Secret Agent Man . . .

Once again I started a  trip out afraid that I was gonna have nothing at all interesting to write about. The folks in the Austin airport are so used to me by now that it’s just business as usual and there are very few amusing or interesting events to write about that happen there anymore. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing though? On the one hand, I sort of miss the fun that I used to have by catching people by surprise on almost every trip, but on the other hand, it would seem that I have accomplished something that I am proud of – I’ve shown an entire airport full of people that cross dressers are people much like themselves and I’d like to think that I’ve helped to get them used to the idea of seeing and interacting with one. So, I guess it’s all good!

I keep asking the lady that sets up my travel to try not to put me on flights that leave before 9AM because it means that I will have to get up at 2:30 or 3 AM if my flight is at 6 or 7. It’s an hour drive to the airport and I stick to the airlines recommendation to be there two hours before a flight, and so that makes for a damned early morning. This time I almost paid a high price for getting up at 2:30AM for a 7 AM flight – I fell asleep twice while making the twenty minute drive from the Detroit airport to the hotel. Once was about mid way and without much traffic around me, but the second time was a close call. Of all places, I was on the off ramp of the exit to my hotel and apparently dozed off, waking just in time to avoid rear ending the traffic that was parked at the intersection ahead of me. Scary stuff there boy! Needless to say, my day was pretty much over at that point, and so I did nothing of interest that evening.

The next day was purely a work day, where pretty much all I did was my job, hit up a couple of department stores looking for good deals, and then had dinner at “Bob Evans”. For those of you not familiar with Bob Evans, it’s kind of like a Denny’s or a Cracker Barrel, but I think a step or two above them in quality. Anyway, I was sitting there eating my dinner and reading my book when an older couple entered. The man was stooped and using a walker and his wife slowly walked along side of him with her hand on his arm. You could tell that it was a gesture of love and not that she was helping to hold him up or anything. Y’all know me by now – I couldn’t help noticing that he was wearing a “US Air Force” cap and so I nodded as they walked by.

About mid way through my dinner the waitress came up and started asking me a lot of questions about my Kindle E-book reader. It seems that she was thinking about getting one for her daughter, and so we probably spoke about it for a good five or ten minutes, with my telling her the good and bad attributes of it. When I finished my dinner, she brought me my ticket and gave a laugh as she handed it to me.

“Well, today is your lucky day dear! I accidentally gave your bill to a couple that has already paid for it and left, so you only have to pay for their meal!”

I took a brief look at the $8 ticket that didn’t come anywhere near paying for the mushroom appetizers and the chicken and noodles I’d had, before I looked back up at her.

“I tell ya what – let’s spread the love huh? You see the older couple sitting two tables behind me? The gentleman with the walker?” She looked a little confused, but looked behind me and then nodded.

“I don’t want you to say anything to them, because I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, and frankly I don’t want to be uncomfortable either, but why don’t you go ahead and add their bill to mine?”

“OH! You know Harold?! I’ve known him for years!” she said with a smile, and her expression now clear of the confusion it had held a moment ago now that she understood that I must know Harold..

“No ma’am, I’ve never met him.” I told her with a wink, and then watched her expression falter again..

“But. . . then why are you picking up his bill?” she said with a surprised look once again on her face.

“Did you see the “US Air Force” hat that he’s wearing?” I asked her, and she nodded in the affirmative.

“Well, I figure that means that he either served or retired from the Air Force – either way I figure that he did his part for our country. I kind of figure that deserves at least a dinner, ya know?”

I kid you not, the waitress actually teared up. She didn’t cry, don’t get me wrong, but her eyes definitely got glassy.

“Well look at you!” she said softly. “You know, people just don’t do that kind thing anymore. Thank you.”

You know for the low low price of $25 I got to feel great for the next two days just thinking about it. Besides, I figure I need all of the good Karma I can get.

Fortunately my flight back home from Detroit to Austin was no where near as early as my flight out had been, and so I didn’t have to get up until about mid day (5:45AM) to start getting ready. This time I was wearing a black and white dress that is no great departure from my normal outfit. I figure that a little black and white dress is just about as flattering as a little black dress, so I have more than my fair share of ‘em.

As I dropped my car off at the Avis lot, the young man that checked it in was the same kid that literally backed away from me when he saw on my contract that I was a guy the last time I had been there. He wasn’t a whole lot more eager to get anywhere near me this time, but at least he didn’t have that panicked look. While I was getting my receipt from him, one of the bus drivers called out to me.

“Which airline ma’am?”

“US Airways” I told him, and before I knew it, there were TWO bus drivers reaching for my bags. They both stopped, looked at each other, and then looked back at me.

