I'm Dressed, You're Not

By John C. Gunn

If you know fifty males, one of them is a crossdresser / a heterosexual transvestite / a “TV “ (slang).., none of which is a negative term (look ‘em up). That could mean 1 on the Oakland Raiders and every other 50-man NFL roster and 160 of the 6,000 L.A. cops might wear a little black dress come Friday night. If you’re coping with that particular situation, this could be a very disturbing time for you. It doesn’t have to be. This may be the book for you. The author has dealt with it since he was five years old. He’s married, a father and a Grandpa. And is doing just fine. “I’m Dressed, You’re Not” is intelligent, educational, tender and humorous. It’s not anyone’s “journey”, and you won’t find a “female trapped in a man’s body”. In the Los Angeles radio market they called Johnny Gunn, “The Midday Nice Guy”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Dec 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483477077

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I’m Dressed, You’re Not

John C. Gunn

Copyright © 2017 John C. Gunn.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Scriptures taken from the King James version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7708-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7707-7 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 12/01/2017

SOME PEOPLE WHO’VE KNOWN

JOHNNY GUNN A LONG TIME

Mandatory reading for anyone who truly cares to understand.

Marjorie Vigue Kari, MS, LMFT, MPA,

Psychotherapist, Rancho Los Amigos Hospital,

Los Angeles

I speak for the cops in the class when I tell you that we have a whole new outlook and understanding towards cross-dressing.

Sandy Kirsch

Law Enforcement Officer, Orange County California

Speaking for one of my classes, (‘dressed’) and, THEN, returning the next week as Johnny, in suit and tie, gave my students, perhaps, one of the most important life lessons they have ever had.

Rosemary S. Pfuhl, M.F,C.C.

Director, Psychological Services

Rancho Family Practice, Temecula, CA

Gunn emerges as the go-to guy for finding normalcy as a human being. And, this book as a guide toward a confidant and proud, respected future.

Richard F. Docter, PhD, Professor of Psychology,

Cal State University, Northridge,

Los Angeles, CA

This book is

dedicated to my amazingly incredible late granddaughter, Emily Gunn Hobson, who, at an intellectual 24 years of age, was the first to read the Prologue and first three chapters, and quietly said, Do it, Grumps.

Prologue

This book is not necessarily being written to educate a great populace about a subject they don’t know, and don’t particularly want to know, anything about. It’s for all the guys who used to be confused and frightened by that which they didn’t even know how to spell, and now they are one!

It’s not a professional analysis of the behavior of a thousand-person study group, half of whom took a placebo, it’s about me and the people I know and about the years I’ve spent thinking about it and coping with it and making it fit in my otherwise simple life (you know, don’t you, that there is no such thing as a simple life?). It’s going to take me thousands of words to try to make anybody understand why a man should want to wear women’s clothes, and at the end of that attempt it all comes down to one man’s opinion, or, if I had a PhD after my name, one man’s theory. If I were told that my life would end five minutes from now unless I put it into one sentence, here’s what I’d write: For all of my life, one of my strongest, most compelling thoughts (drives? fancies? whimsies) has been the adoration and reverence I feel for that which is female, to the extent that I would like to be one for a short period of time. And thereby hang lives of misunderstanding, torture, divorce, suicide, guilt, shame and ridicule. You can’t tell anybody about it; not your dad or mother because you know they’d be disappointed in you, not your brother, your best friend, because he looks up to you and you certainly don’t want him looking down on you, not the girl you marry because she knows about Christine Jorgenson and sex-change surgery and gay-bars and all manner of weird stuff and you don’t want her lumping you in there somewhere, not anybody who can provide professional help because they might want to go strange places and dig out all manner of material that really isn’t there to be dug out, not the other guys because they might beat you up. You can’t tell the people you should be able to tell because you’d lose them, or, at least, you’re fearful of losing them and you can’t take that chance.

