Suckered in to returning to Detroit

First of all, let me say thank you again for all of you that expressed concern for my wife and I. She is still having contractions, but they are coming infrequently and are no where near as intense as those that triggered our two night stay in the hospital. The Docs still aren't sure WHY they started, but apparently it's not unheard of for women to have contractions for weeks or months before the baby is due. So - we are fine, she is fine, and our unborn little critter is fine and now we just have to keep it brewing in Mommy's tummy for another 7 weeks or so :-)

so I was just in Detroit a couple of weeks ago where I repaired one instrument and evaluated another for the same customer. The repair was a bit tricky because it was an intermittent fault, a problem that comes and goes. Repairs like this leave you a little less than confident that you have resolved the issue when you leave, because you have to ask yourself "Did I fix it, or has it just not reared it's head yet?". I evaluated another instrument while I was there because they complained it wasn't accurate. When I tested it, I found it to be accurate to less than 10 PPM. In technical jargon, that equals "Holy shit! That's not just accurate, it's damned accurate!"

Well, a little over a week later this customer calls me to ask what kind of warranty he gets on repairs, because the instrument I repaired is acting up again. I asked him for the serial number and confirmed it was the instrument I had repaired, and so I told him I would set up a trip to return and look at it again. I wasn't completely shocked, because like I said, it was an intermittent fault and I wasn't 100% confident I'd permanently fixed it when I left. So, I set up the trip - flights, hotel, rental car, etc!


So you see the white leather skirt in the pics below? Easily a $100 skirt but I got it at Goodwill for $4! It was wrinkled all to hell, but still had the huge manufacturers tag on it describing how to properly clean and take care of it. It was brand new and all I had to do was knock the wrinkles out of it!  Ya gotta love Goodwill! 
My wife told me I was insane to where that much white - it was like daring the world to make a mess of it, but I kind of liked the idea. I'm glad I did because I think it looked terrific.

Once again I had a few extra minutes on my hands and so stopped on the way to the Airport to take some pics in the great out doors. Obviously I'm not too concerned about people seeing me as I am spending better than 12 hours on airplanes and in airports, but still I would feel a little silly if cars drive by and see me out there taking pictures, so I do tend to pull a ways off the highway on smaller roads that will likely be free of traffic long enough to snap a few pics.





Nothing of the slightest bit of interest happened on the flight from Austin to Charlotte, or from Charlotte to Detroit. Sometimes I think this is a good thing. Nothing interesting happening sort of means that either I passed or I was treated well anyway. On the other hand, it makes for a boring story to tell! The women that sat next to me chatted with me a bit. We spoke of nothing special, just the usual one traveler to another kind of comments, but they both smiled and were clearly comfortable speaking to me, so that's cool.

As I was exiting the rental car shuttle bus at the Avis lot, I was totting my usual load - a back pack with my laptop and cables, a 50lb tool box, and a 50lb suitcase. You really do have to try this sometime while wearing a skirt and 4 inch stiletto heels! So an Avis employee reaches out to grab my tool box for me. I don't cross dress to get guys to do my heavy lifting for me, and always feel a bit uncomfortable taking advantage of mens chivalry this way, so I told him "No, thank you! I got it!"
This gentleman was African American, probably late 50's or early 60's, and he got pretty insistent.
"That's all right, I'll help you out!" he insisted.
"Nah, I have lots of practice at this, I'll get it. Thank you though!" I replied with a smile. So he gives me this hurt look.
"What's the matter? I'm your friend. Don't you have friends?" he asks, with the smile asking it clear he's yanking my chain.
"Yeah, I've got one or two." I said as he ignored me and took my suitcase to the car anyway. He put my bag in the back seat and I took the toolbox to the trunk, but I couldn't open the trunk. he had the keys and there was no manual latch. He walked to the back of the car, realized that there was no remote for the trunk on the keys, and so he handed me the keys and went to front of the car to look for a lever. I could hear him making little comments like "Well, where the heck is it?" and so just used the old fashioned method to open the trunk - I slid the key in to the lock and turned it. Imagine that - key, lock, trunk opens. We are so used to our toys and buttons that everyone forgets that they can actually do a few things manually. I was just putting the box in the trunk when he gets to the back of the car.
"Hey now!  That thing is heavy, I don't know if I could have lifted that myself! What are you stronger than I am?" he says with a huge smile on his face. You can't tell it just by the text I've written, but if you had seen the look on his face, and the tone of his voice, you would know this guy was clearly giving me hell, so I smiled right back at him.
"Awe come on, what, is this the pick on the drag queen day?!" I asked him.
"I'm just saying!" He replied, with a little laugh. "Well, you have a great night!" he said with a wink and a grin.
That has probably got to be oddest exchange I've had with anyone yet. still kind of scratching my head, I made the short drive to my hotel in Allen Park. When I got to the Holiday Inn there, the young lady behind the counter looks up.
"Ah! Your back again!" she said with a warm smile.
"Yes ma'am, I'm like a cockroach - you cant get rid of me!" I told her, trying to put as much "Texas" in to it as I could. She laughed, and chatted with me as she got my keys and paper work together.