“I’m sorry, which airline?” he asked again.

“US Airways please.”

“See, I told you she was on my bus!” He told the other driver with a laugh, and then grabbed my bag out of the other mans hand and headed off with it. The driver that had just surrendered my bag to the other looked at me and laughed.

“Just follow your bags ma’am, just follow your bags! I wouldn’t let him out of sight with them if I were you!”

“Thanks – I think I’ll do just that!” I replied with a laugh of my own.

The man behind the counter at the US Airways ticket counter surprised me a little bit. I've always found most US Airways folks to be just a little bit cool toward me, but not this time.

“Well hello and welcome back! I haven’t seen you here in a while!” He said with a huge smile.

“Oh I’ve been here, but probably flying your competition. They put me on what ever airline and flight is cheapest, so I’m Gold with you guys and platinum with Delta.”

“Yeah, I recall your being Gold from the last time I took care of you. OK, so let’s see – they have you set for a long day don’t they?!” he said as he pulled up my itinerary and looked at it. “Wow! They have you sitting in Charlotte for four hours! Let’s see if we can get something better for you, shall we?” he said with a genuine smile, and then he started punching a bunch of keys on his terminal. Every couple of moments he would “tsk tsk” or say “nope, not that one”, and eventually he looked up at me with regret in his eyes.

“You know, I’m sorry, but there really are no other options. All of the other flights are booked solid!”

“That’s all right, I appreciate your trying for me. Besides, I just remind myself that I am getting paid to sit in the nice comfortable airport!” I told him.

“I guess you have a point at that!” he laughed.

“Yeah, it could be a lot worse! I could be busting my butt off outside in the cold rain for a living."

“Oh no, we don’t want that!!” he quipped.

Going through Detroit’s TSA checkpoint always makes me a little nervous because they use those full body scanners. You know, those marvels of science and engineering that make it real clear to who ever is looking at the monitor that I am most definitely a guy? Before you get to that scanner though, you have to show your tickets and ID to a TSA inspector. The young man, maybe in his mid twenties, took my documents and looked at me.

“Hello . . . Matthew . . . “ he said loudly enough for everyone around us to hear. I didn’t know if he was just thoughtless, or if he was trying to be rude, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Good morning!” I told him with a smile. He kept looking at my documents and said something I couldn’t hear, so I asked him to repeat it.

“For fun?” he said again.

“I’m sorry?” I asked him. I was pretty sure that I heard him this time, but I had absolutely no idea what he meant.

“Are you doing this just for fun?” he clarified. Ah! Now I get it! He wanted to know if I was cross dressing for fun.

“Well, it’s not quite that simple, but I guess you could say that.” I told him, and still he kept looking at my documents.

“Let’s just say that I’m not running or hiding from anyone if that’s what you mean!” I told him with a laugh that he didn't return. At last he glanced up at me again, stamped my ticket, and passed me through.

Oh – the body scanner? Yeah, they made me wait and then frisked my chest again. You know, patting down my chest when I go through those things is so popular that I’m thinking about either putting a mouse trap in my bra or charging admission. . .

Magic on the Airplane

As usual, I was on the way to Detroit this week, but in an unusual turn of events, I had a direct flight from Austin to Detroit and it didn’t leave until after 2PM. As always, I considered going “pretty” but reached the conclusion that it would be almost insane. There was just no way in hell that I was gonna get up at 4AM and be out of the house by 6AM for a flight that wasn’t even gonna leave until 2PM. Even I am not that crazy!

Still, I packed a few outfits just in case I had free time on my hands on this trip, and then I laid out a boring guy outfit of jeans and your typical casual shirt.

The next morning the alarm went off at 6AM for getting my daughter up and off to school and I laid there in bed for a moment as my wife just about catapulted out of it. I almost giggled at the reversal in rolls, because early on in our 24 year marriage I used to be the one that jetted out of bed and always had to kind of prod her to get her moving. Today I was the one being a slug while it didn’t seem to bother her at all to get up with no delay. What the heck has the world come to anyway?

I laid there in bed watching my wife make her way to her closet and start getting dressed for the day, and I wondered just how feasible it would be to try and sneak in another couple of hours of sleep, but I just couldn’t handle the guilty feeling that was growing at the back of my mind. With a sigh, I gave in to the guilt and dragged my lazy butt outta bed and headed down the stairs to make my wife some coffee. Just as I walked past our two year olds closed door his parent detector went off and he started to holler that he wanted “up”, and by the tone of voice, he wanted “up” by God right this second! Now holding the little Tasmanian devil in my arms I again headed down the steps, got him something to eat, and managed to make the pot of coffee I had planned on. I had a nice domestic morning taking care of the little one, helping to get my daughter ready for school, and reminding my wife that I still loved her by getting her some coffee and toast, and then I killed the rest of the morning chatting with her and surfing the internet. At about 1130 it struck me that I had killed too much time and really needed to get my behind off to the airport before I ended up late, so I grabbed my bags and gave my wife a hug.

