So this
started off as yet another blog that was almost completely lacking in anything
interesting to talk about. That seems to happen more and more lately and I’m
starting to wonder if it is because the world is getting used to seeing people
like me out and about or if it is just that my own excitement level at the
little things has just dropped over the last few years? Maybe things that I
once thought were interesting and neat have now become old hat? Honestly, I
don’t know and can’t think of any reason to spend a lot of time dwelling on the
question. Anyway, it wound up getting a little more interesting on the last day
– at least if you are a teenager . . .
Normally I
get a bit of warning before heading out on a complex or long term service call,
but not this time. One Friday afternoon I got a call from my manager telling me
that he needed me in Albany New York the following Monday night. No worries,
that’s what I get paid for though, so over the weekend I spent the time to set
up flights and hotels and the like, and Monday morning my happy ass was on an
airplane bound for the North Eastern United States.
The dress
that I wore on the way to Albany was another thrift store treasure. It had been
part of a two piece suit and had a price tag on each piece of about $10. I
thought that the coat that went with it was a bit over the top, with a huge
fake diamond clasp on the front of it, but for $10 I was willing to give it a
whirl. When I went to pay for it though, the young lady behind the counter rang
it up at over $20 and so I stopped her.
“Hey now!
The price tag says $10 but you just rang it up for twice that. What’s the deal
with that?” I asked her with a grin and a wink.
“Nope, it is
$10 for each piece.” She replied.
“You’re
kidding? It’s a two piece suit, and y’all are pricing each piece of it?” I
asked her, trying to clarify it, because it just didn’t make sense to me.
“You got
it!” She replied with a laugh.
“Well, I’ll
tell ya what then! I think that the coat sucks
anyway and I was just gonna throw it away. Since you priced them individually
does that mean that I can just buy the dress and leave the coat?” I asked.
“You can!”
she answered.
“Well cool
then. You keep the coat and I’ll take the dress!”
And there ya
have it – Kimberly has a pretty green dress . . .
I don’t
imagine y’all want to hear all of my work related problems and activities, but let’s
suffice it to say that my one and a half week trip ended up being a three week
trip with my making multiple trips between Albany and Fishkill New York. I had
originally intended to meet with
Lisa Gayle Harris, but the
way my job was yanking me back and forth between the two cities and customers,
combined with late nights I had to spend helping customers by phone, it just
didn’t pan out.
One night on
the way back to my hotel I stopped and hit up a Marshalls department store in
boy mode and found a pair of shoes that I really liked. Even better, they
looked to be perfect for a dress that I had brought with me. The problem is
that I have learned over the years that women’s shoe sizes, just like sizes on
just about all women’s attire, are
highly unreliable. Some shoes that fit me perfectly are size 9, some are 10,
and some (ugghh) are size 11. Suffice it to say that I have learned not to buy
shoes without trying them on first, and that of course presents a bit of a
challenge when buying women’s shoes while dressed as a man. With my heart in my
throat, I grabbed two pair of the same shoes – one in size 9.5 and one in size
10, and headed to the dressing room with both pairs. The young lady behind the
counter had a bit of a puzzled look on her face as a 46 year old man placed two
pair of women’s shoes in front of her.
“OK, I’m
pretty bold for a cross dresser, but I’m not
bold enough to sit out there in front of all of your other customers and try on
heels. Do you mind if I take these into the dressing room and try them on?” I
asked her with a sheepish grin.
“I don’t
mind at all! Go right ahead!” she told me with a grin.
“Thanks!” I
told her and happily headed on back with the boxes cradled in my arms.
Like a lot
of us, I am cursed with one foot that that is smaller than the other, and so
the ideal shoe sizes for me would usually be a 9.5 on my right, and a 10 on my
left, and I found these shoes to be no exception. The size 10’s fit well enough,
and so I put them back in their boxes and headed back out to the counter with
them where I struck up another conversation with the lady manning the door
there.
“So? Did you
choose one?” she asked.
“Sure! I’ll
take the size 10’s please!” and then I proceeded to tell her laughingly that
the ideal pair for me would be one of each size. She laughed, because it turns
out that she has the very same problem.
After she
was done ringing up my shoes, I took out my phone and showed her one of my favorite
‘Kimberly’ photos.
“Just in
case you were gonna have nightmares tonight about the ugly old crossdresser,
this is what I look like.” I told her with a grin. She was gratifyingly surprised.
