This whole crossdressing thing is a second adolescence for me. Adolescence is the time when you are discovering your body, your sexuality, your limitations, and it is a wonderful time that is wistfully recalled by most people but impossible to recapture. It didn’t feel as wonderful then as we now know it was.

They say youth is wasted on the young and true it is.

But lucky me, I get another chance! There is a whole new person growing up inside me and so I get to experience the joys of adolescence but this time with the maturity to appreciate it!

Of course, the recklessness and foolishness that are hallmarks of true adolescence are tempered somewhat by my age, so that sometimes that disconnect makes me feel like my mother trying to learn to ski in her 60s. I’m talking about things like:

• I won’t dive headlong into relationships, sexual or otherwise,
• I feel constrained by certain sensibilities when it comes to fashion,
• there are people in the world who depend on me,
• I suffer the next morning if I drink too much, and
• I don’t consider it fun to hang out in a club where I can’t hear myself yell, and where what passes for music is volume-distorted bass beats with or without someone rapping about killing the police.

And it’s not just internal. My friends are not 16 either, so they are less open-minded, less malleable and more judgmental. This means that there is so much more I can do to offend them and ostracize myself. Also, society generally tends to forgive the excesses of youth, but won’t be as generous with someone older, as sadly, I am.

So, while I do have some new excitement from my renewed adolescence, you really can’t go back! But that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying the aspects of it that are new and exciting and even a bit scary!