“I love you and I will miss you!” I told her as I kissed her forehead.

“I love you too. Have a good trip.” She replied. As I made my way to the door, she surprised me by calling out to me.

“Hey. . . “

Mid way through the door with my huge suitcase towed behind me and a twenty pound backpack slung over my shoulder, I turned to see what she wanted.

“Thanks for sticking around. . . “

For just a moment I started to get that warm and fuzzy feeling, thinking to myself that I was glad I had gotten out of bed to help her with our children. I started to smile and then all the implications of her simple statement struck me.

“Hold it! You are talking about today and not just in general right?” I asked her with a laugh.

“Well yeah, but maybe a little bit of both” she replied with a laugh of her own.

On my drive to the airport I kept thinking about her words.

“Thanks for sticking around . . . “ she had said. Wow, apparently my wife misses me so much that she felt the urge to thank me for spending time with her instead of leaving early in the morning to fly pretty. When it came down to the choice of flying pretty or spending a few extra minutes with my wife and children in the morning, I had chosen my family so rarely that my wife felt compelled to comment on it and to thank me for it.

When I first met my wife, I was at the lowest point in my life. I was suffering almost crippling depression, most definitely deep in the hands of alcohol abuse, and in legal trouble with the US Army for something stupid I had done while drinking. For some reason (and I’ll never know why) she managed to look beyond all of that and to see the person that I might become. Not only to see that person, but to have the patience to wait for me to become that person. This person that had saved me from a life of loneliness and depression, this person that had helped me to become a decent man, husband, and father, had stood in our home and thanked me for spending the morning with her. . .

Clearly I have been doing something horribly wrong . . . 

I admit that sometimes I have come to almost think of myself as female, or at least largely female, but every once in a while something like this jumps up and slaps me in a way that makes it plain that I apparently am still very much a male.

A woman would not have needed this to be pointed out to her and she would not have needed someone to explain this to her. She would have known what it would mean to your spouse to always be choosing the selfish path over her, and she would have known that it was important to sometimes choose to spend a few hours with your spouse over doing something for yourself. I think that a woman would have known. Me, on the other hand, I had to be hit over the head with it.

There was no one I recognized at the Delta counter when I checked in and so I sailed through that and the TSA check point with little or no conversation and soon found myself sitting on a large and comfortable airplane. It was quite a nice change of pace from the cramped little planes that I normally get stuck on. As I entered the aircraft I almost, but not quite, stopped in my tracks as I saw the flight attendant, because she had to be one of the prettiest and cutest women I had ever seen. She was a woman of medium height, with long blond hair, and a tiny and perfect waist that was immensely flattered by the Delta airlines uniform skirt and blouse. Her makeup was light and flawless and she wore her hair up in a single pony tail that sort of stood up an inch or two before falling down her back, and all I could think of was that she was a living Barbie Doll. I kept catching myself sneaking looks at her as others were boarding the aircraft, and eventually I reminded myself that since I didn’t care for it when people kept staring at me, I really should stop obsessing about her. Trying to distract myself, I pulled my kindle out of my bag and began to read my latest “society ended and here’s how people survived it” book. I was just starting to get into the story when someone walking by stopped and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey” he says to me. Since I really don’t know that many people in the Austin area, this kind of surprised me, and so I probably just about jerked my head up to look at him. With a feeling of shock, I recognized one the few men in my office that I work with quite a bit. The shock wasn’t really at seeing him, but more the thought of what might or could have been. What if I had made the flight dressed? Would he have recognized me? Would it have been the end of my job or would he have just walked by me, never having realized who I was? When I was younger I would have been 90% sure that no one would recognize me, but as I age I am afraid that my “looks” are coming closer together, and the change between Matt and Kim is not as significant as it once was.

“Hey, what brings you to my world?” I said to him with a snort.

“I’ve got a couple of customers in Detroit to visit.” He replied with a short and to the point response.

“Well, good to see ya’!” he added after realizing that he was holding up the line. As he walked by my first class seat on his way to coach, he gave me an odd look and rolled his eyes. The message clearly being that he thought it less than amusing that the lowly service engineer was gonna fly first class, while he, the sales/product expert was headed back to coach. I cant wait to talk to him later to rub that one in!

