My 21 year old son has gotten very close with a young single mother whose family life quite frankly sucks. I don’t really know a whole lot more about her situation than this – she doesn’t want to live at her home. A couple of days ago my son approached me and asked me if she could live with us until he goes off to the navy in August. My wife and I discussed it and agreed to let her stay with us since we like her, she seems to be good for my son, and we couldn’t bear the thought of her baby not getting what she needs. I did however ask my son to consider letting her know about my being TG so that she wouldn’t be stunned or shocked if she comes down the stairs some morning when I am getting ready. I also have to admit to the selfish motive that I didn’t want to be on pins and needles the entire time, watching everything I say or do lest I give her a hint. At this point my wife entered the conversation and actually agreed with me, that having her stumble upon me one morning would be the worst possible way to introduce her to the idea, and after thinking on it for a moment, my son agreed. I offered to talk to her and save my son the discomfort but I failed to anticipate his direct approach. He walked directly up to her and very bluntly said “Oh yeah, my Dad is a cross dresser.” She just looked at him for a second.
“Yeah? So?” she said with a grin.
You know that is very close to my sons reaction when he learned about me – ‘yeah, so?’ I showed her a couple of my pics and while she did say I was pretty, she didn’t really seem too terribly impressed. Talk about anticlimactic . . .
The following day I was planning outfits for this weeks trip when one of the hanger bars in my closet finally gave out under the strain and collapsed. Did you know there was a limit to how much stuff you can hang on a wooden bar before something collapses? Who would have think it? Now properly motivated, I took the time to go through my closet and get rid of things that I can’t or wont wear, and in that process I cam across a number of dresses and gowns I had tried and failed to sell on Ebay. I grabbed them all up and took them to my sons room where he and the young lady were sitting.
“Ummm, I know that some of these are over the top, but I’m about to chuck ‘em. Would you have any interest in them?” I asked her. To my surprise, both she and my son grinned from ear to ear and started plowing through them like it was Christmas, and before we knew it there was a whole little fashion show going on. Soon she settled on a soft green and floaty dress that fit her perfectly. Since she is TINY I had to shake my head wondering what the hell I was thinking when I bought it for myself. Still, it was worth it when she looked up at us and grinned while holding the skirt of the dress out.
“I feel like such a girl!” she said with just a little bit of wonder in her voice. There is something maybe a little bit sad about a pretty young lady that isn’t at all familiar with feeling like a girl.
I had dared to think we had it beat because my legs have been clear for half a year now, but my erythema nodosum is back big time. This stuff gives me huge red and very painful bruises / swelling on my legs. It hurts and it looks terrible and is one of the reasons I typically wore longer skirts for so long. They have done a lot of lab work and found no cause for it so I’m stuck with it. One lab result I got recently though was a bit interesting. It seems that I have a low testosterone level. I think they said the normal levels are something like 260 to 1200 and mine are at 200. I wonder if there is anyway that is related to the stuff on my legs? Of course my wife wants me to take testosterone and of course I dread the entire concept. I devote quite a bit of effort to presenting as female and can only imagine what taking testosterone would do for that. Ugghhh . . . .
So now my wife is angry at me for two reasons – she thinks if is my fault that my testosterone levels are low in the first place, thinking it is due to wearing snug female undergarments AND she was angry that I even hesitate at the thought of taking testosterone to bring it up to normal levels..
So today I am on the way to back to Newark NJ. We have a customer there that was expecting a service call from the engineer that just got in so much trouble, and we didn’t know anything about it until the customer finally called my manager asking why we hadn’t come. So once again, off I go . . .
This time I’m flying out on United Airlines, even though the reservation was made through US Airways, and the lady at the counter didn’t give me a single smile. When I first started flying this way, I was constantly getting smiles and people would go out of their way to talk to me. Not any more though. Is that good or bad?
I was headed through the TSA check point, when this big burly TSA guy looks at me.
”Come on through little Miss Orange!” he said with a smile, while waving me forward through the metal detector. That’s funny – a couple of weeks ago I was referred to several times as ‘pretty in purple’ and this week I’m being called ‘little Miss Orange’. Is this color thing a new trend or what?
I almost forgot to tell you about my new brown shoes! I bought them a couple of weeks ago on sale at Macy’s. Even on sale, they set me back a little over $100 (that’s a lot of money for me) and so imagine my disappointment when I find that they are really too tight wear. I was gonna put ‘em up on Ebay when my wife suggested we take them to “The Shoe Doctor” in Austin and have them stretch them a bit. I went ahead and did that and decided that while still a bit tight, I could stand them, and so I wore them today. That might have been a mistake though because my toes are screaming as I sat in the airport typing this.
