Pride?  Really?

"There's an urge inside.  I get a tense, nervous feeling.  You've got to express that side of you.  I've got a woman tapping lightly inside my head, asking to come out, and it gets stronger - until I actually dress and let her out - she keeps banging harder and harder."  Paul Lindsay

Paul Lindsay, by his own account, always wanted to be able to dress like a woman, even as a child.  At puberty he was drawn to wearing women's clothing.  A compulsion that he kept well hidden until he was 48 years of age.  By that time he had long been married and was a father of two teen-age children, a boy and a girl.  Teens, needless to say, don't anticipate discovering that either of their parents is not what they appeared to be; they trust that their father and their mother will always be just that.

In Paul Linday's case, he will always be the father of those two children for he did, after all, father them.  His biology as a male made that possible.  His wife of long standing viewed him as a masculine partner and they enjoyed what would be characterized as normal conjugal relations: ergo, the children.  Throughout it all Paul had an inescapable yearning to dress himself in clothing not normally worn by men; stockings, girdles, skirts; items of apparel that would certainly turn heads.

But there's a photograph of Paul Lindsay, and he certainly makes a presentable-enough-appearing woman.  He looks comfortable in the persona.  He would be, since just after he married his wife, Paul began acquiring female garb which he would tuck away secretly in a small crawl space of the apartment they shared.  When his wife was absent from home that was his opportunity to indulge.  He did not divulge to her his fascination with wearing women's clothing.

Fearing, and with good reason, that her reaction would be a visceral one; disbelief and distaste.  And who could blame her?  What woman would expect to be informed by her husband that he thinks her clothing is great, so much so that he too would enjoy wearing them, would she mind?  It would be a rare woman who did not react with shock and a numbing sense of betrayal.  Which is just what happened with Paul, when he informed his wife he liked to cross-dress.

"I said, 'I like to cross-dress'.  She was stunned and didn't believe it.  She shut down and didn't want to talk after that.  In hindsight, I think I couldn't keep the secret anymore - more than just being open about it."  Their marriage was on the skids, in any event.  And Paul decided to break the news to his children, son 19, daughter 17.  His son quietly took the news, stating his father had taught him tolerance.  For his daughter it was a little different; she was fearful of what would happen to their relationship; father/daughter.

"It was weird just trying to figure out what was going on and how to handle it.  I was afraid that he was transsexual and that I'd lose my dad, which wouldn't have been OK.  It's like someone died.  Finding out he's a cross-dresser was a relief, because I got to keep my dad."  More or less.  Sometimes her dad is a man by the name of Paul Lindsay, and sometimes he's a woman named Amanda Ryan.  Paul/Amanda call the female persona Paul's 'femme'.

When Paul is fully dressed as Amanda he wears earrings, makeup, nail polish, hip pads, high-heeled shoes, a dress, wig, and breast forms.  When he is arrayed in this manner people still do a double-take; evidently the male in him remains in full evidence.  The human mind is a strange thing.  It exercises control in psychologically perverse, confounding, confusing ways.  That's quite the gender contortion; slipping from male to female.  Representing another mystery of the unknowable human mind.

Paul spends time on hair removal, undergoing laser treatments on beard and arms.  He sometimes waxes his back and chest, shaves his legs, trims his eyebrows.  And Paul/Amanda do a lot of public education.  "I think that we've accomplished a great deal, the attitude of the public has changed a lot.  Ten years ago, attitudes were very stereotypical.  We were perceived as 'sexual deviants, perverts, and pedophiles'.  Now, when I say the term 'transgender' the response is, 'Oh, I've heard about that, tell me more'.  To me, that's a quantum leap.  It opens the door to conversation and education."

As a male, Paul continues to try to sustain intimate relationships with women.  Once, about a month after initiating a new relationship he told the woman about his need to cross-dress.  Her response was that she was fine with the situation and they had a four-year relationship.  In the final analysis, however, the relationship broke down, because the woman wanted a male who was positive about his gender, not someone who would meander from one identity to the other.

"Amanda", he explains, "is a significant part of my life - not one I want to repress anymore.  If someone is not interested in getting involved with me as a whole, then why bother being involved?  I'd rather be true to myself.  I spent too many years trying to figure out who Amanda is to simply give up on that."

So he has figured out who Amanda is, then?  As though life isn't complicated enough.