I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to dress up. I lived in a VERY male household. I had two brothers and no sisters. My dad was away from home most of the time, so maybe I identified too much with my mother. On the other hand, maybe there is a biological explanation--in fact, I'm absolutely sure that there's a biological explanation. In any event, I started to crossdress as soon as I knew that there was a difference between boys and girls.

My favorite book when I was a kid was The Marvelous Land of Oz, in which it is revealed that our young hero, Tip, is actually Princess Ozma in disguise. Glinda the Good Witch transforms him back into her at the end of the book. I always wanted to be Princess Ozma.

This part of my bio used to read like this:

"Like most crossdressers, I hid my desires as if my life depended on it when I was a teen. I was also wrestling with the problem of sexual preferrence, which I have never really resolved to my own satisfaction (I am bisexual, and have only really been comfortable with it for the last few years).

I have been out of the closet for a couple of years now. I haven't told my family about it, but they don't need to know, really, since they all live far away from me. I haven't taken hormones (yet) or undergone any surgical procedures to feminize myself (yet), but I can forsee doing both in the near future. I have always viewed gender as a spectrum rather than as an absolute. It is entirely possible to encompass several gender identities in one person, I think, although most people will go to any lengths to have only one. I feel bad for those folks. They don't have much fun in life. Put another way: I don't like to have the same thing for dinner every night, either.

Everyone who knows me knows about Christianne, and the process of telling everyone was surprisingly easy. Scary, but easy. The best thing about coming out of the closet, as the saying goes, is that all of my female friends now give me clothes."

A lot has changed since I wrote that. First off, I've arrived at the conclusion that I am a transsexual. Part of me has always known this, but I've never been willing to fully acknowledge the fact until very recently. When I realized what I wanted to do, I sought professional help. I've been seeng a therapist who specializes in gender identity, and she concurs with my assesment.

At this writing, I've been on hormone therapy for a couple of years now. I started living full-time as female at the end of 2009. Both of these changes in my life represent the best decisions I've ever made. I've never been happier. Hell, I don't know that I ever even knew what happiness was until I actually experienced it. Making the decision was hard, I admit, but once I pulled the trigger, the rest was easy. I fully intend to undergo gender reassignment surgery when I qualify (and when I can afford it). Any doubts I may have had--and, believe me, I had lots--are pretty much gone now. I guess I've gone a bit beyond recreational crossdressing here.

A little over a decade ago, I discovered that I lived upstairs from a professional dominatrix. Her next door neighbors were a strange cabal of Mormon missionaries, and I later decided that their proximity was a lot like putting matter next to anti-matter. Her professional name was (is) Domina Zephyr. She was a very nice girl, and she was instrumental in drawing me out of my shell. There isn't much in the way of a TG support network in my home town, but there IS a BDSM group. She was a member and asked if I would like to attend a meeting, and, curious, I went. My preconceptions about the leather scene turned out to be entirely unfounded. Almost everyone I met turned out to be very nice, and I have learned a lot about my own sexuality from them. Mainly, I discovered that I REALLY like fetishwear. I don't much like MALE fetishwear (the leatherboy scene does nothing for me), but female fetishwear...well..

So some of the pictures in the photo section feature fetish. I'm not ashamed of this--hell, I think I look pretty good in these pictures. I'm a sex-positive feminist these days and I want what I want out of sex. For the most part, though, I'm a jeans and a t-shirt kind of girl. You can't really go shopping in 6 inch fuck-me pumps. Seriously.

It wasn't always so rosy. The first girlfriend I ever told freaked out. She had a streak of homophobia a mile wide, which surprised the hell out of me. It was ugly. I went into a deep depression after that experience. I dated mostly men for a while after that, but gay men aren't terribly accepting of transgenderism, either. This period only served to demonstrate that I am more attracted to women, even though men are more skilled in bed.

Age: I'm as old as my toes and slightly older than my teeth.

Height: 5'6"

Weight: Yeah, right!

Occupation: graphic designer

Favorite movie: Depends on what day of the week it is (at this writing it's Touch of Evil)

Favorite music: Punk (The Clash, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, Television, X), Post-Punk (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, REM, PJ Harvey, Madder Rose, Sleater Kinney), Memphis Soul (Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Booker T and the MGs), Pop (Blondie, Katrina and the Waves, The Bangles, En Vogue), and many others...Here's a fun playlist to give you an idea of what sort of music I like:

Favorite writers: William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, James Agee, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, Dan Simmons, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, John Collier, Elmore Leonard, Saki, James Thurber...and so on.

In an interview in 1962, shortly before his death, William Faulkner was asked what he was reading. His answer: "Charles Dickens and The Bible. At my age, I only have time for the good stuff.".

Favorite Artists: Albrecht Durer, Jan Vermeer, Caspar David Freidrich, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper, Joseph Turner, John Constable, William Hogarth, Goya, Velasquez, Daumier, Gustav Klimt, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Robert Arneson, Klaes Oldenberg, Chuck Close, Christo, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner..and so on.