What I learned from a cross-dressing man
In the year 2022, it’s reasonable for me to expect you to have heard of a cross-dresser, even if only in television or the movies. I’m not sure it’s as reasonable to expect you to have met someone who is cross-dressing, but you have likely heard here or there of someone who kicked their husband out after they discovered him wearing their lingerie - or some such story.
On my recent trip to Paris to attend the International Conference on Movement and Cognition, I met my first cross-dressing friend and, from this meeting, I received an incredible gift.
We are living in a time where cross-dressing is a tame cousin of things like trans-gender augmentations. And I do not pretend to be an authority on any of these subjects, though I have tangentially found them to be a matter of curiosity. I actually have a theory about why this is all happening at this time in our evolution, but that is a matter for another story. Not today’s.
Truth be told, I plead ignorant to understanding why someone would want to wear the clothes of the other gender yet, as a product of the Levi Strauss 70’s and the Calvin Klein 80’s, I’m more comfortable with female androgyny than I’ve ever been with male cross-dressing. Why would a man want to wear women’s clothes? Or make-up? Or put themself through the effort that women have to make to create a face or a hair “do”?
I’ve not been a viewer of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, though I understand it is a very popular show. And frankly, meeting my first cross-dressing friend was not on the radar for what I expected to experience at this International Conference of neurologists, doctors, physical therapists, research scientists, somatic therapists, and other practitioners in one of the world’s preeminent universities - La Sorbonne.
So how did a cross-dressing man from Croatia crack open my inner reality? Well, I’d like to share this story with you. Frankly, I am still experiencing the bi-products of that exchange and sharing it with you will surely help me to sift through the gems.
On Day 1 of this long-awaited and diligently prepared for Conference, I consulted the schedule, first to ensure that they hadn’t made changes to the date and timing of my and Richard’s presentation. That all still in tact, I set about to choose the first event that I would attend. With so many truly interesting and important topics being offered, how would I choose? Perhaps I could start in one and then sneak out and quietly come into another. That became my plan… Polyvagal Theory and Anxiety with something called Laban sounded useful and like a good way for me to explore who my sister and brother presenters and participants would be at this global conference.
I entered the space to find a very warm and welcoming woman facilitating this workshop. She greeted me energetically with her welcoming and open smile and we were encouraged to remove our shoes. I hadn’t exactly planned for this as there was a clearly communicated dress code for this conference and this classroom was obviously not a somatic movement studio, but rather an actual classroom with desks and chairs pushed to the walls to clear a middle area. This floor was not cleaned for people doing movement practices, it was the floor of a university classroom that welcomes street shoes of all kinds, but not so much the yogic-minded barefooted étudiente. Well, who was I to buck the flow? I’m here in Paris to have the whole experience, so ‘shoes off’ it is!
As we began, Sharon (“Sha-RŌN”) started with some dialogue and introduction before offering a variety of exercises that we would do together in the larger group and then in smaller subsets of the entire group. It was fluid and easy and involved a lot of self-inquiry. At one point I found myself interacting with this unmistakeable man, dressed to the nines: eyes; lips; nails; and an electric blue-colored dress. Oh! Heels. High heels. While I was laboring over shoes-on or shoes-off, he was clearly keeping his pointy high heels in the ON position.
I don’t recall any details of the engagement. What was the exercise we were doing? What were we asked to share or how were we told to move? That wasn’t the most important aspect of this moment for me. I was stuck on figuring out if this was actually a man dressed as a woman or a manly woman dressed in accordance with her need to express her femininity. I didn’t want to make any mis-judgements. I didn’t want to say anything offensive or to even cast a look that might be inappropriately too long or too curious. I wanted to be respectful, but there was no hiding the fact that I was curious. And I was also very interested to meet and experience my conference-participant-counterparts, so I asked her / his name. I’m not gonna lie, I actually thought this might help me to solve the question of which sex is this person. “Predrag.” Okay, can you hit me with that again, please? Between the accent (which seemed Baltic, but I couldn’t ‘be sure) and the unfamiliarity of this name, I didn’t know what to make of this. He showed me his name badge. P-R-E-D-R-A-G. “Pre-Drag” he repeated rolling the r’s in both syllables of her name. Even the sound of the voice wasn’t satisfying my quest to resolve this mystery. The only thing I got was that there was some relationship between this foreign name and the idea of “Before” being in “Drag” which I wasn’t yet sure if was intended and a pseudonym or if this is an actual name from whatever actual country she/he hailed. So I asked: “Where are you from?” And then I learned Croatia.