Then, in deciding that you know something that nobody else knows or that you understand something that nobody else understands or that you know it’s not a sin and everybody else thinks it is, you can’t help coming to the conclusion that you’re one-up and everybody else in the world, including your dad and your brother and your wife are one-down and that is no good,

that makes them less, which they’re not. But it leaves something between you. Not something good, something in between you and them, something in the way. You have a secret that you can’t tell and you keep it bottled up, all through childhood, all through school, all through courtship and marriage, all through life, because you learned how to keep it a secret from the very beginning of memory when you learned some awful things; that boys were better than girls, that your sister would go nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah, nyahhhh if she found out, that girl stuff was sissy, terrible things. When you don’t tell one of your most important thoughts to one of your most important people it’s a harmful kind of dishonesty.

You know, too, that it’s not a dishonesty that should be punished. For all my life I’ve revered that which is woman to the extent that on occasion I like to pretend to be one. Does that get you thirty lashes? I should hope not (although it could have at one time in history). Or ninety days, or stoned, or drummed out of society, (it will get you drummed out of the Military). It shouldn’t be grounds for divorce but it is a crying (literally, tearful) shame that it’s grounds for estrangement. It shouldn’t be a reason to see a professional, but it is. In Grand Rapids and Altoona and Tampa and tens of thousands of cities all over the world people are paying eighty dollars an hour to talk to somebody who for two or three days, fifteen or fifty years ago, studied a chapter called Aberrant Behavior in a book called Abnormal Psychology in which there is a paragraph about Transvestites, Transsexuals and Drag Queens, the assumption being that, deep down, you are probably, an abnormal, aberrant, closet drag-queen and we all think we know what those people do behind closed doors.

It’s been conservatively estimated that one out of one hundred males is a heterosexual transvestite (TV). I’ve heard reckless estimates of 6%. Let’s err cautiously and go with two per hundred and round numbers. Half of 300-million U.S. population is 150-million males. Two percent is three million TV’s in the U.S.A. If there are 50 UPS drivers in your town, one of them wears pantyhose under his brown uniform or might this Saturday night with a little black dress. If there are 50 guys on the Oakland Raiders roster one of them may shop at Victoria’s Secret. In Los Angeles 8,000 cops computes to 160 who dress, either partially or completely. You walked past 300 men and boys at the mall last week… you walked past six transvestites. You know one if you know 50 males. And if just 10 family members and friends orbit in and around the lives of each of 3-million heterosexual cross—dressers, there’s another 30-million people who should know more than they do know now, and none of the foregoing hurt a bit, did it?

It didn’t bother you because you didn’t know about it. It only bothers you when you know about it. If you ever have to cope with a man who is inclined to dressing" it can be one of the most disturbing, painful and confusing things you will ever go through. But it doesn’t have to be.

Read on.

Chapter One

Adrian & Jennifer/Ad & Todd

A private telephone rang in the executive office of a national, furniture manufacturing firm in a suburb of Los Angeles, interrupting the tall, well-groomed, neatly pressed executive who was reprimanding one of his more than one hundred employees. He oversaw at least six departments with direct responsibility to one of the giant, parent corporation’s numerous vice-presidents. Still, he took a personal interest in the important, stress-related situations that could affect the performance of his people; marriage, births, home buying, graduations, anything that might interfere with their concentration and the quality of their output. He was well liked, but hadn’t always been. Everybody he worked with noticed the changes that started to take place two or three years previously. Things must be going a helluva lot better in Todd’s marriage, they would say; or, I wonder if someone in the front office didn’t have a serious talk with Mr. Roberts about his treatment of the drudges who work for him.

The turnaround in Todd’s attitude was one hundred eighty degrees. He was actually getting to be rather likeable. The people who’d been there a few years didn’t even like to think about the old days. It’s like he joined A.A., and it’s working! somebody said. No one said anything to him; he wasn’t quite that human yet.