 




Well, the next day I had a job to do, so I headed out to get it done. Shortly after I got there and started to evaluate the instrument, I discovered that my customer had either made a mistake or had lied to me. This was NOT the instrument that I had worked on, and it was not the serial number he had given me by phone when I set the trip up. So, he had suckered me into returning with out providing a purchase order first. Grrrr !!!
The good news of course is that this is NOT a warranty, so I've just gone from costing my company money to making money for it. Got the repair done, looked at a few other instruments for them, and headed for the hotel around 4PM.

I honestly considered not going anywhere, but I had discovered that a small pub Called SOhO in Ferndale was doing Karaoke that night, and so I decided to give it a shot. Apparently I'm developing "a thing" for leather, because I wore another leather skirt. This one is very soft and a little shorter and tighter than the White one I had worn the day before. To be honest, it just feels sexy as hell!



So when I got there the place was almost empty, maybe half a dozen people there, and they were all intently watching a hockey game.  I sat at the bar for two or three minutes before the bartender managed to pull his eyes away from the game long enough to ask me what I wanted. It turns out it was some sort of playoff and these guys were all WAY into the game. I got a couple of laughs asking stupid questions about the game, like "Which side is Detroit?" but they all answered with good spirits.







In about half an hour, the place started to fill up and you could tell things were gong to be interesting. The karaoke was supposed to have started some time ago but no one was willing to turn the game off. I sure as hell wasn't gonna put in a request slip 'cause I was pretty sure they would lynch me if I interrupted the game. Eventually the karaoke started. The girl running the karaoke sang first and did quite a good job. The next guy looked about 15 to me and so I was pleasantly surprised when he started to sing Paul Anka "Diana", and he did a great job! Right there I knew I was gonna have a good time.

I think the name of the guy below was "Scott" and he went way out of his way to make me feel like I was among friends. People like this can make such a huge difference in how a night is going to turn out. He introduced himself, then he introduced me to his daughters, who also chatted off and on with me all night. They took what might have been a "ehh" night, and turned it into a great one, and I am so grateful! One of his daughters is in a all girl band called "Jane of Arc". I haven't listened to any of their stuff yet, but I have found them on Myspace for you.



By the time I got up to sing, the place had filled up, and I was more than a little nervous. I used to do this all of the time, but it's been a long time since I sang in front of people so my confidence has suffered. I was more than a little gratified when I noticed part way through my song that most people had actually stopped talking to listen so I must not have sucked TOO bad! I know I often catch people by surprise. When they see me, they expect me to either sound like a woman, or like a guy trying to sound like a woman. When I just start singing in a normal male voice they are surprised, and then they are surprised again when they realize that I don't exactly suck at it either. So, listened to a lot of people sing, sang a few times myself, and had a good night talking with nice people - it doesn't get much gooder than that!
 

Old Stuff

So I've started sort of writing a book lately. I think the whole idea is kind of arrogant - it implies that my life would be interesting enough for people to want to read about it.
So anyway, I was tearing through a bunch of old photographs looking for pics to use in the book and stumbled on many that brought back a lot of memories - some good, some not . . .


This is my very first car, and yes, they young man trying to look like a bas ass is me.



This was a 1967 Mustang and I bought it in 1984 for $600. On the salary of a PFC in the Army, this was a hell of a lot of money for me at the time. The car was at least half bondo, clearly someone's project car who had given up part way through it. It had a sun roof, side pipes, and chrome rims. At least it had chrome rims until I literally tore them off when Jack Daniels and I put the car through a couple of trees. For all of it's flaws, I LOVED that car.


This picture was in my room, in the barracks at Ft Sill and would have been very close to the same time the mustang picture above was taken.



This was pretty much my life. If I wasn't in the car, I was either drinking, or playing guitar, or both.


The picture below is of my second classic Mustang, which I bought shortly after getting out of the Army in 1986.




It was a 1968 Fastback, and today it would easily sell for $30K. (Damn it!)
I played a bit too hard with this one and blew the engine. I left it in the hands of my mother and her husband when I re-joined the army, and they arranged to have the engine rebuilt. Funny thing - here the car is sitting at one of his friends, no engine in it, and supposedly someone stole it by towing it off. Something fishy about that! When combined with a few other things, I never quite forgave them for that, as this was my end all, get all, dream car.


My third Mustang is below



You wont see any pictures of its passenger side because it was destroyed in an accident by it's previous owner. Outside it looked like hell but the interior was perfect. This was taken at Ft Lewis WA shortly after I went back in to the Army, so probably about 1987.



This pic was taken when my wife and I were leaving Ft Lewis and the United States to go live in Germany for three years.




The down side to my being a cross dresser - I like having a mustache when in boy mode. :-(
You know what's sad about this picture? I thought I was ugly back then! I look at it now and think "Damn! I didn't look half bad!", but back then i thought I was ugly as hell. Gotta wonder . . .







This was at the YOP recording Studio in Leiphiem Germany. The two on the left ran the studio. If you zoom in on the pictures on the wall, you will see a couple that have girls in them. WRONG! It's their pictures - they were cross dressers! I was so far in the closet at the time that I never spoke about it with them. I always wished I had though . . .





My son was born almost two months premature and spent his first few days in a German hospital and in incubators . Here the nurse offered to let me hold him, but I was afraid I'd drop or break him and declined. She gave me this real evil smile and plopped the boy into my hands anyway, and someone took the pic. . .







