A life in so many ways.
I’ve had a bio up here since 2011. I changed it a few times, but the only major
re-write was in 2015. Well, right now
it’s 2019 and not only has this blog changed a lot since 2011, I’ve changed a
lot since then. So, it’s time to
re-write. When I wrote this originally
and later did the re-write, I’d bounce between a history of me and a history of
some likes and dislikes. I tried to
explain how I got from some fuzzy obscure ‘there’ to an even more fuzzy obscure
‘here’. Well, this time I’d like to tell
the story in several different ways, but have each way be its own story. I’ll tell you how I became a creator and how
my cap styles have changed. I’ll tell
you my general history. I’ll tell you
how I grew from a boy, to a heterosexual man, to a heterosexual man with some
kinks, to a heterosexual man with a feminine persona, to a fully accepting
queer.
Let’s start with some basic general history. I was born in mid-Michigan in 1974 (I wonder
if that makes me old? Young? Just some dude?) and have lived here for
almost all of my life. I had a good family
upbringing with parents that remained married.
I have a couple brothers. My
boyhood wasn’t really anything special.
In high school I wasn’t into sports because my doctor said I had a heart
murmur and banned me from playing school sponsored sports. So, I was into computers, chess, band (played
the trombone), and journalism (was a photographer for the school newspaper and
yearbook).
After graduating high school, I went to a community college
on a music scholarship for a couple years then finally moved away to a state
college to pursue a degree in optometry.
While at that state college I got a job as the assistant photographer
and really fell in love with photography.
A year later I moved back home and I found myself starting my college
career over studying photography. That associate
degree took three years by design. In
the late 90s I graduated and moved to Chicago with the plans to start out as a
photo assistant and work my way up to a commercial photographer. That year the market fell out of photography
and photographers with years of experience were reduced back down to photo
assistants. I barely worked and fell way
behind the eight ball financially. I
loved the windy city, but I moved back home after only a year.
I tried various photography and graphic designer related
jobs over the next few years and finally settled on running the photography
department for one of the biggest event videography and photography companies
in the nation. But after several years
and the pre-recession killing our business, I got the worst news of my life… my
father had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was going to die soon. I moved back home because the doctors gave
him six to eight months. He lasted nine
months (that’s kind of a family trait; do just a little better than ‘they’
think you can, sometimes just to prove ‘them’ wrong). I tried being a truck driver but failed at
that (hey… it’s HARD!). After a hard
year of grieving I tried photography one last time but quit after only a few
months because management screwed me over.
I didn’t have to guess that they were screwing me over, my manager
admitted it to my face. That autumn I
went to school to become a nurse. Three
years later I had my degree. Three
months later I failed the test to get my license. Three months after that I took the test again
and became a Registered Nurse. And finally,
a year after that, I got a job as a nurse.
After five years in that job I ‘promoted’ to be a nurse manager and now
manage a team of over 40 nurses.
I still live at ‘home’ taking care of my mother. Her health is failing more and more every
month. She really can’t do much without
her oxygen and has given up all of her favorite activities because they just
cost her to much in physical energy.
So that’s my general history. Let’s talk creativity. If I have to look back and find a time when
I’d say I found my creativity, I’d have to say it was around age 10. My brothers and I had a big collection of
toys ranging from GI Joe, to the Transformers, to Go-Bots, to Voltron, to Army
Men, to He-Man, to Thundercats, to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I think the
TMNT stuff came later, but still, it was a wide variety of toys). Instead of playing a different game with all
the various sets we had, we combined all toys into one massive game. In retrospect it was role playing as we each
had a character (and later, several characters) with all the other toys acting
as non-playing characters. That game
lasted years. Years!
Later, in Junior High school and High school, we moved on to
real role playing with Dungeons and Dragons.
Again, we didn’t quite play by the rules and changed them to suit our
particular storytelling style. Various
friends joined and left our groups over the years, but we played in a
continuous world where our original characters became gods that our later
characters worshiped. That world still
exists today as I’m helping my brother introduce it to his children.
Around that time, I got into computers. And of course, combine computers and high
school level hormones and you have… porn.
I remember distinctly finding photo sets (these were the days of 2400
baud modems, so NO video!), and instead of just looking at the photos and
‘manually’ enjoying them, I’d make up stories in my head to go along with
them. I’d even delete images that didn’t
work with the story. But more on porn
later.
While I was into photography in high school, I never really
looked at it as a creative outlet at the time.
It was just something to study and do and get better at. At the time I was more into music. I was into playing marching band, symphony
band, orchestra, jazz band, and small quartets.
I even wrote a marching band song with a friend of mine. My love for playing music died out as I went
into photography, but my love of listening to music exists to this day. There is the rare time that I’m not listening
to music, but it is honestly rare. I’m
listening to music right now as I write this.
When I went for my photography degree I specifically leaned
Photoshop. This was the mid-90s, so it
wasn’t exactly the beast that it is now, but it was still plenty impressive. Digital photography itself was rather new and
not truly utilized in the profession yet.
