Back around the year 2000 when I was living in Colorado Springs I used to go to a trans \/ crossdresser support group. It was a motley group, I’ll admit, but I still have fond memories of those evenings as it was the first time that I fully dressed and got out of the house to socialize. LisaJo was the girl in charge, and one evening she said that she’d heard from a small TV production company making a documentary about the hidden lives of crossdressers and that they were looking for people to interview. I immediately thought it sounded interesting and gave her my contact info. Surprisingly I was not too worried about being seen on TV. It just intuitively felt like the right thing to do, if in fact they wanted to interview me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I talked to the producers on the phone and then a couple months later a small crew showed up at the duplex where I was living next door to my then-best friend Kathy who owned the place. I was pretty nervous but must have done well enough since I made it into the show. They shot an interview for maybe thirty minutes and got some footage of me walking around outside and that was it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The show finally aired in 2001 as part of the series MSNBC Investigates<\/em>, with a taped intro by Lester Holt. The episode itself was called “The Secret Wardrobe” and I’m very relieved that I’ve never seen it on YouTube or on any other video sites that I’m aware of. And as far as I know MSNBC never re-aired it. (This was back when MSNBC was just a small mainstream news channel, before Rachel Maddow came onboard and it became the big progressive outlet it is today). Once I started Trannies In Trouble in 2003, I would occasionally get an email from someone asking if that was me in that TV documentary that they saw but after a few years the memory of it just faded away, thankfully! The interview itself was what you’d expect\u2014what it was like growing up as a crossdresser, the secretiveness, and whether any of my friends and family knew. One of the funniest exchanges in retrospect was my insistence at the time that I was completely straight! As I’ve said here before, all the years of doing Trannies In Trouble have completely warped my sexuality and now, as the saying goes, I’m about as straight as a three-dollar bill. I haven’t had a genetic girlfriend in over thirteen years\u2014those days are long gone. But yeah, I’ve certainly had sex since then!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we taped the interview, I also chatted with the producers a little and we discussed some of the possible topics we might cover. I recall at one point I tentatively brought up the subject of bondage but, well, there was zero response. I just had the impression that that was not something they wanted to add to the piece, so I dropped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since so many years have passed, I can’t even remember the names of the producers now, and of course I never met Lester Holt. He taped his bit in a studio somewhere. But looking back one of the main reasons I did the interview was that I eventually wanted to be more out of the closet and didn’t want to carry these secrets around the rest of my life. And if I did this interview, it would just force the issue\u2014I even gave them permission to use my legal name in the show, which seems kind of crazy in retrospect. I also used the experience as an excuse to come out to my family since I didn’t want them to stumble across the show while clicking around some evening and go WTF?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So before the show ever aired, I told my older brother and my father that I was a crossdresser. I knew that both of them could handle the news okay, which they did. (My brother basically knew already anyway). The difficult talk though would be with my mom, as I knew she would not be happy at all. Finally, I chickened out and just asked my dad to tell her, and yes, my instincts were right. Apparently, my mom was very <\/em>upset when he told her, and it wasn’t till a few days later that she even called me on the phone. Looking back, I should have had the courage to tell her myself, but I don’t lose sleep over it. She did eventually come around to accepting the news more or less, and of course she still loved me, but it certainly took some time for her to get over the initial shock. Although she was probably never fully comfortable with my identity as a crossdresser, later in life she would occasionally say something to at least try to acknowledge the truth, so she made an effort, even though those comments could be a little awkward! She also had a friend who was a chiropractor and apparently that friend helped her realize that my dressing wasn’t that big a deal. I think she also reassured my mom that I wasn’t gay. Guess I got the last laugh there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In retrospect I’m glad I did the interview in spite of those capri pants. And the fact that it happened before YouTube came along is such a relief. If by chance someone reading this finds a link somewhere online, do me a favor and don’t post it here, though you could send it to me privately. I would bookmark it, but with the feelings of cringe that the show would likely induce I doubt I’d ever watch it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back around the year 2000 when I was living in Colorado Springs I used to go to a trans \/ crossdresser support group. It was a motley group, I’ll admit, but I still have fond memories of those evenings as it was the first time that I fully dressed and got out of the house … Continue reading That Crossdressing Documentary I Was In<\/span>
Even just writing about the show now, it sounds like something that I just made up. But it actually did happen\u2014I’ve just never written about it till now. One of the memories that most embarrasses me is that I wore capri pants for the interview, which I’m sure just looked silly. I was friends at the time with a woman whom I’ll call Jane who was really into high fashion, and you could say that she did the “styling” for me. Sometimes though the styles you find in fashion magazines can be just plain ugly, so although Jane often had good taste, well, let’s just say she wasn’t infallible. But I was glad for her help as we went to the mall a couple times to look for outfits, and it was much easier and more fun doing that with a genetic woman rather than going alone. I recall I did wear a sexy animal-print top, if I remember right, and I think I wore some kind of collar or choker with a dark bobbed wig. Looking back, I should have insisted on wearing a tight skirt, but Jane was persuasive, or I was just too passive, probably a combination of both. I also don’t think my makeup was very good then since this was back when I was just starting to dress more seriously, but at least I was young so maybe it didn’t matter that much!<\/p>\n\n\n\n