What were the odds?

Once again I find myself off to Detroit. I arranged for a flight that left at around noon just so that I could be the good guy and help my wife by getting my daughter off to school. This saves my wife from having to fight with two children to get my daughter ready and to school but results my getting to my destination a lot later than I care for.

Once I was ready, I walked down stairs to see my wife on her laptop. Much like myself, she is kind of an introvert and spends very little time actually socializing with people, and instead spends a lot of her time online. She looked up at me and grinned and shook her head.

"Your hair looks nice." She told me in a sincere tone, and then went back to looking at her laptop.

"Well thank you!" I said, kind of surprised because she rarely comments on my look, but I am strangely pleased and flattered by her comment.

"I’m sorry you got stuck with a weird husband." I told her with a grin, while standing across the table from her. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then replied.

"No your not."

I looked at her, feeling grateful that my wife doesn’t think I’m all that weird.

"Awe, that’s sweet . . . " I started to say, but then stopped as it struck me that that is NOT what she meant.

"Hold it. You mean ‘no, I’m not sorry that I’m weird’ huh?" I asked her.

"That’s what I meant" she confirmed, still with an ironic smile on her face.

This launched us in to 20 or 30 minute conversation alternating between levity and tragedy. Among other things, she has informed me that a significant reason she has no friends is that she is afraid to bring people to our home because of what they may see or figure out about me. She is afraid to bring people to meet me because of the clues I give off. She is afraid to have friends because I may ruin it for her.

Now for those of you inclined to think my wife unreasonable, I have to point out that this has indeed happened twice already. Once with an acquaintance who never progressed to friend after finding out about me, and once with a really neat woman that had been my wife’s best friend. When her husband found out about me, my wife and I were no longer welcome in their home, and so the friendship died. This did happen, and it was because of what I am, so it’s hard to look her in the eye and tell her that she is being entirely unreasonable. Reasonable or not, this seems to be the new way of things with my wife and I. As I am prepared to leave the house, she let’s me know how unhappy what I am makes her. I don’t know where to go with this. It hurts to know that I make her unhappy and yet it’s the first time in my life that I have been happy. I don’t know what I can do to make the love of my life happy while not making myself utterly miserable . . .

As I checked in for my flight with US Airways, I see that the lady behind the counter is the same lady that took care of me a month or so ago, and who never once smiled. I recall thinking at the time that it was a shame because she was really beautiful and I was sure she would be stunning if she smiled. Well, it turns out that I was right, because as soon as she saw me, she gave me a huge smile, and she was indeed radiant and stunning. I handed her my tickets and ID and she gave me a little laugh.

"I remember you very well and I don’t need to see your ID." She said with a grin.

"Oh really? Are you saying that I make a bit of an impression then?" I asked with a wink.

Soon I had my bags checked and was in the way through the TSA security where I was set back just a bit by the young lady checking everyone’s ID. She was a young, short, and blond woman with brilliant blue eyes and she reminded me so much of my wife when we first met that I was lost in my memories as she checked my ID.

"I hope you have a great day!" I told her as she handed my documents back to me. She said nothing, but blushed and glanced up into my eyes for a heart stopping moment. I was sort of in a daze, with my thoughts flickering all over the place as I walked away.

Adorable little blond girl with the eyes of my wife from 20 years ago,

Her blushing, probably in embarrassment to be dealing with someone transgendered.

My wife, scared to have friends because of what I am.

Much like a lot of my life these days, today is off to a confusing start. . .

As I sit at the gate getting ready for my flight, I get a text message from my wife telling me that she is sorry for our conversation. As I’m reading it, I see two TSA agents walking down the concourse, a man and a woman, and they are speaking to each other. As they walk on, the guy is literally turning around almost backwards to stare it me as they walk off. At last, they get so far away that he has to turn around and face the woman he is walking with and talking to. I can’t decide if I should smile or be irritated and so I just returned to my wife’s text message. I replied to her that I didn’t want her to feel sorry for what she said or how she felt. It’s important that I know how she feels, but I also confided that I didn’t know what to do to make us both happy. Just as I hit send, I see the two TSA agents returning, this time with a third agent. All three stop not 15 feet from me and have a "casual" conversation. As I am at the end of the concourse, they have just walked a long way to have a casual chat so close to me, and it’s pretty obvious that the idea is to show the third guy the freak show waiting for a flight. Soon they wrap up their conversation and return the way they went, with both of the guys sneaking looks back in my direction. What the hell, I just grinned at both of them as they walked off.

I had a fairly long layover in Charlotte and so chose to have a sit down dinner at Chili’s instead of my typical fast food meal. I started with an entirely healthy meal of salmon and veggies and then destroyed the whole "good for you" concept by getting a couple of 7 & 7 drinks with it. I very rarely drink in airports because it’s too damned expensive and I think it’s a good idea to keep your wits about you while traveling, but somehow it just sounded like a good idea today. When I checked my ticket I was delighted to see that I had a free upgrade to first class and so I flew to Detroit in comfort. There was some sort of maintenance delay, so we sat at the gate for over 30 minutes, but that’s not so bad when your sitting in first class sucking on a couple of screw drivers.

At the Detroit airport, there is a long escalator taking you down to the rental car shuttle busses, and you can look through the plate glass the entire way, so I could see the Avis bus sitting there and waiting. I had intended to stop, put on my coat, and then head outside, but I worried that the bus would pull away while I was putting the coat on. Instead, I chose to just head out the door with no coat for the short walk to the bus, thinking ‘how bad could it be for only 50 feet?’. As I exited the building, the cold reached up and hit me like a slap in the face, and I was still sort of in shock when the bus driver came up to me, almost running.