This is my Fourth Mustang I bought a few years after leaving Germany. This was in Albuquerque NM. This is a 1969. This car sat outside at a storage lot in Texas for almost 10 years. When we got there, it was uniform gray from years of dust. Poured so gas in the carb and she started first try. I bought her on the spot. :-)
You know you GOTTA love a car to be standing outside washing it in the snow. I didn't want to let any salt from the roads to start working on her!



And for those of you going "What the hell???!!! Where is the crossdressing in this blog??!!!", here is a pic of me in Austin probably ten years ago.




This would have been with in a year or so of the first time I'd ever gone out in to the world. Would you believe my wife made that dress for me?! Isn't that cool?!

Baltimore MD and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds

This week I am off to Baltimore MD and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.



This is where the Army does a great deal of it's testing on equipment that is in use, or being considered for use, by our soldiers, so the trip holds sort of mixed emotions for me. On the one hand, I like having something to do with the Army again, where I spent so many formative years of my life. On the other hand, it reminds me in no uncertain terms that I am no long a part of that world. What can possibly compare to being able to say "My job is to defend the United States of America"? Sometimes I really miss it . . .

The day started with a new outfit. Well, sort of new . . . I've had this top for about three years I think, but had not found a skirt to go with it. . . . until now . . .
Good thing too, since I was in the verge of throwing the top out!





It was a long but reasonably pleasant trip getting there - nothing too interesting to yap about. When I was loading my bags into the rental car shuttle bus, one of my bags wouldn't fit in the baggage rack with out a lot of work. I turned and set my backpack in a chair to free both hands and when I turned around to take care of it, a guy was already doing it and gave me a huge smile. When I was leaving the Avis rental car lot. I handed my Drivers License and contract to the guard at the gate. I have an ID with my female picture on it, but my drivers license is 100% male. He looks at it and then starts to walk around the car. I assumed he was checking it for damage before it leaves the lot, but apparently I was wrong, because I noticed that he wasn't looking at the outside of the car, he was looking inside it. Soon, he returned to the drivers window with a confused look on his face.
"I don't understand? Is Matthew with you?" he says while looking at my drivers license. I couldn't help myself, I just started to laugh.
"Yes sir, that's me." I told him.Of course as soon as he heard my voice it was very clear what I was.
"oh! I see!" he says "I'm so sorry!"
"No need to apologize, I imagine you don't run in to people like me very often huh?" I asked him.
"No, no I don't!" he said with a laugh, while handing my documents back to me. "You have a great day!"
Leaving the Avis lot was probably where I reached my greatest speed on the trip from the airport to the hotel. The entire trip was nothing but bumper to bumper cars and brake lights far as you could see. I got excited when we got up to 20 MPH once, but it didn't last!


As usual these days, I arrived sort of tired and so all I did was to take some fast food to the hotel and vegetate the rest of the night.
The next morning I made the drive to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds where I was to evaluate 3 instruments that were all having repeated problems. It didn't take me long to determine that all three had the same fault, with a major component that doesn't fail often. Since it doesn't fail often, I don't carry any with me and had to arrange for someone to drive three of them down to me from MA. That's over a four hour drive, and so he wouldn't arrive until the following day. That gave me a large part of today for myself and so I decided to go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum!


Leaving the Proving Grounds I got stuck behind this M1A1 Battle Tank. I once spent three months riding in these things in the El Paso Desert sun, testing new "Friend versus Foe" technologies when I was a Sgt in the Army. In fact, that mission is where I shook the hand of Neil Armstrong - the first human being to walk on the moon! (Yes, I WILL bring that up every chance I get!)
Got back to the hotel and tried yet another new outfit. While it's new, it's very much like the majority of my outfits - nice I think, but nothing terribly special.



Made the hour and a half drive to Washington DC and was relieved to find that this Museum has a large dedicated parking lot. It cost $15 to park there, but at least I was going to be sure that my car would not be towed this time! You might recall that on my last visit to the Smithsonian, I had failed to read the small print on the parking meters. You know, the print that said something along the lines of "No parking during the hours of 4 to 6 PM". I'm sure you can guess what time I had parked there? Yeah, well no car of mine was getting towed today!





I took lots of pics of course! Lots of airplanes and lots of space craft. I'm sure that you can find the entire inventory of the Smithsonian on-line, and with far better photographs, so I won't bother to share them all here, but I will share a few of them that I found particularly interesting.






The Enola Gay - the plane that dropped "the" bomb on Hiroshima Japan. A beautiful looking machine, which is kind of incongruent considering the horror it was involved in. I'm not even going to start (or allow) a discussion about whether the US did or did not have to drop the bomb, but I'm fairly sure any reasonable human being would agree that the result was horrific destruction, pain, and loss of life. A very sad thing when men set their minds to killing one another . . .
Oddly enough, most of my pictures of it turned out too blurry to bother uploading. Strange . . .






The space shuttle "Enterprise". This is actually the second time I have seen it. The first was when it landed at Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma, being carried on the back of a huge plane. I drove up from Ft Sill OK just to see it. Well before even that, I had heard the sonic boom when it came in for a landing at Edwards AFB in California on it's very first test flight.