Apparently determined to make an ass outta myself, I blushed and stammered every single time that the Barbie Doll flight attendant asked if I wanted something to eat or drink. At some point during the flight, I recalled the feeling of joy it gave me when a woman in the Austin airport had just suddenly told me “You are beautiful!” and I resolved to try and screw up the courage to tell Barbie the same. As we left the aircraft after landing, she told most of the first class passengers goodbye on their way out, to include me when my turn came.

“Thank your flying Delta, we appreciate your business!” She told me with a stunning smile.

“Thank you!” I replied, and then with a red face, my heart in my throat, and my pulse rushing in my ears. “You know I have to tell you – you are one of the very prettiest women that I have ever seen.”

“Thank you so much!” she answered with kind of a surprised look on her face and then a huge smile. I didn’t wait to see what else she might say, because I was too busy almost running up the gate ramp, afraid that God might strike me dead for getting up the courage to make such a poor attempt at complimenting such a pretty woman.

As it turns out, my colleague was coming to Detroit to talk to one of the same customers that I was here to work with, and judging by my customers greeting to me, he had clearly been there before me.

“Hey Matt! Glad to see you and thanks for coming on such short notice! Hey, you know your sales guy was here last night right? Yeah, we made sure to tell him how much we liked you and that you are our preferred service guy!” he told me as we shook hands.

“Well hell, that was damn nice of you – thanks! So does that mean I owe you a steak lunch today?” I asked with a laugh.

“Damn right it does!” he replied with a wink and a laugh of his own.

“No worries! You keep lying to my manager and the sales guy, and I’ll keep buying lunch when I come. Deal?!”

I thought I was going to have a short day, because what I had to do there was not that hard to accomplish, but when I was almost done, I received an email from another customer in the Detroit area – Ford. Ford is one of my favorite customers for several reasons. They are of course the creator of my beloved 1967 Mustang, and also of my 2002 F150 – two vehicles that I love. I also happen to really like the woman that I work with there. I was new to infrared mass spec (FTIR) when I first met her, but she was not. She told me how she and her group had pioneered the use of FTIR at Ford many years ago, and how they had started off with a huge bench top systems that required constant alignment and adjustment. They were delighted to move on to our much more compact and reliable system when it became available years later. That first day so many years ago when I was working with her, I knew that she knew more about the thing than I did, and she knew that she knew more about it than I did, and still she was a good and kind person that had patience with me as I worked things out. Of course that was a long time ago and I now feel confident that I can hold my own with her, but she remains one of my very favorite customers to this day. Needless to say, when she sends out an email asking for help, I bend over backwards to take good care of her, and it was enormously good fortune that I just happened to be only an hour or so from her when she needed it. The bad news is that it ruined my chance to have an afternoon to myself, but at least I know that I did what was right between my customer and my company.

That night after I completed repairs for both customers, it just felt too late for doing anything pretty, but not necessarily too late to go shopping in boy mode, and so off I went to the mall! At JC Penny’s I found three dresses on clearance sale, grabbed them, and took them to the mens fitting room where I tried them on. While I could get them all on, one of the dresses was too tight, the other just didn’t flatter my figure, and the third was . . . well, it was perfect! It had a red and black pattern that I knew were good colors on me, and I was delighted to see that while it had originally sold for $80, it was now selling for only $15! It just doesn’t get any gooder than that! Delighted, I made my way to the cash register. Just as I approached the empty register a young man and woman stepped up just in front of me, and so I got in line behind them. After a a few minutes, the folks in front of me were done and I started to step up for my turn.

“I’m sorry, but the line forms over there.” The sale associate told me while pointing to the other side of the counter where two people had formed a line after I had arrived.

“You know I see that now, but I was here long before those folks formed a line.” I told her, feeling just a bit offended.

“I’m sorry, but you will need to wait in the line.” She replied.

“No ma’am, I don’t. I’d rather give you the dress back than get in the end of a line that formed after I was waiting here.” I told her, placed the dress on the counter, and turned to walk away.

“Hold on dear!” called out the first woman in the newly formed line. “You were here first – you go right ahead!”

“Are you sure?” I asked her, looking in her eyes to try and tell if she was doing what she thought of as the right thing, or if she thought that she was just humoring the asshole. With a kind smile, she waved me forward again, and so with a quick look at the sales associate, I again stepped up to the counter. Dress in hand, I thanked the woman that had waved me forward and then made my way to Macy’s.