"Here, give me those bags! You get on the bus where it’s warm and I’ll take care of these!" he said with a gentle smile.

"Thank you SO much!" I told him, with my teeth chattering so badly that I was not sure he recognized it as speech. The bus driver took his seat after putting my bags up, and then turns to me.

"Are you a member of our preferred program? " he asks me.

"I am," I said, and gave him my last name. He looks at his computer for a moment.

"And your first name?" he asks.

"Matthew," I called back to him, all the while looking at the only other passenger on the bus for a reaction to my male name. I’ve got to hand it to the guy, he didn’t even blink or look up.

With my starting my trip so late in the day, combined with the delay leaving Charlotte, it was around 9:30 PM when I arrived at the Crowne Plaza hotel. They placed me on the eleventh floor – the priority club floor where they have a lounge just for members. I poked my head in to the almost empty lounge and see a really cute woman about my own age, with short spiked hair, and glittering eyes standing behind the counter.

"Come on in, come on in!" she says with a smile, while waving me in. "You’re just a bit too late for hot snacks, but I’ve still got some chips and cookies."

"Awesome!" I told her as I entered.

She was very friendly and out going and soon we were chatting about nothing specific, while I snacked and ordered a white Russian. Just as I sat down, I realized how tired I was and so I took my snacks and drink to the room with me, where I pulled out my laptop and checked my email. I see that I have an email from Chrissie, a Vanity Club member who also travels a great deal. In it, she says it’s too bad that I hadn’t given her more notice about my trip to Detroit, because she was there tonight as well and was staying at the Crowne Plaza. I sat there looking at the email for a moment, thinking to myself that I was too damned tired, and it was too late, to go be social, but I just couldn’t pass it up. Chrissie and I have been trading emails for about a year now, and have come close to meeting several times, but never quite seemed to get it right. We had been only miles apart a couple of times, and had both even been at the Southern Comfort Conference last year and still we hadn’t managed to connect. Having wanted to meet her for so long, there was just no way I could pass it up if she was in the same darn building I was in, no matter how tired I felt.

I gave her a call and we both laughed to find that we were only separated by a single floor. In short order I was in the elevator on the way to the lobby to meet with her. I only made it down one floor when the elevator stopped and on walks a gentleman who looks at me with a smile.

"Well hello, and yes, I am who your thinking I might be!" he says with a grin.

We made our way to the lounge in the lobby where we sat talking for a few hours about nothing and everything. We have a LOT in common, from family, to traveling for our careers, being transgendered, etc, etc. We were both struck by how incredibly unlikely our meeting that night was. From completely different states we had headed out, working in completely different fields, and we both end up not only in the same city, but at the same hotel, and with no prior planning or coordination with each other. I’d have to say the odds were astronomical against it, but what do I know? It turned out to be serendipitous though, as I really quite liked her, and considering the conversation with my wife this morning, I sort of needed someone to talk to who understood my life. All talked out and exhausted, I was back in my room and headed for bed around 1:30 AM

When the alarm went off at 6AM, the pounding in my head made it abundantly clear that I had way over done it the night before. I mentally started ticking off a list of all I had drank – two 7 & 7’s at dinner, two screw drivers on the plane, a white Russian in the upstairs lounge, and then two glasses of wine with Chrissie.

"Oh my God, you’re an idiot, and on a work night at that!" I scolded myself, but let’s face it, my head hurt too bad to pay attention to what I was saying. Eventually I dragged myself out of bed and headed for my customers. The drive, and in fact the entire day, was cold, dark, and miserable. My customer had told me that he had three instruments for me to look at, but then wheeled out five, and so I wasn’t done until almost 7PM. Given that I had an hours drive to get back to the hotel, and I still had a pounding head, I decided that I was done for the night and wasn’t going to be going anywhere. When I got to my room, I cleaned up a little and headed for the members lounge where I again found the same cute woman manning the place.

"All right! Tonight I’m not too late for the hot stuff I see!" I told her with a grin, as I looked at the assorted snacks, and noted that again she and I were the only ones there.

"Nah, I’ll have the hot stuff out for another hour or so. Come on in and help yourself!" she says. "Would you like something to drink?" At the very mention of a drink, my head throbs so bad that I must have winced.

"God no! I think I had at least one too many of those cute little white Russians last night and my head is killing me." I told her with a grin. She laughed and this set off an hour or more of conversation with her. I don’t know for sure, but suspect that she figured out that I was the cross dresser from the night before, and she completely opened her life up to me. She told me that her divorce to a self centered and unloving man was just about to become final, and that the only good thing she was bringing out of the marriage was three beautiful children. I commented that my own marriage had now lasted for 22 years, and trotted out my favorite joke that the reason it has lasted so long is because I’m not home enough to really irritate her. At this point she shocked me by telling me that her own marriage had lasted 23 years. Wow – 23 years with a selfish, self centered, and unloving man and now she has had enough. Of course it was only a hop-skip-and a jump from that thought to wondering if that is how my wife views me and our marriage.

Until very recently, say the last two or three years, I’ve never flirted with women. I was way too shy and they were far too intimidating to me, but getting out in to the world as Kimberly the last few years, combined with doing field service where you are forced to meet and interact with so many people, has done wonders for my self confidence. I had to say something when she complained that she had no idea how to date anymore, and no idea how she was going to go about meeting a decent guy, and that she was afraid she was going to end up all alone.