The SR71 Blackbird. I could be wrong, but the last I'd heard, this was still the fastest plane in the world. It was retired because it was terribly expensive to operate and satellites could do much the same job. I don't know if it's true or not, but I had a guy that used to work on these tell me years ago that they leaked fuel quite badly from the wings until they get up to altitude and speed. Something about it being designed to allow for the plates to expand when heated by the friction of traveling through the air so fast..



All in all, not too bad a day!









My last day there was also a pleasant one. The guy that hand carried my parts down to me from MA is the same guy that gave me OJT on this instrument several years ago, so he and I had traveled a lot together and know each other well. He's a real good guy, with a great sense of humor, and I really enjoy spending time with him. He arrived about 930 AM and we tag teamed the three instruments and got them complete by about 2 PM. He headed back on his long drive, and I headed for the phone booth where I became my super human alter ego Kimberly! :-) All right, all right, so I changed in my hotel!
My first order of business was the huge mall I had seen the day before in Towson. I took a walk through the entire mall, looking for anything I couldn't live with out and could afford. Ultimately that turned out to be nothing. Oddly enough, I really didn't see any shoes that I would kill for. Until recently (the last couple of months) I would often find shoes that I thought were awesome but just couldn't justify the expense, but it seems that lately I don't care for the majority of shoes I see. It seems like most are big clunky things, with huge straps all over them. I know I was read by at least one lady in Macy's. As we crossed paths she looked me straight in the eyes and gave me the biggest smile you have ever seen and she had a distinct twinkle in her eye. I've seen this look a lot before from women and think of it as the "I know your secret" look. It's not at all a bad thing.



After shopping I returned to the hotel briefly, and as I entered a young man was waling the other way. As we approached each other, he smiled and told me that I looked very nice! I wonder if as far as he was concerned, that comment was made to a woman, or if the unspoken rest of that comment was " . . for a guy."
I raided the internet looking to see if there were an "friendly" places that were doing Karaoke on Wednesday nights but I found none. Several places that do it on weekends, Monday, and Tuesday, but not on Wednesdays. Having failed with that idea, I looked to see what movies were playing in the area and found that the new Wolverine movies was going to start in about 15 minutes, so I grabbed my stuff and headed out. The nearest parking to the theater was about half a block away in a garage so I parked there and started looking for the exit. Apparently I got turned around some how and exited through the wrong door, so I had to walk completely around the block to get there.
I got my ticket and headed to the concession stand where there was no line at all. It didn't matter though, because they all ignored me as if I were invisible. I don't know if they treat all of their customers that way, or if that's just the "I will ignore the cross dresser until someone else offers to help" tactic. Got all settled in and was part way through the movie when I decided to open the candy I'd bought. As I was getting it out of my purse, I realized I hadn't noticed my keys when I was rummaging around. I opened the purse and went through it again, and again, and again . . . no keys . . . I figured that I probably left them on the counter and where they would certainly have been found and held for me, and resolved to watch the rest of the movie before going after them. I just couldn't stand it though, and had to leave long enough to go to the counter and ask. What a relief! I had left them on the counter, and they did have them, so I returned and watched the rest of the movie. I quite enjoyed the movie by the way!


After the movie, I returned to the Holiday Inn and went to the lounge for a bit. It was 945 PM and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, so I ordered a drink and some dinner. There was a guy sitting three stools away, and he keeps texting on his phone, giving long drawn out sighs, and then places a call. We can all hear his side of the conversation, where he is speaking to his son, who is not going to be staying with him for the weekend after all. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the guy is divorced and the child is going back and forth between parents, and this weekend Dad is going to be disappointed with no son coming as planed. He's not slurring his speech or anything, but it's fairly clear the guy has had a few drinks before I got there.
Here's the thing. The bartender was clearly not pleased to deal with me. Another hotel employee pretty much giggled when I walked in and excused himself and left in short order. Everyone in the lounge knew I was a cross dresser. In spite of that, this disappointed father went out of his way to speak with me. We chatted for at least two hours, about parenting, and about our time in the military. He was in the Navy during many of the same years I had been in the Army and so we had a bit to chat about. Before we were done, he had moved and was sitting in the stool next to me. when he moved, I couldn't help noticing the bartender snicker and raise his hand to try and hide it. I suspect he thought that this gentleman I was talking to didn't realize what I was and might be in for a surprise if he got serious. If your going to be out in the world as a cross dresser, you have to have skin that is at least marginally tough, so most things I let roll off of me, but the bartenders snicker and all it implied just really assed me up. I'm still not sure if the gentleman I was talking to knew what I was or not, but he treated me like a lady, and I caught him more than once sneaking peaks at my legs. This sort of causes mixed feelings for me though . . . I have no interest in men, but I was so grateful that he was treating me as a woman. He was being kind, he was watching his language, and even offered to buy me a drink (which I declined).

Detroit Again

his weeks trip was returning to Detroit again! In some ways I find going to Detroit to be depressing. It makes me consider the once proud US Auto Industry that is now in such decline, and all of the unemployment that goes with it. This was where my proud old lady, my 1967 Mustang was conceived and given birth. Now it’s full of closed and empty buildings and unemployed people, with all of the shattered dreams that go with that.
As usual these days, I flew pretty. Not sure if it was my attitude or what, but it just seemed like a very comfortable day with several friendly people. I took a couple of pics at the airport, one or two with my bags, because the thought of showing you the bags I travel with amused me.