Once in Macy’s, I made my way to their sales racks, looking for another good deal, and my eye was drawn to a red dress. It was not the caliber of the red dress that I had found in Dillards a couple of weeks ago, but it was pretty nice, and so I pulled it off of the rack to get a look at it and at it’s tag. As I was holding it up to look at it, a Macy’s sales associate walked by.

“Just your size!” She quipped with a grin.

“You know, it just might be!” I replied with a laugh while looking at the size 12 tag.

“I’m just teasing you. Can I help you?” she asked.

“No ma’am, I’m well beyond help but thanks!” I replied with one of my favorite jokes.

“Well, that puts you at least one step ahead of most people! At least you know your beyond help!” she laughed.

“Well, let me know if you need anything!” she told me and then moved off.

I usually wear size 14, but I have found a lot of 12’s and a lot of 16’s fit me perfectly as well, so there was a bit of hope. I looked at the price tag and saw that it was priced at over $80 after a number of mark downs, but after doing a little math in my head I figured that the price tag still said it was more than the 50% off rack said it should be, and so I took it to the counter where I found the same sales associate was now standing. She took one look at me.

“So you DID find your size!” she said with a giggle.

“You joke, but you never do know these days!” I told her with a laugh, and while seriously contemplating showing her my pic on my cell phone. Fighting the urge to get a giggle with the shock tactic, I just handed her the dress.

“The rack it was on said 50% off, but it’s current price is a bit more than that. Can you tell me what it really costs?”

“$70” she told me after scanning the tag.

“You know, it may be worth that much, but it’s more than I wanna pay. Thank you anyway!”

“No problem, and thanks for letting me play with you!” she replied to me. I again seriously considered pulling out my photo just to show her that kidding or not, she had hit the nail on the head, but I decided that I’d leave it alone.

I headed back to my hotel with my new dress in hand, and started to get my stuff together for flying home the next morning. Once again I had the back and forth decision making process where I tried to decide if I should fly pretty or drab, and eventually I decided to go pretty. Now the next bit of nerve wracking was about WHAT to wear! I had brought a few outfits with me and I had also just bought the cute little red, black, and white dress – so what to wear?! At last I settled on the new dress and started packing everything else away and getting the odds and ends ready that I would need for the following days trip. I had most of my things put away and most of my outfit picked out when I ran into a serious snag – I had forgotten to bring even a single bra with me! What kind of cross dresser leaves the house without a single bra for goodness sakes? In self disgust, I packed away my pretty things and took my male outfit back out, now resigned to flying home drab. The thing is, the following morning I decided that really wanted to fly pretty, and it had been so long since I’d felt a strong desire to do that, that I decided to make the effort to make it happen. At 8AM yours truly was shopping at the local Walmart for a pretty white bra, and by 11AM I was dressed and headed for the airport, sporting my pretty new dress!

As I approached the TSA check point in the Detroit airport, there were two large, African American, female TSA agents chatting with each other, and they both looked up at about the same time and with the same look that I long ago learned to recognize – the “Wow, that really is a cross dresser standing in front of me” look.

“Good morning!” I said to both of them as I handed my ID and ticket over.

“Good morning to you!” one of them replied. “And how are you today?”

“Oh hell, I just couldn’t be any gooder, thank you for asking. And how are you?”

“Fine thank you!” she replied with a huge grin.

“That dress is adorable!” the other woman injected.

“Awe thanks! I just got it yesterday!” then I leaned in like I was gonna tell her a secret. “Ya know, JC Penny’s rocks!”

They both laughed, inspected my documents, and then passed me through.

Most of the time you will find yourself going through the full body scanner at the Detroit airport, and this time was no exception. This always makes me a bit nervous because more often than not they decide to frisk me as a result of my breast forms. This time they surprised me though.

“Wait here a moment please.” Said the female TSA agent at the outlet of the scanner, clearly waiting to hear over her headsets if I needed additional screening or not.

“OK, I’m gonna have to pat down the back of your neck if that’s all right?” she asked.

I just nodded and then she patted the back of my neck briefly.

“All right – you’re free to go!” She said with a smile.

I was grabbing my stuff off of the Xray belt when a male TSA rep looked at me with a look of regret as if he was personally sorry that I had been inconvenienced.

“I guess they just liked your hair.” He told me with an apologetic grin.

“Oh it’s no problem, I’ve been through worse” I assured him, thinking of the many times I had been forced to stand there with someone patting down my chest or legs.

After putting my shoes and sparklies back on, I made my way to the Delta Skyclub to kill the three hours before my flight.

As I took my seat in the first class section, the gentleman in the seat next to me looked up.