As is usual when traveling by air these days, my flights were delayed . . . and delayed . . . and delayed . . . After boarding two hours late we started toward the runway thinking we were on our way, but we were wrong! Soon I notice that the pilot has shut off one of the engines, so I knew that we were either going to be delayed again or we had a mechanical problem and were going to return to the gate. Fortunately the pilot came over the PA soon and informed us that high winds in Newark had air traffic all screwed up and so we were going to have to sit on the runway for about 40 more minutes. Ah, what a glamorous life I lead. . . By the time we landed, I’d already had a 15 hour day, my new 4 to 4.5 inch stilettos were killing me, and I was just plane worn out. Still, nothing to be done for it, I had to make my way through the rental car process. I usually use Avis, but apparently they were out of cars, and so I got to play with National. As I’ve come to expect, they treated me very well, were very friendly and polite. After getting my contract, I headed for the lot where you pick your own car out of the pack. As I was dragging my bags to the aisle of cars, a male National employee practically ran up to me and took both of my bags, despite my protestations that I was fine.
“Here, let me take those for you.” He said with a smile. “What size car did you rent?” When I told him “intermediate”, he proceeded to walk me down the appropriate isle and pick out a car. Once again I said that I was capable of loading my own bags into the car, and once again he ignored me, frankly to my own relief and deep appreciation.
The following day I had to go earn my paycheck, and so I headed off for my customers location where I worked until around 4PM. When I was done, I just couldn’t find any enthusiasm at all for going through the effort of getting cleaned up and changed, and so I decided to just go shopping drab. One of the malls I stopped at was absolutely shocking; I think it was called Short Hills. It had all of the higher end department stores like Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Ave, all selling clothing and shoes for more than I make in a week or two. I recall picking up one pair of shoes that I thought was just kind of “eh” and finding a $1,600 price tag on them. I almost dropped them and then sat them down very carefully and gently lest I cause any damage and be asked to pay for them. I don’t recall which store that was, but I left it immediately because I clearly had no business being in there.
You know, I have to give the place props though, because it had some of the most stunning looking women I have ever seen walking through it. Texas can hold it’s own against any state as far as having pretty women in it, but high fashion is not usually high on the list of priorities of your typical Texas women. Not so at the Short Hills mall though! These were drop dead gorgeous women and most of them clearly took their fashion very seriously. Killer dresses, skirts, shoes, outfits, and many of the ladies sporting long and glorious hair that they had clearly devoted a good deal of time and effort to. If you want to loose weight, just take a walk through that mall, because after your done seeing all of these flawless beauties, the very thought of eating and gaining weight will make you sick.
As I seem to do a lot these days, I debated whether I should fly home pretty or not. I didn’t feel any particular enthusiasm for it but knew that I would be miserable later if I didn’t. It actually occurs to me that this is an interesting, if undesirable, change in my attitude. I used to fly pretty because it was fun, I enjoyed it, and it made me happy. These days I seem to fly pretty just to avoid feeling bad. Somehow that has ominous implications because it almost sounds like your typical drug addiction – you start because it feels great but then later you find yourself doing it just to avoid feeling bad. Hmmm, maybe I’m gonna have to think on that one just a bit. . . In the end, I did indeed choose to fly home pretty.
So I got all checked in at the Newark airport and headed off for my newest addiction – Iced coffee and Iced Mochas! I get the caffeine I need and want AND a cold drink to cool me down a bit. As I’m standing in line for it, this young Hispanic woman walks up to me.
“Hey, how are you doing? How was your flight last week?” she asked me. I just looked at her for a second, not quite recognizing her.
“It was fine thank you.” I told her. I guess my face looked as puzzled as I felt because she laughed.
“You don’t remember me do you? Remember we were chatting about how last week was a terrible time for anyone trying to fly to France?” she asked. As soon as she mentioned that, I DID recall! She had been working behind the very counter I was now ordering coffee at and had been very chatty and friendly.
“Now that you reminded me, I DO recall you!” I told her with an embarrassed laugh, and then after thinking about it for a second, something struck me.
“Hold on a sec.” I told her “You mean to tell me that you deal with hundreds of people every day and yet you remembered me?!” She got a slightly embarrassed look on her face as she answered.
“Well sure I did.” She said with a grin.
“Well then I’m very flattered. So how was YOUR week?” I asked her.
We traded one or two more comments and then she had to get back to work, so I headed for my gate.
Once again I was fortunate enough to get a free upgrade to first class from Newark to Charlotte and shortly after the take off, the male fight attendant started making his rounds through the first class cabin. At each seat he would consult a list in his hands and then refer to the passenger by name. When he got to me, he got a small smile on his face and leaned in to speak quietly to me.
“You must have traded seats with someone else, because you definitely don’t look like any ‘Matthew’ I’ve ever seen.” I just laughed, thinking to myself ‘Yeah, that’s it! I changed seats with someone named Matthew’.
“And so your name is. . .?” he continued.
“ ‘Kim’ is just fine, thank you.” I told him, grinning like an idiot my darn self.
Soon enough I will have to go back to being a caterpillar but right now, just for this very moment, I’m a butterfly . . .