You know, it takes a fairly large bag to carry enough clothes, makeup, and sparklies for two people for a week! Even at that, it occurred to me that this pic doesn’t tell the entire story because I didn’t have my laptop backpack on. So this is what I drag through countless airports and on and off of shuttle buses.

I LOVE this skirt for a couple of reasons: First, it’s cute as hell, and second, it just feels sexy. It’s a bit tighter than most I wear and so it sort of hugs you as you walk. Yeah, I know, TMI huh?
If you want women to talk to you and compliment you, you need to get a pair of shoes like the pair I was wearing. I swear I’m not exaggerating, every single time I wear these shoes I have women stop me to comment on them.
As I checked in with US Airways, two of the ladies behind the counter both went out of their way to tell me how cute they thought my shoes were!
“Those are cute!” one of them said to me. The other one peeked around the counter at them and then nodded in agreement.
“And they look comfortable too!” the other lady added.
“Well thank you!” I said “They are one of my very favorite pair and they ARE comfortable – I can wear them all day and be perfectly comfy!” I replied with a smile.
Got to my seat near the back of the plane and sort of people watched as folks boarded. I watch one very gruff looking guy, big beard and mustache, looking like he is one of those frontier men from the 1800’s. He’s looking at his ticket and at the seat next to me, and he doesn’t look happy. The seat next to me was in fact his seat, and there we sat for the next hour or so, with me thinking he was uncomfortable being next to me. Funny thing though, after a small nap the guy woke up and turned into a friendly little chatty Cathy! I had read him completely wrong! Here I was assuming this “he-man” was irritated to sit next to me, and it turns out he was really quite nice and was just tired. That entire hour I had sat there feeling kind of angsty and uncomfortable, fearing he might be intensely uncomfortable to sit near me, and it was for nothing – it was all in my head.
Not sure what it is, but I think there’s a lesson there somewhere for me.
Many hours later, I arrive in Detroit at about 730 PM. Everyone on the air craft is standing in the aisle, grabbing their bags, and waiting to get off of the plane when the flight attendant comes over the PA.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to take your seats and please be sure you keep your bags out of the aisle.” What the hell? Everyone sort of looks at each other, surprise evident in all of their eyes, and they start to get back into their seats, many still holding their bags in their laps. A few moments later a policeman comes striding down the aisle. I looked at the guy that had been sitting next at me and laughed as the policeman approached us.
“Ah hell, what did you do?!” I teased him.
“Uh uh, wasn’t me!” he replied with a grin of his own.
The policeman walked to the back of the plane and then returned shortly, leading a young, sort of rough looking girl out in hand cuffs. There’s another first for me. I’ve never seen that done before.
I got off of the plane, grab my bags, and head for the rental car shuttle bus. I did my best to sort of toss my bag and tool box up onto the bus, but it’s hard to fling 40 and 50 pound bags with one hand, so I only got them to the top step. As I was climbing aboard to grab them, two men both jumped up and helped place them in the racks. I gave them my best smile and the softest “Thank you so much” I could manage, hoping they wouldn’t realize I was a male. While not often, this has happened to me before and it leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s a welcome confirmation that I was perceived as female, but on the other hand, I feel I have abused their generosity and chivalry.
The bus was packed, so I headed to the rear and the only remaining seat, next to a young lady, probably in her late 20’s. Part way through the trip to the rental car lot, the magic shoes strike again.
“Excuse me,” she said “Those shoes are awesome. Where did you get them?”
What did I tell you? The shoes are like compliment magnets!
Got to the Avis lot to find that they had screwed up everyone’s reservation and so everyone from the bus was standing in a line that exited the building and wrapped around the side. I chatted with three or four people around me and not one batted an eye or looked at all uncomfortable.
When you leave the rental car lot, you have to present your contract and drivers license to the gate guard. When I handed it to him he clearly didn’t think it was mine. He looked very uncomfortable and was handing my license back to me while he started hesitantly to speak.
“Ma’am, I need your . . . OH!” he said with a little laugh, as it clicked and he figured out the guy on the drivers license was me. By the time I got to the hotel, it was almost 9PM and I was tired, so I called it a night.
The next day I did my job, and fixed a broken machine. This one had an intermittent fault, which is exceedingly difficult and time consuming to pin down. I’d much rather be faced with an instrument that has flat out failed than one that just operates poorly. Anyway, got it repaired at last and got back to the hotel by around 5. I grabbed m skirt and top out of the closet and then stood there holding them in my hands. ‘How odd’ I thought to myself. ‘I have absolutely no desire to go any where.’ The thought of spending all the time and effort to get ready just to spend a couple of hours out and about just didn’t seem worth it to me. I went and got a nice and fattening mushroom, swiss, and steak burger from Burger Kind, and spent the rest of the night cruising the internet and annoying people online.
Flying back home the next morning, I had some time in the Detroit airport and so I window shopped in a few of the stores they have. I was in one that sold some pricey purses and the sales lady walked up, an African American, about my age, maybe a little younger.
“Can I help you find something sir?” she asked with a pleasant voice.
“Nah, I just had some time to kill and thought I’d look around!” I told her.
“Well, of your looking to buy a bag for someone, we have a very good deal going on! Most are half off and I don’t know any woman that wouldn’t like a Calvin Klein bag!” she said with a smile. I was looking at them but didn’t really see anything I liked much, let alone several hundred dollars worth of “like”.
“You know” I said “To be honest, I just don’t see anything I like that much.”
“Well, maybe she would like one?” She replied “After all, you wont be wearing it and women do love them.” She persisted gently. I didn’t say anything for a second. I’ve never done this before, but for some reason I just had to.
“It’s not as much a given as you might think that I wont be wearing it.” I said to her. She laughed a little, not at all shocked. I think she had suspected as much already.
“Honey, that’s OK with me! I’m all for diversity.” At that point I pulled out my phone and showed her the one “Kim” pic that I carry on it and you should have seen her jaw drop.