“We are in for a treat on this flight!” he told me. There were a number of thoughts that went through my mind at this comment, most of it along the lines of “Oh great, he’s being sarcastic, hates the thought of sitting next to a cross dresser, and is about to say something really mean.”

Much to my relief though, his comment had nothing to do with little ol’ me.

“Really? How so?” I asked him

“Do you see the cute flight attendant?” He asked, pointing at an adorable flight attendant with red hair standing at the door and greeting people.

“Uh huh” I replied

“She’s a magician! I’ve been on a couple of flights with her before and she will actually do some magic for you! She is really good at it too!” he told me.

“I’ll be darned! I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a magician before, so that would be really neat!”

As the plane taxied to the runway, I was disappointed to see the cute young and presumably magical flight attendant head to the back of the plane, and so I feared that I wasn’t gonna get to see any magic after all, but I shouldn’t have worried. Apparently the guy sitting next to me was one of those freaks of nature (someone who actually flies more often than I do) and the magic flight attendant made her way to our row part way through the flight just to see him.

“So would you like to see some magic?!” she asked him.

“Sure!”

“Would you mind being my assistant?” She asked, looking at me with a huge smile.

“What the heck. You betcha!” I told her.

“OK, I have four cards – two red queens and two black aces.” She said and showed us all four of the cards.

“Hold out your hands for me” she told me, and then she showed me the two red cards and placed them face down in my palms.

“Wah la!” she said (or something along those lines). “Take a look!”

I turned the cards in my hands over to look at them and sure enough they were both now the Aces.

“Awesome!” we both told her.

“OK, now I have a couple of washers. Here, you hold this one.” She said to the guy next to me and placed a typical large washer into his hand and closed his hand around it.

“I have the other washer here.” She said, showing us the twin to the washer she had earlier placed in his hand.

“I’m going to go ahead and move the hole in the washer.” She said, and then placed her thumb and finger over the hole, then slowly started pulling them across the washer. Suddenly the hole in the washer was no longer in the center. Since she had her finger and thumb on the washer it wasn’t yet clear if she was “moving” the hole or if the hole was gone.

“You know, I’ve changed my mind. I’m just gonna move the hole onto your washer instead!” she said with a grin while showing us that there was no longer a hole in her washer at all. She then pointed at his hand indicating that he should open it, which he slowly did to reveal that his washer did indeed now have two holes!

“Hey you’re pretty good at that! Do you mind if I take your photo for my blog?” I asked her.

“Not at all – go ahead!” She said with a grin. “I’m already on youtube!”

Watch what you wish for . . .

You know, for someone used to traveling and being on the road as much as I am, it’s almost painful to be stuck behind a desk inside a gray little cubicle. Painful or not, that is where I found myself for the first half of this week. On my male facebook account, I posted about being bored all to hell, and how I wished that one of my customers would break something so that I could get out of the office and go earn my paycheck. Well, one should be careful what you wish for, because less than half an hour later one of my favorite customers commented on my facebook post that he had five dead instruments and desperately wanted a service call to repair them. With most of my customers this would have started a whole long process of providing a quote and waiting for the customer to produce a purchase order before making travel arrangements, but this customer has always been awesome about very quickly paying us after service calls. My manager actually tried to talk me out of going so late in the week and with so many instruments to repair in only one day, but I convinced him that I could get it done, and so off I went! I later decided that I should have listened to him. . .

I have to be out of the house pretty early in the morning so that I’m gone before my daughter gets up for school, but my flights didn’t leave until late morning, and so I started off by going to Denny’s for breakfast before catching my flight. The waitress there was a cute little “hottie” with a perfect figure that made me feel guilty for eating, but she was a real sweetheart and good at her job. Everything was “Sweetie”  this, and “Sweetie” that, which actually grew a bit annoying, but in the end she kept my coffee cup full for a couple of hours and did it without constantly interrupting the novel I was reading. That’s a real art by the way – taking good care of your customer without becoming a pain in the butt. I have no doubt at all that I would make a terrible waitress. I can work hard all day, or I can be nice and smile all day, but don’t ask me to do both at the same time.

A few years ago I was looking at one of only half a dozen photos I had of me as Kim, and thinking to myself “Gee, you were cute back then. Why didn’t you take more pictures to have something to remember the days before you got old by?!”  Right about there a monster was born. I bought my first digital camera, and started taking loads of pictures every time I had the chance, and in only a couple of years I went from having only six ten year old photos, to having over a thousand. I was so caught up in it that I didn’t even realize how crazy it had gotten until my wife and daughter-in-law both started laughing at me about it. I hadn’t realized it, but since they are both connected to my yahoo account, they both get a notification every single time I uploaded a photo to flickr, and let’s face it, I upload a LOT of pictures. I guess a lot of cross dressers do this, and so in the cross dressing community this wasn’t terribly out of place, but when my wife and daughter-in-law started commenting each time I posted pics, I realized that in the “normal” world, I had become a pretty narcissistic obsessive individual. I figure I’ll stop taking the pics the day I decide I’m too damned old and ugly to bother with them, but until then, I will settle for just being a bit more reasonable in the number I take. Maybe. I think.