I also started working with other graphics programs, but manipulating
photos was my favorite. In Chicago I got
to actually use my Photoshop skills professionally. I also utilized those skills at the various
photo and graphic design jobs I had between Chicago and calling it quits in
photography. Those skills are what
really push me creatively today and I still make caps in Photoshop.
After starting up nursing school I only occasionally used
Photoshop until I started making caps. I
had, at that point, been looking at forced femme caps for a year or so when a
cap found at Rebecca Molay’s site by Dee that brought me to Rachel’s Haven. At Rachel’s Haven I turned my desire into
seeing images and reading stories into a creative outlet by making images and
stories. On November 15, 2009 I became a
cap artist by introducing myself to the Haven and making my first cap “Oh No….”. Making and trading caps at Rachel’s Haven was
great as using everybody’s preferences helped focus the story down and let my
creativity come out in design. Sure, I
was till writing a story but by not being free to do whatever I wanted, it
helped to fence in the story aspect. A
year later I made this blog and about a year after that moved into making caps
all for myself and my blog audience.
Thankfully my time coming into
making caps didn’t ever involve the classic black text on white background
phase. Most of my creative journey took
place between 2009 and 2012 and can be seen in my “Caitlyn’s Next 200 Followers”
post. About the only major creative leap I made that
isn’t in that post was my ‘Kinetic Text’ style caps. After a creative break of several years, that
coincided with getting a job as a nurse, I returned but focused on what ended
up being called Obscuras instead. I’d
find an image, write a story for it, and then simply post that. No putting it into cap form where my design chops
could be utilized. That phase of only
making the occasional cap and focusing on Obscuras, starting in 2015, lasted
until earlier this year. 2019 has been
marked by far more caps and only a few Obscura along the way. I liked the Obscura because it really let me focus
on the story aspect without any thought of limiting it in size to fit into a
cap.
So that’s my general history and
creativity. Let’s talk sexuality. I’ll start by saying that while I’ve told
variations of this journey before, it’s always a little different as I look at
it differently as my current position changes.
And as a person who considers himself queer, I now focus on different
details for my journey.
I’m in a fairly conservative area
of the country and while my parents were considerably liberal in their mindset,
it wasn’t exactly a liberal time. I was
taught growing up that sexuality was either normal or not. Normal meant traditional sexual roles for men
and women. Men were defined by having a
penis, were attracted to women, were expected to work, were expected to not
show emotion. Women were defined by not
having a penis, were attracted to men, were expected to raise the children,
were expected to suppress their uncontrollable emotions as much as humanly
possible. That was all normal. Emotional men? Not normal.
Homosexuality? Not normal. The thought of gender swapping or being
something between masculine and feminine just wasn’t even on the table as an
option to be considered. But if it were,
I’m sure it would have been ‘Not Normal’.
And while normal didn’t
necessarily mean good, not normal was distinctly bad.
So in high school I considered
myself a ‘normal’ young man. I was a man
who was attracted to women without giving it any thought whatsoever. I think if I grew up 10 years earlier, I
might never have found myself sexually (and by the same token, if I’d grown up 10
years later I’d have found myself sexually much more easily), because the
internet sped up my introduction to ‘kink’.
You see, at that time I thought of anything other than “Man Having Monogamous
Sex With A Woman” as a kink. A
threesome? Kink. Cheating on your wife/husband? Kink.
Homosexuality? Kink. Lesbianism?
Kink (and yes, it wasn’t just a kink for women, it was a kink for men to
like watching lesbianism). Bondage? Kink.
Masters/Mistresses and slaves?
Kink. Transgenderism? I hadn’t even heard of it, so it must be
Kink.
I’m not sure which I found first,
but these two things opened me up to transgenderism. I liked reading porn (I liked reading in
general), so porn stories were something I’d collect. Most of the stories were of the ‘man meets
girl, man has sex with girl, man and woman continue to have sex’ style. But some stories were distinctly into the
kink area and I’d read them even if I wasn’t seeking them out at the time. Reading about lesbians, reading about masters
and slaves, reading about mistresses and slaves… all of that lead to the first
story I read that involved a mistress slowly feminizing her male slave. Compared to what I look at today (hell,
compared to what I CREATE today), it was incredibly mild. He’d have to wear panties under his
pants. He had to accept being referred to
by a female name in the privacy of their home.
He had to put on lipstick when he performed cunnilingus. Like I said, mild compared to today, but
shockingly kinky to a person who hadn’t been introduced to transsexuality or
transgenderism. The other thing that
opened my eyes was a series of images.
It was a blonde man and a woman with black hair. They were just photographed against a blue
background and kissing while slowly undressing.
She had very small breasts, but she was still cute. The surprise came when he was down and
pulling her panties off… and she had a penis.
I was shocked! I was
horrified! I was… aroused?