“That’s you??!!” she almost squealed. She kept looking at the ugly old man standing in front of her, then at the pic, at me, the pic . . .
“Oh my God, your beautiful!” she said with this stunned look on her face. I don’t know what I’d expected when I showed her my picture, but there is no question that her surprise and enthusiasm are genuine. I sort of held out my hand to get my phone back from her, but she kept a hold of it, and kept comparing the picture to me, until I started to blush.
“Not too bad for an old man huh?” I asked her.
“You look so cute! I just can’t believe that’s you!” she replied, still with kind of an awed voice.
“I come through this airport quite a bit like that.” I shared with her, adding a wink for emphasis.
“Honey, you have got to stop by here the next time you do. Would you please??!!”
“I dunno, I can’t afford to shop here. I’m afraid I’m sort poor by these standards” I replied. She laughed again.
“Sweet heart, I can’t afford to shop here either!” she said in a mock whisper, acting like two conspirators. “You know this stuff in the airports is always twice as expensive!”
Clearly we had gone beyond customer and sales associate, and were now “girl” friends.
This was a good week, almost entirely pleasant. I’d spoken to many people, and all of them had acted like I was a normal human being. I do not have a feminine voice, so there is no question that even if my appearance might have fooled them, once I started speaking to them, they all knew I was Transgender and it hadn’t mattered to them.
As soon as I landed in Chicago to catch my connection, I got an email from my manager giving me the information for another customer in Detroit that wants a preventative maintenance service call, so looks like I’ll be back here shortly. Next week I’m off to Northern California. On the one hand I’m very pleased to be so busy for my job. On the other hand, I’m not spending much time with my seven months pregnant wife and with my children. It also bothers me to think that I’m this busy because they have laid off half of my company. . .

Roanoke Virginia

Well, the last day on my week long trip here was not a real good one personally or professionally. While it worked flawlessly the entire day before during the setup and training, today our Residual gas analyzer decided to fail. Turns out the main processor board has failed and that can't be replaced in the field due to programming and setup requirements. So dead in the water and nothing to be done about it here, so I headed south to Roanoke where my flight leaves in the morning. The other engineer from my company that surprised me by being here has gone home, so I was pretty much on my own.
In boy mode for the drive, I raided a couple of Goodwills and got nothing but curious looks from other shoppers for my trouble. No hidden treasures found. :-(

Got to my new hotel, cleaned up, and went shopping at Macy's and then saw the movie "Knowing". The movie was all right, but left me trying to decide if I'd just seen a Sci Fi or religious fantasy. A bit confused but still a worth while movie!

Detroit and Almost Busted in Blacksburg VA

So this week I will be spending entirely on the road, to include traveling on Saturday as a result of my customer insisting that Friday is the only day he has open for training. Six months ago this would have resulted in a short conversation where I’d have told him as politely as possible “Blow it out your ass, it either happens Tuesday to Thursday or it doesn’t happen.” With the economy the way it is, my company needing all the income we can get, and knowing that 50% of my company is now unemployed, I instead told him “Yes sir, I’ll be there!”

I’ve got a few new outfits this trip, odds and ends I’ve been finding at Goodwill. Nothing real special or terribly different from my norm, but hey . . .

As usual, I had a very early start to my travel day, getting up at 3AM so I would have time to get ready and out of the house before my daughter wakes up. This night I didn’t get much sleep though. My 20 year old son (who does know about me) poked his head into the room about midnight to warn me that a girl friend of his (who does NOT know about me) was going to be coming over at around 2AM. She’s a good girl, but has screwed up parents who threw her out of the house when she refused to be in by 10PM. She literally has no place to go so my wife and I have told my son that she is welcome to call our home her own. We could use the good karma and it may not be that long before WE are looking for a place to stay. Well, I found it hard to sleep worrying about what time she would arrive, would I still be able to fly pretty, was I running too big a risk getting ready with her in the house, etc. Finally she arrived at exactly 3AM (when my own alarm went off), but fortunately she must have been exhausted and headed directly to bed, so I had the downstairs to myself to get ready. J






This was my first chance to use my new ID with my “pretty” picture on it and I pulled that puppy out every chance I got! I imagine most people had no idea why I was grinning like an idiot every time I was asked for ID!

I’ve been flying femme for about a year now and this was the very first time that a male sitting next to me chose to strike up a conversation! He went out of his way to speak with me, asked about my job, my company, where I lived, etc. Not a huge thing, but a pleasant thing none the less.

