I am sure there are numerous factors leading to my current TG conundrum. One I want to focus on right now involves my love for hosiery. It may be one cause, it may THE cause. Who knows?

I do know I absolutely love the way tights feel and look on me. No other garment turns me on in ways that tights do, and I don't mean sexually entirely. I admit they do provide a sexual thrill like a fetish. I've always been attracted to women who wear hosiery, and I LOVE when my wife wears them (even if she does so reluctantly). But there is a more powerful urge to wear them than just sexual satisfaction. I can wear tights all night. I own more pairs of tights than I do t-shirts and I've always been a T-shirt and jeans kind of person. Most of my tights are black, but I also have a great variety of colored tights: gray, brown, blue, green, purple, red, teal, even a footless, a black and white striped pair and a tie-dyed pair. I think I look great wearing shorts and tights. I love them. I can wear them all day and even longer sometimes. Just something about that sleek, silky/nylon look and feel.

But I don't know when the infatuation started exactly. That memory is long gone. I can remember instances of swiping a pair from my mother's room or from the local drug store way back around 8th or 9th grade, but how it all started is gone now. I can remember telling my mother about them around 1993 or so because I wanted her to buy me a pair. She was not happy about that at all. I remember wearing them secretly under my jeans from time to time, but never to high school. I remember getting the nerve to wear them at a couple part-time jobs in college. I don't think I had them on in class. Sometime after graduation, I would wear them occassionally to work. I was up front to a few girlfriends (including the woman who would become my wife) with no problems. Wearing them, though, sometimes feels like an addiction. Like the desire to would wax and wane. Sometimes I would go for a long time without wearing them, then binge on them in some frenzied ecstacy. There were also times when the secret felt too great. I wanted to tell people. I HAD to get the weight off.

All that built up to last Halloween. The urge to come out about my tights reached a boiling point then. I was too tired of feeling like I was afraid of what people would think. My decision was the people I care for don't care about what I'm wearing, and if the people I don't care for have a problem, then fuck 'em. Who's going to tell a guy 6'0" and about 250lbs. what to wear. The decison was made.

I went in to work on Halloween dressed in shorts & tights making some lame excuse because it was a costume day. Some people laughed, but not in a teasing way. It was how I tested the waters. Finally, I came out to close friends. Guess what? They didn't care what I wore to work. My reputation was already solid. As long as I could perform well, my wardrobe was not a concern to anyone else. The weight of dropping that 20 year secret was powerful. I was elated! (though maybe a little too much at first. I think I got slightly obnoxious, then toned it down) One friend later told me I was super-geeked.

Things went that way for a few months. Getting to wear tights openly without jeans was like fulfilling a life-long ambition. I was freed. Too bad it didn't end there. Shortly after coming out, I started shaving my legs to get the full effect. My wife was not thrilled. She supported my decision, but does not like the look at all, especially in public. Shaving my legs, she said once, made her feel sick inside. She said later she was getting over that. I don't know how much I believe her. Then about a month ago, I started wondering what skirts would be like. I bought a couple off ebay. They're cool. Not as fun as I thought, but not awful either. There is no sexual thrill with skirts quite like how tights feel. Hell, even wearing tights regularly now has blunted their sexual impact. I'm quite okay with that.

However, all of this really re-opened a heavy oak door long shut that contained my gender confusion. The past couple of months I've been reliving that age-old battle over whether I am transgendered or not. As described in my previous blog entry, that female template in my mind is back with a vengeance. I'm really feeling a pull now. I don't know whether loving tights are a symptom of that larger TG issue, or if I created a TG issue to disguise what's actually some form of transvestisim and a desire to be a woman so I can simply satisfy my desire to wear tights. I just can't say right now. I love tights. I wear them openly. I'm doing so right now with jean shorts. That should be enough. So why isn't it? Guess that's another piece I gotta fit into this X-Files-sized puzzle.

Thanks for reading