Do you know where Croatia is? Let me tell you because I had to check the map to be sure. It’s to the right of Italy… you know Italy, where my ancestors are from. Croatia is near Serbia, too. And I have some vague memories of some important news about these two countries dating back to my late teens or early twenties. But Croatia is the homeland of my unspecified friend.
Well, this first workshop experience was a winner for me! I loved the facilitator and was so admiring of her nimble and fluid self-possession in her body. Sensual and grounded. Very present. Clear in her communication and inviting for us, her participants, to explore within ourselves. It was my kind of workshop. I was beginning to feel very much at home and at ease in this Parisian experience.
After the workshop and the Coffee Break came another chance to choose. I’d tested out the workshops with a happy result. Now it would be time to for me to sit in on the symposia. If I am to pursue a Research PhD, I’d like to know what kinds of presentations I’ll be expected to produce. There would be 3 symposia and then an open space for questions at the end. While this was not the format being presented by me and Richard, it would give me a sense of how people pack information into that 20-minute timeframe. And besides, he was taking on the Oral Presentations for this segment, so he’d be reporting back on how those were when we met for lunch.
Lunch was your basic, almost indigestible, commercially prepared, chain-type restaurant food, but it was nice not to have to pay for the meal. And, after lunch, it was, as Richard would say, a toss of the ‘brain ball’ by 6 different presenters to the entire Conference attendee population.
This “Plenary Symposium,” as it is called, was incredible. Packed with knowledge, information, intelligence, years of research, investments of brain cells, a level of education and experience that I’ve missed and longed for since I completed my graduate work. Now the brain was feeling inspired! Time for another workshop.
What was it that Predrag had said to me? I think she mentioned that she was also doing a workshop about stage fright. It sounded like a good follow-up to Sharon’s and, well, it would offer me another opportunity to meet this friend and, perhaps, solve the mystery. Let me check the schedule… Here it is: Sensual movement overcoming stage fright. Yes! That sounded like it might be helpful for me to experience prior to our Day 2 - 10:00AM presentation.
I entered the classroom, the same one I had been in this morning, with only a few minutes to spare before the starting time. There weren’t as many people in the room as were in the morning, and there didn’t appear to be a workshop facilitator in the room yet. Just a group of people, some interacting, some not. There was a handsome man with long-ish hair cut bluntly at the level of his strong jawline sitting in a chair speaking with another person. He was wearing a black dance leotard and in bare feet. He looked at me when I walked in and made a slight act of backing his chair up as if to make some room for me to enter their circle. I didn’t overly react. It wasn’t clear to me if I fit into that conversation, so I just stayed reserved.
In a few minutes more, this same man stood up and went to the area of the desk at the front of the room and then it became obvious that he was the facilitator. Wait… a… minute… was this man Predrag? Was this the woman I interacted with this morning in Sharon’s workshop? Clearly this man is a man. A handsome man, for sure. My head was spinning a little. Confusion was the over riding sensation. Then he pulled his chair to what would be the center of the group and decided, even with the small number of participants, that it was time to begin. He shared his story. Who he was and how he had come to know himself in this man’s body before the heart attack when he found himself strapped to a gurney, staring at an overhead light, unsure of whether he would die or live, and recognizing that he didn’t feel any fear. It was a riveting story. It was his turning point, his awakening. Somehow it linked to his expression to dress as a woman. He hinted at it, but that wasn’t the point of this workshop. It was just a way for him to offer himself to us and then ask us, the participants, to do some very simple things including speaking a word about our truth; naming what we are passionate about; and moving to 3 people in the group without speaking or touching. There were other exercises he had us do, but for the moment these are the ones that stand out most clearly in my memory.
In these simple exchanges, what I learned about myself that was surprising to me was that I seemed to be much more comfortable presenting myself to another in a physical expression than I am in a verbal expression. Opening to my voice was much more uncomfortable than moving in my body and being in the presence of another. Shocking!! If I were to have had to predict which would be easier, I’d have clearly ranked myself as more verbal than physical.
