Coming out a little bit

This post is for Jamie. The picture. I'm not sure he appreciates the retro girdle - I don't particularly -, but the girl is pretty and the polka dots should do the trick.
And the text. Because it's the truth this time, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I know he appreciates that. But therefore it's going to be a bit dull, I fear, and I warn everyone who read until here hoping for a hot story to get off on to better stop and and click elsewhere - or browse my new tumblr archive just here on my sidebar.
The post is not only for Jamie. It's also for those of us who haven't come out and wonder how it would be if they did. No, I didn't actually come out, but I gave friends, close friends and not so close friends of my everyday life, yesterday's story to read. And it had some effect.
To tell about it I have to disclose some facts of my life I'd rather keep to myself because they contradict the young, pure, inexperienced and sexy persona I had planned to assume as author of this blog. So that's over. Hopefully only for the young and inexperienced part. (If you are still annoyed by my dishonesty, I apologize and beg you to read my page "on truth", also right here on the side-bar.)

I have a friend who is a writer and editor in a publishing company. I wrote yesterday's story answering her invitation to contribute to a collection of short stories she was preparing.
I am not a professional writer and it's not through work I know her. She's a close friend of my girlfriend's.
I have the lazy habit to leave it to my girlfriend to care for our social life, take initiative to invite people, remember birthdays and so on. The result is that I live socially in an environment dominated by women. It's quite a group, really. On almost every dinner or weekend activity they seem to outnumber us men. Even if they don't, arithmetically, they still do, when it comes to effect. The women create a community, a circle of friends - with conflicts, friction, envies, that's true - but a circle of friends. We men, even if equal in number, are never much more than their appendixes. It is, I believe, a quite common form of male submission, and not sexual. It's just the consequence of our - or at least my - lack of commitment to this kind of social life. Contrary to the girls, we guys are not much closer to each other than one is on a "Hi, how you are doing?" basis. And whether it is a general characteristic of our group, or whether it is just me, also my relations to my girlfriend's female friends were rather superficial. Friendly, but detached.

That changed after I started my blog. Not this one. I have another, ordinary blog with my name on it, where I post my general musings about what interests me - except the kinky part - and publish stories. No content warning is necessary for that blog.
To my surprise and my pleasure, I found that several of the women (and none of the men!) I had known for years as little more than my girlfriend's friends, became regular readers and correspondents, and some are now more my friends than her's.

One of the closest is Pamela, the writer and editor. She lives in a stable relationship too, and with respect to that neither of us has ever given in to temptation that would mess up our lives. But we both like writing, we respect each other in this realm, and that is a strong connection. We talk a lot, by mail or in person, also under four eyes. She is the only woman, for example, who confided to me that she likes kinky porn. Kink, not ordinary straight, vanilla porn. "You don't imagine", she said, "and I wont describe it to you. But it's really weird and depraved stuff that I watch and that turns me on."
Well, I could imagine, and happily recommended some sites to her. But we remained careful and responsible as ever and left it at that. And I did not tell her about my special interests that are manifest in the blog you are reading right now. Not at that time.

Back to the story. I declined the invitation first, for two reasons. I was absorbed in my job and with little time for other things, and I didn't like the collection's working title: "The beautiful life". Isn't that corny? But her publisher's idea was exactly this: A collection of happy, edifying stories that convince readers that life is beautiful and worth living!
It was summer. Everyone was on holiday except me, who was trying to meet a deadline. And then it came to me, in spite of lack of time: a totally happy story! I wrote it and mailed it to her, commenting that I knew well it was not publishable in the harmless context of the planned book, although I found it fitted perfectly with the title and the collection's purpose.
A couple of hours later I got an enthusiastic call from her. She was at the beach and had just read it. She had printed it out and taken it with her. "It's one of the hottest things I ever read!" she said.
And she found it publishable. If I would consent to her giving it to read to everybody on her dinner-party tonight. Her lover owns a country house near the coast. Many of my usual friends would be there, but not me. So it was decided. My kinky fantasy would become public knowledge in my friend's circle.
Next day she updated me on the reaction. It had not went very well. She reported that it had been mostly awkward, and that it had been difficult to extract any extended comments from our friends. Most people, all women except her, had said they didn't like it. Sleazy, was one word. Porn, another. One man commented he found it very curious I had written the story from a woman's point of view. And everybody had considered it not publishable in the planned collection.
I confess that, as much as I had been elated by my friend's praise, I was smashed now by the reported reaction.

End of story. - End of story? - No. Two weeks later, my work deadline met, I saw Pamela and all our friends on a great garden-party at her country-house. And to my surprise, Pamela's sister, a sexy and admirable woman who at the couple of times we met before had only showed friendly indifference towards me - and one of those who'd said she didn't like my story - made a very determined pass at me.
I wonder if I have been an idiot for most of my life at trying to hide my femininity, not only to avoid social disapproval, but because I believed it to be a turn off for women, who I presumed were not into femm boys.


(Picture from here)