"I suspect your not going to have any trouble at all when you’re ready to meet someone. You’re out going, clearly intelligent, and absolutely cute as hell." I blurted out before my brain could talk me out of saying it. I sat there blushing for half a second and wondering if maybe I’d gone too far and said something inappropriate, but she quickly let me off the hook.

"What a sweet thing to say – thank you so much!" she said softly. Still embarrassed that I had acted so boldly, my eyes flickered up to hers for just an instant and I couldn’t help seeing that hers were tearing up. It was probably just as well that two women entered the lounge at that point, thus distracting her from her fears of being lonely. Soon the three women are speaking bluntly about the flaws of husbands and men in general, and I’m flattered that they are willing to have the conversation in front of me.

The next morning I have to get up at 3AM if I want to fly home pretty. It’s a toss up for me as I want the sleep, but I know that I’ll spend the entire trip home being depressed if I don’t go pretty, so once again I find myself up well before the sun. It reminds me of the joke we used to share in the Army about how the US Army was always trying to sneak up on the sun.

On the rental car shuttle bus, a man a couple of seats down strikes up a conversation with me.

"Are you in Detroit for a convention?" he asks.

"No, I was here working on a broken instrument" I replied. "Are you here for a convention?"

"Nope, I just come to Detroit once a month or so" he tells me. He has an odd look in his eye and smile on his face, as if he is amused by some sort of inside joke that only he knows about. I can’t help but notice the fact that he was intentionally vague and assume it has something to do with his inside joke. We chatted about nothing for the five minute ride to the airport. You know, I’m still wondering what kind of convention he thought would bring a cross dresser to Detroit, and what brings him to Detroit once a month that puts such an odd grin on his face.

I can’t use my coat when I land in Austin anyway because I’ll be changing back to boy mode, so the first thing I do as I enter into the airport is to stop, pull off my heavy coat, and pack it away in my bag. Soon I’m pulling my bag and tool box toward the airline counter when I hear a male voice directly behind me.

"You must be going someplace warm if your not bothering with a coat!" I turn to see an airport employee smiling at me.

"You betcha! I’m going to Austin Texas and it’s a lot warmer there!" I said with a laugh.

Today I’m taking the scenic route home and flying through Phoenix Arizona on my way to Austin. Soon I’m sitting on the plane next to a young lady who smiles and chats a little off and on. She doesn’t seem to be at all put off by me so that’s cool. Had a little giggle when the flight attendant walks up to each of us in first class, confirming our names and getting our drinks. Every one she approaches, she looks at them and reads their first and last names off, confirming that they are who her list says should be in that seat. When she gets to me, she kindly uses only my last name.

"And you are Ms XXX?" she asks me, with a soft smile.

"Yes ma’am, That works for me!" I grinned back at her.

"And what shall I call you dear?" she asks. Clearly she is giving the chance to give her a female name, but it didn’t really occur to me until after I’d responded out of habit.

"Matt is fine." I told her.

She was a sweetheart though and never once called me "Matt". I was either "hon" or "dear" for the rest of the flight.

High Heels and Snow

       ............

This week I was off to Longmont Colorado to install a mass spectrometer and to train the customer in it’s operation. Colorado is an absolutely beautiful state and I do tend to enjoy my trips there, but this time it was a bit colder than I like, and with more than a little snow.

.. ..

It seems that there are so many TG’s flying these days that no one even bats an eye at me in the airports anymore. I consider that to be a mixed blessing sort of thing, because on some level I guess I had been enjoying the reactions that I used to get. It had amused me to see people do a double take, re-evaluate their preconceptions, and then step up to the plate and treat me like a human being. Not these days though – it’s just business as usual with everyone involved, with me being treated no better or worse than anyone else

.. ..

My flight was a direct one from Austin to Denver and so I arrived fairly early in the day. As this was just a travel day, it gave me most of the afternoon to have fun, and so I did! I started by plotting out the Goodwill stores between the airport and Longmont and found two that I headed out for. The first was on Colfax avenue in Denver / Aurora, and if you have ever spent any time in the area, you probably know that Colfax is not one of the safest or nicest areas to visit. My wife and I had lived only a couple of miles from there when I was attending a year long course on Lowery AFB many years ago, and so I knew this, but still I didn’t let it intimidate me. The first thing I noticed as I stepped out of the car in the parking lot was that high heels were less than ideal on snow and ice. I just reminded myself that if I took small and careful steps, I would probably avoid making a complete ass out of myself by ending up on my face or backside.

As I closed the car door, I noticed two African American women approaching me in the parking lot, also headed for the Goodwill entrance. To be honest, they looked just a bit on the rough side, with both of them looking tired and disheveled. As I locked the car door and started to make my way to the store, I glanced at them both and gave them a smile, and then one of them spoke to me.

“Girl, don’t you look pretty!” she said while returning my smile.

“Well thank you! I try anyway.” I replied. While we were speaking, the other lady was looking at my shoes, something I have come to recognize as sort of a greeting ritual with women.

“Sweetheart, you better be careful on the snow and ice in those heels.” She said, with kind of a “tsk tsk” attitude. I just grinned at her.

“Oh hell, I have a lot of practice in these things!” I told her. About that time I had reached the door and held it open for both of them.

“Well thank you!” they both told me almost in unison and both with genuine smiles.

“It seems fair to me. You two gave me a smile after all.” I told them with a wink.

I did my shopping and found lots of baby clothes for my son. Goodwill rocks for this sort of thing because lets face it, babies do not wear out their clothing. They grow far too fast to be wearing an outfit long enough to do any damage to it, and so you can buy these cute little PJ’s that are like new for only a dollar each. I also found a cute little (and I do mean little) multicolored skirt. That one’s gonna get put away until it gets a lot warmer!

