It’s Day 2 of Fantasia Fair and I am sitting here in the Purple Feather Coffee Shop writing my thoughts. Every time I look up I see one or two crossdressers on the sidewalk outside the storefront windows. From time to time one of them comes in here and orders a coffee. For a crossdresser, it is such a different feeling to be hanging out in a place where you are just another person; it is understood that your lifestyle is completely off the charts everywhere else, but here it is as if there is a world where we can just live a normal life – even if you are a rank beginner. 

I have been in progressive San Francisco, where I felt wonderfully free to be Janie, but I never once saw another CD in my entire stay.

This is a different thing altogether. And here I can walk around and feel more feminine than worried, and I can be flirty in the way I walk and smile at all the friendly people. A few tourists did look at me like a sideshow, but there were some nice comments too.

I should note, for those of us who pretend, that the safety factor here is obviously not an authentic representation of female life. One of the things for which I was unprepared in my recent trip to San Francisco was the vulnerability I felt while walking the streets of that unfamiliar but real city. As a man, I am used to dealing with this, but as a woman I sometimes felt very worried by this fear.

Provincetown is such a beautiful place, being on the tip of the Cape, and with such quaint shops and homes built in the town. The culture of acceptance and understanding that exists here makes life for people who don’t belong anywhere else so easy and free. And it feels like the safest place I have been to in these United States. In a place where people tend to come to be accepted, they can hardly be anything but equally accepting of others. I have personally felt this obligation to be more understanding and accepting of people who have chosen lifestyles that are different from my own and from what I can understand, and it has made me a better person. Instead of being threatened by people’s differences, we can offer a fair trade that I accept you if you accept me, and in this way everyone is accepted.

That said, crossdressing is a big problem for people to be able to understand. I have met quite a few crossdressers who don’t understand the whole thing themselves, and I am among those. But we’ll explore that another time.