I am a lumberjack, yes, I am...

I took the girls up camping with a bunch of other Dads. (We didn't actually camp, eschewing the rocks and the company of tarantulas for the floor of a cabin.) I wore a plaid shirt and women's jeans because that's what fits. I sat scratching my three-week-old beard and realized that I was in no way feeling en femme. That felt just fine.


I looked around and tried to imagine which men there would be accepting, and which would likely pray for my salvation. I didn't till now wonder which might be at the least recovering crossdressers. I can't imagine any in that particular group. If you can't spot the CD'r in a group of 20-25 men, statistically, you are it.

As I was casting about for a way to begin this entry, I thought of

The Lumberjack Song

I don't think I ever actually saw it previously, but Dee mentioned it a couple of years ago before she (or I) had any transgendered framework to put me in. It came up because of a silly picture Dee took of my even sillier outfit. (I was wearing my Lucky Charms pajama pants, Underdog t-shirt, and Davy Crockett hat. I was dancing a jig next to a gas pump in Blythe at about 2:00 in the morning on the way back from Disneyland.) A friend of Dee's who saw the picture, laughed and said that the picture reminded her of the lumberjack song. In context now it seems prescient.

I looked it up and watched it just now. If I had seen it before it wasn't in light of thinking about how people think about the transgendered. If anything I would have thought it funny, silly and that the reaction of those in the background of the lumberjack reasonable. When I think of it now its kinda poignant. His manly friends and his devoted girl are so supportive of the barber's need to dream of a new and different life. The provide the chorus to his fantasy of manly times in the woods. (Which by the way which after Brokeback Mountain sound's well, gay..:)) When he reveals he "likes to put on women's clothes and hang around in bars", they shrink away. He, lost in a pink fog, is oblivious to their revulsion. Pretty apt really I think.

At the end she laments, " I thought you were so rugged!!!"

This may happen even more so because those with any version of transgendered issues are at risk to overcompensate a bit on their manly side. I.for example was the most macho 115 pound man Dee had ever met.

We were talking about it in the context of changes and I pointed out that Christopher Reeve was very rugged, until a tragic fall meant he could do nothing for himself. Not what Dana signed up for, but she handled it with unbelievable grace. Dee mentioned the stereotype of the man who trades in the old wife for a new trophy model every 10 years or so, because he can.

Dee put it this way about the changes for us. "You married Kelly Bundy, and 15 years later are living with Peg."

Referencing her new sleeker look as of late, I said, "You're looking more and more like Kelly Bundy everyday, dear."

She rejoined, lovingly, "So are you, dear!" Its "spice like that" (~The Sheriff.. in the movie Misery) that makes marriage fun.