Nobody knew it, but three years ago he joined F.E.M., which isn’t anything like Alcoholic’s Anonymous but can be every bit as miraculously extraordinary.

Todd’s secretary intercepted the call. Oh, hello Ad. I’ll tell him you’re waiting. He’ll be with you in a few seconds.

Todd was happy for the interruption. He finished his scolding with a smile, elicited a promise of a more cooperative attitude from the scoldee who was unhappy about not receiving a raise, then, closed the successful interview with a warm, two-handed handclasp.

She left with pastel fantasies dancing in her head of a fatter paycheck next time around and of Mr. Roberts inviting her to spend a stolen weekend in Malibu. Not that he was known for that sort of thing, but anyone who touched like that could have something more in mind, she thought. Too bad the incoming call had interrupted any proposition he might have had in mind. He was a dream, fair hair on a tall, slim frame with not an ounce of excess adipose tissue anywhere. His smile made the sun come out in a room with no windows. His voice and projection made you think it was just for you.

Todd liked hearing from his fairly new friend. Addison! And how are you, this spiffy afternoon?

"Just swell, Todd. How’s that for an answer to spiffy’? You’re not old enough to even know people who said ‘spiffy’ and ‘swell’, or ‘keen’ which you honest-to-God said the last time I talked to you."

So, going to the meeting tomorrow night?

Yeah. We having dinner first?

Absolutely. You pick the place. The meeting’s at Charlie’s so let’s get together on one side of the hill or the other. Ad would be coming from the San Fernando Valley and Todd from the other side of the Santa Monica Mountain range that ran right through the middle of greater Los Angeles. Rachel isn’t coming, so it’s just you and me. Pick a spot that’s not too quiet, and we’ll do it all – cocktails, nice dinner, the works. You ARE going to be solo, aren’t you?

Uh-huh. I didn’t know that ‘til about an hour ago. Marsha and I had tentative plans for a movie, but she’s got a cold, so I suggested she go to bed with a warm toddy and a good book.

Addison Bremner was half-a-foot shorter than Todd, mild of manner, had dark brown hair and as with Todd, people assumed he’d attended a University somewhere, sometime. He wore a suit & tie between 8 and 5. He’d shocked everybody a couple of months ago with the announcement that he was going to quit the monthly assemblages, maybe give it all up, pack it in and concentrate on the prettiest forty-year-old divorcee in Pasadena. Todd knew that there had never been a documented case of giving it up for any reasonable length of time, and he knew that Ad knew it too, but somehow these guys would try it every time they fell in love like some high-school kid. So, as expected, here was his best friend, just a few weeks into a relationship, conning his lady friend into a lonely bed while he was allowing the exhilaration of preparing for one more meeting of the lavender hill mob to take over. Todd wondered if the rush he could feel coming on was anything like that felt by Bacchus before one of his famous lay-down dinners. So, she still doesn’t know anything, right?

Ad felt a twinge of guilt, which was immediately replaced with the rationalization that she didn’t need to know now that the edge was off his initial ardor and practicality had set in. Nope, and never will. There’d been enough pain and anguish in her life, and she wouldn’t welcome the difficulty that knowing would bring. Besides, it was risky. He’d said more than once that a secret is that which everybody gets to know, one at a time. So, why tell? Why invite rejection and impose confusion and certain disappointment, on someone who didn’t deserve another complication. There was no reason to expect her to accept something that only seemed acceptable to the other women in the lives of the 25 or thirty members who were scheduled to gather at Charlie Arthur’s house in the West Hollywood hills. With 10 or 12 wives and lady friends and two or three professional invitees, psychology professors and practitioners coming tonight, it promised to be one of the nicer FEM meetings/parties of the year.

