The Early Origins of Jamie's Transformation Chapter 2
As I said in chapter 1, my cousin Jenny, two years older than me, was the first to put the idea of actually being a girl into my head. I was 5. It was just innocent play between two kids, but when I dressed in her clothes and she told me I was pretty and acted as if I was really a girl, it may have all been pretending, but it had an affect.
When my mom and aunt accepted it and did pretended along, it let me feel that what we were pretending was in some way real. I had no male figure in my life and it was nice to imagine that I was female, like mom, jenny and my aunt were.
My mother told me years later that she had always known I was more feminine than other boysÑ"softer" she saidÑand it made sense to her that I would want to know how it felt to be a girl. By the time I was 7 or so, I was not only wearing girls underware exclusively, but I had several articles of clothing that were feminineÑa couple of dresses, some tights, some feminine-styled tops and a nightgown. My mom referred to them as my "play clothes" but they weren't kept in the toy box. They were in my closet and in my dresser, like any of my other clothes.
At 7, for halloween, I dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Mom got me a costume, and a blond wig from a costume storeÉ white tights for under the dress, black patent-leather shoesÉ and she spent a half hour putting makeup on me so that, when I stood in front of the mirror, I looked perfect. No one seeing me would have known it was me. And no one seeing me would imagine I wasn't a girl. Jenny and I went trick-or-treating together in her neighborhood, so no one really knew me there anyway. She told people I was her "cousin Alice."
It was so fun to just be two girls out running from house to house, laughing and enjoying the crisp fall night. I also have clear memories of a couple of men at houses we went to remarking what "pretty girls" we were and one saying to me I was the prettiest girl he'd seen all night with the best costume. Then he said, "watch out, or all the boys will want to kiss you."
I wonder now if that grown man was really saying HE wanted to kiss me. But at the time, his words struck me deeply. Before he said that, I was just into the pretend of being Alice and being Jenny's "girl cousin." I wasn't aware of the boys around us or what they might have been thinking. But from the moment that man put the thought in my head, I wondered about every boy I saw Ñ Does HE want to kiss me?
At first I think I was a bit nervous about the idea but I started to like the feeling. I liked the thought that a boy might think I looked so nice that he'd want to kiss me.
Later, at home, getting out of my costume and with my mom taking off the makeup she'd put on me, I told her what the man had said. Her reaction was not shaming or unhappy as some mom's might have felt. All she said was "Well, sometimes boys kiss boys." That was it.
My mom was a bit of a hippie and, thinking back on all of it, I truly believe that if being "trans" had been a thing at the time, she might have encouraged me to transition. She certainly never discouraged my desires to feel feminine and, when boys did enter the picture, she never stood in the way of it.
After that night of being a girl in public and enjoying how makeup made my already "pretty" looks seem undoubtably female, she would indulge me from time to time when I'd ask her to "do my makeup" again. Some Saturdays I would spend the whole day with makeup on, whether in one of my dresses or not. She only gave me one boundary, which was that I shouldn't go outside with makeup on because the other boys might not understand and might make me feel bad about pretending to be a girl.
But if we were going to my aunt's house, I could fully dress and be made up and we'd go out shopping or to a restaurant or a movie with me as a girl. And I loved those times. It wasn't constant. Sometimes I'd go months without being a girl. But mom, aunt Susan and Jenny never batted an eye at me being a girl any time I cared to.
I suppose that between the ages of 6 and 9 I went out for the day with them fully as a girl maybe fifteen or twenty times. Time goes way slower when you're a kid so five times a year seems like almost never. I do remember, though, that by 8 or so I was aware that girls moved and behaved differently than boys. I know I watched and tried to imitate. Mostly though, I was just myself, not even thinking there was any differenceÉ I was just me.
I do remember my aunt telling Jenny to keep her knees together a couple of times when she was wearing a short dress. When I asked Jenny later why her mom said that she told me "Men like to look up your dress and see your panties." She laughed about it and said she didn't care but it was one more thought put into my head. Did men like to see up my dress? Why did they want to see my panties?
I think I was 9 by that time, and Jenny 11. Knowing now how many men are aroused by young girls, I'm sure we'd both been watched from time to time. The notion, at the time, made me more aware, when I was a girl, of whether men were looking at me. Part of me wanted them to and part of me did not.
I did ask my mom why men would want to see a girl's panties and that was when she finally gave me the full sex talk. She explained how men and women were different physically, and whyÉ how that worked in making babies. But she also told me that some men fall in love with other men and that they kiss each other and, in her words, "Pretend they can make babies with each other."
I was totally confused. Though it was embarrassing having her talk about a vagina and how it worked and how it received a penis, she did not explain at all how a man could do that with another man. I had no idea how two men could do that. But the word "pretend" kind of left me with the thought that they didn't REALLY penetrate. They just pretended. After all, without the vagina, how would it happen?
It was also at about age 9 that Robert entered my life. Robert was an older boy. He was nearly 3 years older and, while I was in 4th grade, he was already in 7th. But there were few kids around the neighborhood we lived in, so he and I became friends. Only very occasionally at first, but by the time I turned 10, he and I saw a lot of each other.
I was flattered that an older boy liked me and treated me not like a kid, but like an equal as a friend. There were some other boys that sometimes came around who were not as nice as Robert and who had pushed me around a bit. Once Robert appeared, he kind of stepped in as my protector. That had something to do with him being older I knowÉ but, I've come to realize, it was also because he saw me as less of a "boy" than other boys. He sensed the thing my mom had always said Ñ that I was "soft."
I didn't realize he felt that way at first. But it soon became apparent.