“No way?!”
She said looking at it. “Do you do your own makeup?”
“I do! My
wife refuses to travel with me just to do my makeup.” I told her with a wink, and
then gave her my heartfelt thanks.
Yeah, when I
got back to the hotel and took the shoes out, I discovered that she had very
kindly given me one of each size! What a sweetheart!
That
Thursday I was supposed to meet up with
Lisa Gayle Harris from the
vanity club, but instead wound up stuck in my room trying to help two customers
by phone and email. As seems to be more and more common these days, they have
older equipment and I am the only remaining field service engineer in the
company with training and experience with it, and so the headache came to me.
Then, in a perfect storm, I got a call from my manager telling me that tomorrow
morning I had to head for Fishkill New York because a huge customer of ours
there had the same type of equipment and
they
needed my help. So much for a free weekend to hang out in Albany! Instead of
laying around all day and going out in the evenings over the weekend, I found
myself driving to Fishkill where I spent the weekend helping one of my
colleagues who was already there and struggling with the system.
Monday
morning I drove
back to Albany to
take care of the customer that I had originally been staying the weekend to
take care of. That Thursday night, the night before I was supposed to head
home, my manager called me again to tell me that he really needed me to go back
to Fishkill
again, because my
colleague was still struggling there and needed help. He offered to fly me home
and then back the next week so that I could get some time with my family since
I had already been gone two weeks, but I looked into it and found that it would
cost well over a thousand dollars in flights, AND I would spend a huge part of
my weekend stuck in airports and on airplanes, and so I just stayed another
week and weekend in New York instead. At least I wound up with all day Friday free
just to make the two hour drive, and so I chose to go ahead and road trip
“pretty” to my next hotel.
The only thing of any interest that happened on the
drive was the reaction that I got from a woman in the toll booth when I stopped
to pay her.
“Honey, you
look so cute!” she told me with a
grin while handing me my change and my receipt.
“Well thank
you! That’s kind of what I was aiming for, but I wasn’t convinced that I got it
right!” I replied with a laugh. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a grin and a compliment
any day, but this sort of comment is kind of a double edged sword. Yes, it’s a
compliment, but it also makes it entirely clear that I am not passing as a
woman.
Later that weekend I had an afternoon free, and since my colleague headed back to his own home in
New Hampshire for the night, that left me free to get out and about for the
afternoon. Fishkill is not exactly the height of social activity and so I decided
to have a bit of a movie marathon. When I walked up to the counter to buy my
tickets, I couldn’t help but notice that the young woman there was very pretty,
and with long blond hair.
“Hi there!”
I told her with a smile. “I’ll take a ticket for ‘Mirror Mirror’ please, and
also one for the four PM showing of ‘John Carter’.”
“Sure!” she
told me with a great smile, and then as she handed me my tickets. “That is a really pretty top!”
“Well thank
you! I just got it and wasn’t really sure if it looked right on me or not.”
‘Mirror
mirror’ was already in progress when I entered, and I was a little concerned
when I found the theater was full of
young children. I suppose I should
have been expecting that, but since the lobby area of the theater had appeared
to be almost empty, I had hoped there weren’t gonna be a lot of people. The
children don’t bother me at all, don’t
get me wrong, I just worry about the possibility of some over protective parent
getting upset about the ‘dude in a dress’. The movie was delightful by the way,
and the women’s costumes were absolutely to die for!
‘John
Carter” was really more my speed though, and I really enjoyed that one. The
woman that plays the lead female role in the movie is an absolute stunner, and
given the costumes that they had her in, she was hands down one of the hottest
women I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The rest of
my time was dedicated entirely to my job, and quite honestly it was a rough few
weeks. One night after we left the customers factory, my colleague and I both
stopped for dinner and a beer at a little pub called “Handshakes”. It was
really nothing to write home about, but we were too tired to look for anyplace
else. About mid-way through our beers a drop dead gorgeous young woman came in
and sat at the bar next to us along with her boyfriend. I hate to admit it, but
I was almost obsessed with the woman, because she was pretty much everything
that I wish I could be. She was in her early twenties, a flawless figure, a
huge head of dark hair, and wearing a short little black dress with a wide
belt. I had to actually devote effort to not
sneaking peaks at the young woman. Things can get a little confusing for
someone like me, because sometimes I am torn between the normal male thoughts
(“Damn but she is hot!”) and those of envy (“Damn I wish I was her!”). Such is my
strange life . . .