.. ..

I hit up one more thrift store on the way to Longmont but found nothing of interest there. What did amuse me a little was that as I approached the door, there was young man coming out of it. At first he paused to hold the door for me, then you could see the light in his head go off as he “read” me, and he just let the door go while giving me a mean hearted look. I just smiled at him and expect that this probably irritated him more than anything else I could have done.

.. ..

When I checked in at the Holiday Inn Express in Longmont, the lady behind the counter was a real doll. Very friendly, very professional, and clearly a really nice person. We chatted about this and that as she checked me in. At one point she let out a small whistle and commented that she had never seen anyone with as many points as I have with their chain.

....

....

The following day was uneventful, starting off with my spending most of it with my customer. A very nice guy, originally from China, and when I took him to lunch we had an enjoyable discussion trading stories about the places we had seen and been to. After work, I drove to Loveland to meet with my half brother and his wife. I had never met her before and so was looking forward to it.

The evening was full of mixed feelings. Pleasure at seeing him again and in meeting his lovely wife, and some small sorrow as we discussed our younger lives and some of the low and high moments in them. He went through a bunch of old photos that he had acquired when our father had died and found and offered me a few that included my mother. I tried not to tear up as I looked at the pictures of this young, skinny, and beautiful woman that had given me life and love and who was now gone. So, an evening catching up on things and with lots of mixed emotions and feelings.

.. ..

The next morning I woke to the sight of a light snow fall through the window. Very pretty to look at as long as I didn’t have to be out in it. As I entered the dinning area of the hotel for a cup of coffee and some oatmeal, I couldn’t noticing that every single one of the half dozen women in the room were drop dead gorgeous, and I mean gorgeous. The lady at the counter was a 20 something brunette with adorable hair and glittering eyes. The lady running the breakfast was a tall blond girl, with flawless skin and piercing blue eyes. The two ladies sitting at a table eating and talking business, clearly planning their work day, were also exceptionally pretty. In the midst of all of this beauty was me, a tired old guy with crooked and yellow teeth, and no hair. Feeing old and unattractive, I once again headed out of the hotel to my customer’s facility to continue the training.

.. ..

Fortunately my customer was exceptionally sharp, and we were done at around 11AM, and so he escorted me to the exit. As we approached the door, you could see a very heavy snowfall through the windows, with the world out there being a more or less solid white. As I got in to the car, I noticed that my shoes had a heavy coating of snow and ice on them, and so I had to re-open the door and kick it off. As I was doing so, it occurred to me that the only female shoes I have are pumps, and that they weren’t gonna be a lot of fun in thick snow and ice. On the drive to the hotel, I seriously considered my options for what was feasible to do for the rest of the afternoon. Did I really want to be walking through foot deep snow wearing pumps? Would I freeze? Would I damage my shoes? ‘Maybe I should just stay drab or stay in the hotel . . .’ I thought to myself.

“Nah, not only no, but hell no! I’m gonna go shopping for boots!” I decided, and so I did!

I kept glancing out of the window as I was getting cleaned up and ready, and it was pretty much just a white haze of heavy snowfall. I tried to take a few photographs that would do the snowfall justice, but I’m afraid they failed to capture the essence and wonder of the thing.

.. 
..

.. ..

.. ..

As I made it to my rental car, I discovered that in the short time it had been parked, it was already covered in snow, and with a nice layer of ice over the windows. Joy of joys – it is now that I find out that Avis had not provided me with a ice scrapper, so I just let the car and defroster run long enough to clear most of the windshield and then headed out.

.. ..

The first place I hit up on my search for boots was Kohls, but I didn’t find any boots there that I liked. As long as I was there though, I decided to continue to browse the other areas of the store. As I was looking through their trinkets, bracelets, and necklaces, I noticed a blond woman, very well dressed and quite pretty, and it was with a shock that I realized that she was almost certainly a TG! I wasn’t positive, and so I kept glancing at her trying to make up my mind and maybe hoping to catch her eye to start a conversation. At one point she and I were on opposite sides of the same rack, and still she had never looked my way, so I took the plunge.

“Hey, you didn’t swipe all the cute stuff before I got here did you?” I asked her with a grin. She looked up at me and laughed.
“No, I left lots of stuff!” she told me. If she was TG, she had a flawless voice, because after hearing her speak I now put the odds at only about 50%. Utterly unsure if she was or was not TG, I took the conversation no further and we went our separate ways.

The snow had of course continued to fall while I was shopping, and nothing had been done to clear the parking lot, and so off I went, traipsing through a foot of snow in my pumps. Just as I got near my car, I became acquainted with a hazard in doing this. Under the snow was a rough pile of frozen material that you couldn’t see and I had stepped squarely on top of it. I went sliding, arms waving and flailing about, trying to keep my balance and to avoid ending up on my caboose. At last, I came to a stop, just barely keeping my balance, and glanced around to see if any one had seen my performance. Sure enough, sitting in the idling car next to mine was someone keeping warm, and he was looking at me with a huge grin. I gave him an “Oops!” look and got into my car.

.. ..

Next, I tried JC Penny, and this time I found boots I liked . . . but not in my size. They only came as large as a 9 and I need 10’s, so off I went again.  My next stop was Sears and Dillards in a mall across the street. The mall was clearly a victim of the economy and a lot of its shops were closed and vacant, so that was a bit of a bummer. As I entered Sears, I saw the tool section and went looking for a cheap ice scrapper for my rental car. I decided I’d rather spend two or three of my own dollars to buy a scrapper than try and improvise to get my windows clear tomorrow morning when it came time to head for the airport. As I was looking through the tool section, a fairly gruff looking SA looked at me a couple of times and at last gave a half hearted offer of help.