In both of the scenario of the story
I put myself in the man’s position. I
was attracted to the humiliation aspect of it and sought more stories like it. In the images though, they’re both men, right
(remember, men are defined by having a penis)?
So… was I the blonde man undressing the feminine looking black haired
man and sucking his cock? Or was I the
feminized black haired man, being undressed and having my cock sucked? Humiliation was strong in either position as
I was either a feminized man or a cock sucker.
So like the stories, I started seeking out images like that.
It was the first time I ever typed
the word ‘Shemale’.
I didn’t make anything of this
change in attraction in me. I was a ‘normal’
man who had a kink. That’s all. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. Overtime, with plenty of reading and images
to look at, I focused on liking the story of a man forcibly changed into a
woman. And while it was obvious from the
‘shemale’ models used on several sites that it’s still difficult for a man to
look like a woman, I wanted the story to be of a man forced to play the role of
a woman without being changed surgically or magically into a woman. So mainly cross dressing and acting like a
woman. I was particularly attracted to
the idea of the man doing so ‘willingly’ to help someone (most often a girlfriend,
but sometimes a sister or a close friend), and then the situation going farther
and farther. Normally ending up with him
having to perform fellatio to ‘prove’ his femininity.
Looking back, I think that was the
only way I could see femininity in myself.
Again, I was moving through wall after wall of conservative thinking, so
man is defined by having a penis. I have
a penis (and have a penis in the story), so I had to have the secondary sexual
characteristics of a woman including long hair, smooth skin, breasts (or at
least lumps on my chest that looked like breasts), wearing overtly feminine
clothes like lingerie skirts and dresses.
But the ultimate was focusing sex on the ‘real man’ in the scene, and
that involved focusing on his penis in a way that mine wouldn’t be a
factor. Yeah, anal sex could have been a
substitute, but think about anal sex realistically without being able to notice
the penis and scrotum of the ‘woman’. It’s
hard to get the imagination around and ‘feel’ real. But wrapping your lipsticked lips around a
cock while he runs his hand through your long hair and looks down and calls you
a good girl? Yup, that’s me as a
woman.
But that’s all with decades of
looking back. At the time, I was just a normal
guy with a kink. I went out with girls,
I went to strip clubs, I stared at women’s bodies.
When I was at the state college
and had long periods of time by myself, I started to think about it more and
started to worry that I was gay. I
honestly thought that these desires might be making me homosexual. Read that again please. I thought the DESIRES were making me
GAY. I never considered the possibility
that I was homosexual and that I was learning how to express this in a ‘safe’
way. And I certainly never considered the
possibility that I wasn’t entirely man.
That I was a woman.
By the time I got to Chicago I
realized a key difference between gay and whatever it was that I was. I never pictured myself or imagined myself
with a man. At least not AS myself. I was always the ‘woman’ in those scenarios. And since I was ‘obviously’ a man, that meant
it was just a kink. I stayed safely in
that cocoon for over 10 years. It wasn’t
until I started making caps and giving myself a femme name did I start to
consider possibilities between homosexual and ‘normal’. At first, I tried to just say that my name of
Caitlyn was a name for the nebulous cap making, storytelling, fairly female
persona I used. Later I decided that
Caitlyn was an actual personality all to herself. I blocked off space for ‘her’ and ‘me’. Later still I decided that we were both part
of the same person and my feminine side didn’t need to be just the kinky part
of me online. And then only more
recently did I realize that if I simply chopped off the two extreme sides of me….
The fake “I’m a man” masculinity and the fake “I’m a girly girl thinking girly
girl thoughts”, I could make a whole full person.
The big problem at that point was
defining what that meant. I could accept
that when I was feeling very feminine, I was attracted to men. And yes, I was seeing that in my non-online
life as well. I could accept that when I
was feeling very masculine, I was attracted to women. But these are two situations dealing with two
very different ideas. One was sexual identity;
was I man or woman or something in between.
The other was sexual attraction; was I attracted to men or women or something
in between. There’s a third sexuality related
issue, but it’s biological and can’t be changed by anything outside of surgery; I’m biologically male. I have a penis, I have testicles, I have
broader shoulders than females, I grow hair more and, in more areas, than
females.
But I couldn’t decide on the other
two. It wasn’t until I started to
actually try to define what I was that I came across the definition of
queer. “A term (formerly pejorative)
used by people who don't identify with the binary terms of male and female or
gay and straight and do not wish to label themselves by their sex acts.” And that was it. I’m queer.
I’m happy to admit it, at least here online. I haven’t said that much to my friends or my
family, but if someone were to ask, I think I’m ready to answer with that
term. “Hey Calvin, are you straight?” “No.
No, I’m queer.”
I know that was a long longer than
the general history and the creative history, but it still feels short. It’s been a long LONG journey to come to that
level of acceptance.
Anyway, that’s my bio as of August
2019. And incase you’re curious, here’s my bio from 2015 that has a little update from 2017 where you can see me
approaching the ‘queer’ status. I actually
call myself bisexual in that one!
