The "Why" of Rye

I’ve had the urge to sit down and write a little about my crossdressing the last couple of days. It’s not something I blog much about much these days now that I openly talk about it and furthermore actually do it. But a few things have interested me about it recently that I’ve as of yet not found a way to translate into my act about it and I plan to write a handful of blogs about it in the near future. For now I’m going to focus on the thoughts I have about the relatively new experience it has been in my life to actually be open about it.

What continues to surprise me to this day is how much most people don’t seem to care about it at all. It’s only been a little under a year since I really went public with it, posting pictures to my facebook and talking about it in my act and it still surprises me how little an impact it has really had on my life in regards to friendships and relationships and such. Before revealing it I was convinced I’d lose friends over it or have people treat me weirdly at the least, but for the most part people just kind of write it off as another of my many peculiarities. Which, frankly is awesome, thought also frustrating when I think of how much of my life I wasted on needless anxiety over the unknown of what would happen. Since my revelation I haven’t had a single bout with insomnia, something I dealt with since I was a teenager, and I have no doubt that there’s not a connection there somehow.

I think the thing I was expecting the least was just how many times I would actually have to “come out,” about it. It makes sense that I have to do it a bit here because no one really knows me here, but there’s a lot of people in my life who I was surprised didn’t “get the memo.” Before last year, I assumed that once I started crossdressing at shows the gossip gates would open and people who knew me would hear it through the grapevine and I’d get ribbed for it the way comics often do. Instead, I’ve created the occasional awkward moment of disconnect when assuming someone knows about it and dropping mention of it in casual conversation as if it was common knowledge and then needing to back up a few paces.

It’s always a strange conversation too because at the end of the day we’re really just talking about clothing preferences, and so there’s not much to actually say about it outside of the initial revelation. Sure, there’s the occasional follow up questions in regards to things like sexuality or underwear, which are easy to answer, straight, and yes, but then there’s some that are harder to really put to rest in conversation. Someone will ask me “Why?” and I’ll answer, because I like it. And then it is awkward because I think I have answered the question, but they do not. So I’ll say “I’m a bit of a crossdresser,” and then it is awkward because I think I have answered the question, but they do not.

Just the other day my friend Maria commented that someone had asked her why I do it. Maria has known about it a lot longer than most of my friends, but she found herself not really knowing the answer. The fact is, I don’t know the “Why” myself. Do I have theories? Sure. But sometime in the last couple of years I stopped caring about the why. I’m 28 years old, and this is something that has been a part of me my entire life, I’m comfortable with it, I don’t feel like it’s anything to be embarrassed about and at the risk of sounding a little egotistical in the process, I think I actually can throw a pretty nice look together when doing it.

With that in mind, I think the reason that the “why” conversations feel so tedious to me is that when someone asks me why I’m wearing a skirt, I’m starting to just answer “Because I have the legs for it,” and that both of us will feel like I answered the question.

Driving Me Mad!!!

The traffic in LA sucks. But you know where else the traffic really sucks? Everywhere. That’s right Hollywood, you’re not special, you gather people into a major city and guess what, it’s going to take a long time for the mass group to move from one area of town to another. Before moving here people drilled into me how bad the traffic was going to be. I was led to believe I’d spend hours in traffic to go five miles and get mugged. But the fact is, the only times I’ve ever had to sit in traffic for more than a reasonable amount of time, the only times I’ve ever truly *sat* in traffic with no forward motion whatsoever have been where there has been a serious accident on the road that has stopped us from moving.

It’s not the traffic that sucks here, it’s the drivers. And I don’t even mean to say they’re particularly worse at driving than in other cities, but rather that they just suck as people. There’s something about getting behind a wheel of a car in Los Angeles that instantly transforms a person into an asshole. I think it’s because people spend so much of their time outside their car being fake that when they finally get behind the wheel the darkest, most vicious parts of their personality are just screaming to be unleashed. On a regular basis, I will hear someone honk at an intersection for the first car to go, while the light is still changing. I’ve been honked at for having the audacity to pause and let a stranded left-turner go so they don’t get stuck in the middle of the intersection. I’ve heard someone call my friend Maria the c-word because they were mad they had to wait for her to pull out a parking space she was wedged into. And absolutely no one here does the courtesy wave to a driver who lets them over.

But what really drives me crazy are the occasions where someone actually gets mad at me because they were wrong. Yesterday I had a driver in the right hand lane refuse to let me over for three blocks despite leaving my blinker on and making many attempts to get over. When I finally gave up trying to get over and punched my steering wheel in anger, the guy screamed at me from his window, asked me if I wanted to pull over and fight over it, and then he spit on my car. Let me reiterate again, this guy spit on my car because he cut me off. Today, the same thing. I was trying to find a parking spot, found one on the left hand side of the steet, and so I flipped on my blinker and started to pull into a driveway to turn around and park, and the car behind me decided that instead of waiting for me to turn, he would dart around me into the oncoming traffic lane, almost T-boned me as I turned, and then he honked his horn at me and threw me a double dose of middle finger. Let me repeat that. This guy got mad at me because he almost hit me when I was in front of him and he was driving in the ONCOMING TRAFFIC LANE.

That’s all I have to say about it, and I know what you’re thinking, “Is this really the end of this blog entry? Come on Rye, we just read three paragraphs of this thing and you don’t have the decency to wrap it up in some poignant way? ” You’re right. I wrote this blog wrong, and hey, go fuck yourself!!