“Can I help you?” he asks in a tone making it clear his offer is not in the least bit sincere.

“Yes please. I need a window scrapper for my rental car.” I told him.

“You mean for automotive?” he asks in a bored tone. Of course I’m thinking to myself that ‘Yes, wanting it for my rental car did sort of imply automotive’ but I wasn’t gonna take the risk of being a smart ass with this guy.

“Yes,” I repeated, “For my car.”  He looked at me for a second and then pointed a bit further down the store,

“Automotive is that way. Ask one of those guys.” He says dismissively and then walks away.

“Thanks so much!” I told his back with a smile, while thinking ‘what an asshole’ to myself. Ice scrapper in hand, I headed to their shoe section where I again found no boots that met my apparently unusual desires. I want black leather, knee high, two and a half to three inch heels, and with a rounded toe. Why is that so damned hard to find? I HATE the pointed toe boots because I think they are ugly, make my feet look huge, and remind me of the wicked witch’s shoes.

.. ..

After I paid for my ice scrapper, I headed out of Sears and entered the mall to make my way to Dillards, but on my way to Dillards I came across a “Famous Footwear” store and entered it. As I walked in, there was a short and petite young man wearing a name tag who glanced up at me.

“You look gorgeous!” he said in a very enthusiastic and effeminate demeanor. He paused and took a look at my pumps.

“I love those shoes, and in plaid too!” he said.

“Thank you so much!” I told him, blushing at the unexpected warmth of his greeting.

“Now all I need is a set of boots so I have something a bit more appropriate for your weather here.” 

“Let me know if I can help you.” He said with a smile, while waving his hand in the generally direction of the boots. I browsed through them and found a pair that I liked, but they also only had size nines on the shelf. I knew it was probably pointless, but still I went to ask the SA if they might have them in a larger size in stock. As I approached him, he was speaking with another 20 something year old male and I could hear little bits as I approach.

“Honey, I’ve never owned that kind of heel. I like these!” one is saying to the other. Clearly I am not the only male in the store that wears high heels. Oh well, as I had suspected, they did not have the boots I liked in a larger size, and so once again I had struck out. I continued on to Dillards where I was well treated, but again failed to find any that I liked.

.. ..

Giving up on the search for boots for the day, I headed off to the movie theater I had passed in the same mall. As I made my way through the almost empty mall, I passed two or three groups of teenagers, and none paid me the least bit of attention.

.. ..

I watched the new “Twilight” movie, about a young lady that falls in love with a vampire, and then manages to seriously complicate things by latter falling in love with a werewolf – the mortal enemy of vampires. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and found it oddly touching, but I can’t say much more with out being a spoiler. I couldn’t help but grin as I heard at least a dozen women and girls in the theater gasp at the last line at the end of the movie.

.. ..

After the movie I slowly made my way to the hotel, more than a little surprised that there didn’t seem to be much effort to clear the streets in a place that gets so much snow. That’s OK though, I had lived in Denver for a year, and in Bavaria Germany for three, and so I have fairly decent skills for driving in snow. As I entered the hotel lobby, the clerk behind the counter gives me a smile as I stomp the snow off of my pumps. I just shook my head as I spoke to her.

“Important note to self – high heels and ice . . . “ I paused, and then we both finished the sentence together.

“ . . . do not mix”, I said.

“. . . are a bad idea!” she said at the same time with a laugh.

Don’t do the Kimberly thing in Wisconsin

Current mood:tired

    ............

.. ..

Well, on this weeks trip, I only spent about 30% of the time female as I had planned on spending. The night before my trip to Madison Wisconsin, I was getting my things together for the mornings flight when my wife started to get kind of sullen. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was angry, but she was clearly not happy and dropped a few hints.

.. ..

“I’m not feeling good. I’m tired and exhausted, and wish you weren’t going anywhere,” she told me two or three times, at least once with the classic boo boo lip sticking out.

For those of you that don’t speak the “wife” language, or my wife’s language in any case, this was a hint to say “If you spend all night picking out and packing things for your trip, and doing your nails, I’m going to be hurt and angry.” Being the selfish and thoughtless person that I am, I at first blew past this and kept getting my stuff together, but within a minute or two, the guilt got to me.

“OK, no problem. Sorry but I still have to pack what I need for the trip, but I’ll fly the old fashioned way so I don’t have to spend a lot of time getting everything together tonight. Once I get it all packed I’ll come sit down with you.” I told her with a smile. She then assured me that she didn’t want to ruin my flights and it was fine with her if I got ready, but it was clear that her heart really wasn’t in the words and so I stuck to that plan.

.. ..

As I was packing, my wife’s uncle from San Antonio called me to ask where I was headed this week. These are the folks that kept asking me if I was Transgendered until I finally admitted it to them recently. They are fine with it and maybe even a little fascinated by it. As soon as I told her uncle that I was on the way to Madison WI, he got all excited and handed the phone to his wife. Who would have thunk it – that is where she is from!

.. ..

“OK,” she says, “If your going there you need to bring me back some cheese turds!”  What the hell??!!  I must have misunderstood her.

“I’m sorry, you want me to get you what?” I asked her

“Cheese turds!” she repeated. I paused, waiting to see if something will click and this will suddenly start to make some kind of sense. Apparently I paused too long.

“Are you still there?” She asks.

“Yeah, I’m just trying to figure out what the hell ‘Cheese Turds’ are!” I told her.

