Today I sit here in comfy PJs.  I’ve got on my AC/DC pajama pants, and my positively ancient Zelda t-shirt, dug up from the graveyard that is the bottom of my t-shirt dresser drawer, with a gold and white rendered Link looking all pissed off.  It’s a me day.  I may even paint my toe nails and watch an old movie on DVD.  Or something.

Yesterday was a struggle.  The job search continues.  On website after website.  As technology improves, applying for jobs gets even more annoying.  It used to be you could just mail your resume and a cover letter.  Or even just email them.  But now, nooooooo.  Every fucking place has their own proprietary HR server.  Each and every damn place makes you create an account with their company and fill out stupid online form after form.  What’s the point of even having a resume?  Why bother writing one?  No one wants them!  And the few times that they let you upload your resume, it’s some damn awful basic rich-text script that strips my nice resume of all of its neat features and renders it almost useless.

But what’s even worse than that, are the sheer number of these places that have bugs in their stupid proprietary system.  Most of the time these bugs in some way prevent you from actually completing the application process.  One asks for your state or providence, but then has a drop-down box that’s blank.  You can’t type anything into the box like a good combo box would allow.  And you can’t advance to the next page because the state field is a required field.  It’s stupid bugs like this that drive me crazy.  Do these people not test their own software?  And why would I want to develop software for a company with such low quality ethics?

I shit you not, nearly fifty per cent, nearly one half, all have some kind of typo or bug.  And at least one tenth, if not as much as one quarter, are too buggy to even finish the application process.

It’s driving me nuts.

And then I’m reading a novel.  A novel like nearly every other novel I’ve written lately.  The research is bad.  Hollow-point bullets (bullets intentionally designed to deform on impact for safety so that they don’t go through walls and accidentally kill the neighbor when a cop fires and misses) that go through steel hospital doors to then kill a vampire.  The number of typos are astounding.  There’s got to be an average of about one every three or four pages.  And that is not an exaggeration!  And a singular simple plot that keeps trudging on because it has nothing else to do.

Meanwhile I’m writing books with plots that have twists and side-plots that tie together back into the main plot by the end.  I’m writing books with character development.  I’m writing books that at least try to research the basics.  And before I even consider trying to pimp my manuscript out to a literary agent for representation, I repeatedly proof read my novel and have my wife and/or friends proof read it as well.  I’m not even remotely an English major and I can do so much better than so many of these published turds.

And yet every single query letter comes back rejected.

It gets me down.

So yeah.  Today is a comfort day.  I’m going to dress comfy.  I’m going to snuggle with a blanket.  I’m going to drink tea and/or hot chocolate.  I’m going to revisit Nostalgia Land.  And, basically, I’m going to do my best to keep positive.  Because sooner or later, something has got to give.  Life can’t stay this screamingly maddeningly frustrating forever.

So why do I wear women’s clothing? Because I want to feel pretty, duh! It’s funny.  A lot of people view crossdressing as a fetish.  Like men get off running around in drag.  And maybe, for some, it is, and they do. For me though, it’s just more about looking on the outside how I feel on the inside.  It’s a level of comfort.  Let me explain. I have a couple of business suits.  (Yes, normal mens’ business suits.)  They’re reasonably stylish because I like to be.  But as good as I might look in them, they’re still stuffy and uncomfortable to me.  Not that the suits are badly tailored.  In fact because of my unique sizing, I always have to get my professional clothing tailored.  The problem with wearing the suits is just that they’re simply not … me. So after a day of wearing a suit, it’s nice to relax and get out of it and into something more comfortable. Some people wear jammies. I wear women’s clothes.  Because, inside, I am a woman.  Or at least part of me is.  All day long in any professional environment I have to pretend to be otherwise.  But when I’m safe at home, I can just be myself.  And that means letting out the woman in me. It has nothing to do with hot kinky lovin’.  Or with creepy masturbation techniques.  Or anything like that.  It’s not sexual in any way.  It’s just myself being free to be me. Oh, sure, there are plenty of times when I’m horny while in drag.  There are also plenty of times that I’m horny when I’m dressed as a man.  Just because it can be fun to add new sensory pleasures like satin and nylon doesn’t mean I dress in drag to get off.  In fact, most times I don’t. And other times I do not as a kink, but because it’s, well, what it should be. Imagine for a moment that you lost your left arm in the war.  You used to wear a watch on that arm.  You’d look at it all of the time to tell the time.  You’d use the arm regularly.  It was a part of you.  But now it’s not.  You still look down at where it used to be, expecting your watch to still be there.  Sometimes you can even feel your arm is still there, a phantom limb.  That’s legitimite human experience. Now, imagine that you’re a woman.  Only you wake up to find that you have a penis instead of a vagina.  And that you’re covered in tons of manly body hair. Same thing. Sometimes it’s downright creepy. Wearing women’s clothing, it’s a balm.  It’s a way of coping.  It helps me feel right. There are plenty of days where I don’t.  In fact only recently did I feel secure enough in a relationship to even dare start.  But gods it feels so right.  It’s such a relief.  It’s like just taking a load off after a hard day of work.  It’s nice to be me.  It’s a comfort thing. So, yeah, sometimes I dress up in crazy ways.  It’s like making up for all of the frustration that’s pent up inside.  But sometimes, it’s just about comfort and simplicity.  It’s like just getting into a hot bubble bath and taking a good soak. Some people might think drag is always just some fetish kink.  But it’s not.  There’s also comfort drag.

Sometimes drag is just for comfort.