I flew on US Airways and connected in Charlotte NC. I managed to snap a pic or two from the air on the way in.



As I was boarding my connecting flight, the flight attendant at the rear of the airplane where I was sitting gave me a huge smile.
“How are you this morning?” she asked.
“I just couldn’t be gooder, thank you!” I replied, giving her my best smile. “And how are you”?
“Oh, I couldn’t be any gooder either!” she laughed while swiping my favorite phrase. As I was getting settled in to my seat she walked up and started speaking to me. It was at about this point that I noticed she was really quite pretty and had terrific eyes! Sorry, but despite the fact that they wouldn’t claim me, I am a guy and do notice these things!
“I’m fine but had a lot of trouble sleeping last night.” She tells me in a confidential tone.
Considering I’d only had about 4 hours of sleep myself, I sort of laughed and told her I know exactly how that feels!
Kind of tired when I got in to Detroit so all I did was get some exercise and channel surf.

The next day I fixed the customers instrument very quickly. Including a great deal of time spent on the phone with another customer, and time waiting for everything to stabilize, I was done in about 2 hours. Since I had set this trip up to go directly from Detroit to my next customer in Roanoke VA the following day, this gave me an entire afternoon to fart around. Once upon a time this would have made me deliriously happy, but I now I just felt guilty that I had not set up my flights to leave today instead and saved my company tonight’s hotel expense. Well, I had no way to know things would go so well, so may as well enjoy it. Got to the hotel and cleaned up, and headed shopping!


I hit up Macy’s because they were supposed to have a huge shoe sale, but I honestly didn’t care for much that I saw there. Certainly nothing I was going to spend my money on anyway.
I’m walking through JC Penny when an older woman starts to talk to me as I walked by. She’s holding a small blue jean coat up to show me.
“This is normally $65 and it’s on sale for $7! Can you believe that??!!” I took a look at it.
“Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.” I replied with a smile, trying to speak softly so I don’t blow it. She looks me straight in the eyes, which is a little unnerving as despite her age, she has very clear, bright, and piercing eyes.
“Honey, you look terrific. You look just great.” She paused long enough for me to get in a blush and a “thank you!”
“So,” she says, again holding the little coat up, “What do you think about it? How would it look?” she asks.
“Umm, to be honest, I don’t think its ‘me’” I said. She sort of rolled her eyes,
“On ME dear! How would it look on ME?” Once again I blushed, because her intent should have been fairly obvious. Instead I was all about “me me me” – kind of egocentric huh? (My wife will laugh herself sick if she reads this. I can just hear her “Well duh!!”)
“I think it might look pretty cute on you, and we both know you will be mad if you don’t get it.” I told her.
“You know what? Your right – I WOULD be angry later! I think I’ll get it. Besides, I’m 80 years old and I’ll wear what ever I want to wear!” she said, still with those bright blue eyes just beaming away. Being as how I am a male dressed as female, the irony of her statement was not at all lost on me. She was so cute, it was all I could do to keep from hugging her
“There ya go!” I said “Besides, growing up is over rated!” We traded a few more comments and then went our own ways. I was just struck that she had clearly gone out of her way to be sociable with me. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that maybe she has known or even loved a Transgender before. She was just so comfortable speaking with me. The more I think about, the more I wish I had hugged her.

Didn’t find anything I liked well enough to buy, so I headed to the Motor City Casino. They have a big sign saying “We ID anyone 30 and younger”. Yeah, they didn’t even hesitate when I approached! L It’s been a LONG time since anyone thought I was 30 or younger.
So I started with $20 and played video poker. On my third hand I got 4 of a kind, and in two more hands I got 4 of a kind again! I cashed out and had something like $49. I figured what the hell, and went to a dollar slot machine and thought I’d spend the $9 and walk out with $40 even. On my first spin I bet $1, but by accident, instead of hitting the “Spin Reels” button, I hit the bet max . . . and hit two bars with a “Double” symbol! Now I had turned my $20 into $80 and even though I’d been there only 15 minutes I called it a night! No way in hell I was gonna give them the chance to take their money back from me!



The following morning I was flying from Detroit to Roanoke VA through Philadelphia. Another 3AM morning, but hey I’m getting used to them. As usual, I arrived at the airport about two hours early and had time to take a look around the airport. I was walking by this little gizmo shop where two women were speaking to each other, and I thought I heard one of them say something about “Isn’t that cute?!” but I wasn’t sure. I continued on to the book store where I found that every book on the Science Fiction shelf was in fact fantasy and not Sci Fi. Call me a Sci Fi snob if you like, but this always irritates the hell out of me. Fantasy is NOT science fiction and it bugs the hell out of me when book stores don’t know the difference. I gave up on finding a book I’d like and so headed back to the gate. I again passed the two chatting women in the gadget shop, but this time one of the women spoke up as I walked by.
“We love your outfit!” she gushed. The other woman agreed and added “That skirt is SO cute!” I thanked them both and considered telling them I had bought the skirt at Goodwill, but why ruin the illusion? I spoke to them for half a minute or so, long enough to know that they really did like the outfit and weren’t just picking on the old drag queen.