“Not ‘turds’ you idiot, ‘curds’! Haven’t you ever heard the Christmas song about eating curds and weigh?” she asks, sounding irritated with my dim wittedness.

“OK, curds and not turds – got it. Yes, I’ve heard the song but never did have any idea what ‘curds’ were. What he hell are cheese curds?!” I asked her.  She quickly launched into an explanation, sounding excited the entire time that she was about to get her hands on this apparently delectable cheese product from home. Frankly, I figured there was a fair chance that she was yanking my chain and sending me on the equivalent of a snipe hunt, and so I was a little less than enthusiastic.

“Cheese curds. Right. Got it. No promises, but I’ll try and look for them.” I told her, still wondering if she was yanking my chain.

“Try hell! You better bring me back some!” she said, and then paused for a bit before continuing. “You know, on second thought, forget it – they will never let you in to the state anyway.” she says with the smug attitude that makes it clear that now she is yanking my chain.

OK, I’ll bite. Why wont they let me into the state?” I asked. She listed three reasons, but for the life of me, I can’t recall what they were. The one I do remember is that you have to be a fan of their football team to get into the state, and as sports bores the hell outta me, I wasn’t gonna make it past that part of the entry exam.

“Oh, one more thing.” She says, suddenly sounding serious. I waited but she didn’t continue, and so I had to prompt her.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Don’t do the Kimberly thing there.” She says, with the tone that makes it clear she is offering heart felt and honest advice.

“I do the Kimberly thing pretty much everywhere I go.” I told her. “Not only have I been out in places like Oklahoma city and Little Rock Arkansas where people warned me I was crazy to go, but they treated me better there than in the cities well know for supposedly being more progressive and open minded. What makes you think that Madison would treat me any poorer?” I asked her.

“Well, it’s a college town, and they don’t tolerate that kind of thing there – you just shouldn’t do it.” She warned me. Now I travel to most of the cities in the United States, and I long ago discovered that the area’s around a university or college are almost always the areas where diversity is welcomed and well treated. Still, she was giving me heart felt advice, and I very much appreciated the thoughts behind it. It didn’t change my mind or my plans in any way, but I did appreciate her concern. You know what the funny thing is though? I had nightmares all night long about the trip. I had the Transgender or cross dresser version of the ‘I went to work/school with no clothes on’ kind of dream. Nightmares where I was “dressed” with no wig or makeup, and everyone around me knew what I was and was laughing at me. Nightmares where the airlines refused to let me board the aircraft. Nightmares where the customer took a look at me and started laughing. We are talking about dreams, and they don’t have to make sense. All I know is I had nightmares all night about the trip and so my 5 or 6 hours of sleep felt more like 2 or 3.

.. ..

When I arrived in Madison, my first order of business was to find a grocery store and look for ‘Cheese Turds’ . . . err . . . I mean ‘Cheese Curds’ for my aunt. I stopped at a grocery store and found cheese curds in a variety of flavors. Having no idea what she may have preferred, I gave my aunt a call.

“OK, I’ve found cheese curds! They’ve got Pizza curds, they’ve got Ranch curds, they have this kind of curd and that kind of curd. They have yellow cheddar curd and they have orange cheddar curd. What kind of curd do you want?” I asked her, being sure to exaggerate the word ‘curd’ each time I say it. As I’m speaking to her on the phone, I see a lady standing next to me break out in a huge grin as she hears what I’m saying. Clearly my sarcastic attitude has not gone unnoticed by her. I just glanced at her, pointed at the phone in my hand, and then circled my ear with my finger in the universal “this person is crazy” sign. She busted up laughing and was still grinning as I walked away.

.. ..

.. ..

The next day I completed my repair at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and was back to my hotel at around 2PM. As I considered getting dressed and going out, I still had a feeling of unease left over from the nightmares the previous night, and kept hearing my aunts voice over and over in my head:

“Don’t do the Kimberly thing in Madison!”

‘Well damn!’ I thought to myself. ‘If I give in to this fear, I’ll be back hiding in hotel rooms soon!’. With that thought on my mind, I got ready and forced myself to go out the door. Just for giggles, I decided to try the new hair I had bought at SCC back in September. The last time I’d tried this hair I really hadn’t cared for it much, but this time I devoted a lot more time and effort to it and I think that I managed to make it look a bit more to my style and liking.

.. ..

.. ..

I started off with a movie, and so went to see the new Sherlock Holmes. The young man that sold me my ticket didn’t bat an eye and I’m not sure he even realized what I was. The young lady where I bought the candy and a coke though, most certainly did catch on, and very quickly at that. As the family in front of me moved out of the way, clutching their assorted snacks and with the father herding the children away, the young lady behind the counter took one look at me and her face broke out in to a huge grin. Soon, I was clutching my snacks and walking down the hallway towards my movie. As I approached a group of teenaged boys standing outside another theater, they suddenly got quiet and watched me walk by. The entire time, I continued to hear my aunts words in my head – “Don’t do the Kimberly thing in Wisconsin!”. I honestly have no idea if they realized I was TG, or were just watching an older woman walk by, but my aunts words had made me hyper aware and paranoid, and I felt like everyone was staring at me.

.. ..