Even after taking my time, slurping a lot of coffee and reading my book, I still had several hours to kill after I finished my breakfast, and so I went looking for someplace pretty to take my usual “this is what I wore today” photographs. I had fully intended to wear a floaty green and white polka-dot summer dress, but I chickened out at the last moment. I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t feel confident in it, and so I put it back on the hanger and chose to wear one of my all time favorite outfits instead. In the end, I was glad that I did, because I felt confident and happy, and I think it showed. I’ve mentioned it before, but you really have to see this skirt in motion to appreciate it. It’s made of very light material and swirls and floats around your legs as you walk, almost as if clouds were dancing around your feet.

I think that Mona, my favorite customer service representative at the Delta Airlines counter, must stand by the window waiting for me to arrive, because she seems to walk out of the back office and help me every time I am waiting in line. I was in line maybe two minutes when she walked out and quickly looked my way and waved me up to the counter.

“Good morning Matthew! It’s kind of strange to see you here so late in the week. You usually leave out of here on Mondays.” She said with a smile.

“Yeah, and usually MUCH earlier in the morning too, huh?!” I answered. “The lady that usually makes my travel arrangements is out of the office this week, so I got to make my own flights. Today, I’m flying at a reasonable hour!”

“So where are you going today dear?” she asked. Would you believe I had to pause and think for a moment because I couldn’t remember?

“That’s a real good question! Where the hell am I going?!” I said out loud. I travel so much these days that it all kind of blurs together, but after a moment it came to me.

“Detroit!” I blurted out, embarrassed that it had taken me so long to recall something so critical to what I was doing. She was still laughing as I fished out my ID to hand it to her.

“Oh no, I don’t need to see your ID. I’ve got your name memorized.” She said with a grin.

“So what are you saying? That I’m a little unique and maybe even memorable around here?” I asked with laugh.

“Yeah, pretty much!” she answered with a laugh of her own.

On my last flight through Austin, I had worn a fairly long skirt and they had not sent me through the whole personal inspection process for it, so I thought that maybe they had lightened up on that particular policy. I was wrong . . .   Just as I walked through the metal detector, a TSA inspector walks up to me with a big grin on his face.

“Lucky you! You have been selected for additional screening. Please step right this way and we’ll be right with you!” He was so cheerful about it all that I wanted to kick him in the shins. It was hard to get too angry though, because at least they were being consistent and not just singling me out. I found myself standing right behind another woman who had also worn a long skirt. In no time a all a female TSA agent stepped forward and took the woman in front of me, and there I stood next in line. Waiting. . . and waiting . . . and waiting . . .   At the end of the inspection area there is always a desk with several TSA inspectors presumably supervising the process, and around it stood two or three female TSA inspectors. They were all chatting each other up and having a good time for several minutes before one of them glanced my way. When she noticed I was waiting she took two or three steps my way, and then seemed to realize what I was and spun around on her heel and walked back to her friends. I sat there starting to fume as they all started grinning and laughing. In a few seconds, I see one of them mouth “I’ll take care of this”  and then turn and head my way. I have no idea what they think my motivation is, or if they are irritated that I wear long skirts knowing that it may cause an inspection, but for me it is simple. I spent more than a decade serving my country and doing my part to earn the freedoms that we enjoy, and it has taken me the better part of forty years to build the courage to wear what I wanted to wear - I will be damned if I’ll let terrorists or the TSA force me out of them. So if they want to inspect a frequent flier that they all know and recognize by now for wearing a long skirt, then I figure that is their own stupidity and they can deal with it.

Right or wrong, hesitant or not, when they decide to do a personal inspection, they do a very personal inspection. By the time this woman was done frisking me, I was blushing and more than a little embarrassed. Blushing and embarrassed, I grabbed my back pack, shoes, and laptop, and made my way to my gate. I was sitting there and getting myself back together by putting in my earrings and putting on my bracelets, when I noticed a pretty young woman sitting across from me. She was probably in her early twenties, pretty, with long dark hair, and she was reading a book with her feet propped up on her bag. Several days later I’m still not sure why, but something about her just kind of captivated me. Sure she was pretty, and sure she was wearing a nice pair of heels that I of course noticed, but that wasn’t it. I think that what captivated me about her was just the fact that she was so damned comfortable with who and what she was. There I sat, all uptight and nervous, stressing over what I was wearing, how I was being perceived, and what people thought of me. In contrast, there she sat – perfectly comfortable with being herself, with her feet comfortably propped up on her bags in what might be considered a less than lady-like fashion.

