by Jayne Doxtater
It began with the box. Hidden, but not that hidden in my husband's closet was a box I had never seen before. We had been married for 7 years and I had never felt such an inclination to want to look through something of his. It was as if it was some mysterious item that one would find in a dark cave in some foreign land. The ‘curse of the mummies,’ I thought and then told myself I’d been watching too many movies. I put down the laundry and knelt on the floor. I lay his laundry next to me and slid the box out of the closet. I opened it.

The first thing I saw was stockings and lots of them. That wasn’t new for him or me as we had been playing around sexually with garter belts and stockings. But there was more. Synthetic breasts, bras, high heel shoes. I saw red and every other shade of anger and hurt. Was he having an affair?

I stood and glared at his closet, at his things. My heart raced. I felt sick. I paced around the house. That only made me feel worse. I grabbed the phone and dialed the numbers to his phone on the ski hill.

I waited for him to answer. Rick had worked in the ski industry most of his life. His skiing had been called “poetry in motion.” Truly gifted in his sport and his work. Rick always became an expert in everything he pursued. Golf, drumming, running; it didn’t matter what it was, he always needed to be the best. Some of his need to excel came from his father.

Not his biological father but a man who had adopted Rick and his sister when they were just 5 and 7 years of age.
They didn’t get along in the early years and both of them resented him for ruling the family with an iron hand.

He had been particularly hard on Rick.


I waited for Rick to answer the phone. Time crawled. I barely heard his voice before I was yelling, “Get the hell home. NOW!”

“Why, what’s wrong?” he said.

“Just get home,” I said. My whole body shook.

It only takes ten minutes to get from the ski hill to our house but it seemed like hours. I waited for him to arrive home Ithought, please let it be an affair, but already, something inside me knew that it wasn’t as ordinary as that.

Rick entered the living room of our beautiful bungalow nestled in the forest of southern B.C.

“Look in the box!” I shouted at him.

He didn’t have to look. He already knew what I had found. “It means nothing”, he said.

“Just get it; please,” I said. I tried to slow my breathing and the pounding of my heart. I heard a dull roar in my ears, as he placed the box on the table. Tears streamed down his face.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said. His breathing was labored.

“Well then explain what this stuff is,” I said.

“I’m just experimenting; I’m not having an affair; I love you. I don’t know why I’m doing this, please I don’t know why.” He stood helplessly, hopelessly staring at the floor. As awful as this sounds, I wanted to hit him; to make him feel like I was feeling right at this moment. Rick slumped onto a chair; “I won’t do it again,” he said. Time slowed down even more.

“Get rid of that box,” I said. “Burn it, bury it. It can’t be in this house, in our
lives.” I didn’t want to know what he was doing with any of it. I just wanted our life back to normal. We held each other. We both sobbed. “It’s ok,” I said. “I love you, everything will be alright.”

The box became a secret. It was a box full of stuff we didn’t want to discuss.

I told myself it would never happen again. Months passed. I thought it was over. Then one day, there it was again in his closet. My heart stopped. It felt weighted like tortured feet in cement. I understood that my husband was not the man I thought I had married. This was numbing. This time, I didn’t hesitate to look inside.

Black patent, 6” strappy, opened-toed stiletto shoes. They were, I guessed a size 9. Only someone tall would wear them. Several pairs of stockings in shades of black, grey and taupe; some sheer others with a single welt up the back of the leg in red or black.The stockings were very long. “Not my size,” I thought, as I fought back tears. Garter belts, one black and lacy, another in white satin and one that was black with a lacy pink overlay and pink bows atop the straps. Six
straps opposed to the four I had always remembered that I had worn in my early teens. Rick had always encouraged me to use the 6 straps. “They hold your stockings on your legs so beautifully”, he would say. I pulled out a bra, two, three. I stared at them blinded by tears. They were black, white, lacy.
Lacy was becoming a theme. The straps of the bras were wide, wide enough to support large breasts. Whose breasts? I was afraid to know the truth. Yet I did know the truth.

Next came a skimpy white cotton t-shirt, so small it couldn’t possibly fit over the breasts, bras; or did it. “Porn stars wear this kind of crap,” I thought. A slender mint green skirt with inlaid strips of the same color. My God, that ‘bastard’
took a skirt of mine from the large green garbage bag of old clothing I had readied for the Thrift Shop.

“That’s my skirt!” I yelled. I found another smaller box tucked under all of this and there they were, “the breasts.” They were individually nestled in round compartments, upside down. No nipples; round, soft fleshy feeling but yet unnaturally squishy. Breasts used after mastectomies, I imagined. Under those fake boobs was a roll of two-sided tape, glue and a bottle of liquid, something. I guessed it was for removing the tape and glue from the skin. The box seemed never ending.

Two brown glass bottles of pheremones (amazing that human scent can be bottled), a chestnut brown, bob-style wig with bangs
plus a longer one, dark brown with auburn streaks. A box
of maxi-pads and a sleeve of condoms. What the hell! The last item to roll out was a small, red, rubber,oblong 'thing'; rounded at one end with a hole at the other, a mini dildo. Something anal. I didn't want to touch it, didn't want to handle any of it, any longer. I tossed, stuffed and scrunched in disgust, everything back in the box. I remember reading somewhere that if someone wants to keep something from you they hide it so well no one will ever find it.

Rick wanted me to see this, I thought. I felt like I was reliving the same scene
from the first movie. This only happened in movies, didn't it? Again the phone call with the same anger and the same demand,

"Get home!", I said. Rick’s response surprised and somewhat frightened me. He was mad, at me! "Why are you going through my things?", he questioned with a tone that made me feel speechless. As I repeated my demand for him to come
home, the more he pushed back. "Stay out of my closet.” His
voice elevated.

"Please come home, we need to talk,” I said. As I asked this I felt like a child, foolish. “Why should I feel like this he's doing this, to me!” I also thought.

Once at home we sat in the family room yelling at each other. I was incredulous that he had any right to be mad.
Finally I asked the question that I should have asked months earlier: " What are
you doing and who are you?"

“I’m a cross-dresser", he said.


That was when I began to lose myself in Rick's world.

"I want to help you through this,” he said. His words soothed my psyche. "There are websites you can go on to learn more about cross-dressing so you can feel more comfortable about who I am, and my dressing. It will
never leave this house", he promised.

Once again, it became our secret.

,,,Copyright 2008 by Jayne Doxtater

This is the first in a serialized story. In this column, Jayne Doxtater describes how her husband’s decision to make a complete transition from male to female had a dramatic impact on herself and her family, leaving all of them changed.

If you would like to communicate with Jayne, please comment by using the "write a comment" option below the bottom photograph.


If you liked the article please send us a tip to support The Vancouver Observer and this blogger's work.
Read Part Two