In that exercise where we had to present ourself to 3 different people, no talking, no touching, he was one of the 3 people that I chose. I know he wasn’t my first but I can’t recall if he was my 2nd or 3rd choice. I walked to the area inside the circle just in front of him. I paused. I stood, completely aware of myself. I felt my feet on the ground. I felt the sense of my body in my gauzy, sunny, yellow dress. I felt a feeling of simplicity in myself and I felt complete comfort to look in his eyes. I held his gaze for more than several moments. It was at least a few seconds. Five? Ten? Probably as many as 12 or 15. It was long enough to look in his eyes, to see him and to allow him to see me. I felt peaceful.
After doing this and several other practices, which he offered with intermitting segments of his own sharing, bits and pieces of his story and how dressing as a woman was about his wish to experience everything in this life, there was a final and most extraordinary exercise that was like the complete cracking of the inner walls of my personal reality. We were to walk up to another person in the group. No words. No touching. Only touching ourself, if we should choose to. The idea was to ask ourself if we are comfortable to present ourself to another in a way that we are showing ourself off to this other person. That we are being completely vulnerable to offer ourself in this public way to one person in this group. Begin!
I could feel my own internal resistance to doing this practice. I could feel my discomfort with sensually slinking up to another person in this group, a total stranger, and revealing myself in a sensual manner. This was the way he demonstrated it and I think it’s safe to say, based on what I observed, that most people interpreted as the assignment. As I was observing my own resistance, the woman in the group who had been staying next to me was making her way around the circle and she was coming to me. She was presenting herself to me in a delicate, fragile, raw and sensual presentation of a dance. I offered my attention with a soft smile and a welcoming heart. She turned a shade of red that I thought indicated she might combust. I felt for her in her vulnerability and also in the power she had to step into herself this way. She moved back to her place in the circle. Wow! That was powerful. Then another person left the circle and made their way around. Slowly, one by one people were breaking out of their spots and 1, 2, 3 of them were presenting themselves to me. To ME! I didn’t know what to make of this. How do I interpret this? It was my turn to go and I still had all this resistance but I also had this confusing feeling of being the one person in the group that 3 people had chosen to approach. I was the only one who was approached by 3 people. And then this man was banging on the door.
I was standing next to this door that was blocked from the inside by a table and, like the many people who attempted to enter this room through that door since the morning, here was another. His persistent banging was to get my attention. I opened the door to tell him to go in through the other door. I looked to Predrag to get some support and interaction. I still hadn’t gone and I was the only one who hadn’t. I knew I needed to go in order to overcome my inner fear. The man was yelling at me! It’s 7:00. Again, I looked to Predrag. “You don’t speak French” Predrag told me. Just tell him that I don’t speak French. “You speak English?” the man said to me loudly and urgently. I could only reply “yes.” “The building is closing! It’s time to go! Get out!!!”
Now Predrag was organizing to solicit feedback from everyone. How was it to present yourself to another in this way? He asked me first. “I didn’t get to do it,” I replied. He just looked at me. “I didn’t get to do it, but I got something else.” In those powerful moments between being approached by 3 different people, realizing that it was my time to go, and being bluntly thrust out of the dreamy, reverie of the workshop sacred space by the banging, screaming French man, I realized I had received a very powerful message. I am that approachable. I am that welcoming. I am the one person in this group of people that so many felt at ease to present themselves to in such a vulnerable way. I felt honored. I felt like I received 3 very special gifts. And I realized that I have a quality that I don’t recognize in myself and it is a quality that I MUST recognize because it’s something that the world needs very much. People who are willing to receive others without judgment and with completely loving openness. I never saw this aspect of myself with such certainty. It wasn’t clear before. And to receive this message at this time in my life was incredibly profound because I have lost people. I have been told that I’m weird and strange and by people I thought love me. I have been rejected and abandoned, but now it was really clear to me that it’s not because of me. Those people who are rejecting me are doing so because of them. In my truth, I am an open vessel, willing to receive others and grateful to receive them in their honest pure self and with their most tender vulnerability. It’s the basis of human connection. It’s really all that we have. Without it, we actually have nothing.
So what did this cross-dressing man from Croatia offer me? A much more clear and certain picture of myself. A much more accepting and understanding relationship with myself. I need not be embarrassed to be me. I need not be apologetic about who I am. Who I am has value. While, in my family of origin and even in some friendships, it’s been under-appreciated, there are some very dear and supportive friends who have held this truth for me while I waited for this right moment to receive the gift. I guess it’s my time to enjoy this great reveal.