She was not worried at all about what people thought of her.

She was not worried at all about behaving like a lady.

She was not worried at all . . .

I was sitting there kind of confused over my own reaction and brief obsession with this young lady, when a woman came and sat down in the same row, and just one seat down from me. It took me a second to realize that this was just a little bit odd. It was still more than an hour and a half before the flight and so the gate area was fairly empty. With the seating of an entire gate area open to her, she had chosen to come and sit next to me. With my curiosity aroused, I glanced up to take a better look at her, and found myself looking directly into the eyes of the pretty young woman with short blond hair. The moment our eyes met, her face lit up in a brilliant smile and she leaned toward me.

“You are beautiful!” she told me, and then sat back into her chair.

‘Did she really say that?! Did I hear her right?!’ I was asking myself over and over.

Pretty woman . . . complimented me . . . thinks I’m pretty . . . no way!

Absolutely shocked, I sat there staring at her like an idiot for at least five or ten seconds while my brain processed that completely unexpected comment. Finally the gears and belts in my brain stopped slipping and smoking and my brain started to work again.

“Thank you!” I blurted out. “You just made my day. In fact, you just made my entire week and month!”

“Your welcome and I’m happy that I made your day!” she said with a friendly smile. I sat there for a second, not sure about the social implications of my returning the compliment. I wasn’t quite sure if it was ‘appropriate’ for one woman to tell another woman that she didn’t even know, that she was pretty, but I figured that she had done it first.

“You know, you’re more than a little cute yourself!” I told her hesitantly, kind of treading on unfamiliar ground for me. I’ve never been terribly confident when it came to complimenting women, and I’d certainly never done it while I was trying to present as one.

She and I talked off and on for the next half an hour or so until her flight left. It turns out that she was going home to visit family that she hadn’t seen in years. It was kind of a triumphant homecoming for her, certainly more than just your average person going home. It seems that many years ago she had been literally run over by a drunk driver. She had died something like four times on the way to the hospital and had spent years learning how to walk again. Now she was making her way home to show her family that she had “made it”. She had overcome great adversity, had become a confident and happy person, and was going home to show her family that she was going to be her own person. I got the impression that there was much more to the story, but you can only say so much to a stranger in thirty minutes.

After I got my luggage and boarded the rental car shuttle bus in Detroit, the driver asked me if I was “Avis Preferred” or not. I assured him that I was, gave him my last name, and then took an empty seat in the rear of the bus. He took his seat and started pushing buttons on his touch screen, and then shouts all of the way through the bus to me.

“What is your first name please?”

I sat there looking at him for a second, more than a little reluctant to shout “Matthew” across a bus full of people, so he repeated the question. It’s silly, because unlike the name Huddle that I use here, my real last name is highly unique in the US, and there is zero chance that there might be any ambiguity that would require him to have my first name to verify if it was me or not. Less than amused, I got up and started to make my way to the front of the bus to reply a bit more discreetly when he looks up at me with a smile.

“Oh! Never mind – I’ve got you.”

You might think that I had ducked that embarrassing little bullet, but you would be wrong. As the entire bus load of people was exiting the bus at the lot, a woman was standing at the door, holding a contract and keys, and loudly calling my name.

“Matthew Huddle? Matthew Huddle?!”

At the top of the steps and waiting for the crowd to clear out of the way, I raised my hand to her, hoping to get her attention, but apparently she didn’t see it and continued to call out.

“MATTHEW HUDDLE? MATTHEW HUDDLE?!”

Disgusted and a little irritated, I gave up the entire concept of being discrete.

“YES?! That’s me.” I replied, trying not to sound as irritated as I felt. Still, I couldn’t help but grin when half a dozen people looked up at me in surprise, apparently not having realized what I was.

So do you remember at the start of this little story, I mentioned that I had been bored and wished that someone would break something so I could go to work? Yeah, well, you gotta be careful what you wish for, because I started working at my customers facility at 7AM Friday morning and didn’t get out of there until after 9PM. It was a long and miserable day, so I was sort of bummed that here I was with a Friday night in the Detroit area, and I was too tired and it was too late to go out and have fun.

I’m really gonna have to watch what I wish for from now on . . .