Trans

When I was four years old, and mom was out for the afternoon volunteering with the church, I snuck into her closet, pulled out her most sparkly and extravagant evening gown, slid into her brightest, tallest shoes, pasted on her reddest lipstick and blackest mascara, strung chain after chain of costume jewels about my limbs, and paraded through the empty hallways looking for all the world like the gaudiest little prince/ss in the long and exalted history of drag queens. This, as far as I can recall, was the first manifestation of my transvestitism, though I didn't learn to call it that until more than a decade later.

Even at the tender and inexperienced age of four, I knew that there was something forbidden about my dress-up act, and hid all traces of it as best I could before my mom arrived home (she still suspected me of rifling through her wardrobe and testing her makeup, but I don't think she guessed the full extent of my transgressions). I infrequently ventured into that delightful closet, saving my excursions for those rare times when my mother left me in the house sans guardian in the form of an aunt or fussy neighbour. Even on these occasions, I got almost as much of a thrill just imagining myself perusing my choices - the simple pistachio-green dress with an empire waist, the peach gown studded with faux pearls about the collar, a veritable prism of skirts. What I loved the most were the shoes - not only for their stylish and elegant shapes, and the mature and refined feeling they elicited when I put them on, but also because they were easily tucked away without a trace whenever I heard a key in the front door. I never asked my mother for permission to play with her clothes, intuiting an answer in the negative, and it was only many years later that I wondered what made me think my activities required such discretion.