Hello! - Girl?

I am a girl.

I have given up my pretense of being a tomboy, manly, or even gender-neutral.

This has been a tightly-held pretense ever since I was around five years old. I have worked hard to be "one of the guys" all my life. I learned how to play with a reel-to-reel tape recorder a good eight years before I owned a barbie doll. I became an audio-visual technician, learned to sort adaptors according to type and gender (yes, adaptors have a gender: the ones with the sticky-out-thingies are called male, and the one with the holes where those things go are called female - deal with it).

I coiled wires the correct way, the way that doesn't make the wire twist. I learned small repair skills - even learning how to correctly solder wires, and the difference between a good solder joint and a cold-solder joint.

Blah blah blah. It was all for nothing.

I am distinctly female, and I've decided to stop trying to pretend I'm not.

I began with tonight's laundry. I'm sick of bumping into my clothes-drying stand in my bathroom - I took it out and placed it squarely in the middle of my living area.

And now, as I write this, it is holding three panties and six (gasp!) bras.

Take that - you formerly gender-neutral hussy. I wear bras, they're out in the open now, no more hiding them discreetly away...

Away from whom? Just who in the heck have I been trying to hide my bras from, all these years, anyway?! And pantyhose - could someone please explain to me why in god's name I never in all my years hung pantyhose up in the bathroom?

Before tonight, that is.

I guess I'm going through the 52-year-old equivalent of spring fever. Well, after all, tonight IS the equinox: in pagan times people leapt bonfires and cuddled away under oak trees all night long, and I assure you, it wasn't for bible study or prayer meetin'! About an hour ago some fireworks scared Bijou back to the window for a good ten minutes - ah yes, it's fête nationale this week, otherwise known as fête de la saint jean baptiste...

A.K.A., Midsummer's Night - a night to celebrate nature in her fecund beauty, a night to recognize everything earthy and hot and female.

So I find it highly appropriate that I have chosen this night, of all nights, to "come-out" and hang my bras and panties shamelessly in the light, in all their colorful splendour.

I have also just finished coloring my hair, and if I can't get to sleep I'll be doing my nails.

What relentless idiocy - a 52-year-old broad making like such a girl!

Whether idiocy or not, the fact remains that if you're a guy in my life, you will now be bumping into things that have previously been hidden away. When you enter my home, you are entering the cave of a SHE-creature. There will be pinks and lavenders and lilacs strewn everywhere. Turn any corner and you might see an unmentionable: challenge me on it and you might find yourself outside on the street without that sumptuous dinner. Call me an old fool, and you'll be doing it to a ringtone.

There will be flowers.

Vive la différence!