FEM was really F.E.M., a loosely put together club that had some by-laws but nobody knew where they were. The so-called meetings weren’t conducted by Roberts Rules. The name was decided upon at a gathering of the first 5 or 6 founding members, Mary Beth, Jody, Adrian, Ernestine and a couple others who had since moved on. Somebody came up with the fact that Friendship and Education were two of the main reasons they were together, and if anybody could think of what two M’s and another E stood for, FEMME might be a good name. One suggestion was Men, Male and Macho. No. Jody suggested that the pragmatism of Friendship and Education were all very well but we mustn’t forget the Mystery and the Magic of being what we are and why we’re going to all this trouble. That did it. They voted and Magic won 3 to 2. Friendship, Education and Magic. FEM it was!

Around forty people would be orbiting around a phenomenon he’d spent a lifetime studying, wondering about, being afraid of, never understanding, and finally reconciling to a degree that permitted guilt-free comfort and downright enjoyment.

But the "Nope, and never will left an echo. I’ll explain in greater detail when I see you. Ever been to Dan Tana’s?"

No. Sounds familiar, though. Where is it?

Santa Monica Boulevard, right at the eastern edge of Beverly Hills, fairly close to Charlie’s canyon. It’s very Italian, the food and the crowd. You’ve certainly never been there with me. Neither has anyone else.

Not Jake?

No, I didn’t start going there until after Lisa dropped out. She couldn’t go there anyway. It’s too sho-bizzy. She’d see too many people she’d recognize who, in turn, just might recognize him.

Have you talked to her lately?

"Not since Christmas. She,—I mean, Jake called from…well, actually Jake called from somewhere down south. He hasn’t…Lisa hasn’t been out in public for, hell, over a year now. Jake’s doing the whole macho trip. He’s had about three lovelies come and go. He’s gained 25 pounds. Says whole days go by when he doesn’t even think about Lisa."

That’ll be the day. You lie and I’ll swear to it.

"Listen, if I tell you everything on the phone, we won’t have anything to talk about over the best Whitefish Moutarde in the world."

Not that I’m going to do much talking, Todd said. Is it dark?

Here we go again, thought Ad. "No Dear, it’s dim. But you don’t have anything to worry about. Just walk in there like you own the place and nobody’s going to look twice. Hmmm, that was the wrong thing to say, let me rephrase that: Nobody’s going to look critically. Make that negatively critically. But I guarantee that there will be more than one positive appraisal. You’ve been looking a lot like Dina Merrill these days.

I can handle that. California Casual?

"Yep. Let’s meet at Hughes Market parking lot. Ventura and Coldwater. I’ll make the reservations for six-thirty. Incidentally, your voice is fine. Believe me, I wouldn’t do this with you if I weren’t sure of that; I’m not the least bit interested in being read myself."

Okay. See you at five-thirty, as close to the northeast corner of the lot as possible; it’s usually empty. Todd hung up.

The gala was approaching. His heart was moving at an accelerated rate.

He remembered the first time Addison had intimidated him into that first outing after his first FEM meeting, very nicely, and very completely dressed as Jennifer. He hadn’t wanted to say he wouldn’t go and appear to be the raw beginner he knew he was. One of the pretenses he’d built up during years of race-car driving, water-skiing, duck-hunting, and teaching his now-grown son to be as macho as he’d been all his life, was not to show fear when fear was there. So, with his heart in his throat and his heels two-and-a-half inches off the floor, he had allowed Jennifer to be escorted into a semi-dark, back booth of the Carousel Lounge at the Wilshire Hyatt. He remembered it now in his finger tips. Yes, the rush of denied pleasure was building. Almost to the peak it had been that first, important night. Ad, subsequently, became the first best-friend he’d ever had, a fact proven more than once during the past ten years.

He thought about Rose, who would be there tonight in her size-too-small knit dress with a belt cinched much too tightly, but never tight enough to give her the sylph-like waist she fondly imagined her girdling had accomplished. Rose had once said that the feeling Todd referred to as a rush was similar to the experience he had 20 years before when he’d broken the Jewish rules he’d lived with all his life and ordered bacon and eggs.

What