As I entered the theater, I stopped dead in my tracks because the place was packed and had very few open seats. Well, damned if I was gonna stop now, so I picked my way into the crowd, took a seat, dug my candy outta my purse, and started throwing “Buncha Crunch” in my mouth and washing it down with coke. It was a fairly good movie, and with some very well done costumes, scenes, and backgrounds of old London, but it is still not going to make my list of favorites. Sherlock Holmes love interest is a bad girl, which of course makes her that much more interesting. She was gorgeous, as you would expect, and she wore a couple of gowns that I would cheerfully kill for the chance to wear. I will never, ever, have the kind of money it would take to purchase a gown of that quality, and I can’t think of any place you would ever have the excuse to wear it in any case, so I suppose everyone is safe. Kimberly wont be killing anyone for gowns today.

.. ..

By the time the movie got out, it was almost 8PM, and so I decided to just return to my hotel and take advantage of the assorted coupons they had given me on account of my Platinum status with them. The waitress was a doll, very friendly and with the good sense to know that a good waitress checks with her guests just often enough to be sure they have the chance to ask for something if they want it, but not so often as to be an annoyance. As I was finishing my dinner, I noticed that my throat was starting to hurt, and my nose was starting to run. Uh oh – not good. It looks like I’m getting a cold. Still, I planned to fly home pretty and so I packed most of my stuff away, leaving out the outfit and makeup that I intended to wear. I guess the joke was on me though, because when I woke up in the morning, I was in no doubt that I now had a cold. I just couldn’t picture spending the day wiping my makeup off over and over as I blew my nose, and so decided I’d be better off flying drab, and I sullenly packed away my skirt and dug out the damned blue jeans.

I was half way out the door and headed for  the airport when I realized that I’d forgotten something! I left my bags in the hall and went back in to my room where I opened the refrigerator and grabbed the bags of Cheese Turds.

Gone to Massachusetts

        

When I landed in Austin last week, I was shocked when my bags came rolling down the baggage claim. The chemical smell wafting up from my bag was overwhelming and choking. It seems that my brand new bottle of nail polish remover had apparently worked its way open and happily soaked everything in my suitcase. That zip lock bag that I had the bottle in just in case of this unhappy event? Yeah, forget about it – it leaked too. Most of my clothing I have bought off of sales racks and at thrift stores. Very few garments I’ve bought were full price or expensive, and so wouldn’t you know it that the only skirt I ever paid more than $100 for was in that bag, and yes, it came out ruined. Everything else seemed to be OK after a washing and so it wasn’t as bad as I might have feared. One hidden surprise though – when I was getting ready for this weeks trip and putting my shoes on, I discovered that the acetone had apparently destroyed the elastic strap for the buckle of my favorite black Mary Janes. Now THAT really pisses me off but what can you do?

 

This week I was off to the Boston area, where I was to repair an obsolete instrument that had been shipped to our factory from Great Britain. When this customer first contacted us, I was terribly excited thinking that as I was the only one in the company capable of working on this instrument, I was probably about to take a trip to GB. I’ve been to Europe many times, but never to GB and so I was sort of looking forward to that . . . right up until my manager shot me down. He made it clear that his region was the United States and so was mine, and he had absolutely no intention of allowing me to travel to GB to do the repair. DAMN HIM!  J So anyway, they worked it out so that the customer shipped his instrument to our service center in Methuen MA and I would travel there to do the repair. The good news? I like coming to this region as I know several people here and enjoy meeting up with the various Sisters groups there.

 

This time I took a couple of what I considered to be fashion risks. As I seem to do fairly often these days, I had bought a long black lace skirt months ago and stowed it away for a while because it was far too heavy and hot for summer. I had also bought a purple, sort of tunic style top that I had feared may be too long on me, but I think my fears were unfounded. When I put the two together I was most pleased with the outfit.

 

 

 

As I arrived at the Delta counter, I could see my favorite lady at the counter and couldn’t help but grin when I noticed that she was dragging her feet so that the guy in front of me would go be handled by someone else, allowing her to take care of me. That’s OK though, because right after inflating my ego like a balloon, she punctured it for me.

“Hey, how are you doing today sir?” she asked with a friendly smile. I had long ago decided I wasn’t going to get worked up about the “Sir” vs. “Ma’am” thing, unless it was done with the intent to be disrespectful, and so I said nothing about it and just smiled back and struck up your typical conversation, none if which do I recall as I write this. I was fortunate enough to get free upgrades to First Class, and so flew in comfort. Having spoken with Kristen of the Sisters of Worcester, I knew that she was going to bring her guitar to their weekly get together and so I also brought mine. Several years ago, making this exact journey on United Airlines, my favorite guitar was destroyed by them. I was flying with Delta this time, but still I was far too frightened to check my guitar and so carried it with me. Unfortunately it was too large to go in the over head for the first leg of my trip and so I had to gate check it, so as I was getting off of the airplane in Detroit to catch my connecting flight, I had to stand there waiting for them to bring it up. After a dozen or so other bags were brought up, at last I see my guitar being carried by a female baggage handler. As she came in the door I waved at her to let her know it was mine and she got a huge grin on her face.

“I just knew it was yours!” she said. We both laughed as I thanked her, but as I walked away it occurred to me that I had missed the chance for an interesting conversation. I should have asked her why she thought it was mine. J

As I was leaving the gate area, a fellow passenger approached me.

“So you’re a musician then?” he stopped and asked me.

“I’m an amateur musician anyway.” I told him. I had the distinct impression that he wanted to talk more with me but was trying to decide if he should or not. He had a very pensive attitude, like someone trying to make a significant decision. I don’t know if that was the case or not though, because as I looked at the monitors to find out where my next flight left from, he slowly walked off. I mentally kicked myself, thinking that he might have really wanted someone to talk to and instead of giving him my full attention, I had focused on my own concerns. That was very thoughtless and inconsiderate of me . . .

