. And I guess the main reason is that my wife loves my facial hair, and facial hair doesn't go with either make-up or a wig. Wherever I go, I am plainly a man in women's clothes (and I'm 6'5"), but I really don't want to look like the comedy stereotypical CDer and I certainly don't want people to feel sickened when they see me, so I try to look good. Recently, my wife has told me she's OK with me keeping my stuff in my wardrobe, so I'm slowly buying better clothes and throwing away the old cheap ones I'd bought just because I didn't want to have to stuff good ones into little hidey-holes around the house. As a man, I'm not too bad looking, and I think that when I'm wearing a nice feminine outfit that actually fits properly I look OK. No-one will think I'm a lady but at least they won't be physically sick. Luckily I'm slim too, so I can get away with some quite nice smart tailored business blouses and skirts. What I do lament though is the very small choice of shoes in size 11. Most of them seem to be purpose-designed to be ugly. There are so many absolutely gorgeous shoes available in the regular sizes - do the manufacturers think that women with larger feet prefer horrible shoes?

Anyway, back to the story. I arrived at the hotel car park about 10:30 at night, and had to park about 150 metres away from the hotel as the car park was pretty full. I got out, straightened my skirt, made sure my camisole top was tucked into it and my blouse untucked, smoothed and looking nice (are the bottoms of cami tops supposed to be tucked into skirts?). After a quick check of my reflection in the car, I picked up my bags and walked to the hotel. It felt gorgeous just to walk across the open space and feel the cool breeze around my legs and under my skirt. Although usually nervous in public when dressed, I felt really confident and I think it was because I knew I was dressed well, and I also figured that people were unlikely to start a fight if they were guests in the hotel. There was a man on his mobile phone as I approached the entrance. He was concentrating and half looked up when I passed. He stopped talking but didn't stare and I couldn't tell whether he'd stopped talking because of me. Through the huge automatic sliding doors was the reception with its big shiny tiled floor, making my heels sound delicious. There were two female receptionists, one of whom had checked me in a couple of nights before, and about eight men between the ages of around 25-40. All of them looked - they could hear my heels, but most looked away again in disinterest. Not one made any rude comment or gave even a disparaging look. Past reception in front of me was a large open bar seating area - there must have been about twenty guys in there sitting in comfy chairs, many facing my direction with an unobstructed view. The ones facing me continued to look, but didn't reach over and poke their friends to look too - as I'd half-feared they would. They didn't laugh either- they behaved as though there was nothing unusual about me at all. I was walking tall and proud, feeling great. It was a big hotel, and quite a long walk back to my room - a good 3 or 4 minutes - and in that time I must have passed close to over a dozen people, but there were no nasty comments or remarks, and a couple of guys gave little smiles which seemed understanding to me. Maybe I just read them that way because of the pink fog and they might have been smiles of pity or embarrassment, but I do really think they were understanding. Hopefully it made them think about trying it too.

I got back to my room feeling elated - it had been an excellent experience and I wanted to repeat it, so I decided I'd go dressed to breakfast. The breakfast tables in this particular hotel are small and square with a centre leg which sprawls everywhere at the bottom, and it's awkward enough normally to know where to put my legs, let alone with a skirt. I decided to go with trousers and a snug-fitting long-sleeved black top with a longer, red, sleeveless boat-necked number over the top. The outline of my bra was quite visible. To complete the look, I wore matte black 2-strap 2" heeled shoes and nude-coloured pop socks (knee-highs). All in all it wasn't a bad look, although I didn't feel as good about it as I had about last night's outfit. It took a bit of courage to get out of my room, but once I'd reached the end of the corridor I knew there was no turning back.

I'd woken and showered epecially early so there wouldn't be too many people at breakfast, so I got downstairs just before 7 o'clock. The breakfast greeter was a guy aound 40ish who seemed a bit nervous. He looked me up and down and giggled nervously, but at the same time he was absolutely respectful. I think he was trying to work out whether I had dressed like that for a joke and was seeing if I'd laugh along, but I was too nervous for that. He showed me to a table in the middle of the room, giggling nervously occasionally as he walked. There were about ten businessmen scattered around the room, two on the table next to mine. A couple of them looked because the sound of my heels was quite loud, but then looked away again. No-one stared and the staff were very polite. Once I'd sat down, I realised that I was shaking like a leaf; so much so that I was in danger of spilling my cereal milk when I put the spoon to my mouth, and it took a few attempts to enter the PIN to unlock my phone. I can't remember the last time I shook so much. I sat and read emails on my phone, and as I began to feel a bit more normal the shakes subsided a little, but they didn't stop completely. I think it was a subconscious terror of what might happen. Logically I knew I'd come to no harm there, but some bit of my brain was off in a panic. That's 30+ years of social conditioning for you.

After breakfast I went to reception to check out. The guy on reception was a friendly chap and started making bright conversation before I'd arrived at the desk. The checking out was slow as there was a problem with the computer, so we had a bit of banal banter while we waited, and I asked him candidly whether they had many men who wore women's clothes. People often say of hoteliers "they see this sort of thing all the time", so I thought I'd find out. He said no, they don't see it. Bearing in mind the previous comment and the size of the hotel, that disappointed me a bit, but I can't say I was really surprised. When I first mentioned women's clothes to him, he nodded at my top and said "What - are those..." and then stopped and grinned as the penny dropped. "I saw you coming over there and thought what are those shoes..." but didn't really think much about it," he said. He carried on as friendly as before though, even when he knew I was CDing. After talking to him for a short while the shakes had gone.

After I'd finally checked out, I went back to my room to pack my things. On the way back down with my case, I passed a man coming up the stairs who hardly seemed to notice me, but by the time I arrived in reception, it was full of smartly-dressed men and women all around my age. There were some slightly amused looks, but no shocked ones or rude comments. No-one was outside when I exited, so I got to the car without further ado. I'd finally achieved two goals - eating and drinking in public while dressed, and putting fem clothes on after the shower and keeping them on until I got almost to work. Usually I go in drab to breakfast and in all public areas of hotels, so dressing and then going about business as usual was great - very GG-like.

These experiences, plus all my previous ones, make me think that as long as you look smart or are at least fairly tidy, wearing clothes that fit, people don't really care what you wear. I found that looking confident helps hugely, standing up and looking people in the eye to show them I'm not ashamed of myself. Last night I actually felt *proud* as I walked through that lobby - a definite first for en-femme me. I wasn't so proud of myself this morning, but I still acted like I wasn't ashamed or embarrassed, and everyone treated me with respect and without kid-gloves. I know that many times in the past I've gone into places with my head bowed, trying not to make too much eye contact. The problem with that is that you look ashamed and guilty, and people tune into that and think you have something to hide, which we really haven't. Plus, if you're staring at the floor and not looking at who and what is around you, you have no idea what people's reaction is and you're probably imagining that it's far worse than it really is.

Anyway, I had a ball - though a very nervous one this morning. I just hope they didn't notice the shaking, and that with time and more outings like this one, the irrational fear will subside and be replaced with pride.