Boarded the plane and we got headed for the runway. I say ‘headed for the runway’ because we didn’t make it. They pulled off and parked the plane, then the captain came over the PA with an Australian accent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we do apologize for the delay, but Philadelphia has sort of a air traffic jam going on and we’ve been told to hold here for about 40 minutes.” And there we DID sit for a little over 40 minutes.
Uggggghhhh . . . .
At last they fired up the engines and we started out again . . . in a big circle and then came right back and parked at the same place.
“Folks, I’m terribly sorry, but right after they cleared us for travel, they have closed the Philadelphia airport. This normally doesn’t last but about an hour. If it takes much longer than that, we may pull back in to the gate and cancel the flight.” And I got up at 3AM for this??
Hmm . . .cancel the flight. Let’s think about this a second. I’m femme, all my male clothes are in my checked bag, my female coat is in my checked bag because I was too lazy to carry it around with me, and I don’t have all of the makeup it would take to do my face if I’m stranded over night. This could end up being very interesting. Isn’t that a Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times”.
About an hour later, they start the engines but no announcement yet, so you know it’s not good. After we are moving, one of the flight attendants came on the PA, very clearly irritated.
“Folks we were cleared to travel but now we have to return to the gate to drop off ONE passenger!” That was HER emphasis on the word “one”, not mine.
“Again, we are returning for ONE passenger. If you do not care to continue on with us, you may leave the aircraft, otherwise please stay on board and we will depart as soon as the passenger leaves and we get the door closed”.
I’ve been traveling a LOT by airplane for 8 years, and I’ve NEVER heard of them returning to the gate for a single passenger. For that matter, I’ve never heard of them doing ANYTHING to accommodate a single passenger – no holding the plane, not even opening the door if someone arrives as it is closed. I still don’t know the story, but have to wonder . . .
While we were parked at the gate waiting for the people that chose to abandon the plane to get off, I started making calls to see what my options were going to be now that I was going miss my connection. Here I am on the plane speaking to US Airways, and I don’t have a very femme voice, so little doubt I outted myself to everyone around me (assuming I might have fooled any of them to start with). Turns out that we have a lot of flights for options and it was no big deal to move me over to another one, so presumably life is good. It’s just going to be another very long day. Of course I suppose I deserve it given how well everything went, and how early I was done yesterday. Aint Karma a bitch sometimes?

So if you thought my day was bad so far, wait till you hear the rest! In my company we have about 6 field service engineers like myself scattered clear across the US. Half are in the west coast (San Jose) and half are in the Eastern part of the US (Boston, PA), and yours truly is dead center in Austin Texas. We VERY rarely meet, usually only when attending some sort of training together and only after a great deal of preparation and planning. Even in my wildest flights of fancy, it would have never occurred to me that I needed to be concerned about traveling femme because I might encounter one of these gentlemen. It was therefore a GREAT shock for me to get a voice mail when I got off of the airplane in Roanoke.
"Hey Matt, I just finished doing some calibrations a few hours from where your going to be working so I talked to the manager and we agreed I should come get some OJT from you! Call me when you land and let me know where your staying. I know you mentioned Roanoke, so that's where I'm headed."
All I could think of was 'Holy smokes, this can't be happening! What are the freaking odds?'
Well, I thought I might outsmart him a little bit, because while I was flying in to the Roanoke airport, the customer and my hotel were actually in Blacksburg, about 40 miles away. I figured I'd let him continue toward Roanoke, and when I got close to the hotel, I'd call him and tell him where I was. That would give me time to get in, washed up, and 100% male before I saw him. The joke was on me though, because rather than wait on me to call him back, he called the lady that makes our travel arrangements and got the address from her! When I called him while was 5 minutes from the hotel, he told me he was 10 minutes from it! Oh . . . My . . .God. . .! I swear I would have done the Dukes of Hazard proud the way I hit the Holiday Inn parking lot with the tires screaming. I'm not sure the car had come to a complete stop before I'd slammed it into park and was running for the check in counter. Have you ever seen a woman run in a long flowing skirt that likes to wrap around your ankles every step? I must have been a hell of a sight sprinting across the parking lot in my long skirt and 3 inch heels! I swear I'd been in my room less than five minutes, frantically tearing clothes off, stuffing them in my bag, and heading for the shower when he called to tell me he was entering his room! It was so close I'm pretty sure he must have been standing at the counter before I'd even entered my room. I told him I'd had a long miserable day and needed a shower and so I'd see him in 10 minutes. By the time he got to my room I was clean and dry and had everything stuffed in my bag, but I was still nervous as we sat in my room talking. I kept looking around hoping like hell I hadn't over looked anything in my rush - like a bracelet, a shoe, a bra . . .
I haven't had a close call like that in better than 20 years. I think I'm getting too old for this stuff . . .

Smile, your on Goodwill Camera!

So today I was shopping at one of my favorite Goodwills in boy mode. Good day - I found a skirt and a top I liked and entered the dressing room stall to try the top on. I don't know why, but I happened to notice one of this little camera in the darkened bulbs in the ceiling. My first thought was that the angle was such that they might see the top of my head, but they wouldn't be seeing anything too private. Then I turned and noticed the wall opposite of camera was completely covered by mirror. I check, and sure enough, that camera has a perfect view of EVERYTHING that might be exposed in that fitting room. I chose NOT to try the blouse on there after all . . .