So at long
last, three weeks later it is time to head for home! I wore my new dress and
the shoes that I had just bought at Marshals, and headed out for the two hour
drive to the Albany airport. Once again I had to pass through the toll booths,
but this time I received an entirely different reaction as the man inside the
booth literally just stared at me for a solid 5 or 10 seconds when I handed him
my ticket. At long last, he snapped out of his stupor and spoke up.
“That will
be $4.25.” he said, paused, and then continued. “Just because. . .
Huh? What
the hell was that supposed to mean?! “Just because??!!” Was he implying that it might have been less,
but he as charging me $4.25 “just because” he didn’t like me?! I dunno . . .
“ ‘Just
because’ huh? Well then I guess I’ll pay
$4.25 . . . just because. . . ”
In order to
save my company a buck, I had set up this flight with two connecting flights, so I had to fly from Albany to
Philadelphia, and then from there on to Charlotte, and then at last on to
Austin. As I boarded the flight from Philadelphia to Charlotte, the flight
attendant took one look at me as I entered.
“That’s a
really pretty summer dress!” she said with a friendly smile.
“Thank you
so much.” I replied as I made my way to my seat, thinking that once again I
clearly wasn’t passing. She surprised me though, because she went on to
compliment almost every woman that came on board. At least she wasn’t singling
out the cross dresser.
As usual in
first class, the flight attendant made the rounds asking everyone what they
would like to drink, and I told her that I would like a screw driver.
“Every
flight has to have a lush on it, and I’m gonna be it on this flight!” I added
with a wink.
“A lush? Now
there is an interesting word.” She
replied with a grin. Shortly she had provided everyone with a drink and then
carried a basket of chips and snacks around and offered those to each of us. I
grabbed a bag of chips and laughed.
“So this is
lunch then?!” I asked.
“Sure it
is!” then she paused. “So we are using all of the “L” words today? Lush and
Lunch?”
“I suppose
we are.” I answered her. I really have no idea what her fascination with “L”
words was. Maybe she was just nervous and so sort of babbled? I dunno . . .
When the
flight landed in Philly, I had a hard time trying to figure out where the heck
I was supposed to go. Signs in one direction said “B1 to B8 this way” and in
the other direction a sign said something along the lines of “B10 to B20 that
way”. The problem of course was that I needed to find gate B9 and it didn’t
appear to be anywhere near me. There were literally signs telling me how to
find every gate except for the one
that I needed. My confusion must have been obvious . . .
“Ma’am, you
look confused. What gate are you looking for?” said a voice from behind me.
I turned to
find an airport employee looking in my direction.
“Well, I see
signs for every gate except B9!” I
laughed.
“No problem!
Go right around this corner and it’s on your right.”
“Thanks!”
When I got
to the gate area, it struck me that one of my TG friends,
Sophie, lived in Philly and it was
a shame there was really no realistic way to see her while I was there. Still,
I took the chance to make her laugh and sent her a text message something like:
‘I’m in the Philly airport. If you get here in the next 20 minutes we can wave
at each other past the TSA inspectors!”
Needless to say, she declined.
As I was
making myself comfortable in the gate area, I couldn’t help but notice two
young ladies enter the area. They looked to be in their late teens, probably
close to twenty years old. One of the girls had dark hair and was wearing
nothing of interest. The girl with her though was a little blond thing, and
wearing an absolutely adorable little sun dress. She looked kind of familiar,
but I couldn’t place her. Let’s face it, I don’t know a single girl that age,
and so I let it go. When it came time to board the plane, I was standing next
to these two near the door while we waited for the boarding to start, and the
cute blond dropped her water bottle three times. On the third time, I picked it
up for her.
“I think
your water bottle doesn’t want to go with you.” I joked with her.
“I know!” she replied with a laugh and then
thanked me as she took the bottle back. It kept nagging at me that she looked
familiar. . .
When they
called for first class to board, I was surprised to see the two young ladies
step forward, because let’s face it, very few ‘children’ that age are found in
first class. It turned out that they sat directly across the aisle from me and
I was mildly surprised when a woman on her way past stopped to talk to the
blond girl.
“My daughter
loves your show. Would you mind
signing an autograph for me?”