 

I found my gate and was getting comfortable while I waited, when a woman sits down across from me and speaks with a British accent.

“What a wonderful traveling companion you have there. What is it?” she asked. I thought it was obvious it was a guitar and so assumed she wanted to know what kind.

“It’s a Takamine.” I told her. She got this blank look on her face.

“I’m sorry. What is it?” she asked again.

“It’s a Takamine.” I repeated, and then seeing that she still had a confused look on her face, I added “It’s a Takamine guitar”

“Oh! I see!” She exclaimed. She said nothing for a few minutes but continued to look at the case.

“Do you play guitar?” I asked her, thinking that maybe she would be interested in playing it for a moment.

“Oh no, not at all. I’m the audience you see.” She told me with a sheepish grin, looking like she was embarrassed that she doesn’t play one herself.

 

I got about five miles south of the Manchester airport in my rental car when my GPS starts to complain. “BEEP” it says, and when I look at the screen there is a message that the battery is low. ‘What the hell?’ I asked myself as I checked the cord connecting it to the car’s cigarette lighter. Everything was firmly connected and yet my GPS was getting no power from the car. “Blurp!” it again says, sounding sad and pitiful, and once again I acknowledge the ‘Battery low’ alarm. This time I had the sense to scan it’s list of future instructions on what exits to take to get to my hotel, and was in the process of trying to commit them to memory when the GPS turned itself off. Fortunately I knew the general area of the hotel and had no worries finding my workplace the next morning, and so not being able to power my GPS wasn’t going to be a show stopping tragedy. Still, I felt traumatized looking at me dead and dark GPS hanging from the windshield, because I have truly come to rely in the thing, and felt like my right arm had just been taken off.

 

The following day was just kind of a “blah” day, and so after I got off of work, I just went to the grocery store to stock my suites kitchen, and then walked through the Burlington Mall in boy mode searching for replacements for my now ruined favorite shoes. I found a pair in Macy’s that I was mildly interested in and as I was examining it, a SA asked me if I needed help. I held the display shoe out to her and asked if she had it in size 10. She assured me that they would and went off after it. When she brought the shoes out, I examined the pair and decided that they really weren’t what I wanted.

“Well, what did you have in mind?” she asks.

“Black Mary Janes, with three to three and half inch heels” I told her.

“Hmmm. . . . how tall is she?” she asked. I looked at her for a moment and then grinned.

“Oh, about this tall!” I told her while placing my flat hand on top of my head. She got a huge smile on her face and held up the shoes I had just rejected.

“Well then, these are gonna make her a lot taller!” she said with a laugh.

“That’s not a problem, I’m long since over worrying about that.” I told her with a wink.

She took me to another pair, but with two inch heels. I shook my head.

“Nope. Not sure why, but those scream ‘old lady’ to me. Is there a happy medium between ‘old lady’ and ‘slut’?” I asked.

“Oh ho, I see!” she said with a laugh.

“Hmmm . . . maybe I should rephrase that! Do you have a happy medium between ‘old lady’ and ‘sexy’?” I asked. She offered a few options but nothing I really thought screamed “buy me” and so I thanked her for her help and left empty handed.  

When Wednesday rolled around, I charged my GPS with my laptop and timed how long it took to go dead on the way to my factory, and then later on the way home. I timed it at about 45 minutes and figured that if I shut it off on the long stretches, this should be enough to get me to the Sisters of Worcester meeting at Club Blu tonight and then back home after.
 

 

 This is a great group of people, every one of them an honestly nice and kind person, and they always welcome me, and anyone else for that matter, with open arms and a hug. If your ever in this area, and don’t look up the Sisters, your being a fool. Well, shortly after I got there, Kristen showed up with her guitar and we started to make some noise. No question in my mind that if she and I had the chance to play together more often, we could be fairly good together. We made it through a few songs together and just generally had a very good time.

 

 

A few hours later it was time to go, and so I made the short and very cold walk to my rental car. As the car was warming up, I fired up the GPS and was immediately greeted with a loud “BEEP!” and “Battery low!” message. ‘Holly smokes’ I thought to myself, ‘I only used it for five minutes on the way here! It can’t be low already!’  The GPS really didn’t care about my opinion of what it’s battery life should be, and so I’d only gone a mile of so from Club Blu when it went dark and turned itself off, leaving me in a city I didn’t know, with an hours drive to another city I didn’t know well. No worries though, because there were a few things I had learned in over a decade of active duty Army service, and one of them was to always be prepared for the worst. With this very thought in mind, I had thrown my laptop in the trunk of the car, and so I pulled over and got it out. After plugging it into my cell phone, I was off and running with mapquest.com on the laptop in the passenger seat. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t efficient, but it did get the job done, and so an hour later I was back at my hotel in Burlington MA.

 

Thursday turned out to be another “blah” day, and all I did after work was surf the net, and push the channel up and down buttons on the TV remote repeatedly, and for hours on end.

  

Friday I finished my work early and was back at the hotel around 1PM, and decided to go shopping for Christmas presents and then to the Sisters of Boston meeting at 8PM. I had already walked the Burlington Mall Tuesday and so knew there were no shoes there that I wanted, and so I headed north to the Rockingham Mall in NH. The traffic was horrible, and it took me over an hour to go the six miles from Burlington to the I93 / I95 interchange. By the time I got past that, I was a basket case and mentally already almost prepared to call it a night. As I pulled in to the parking lot for the Rockingham mall, I knew I had done something wrong, because I had been there before and recalled it as being a fairly large and state of the art mall, and yet I was looking at your typical and small strip mall in front of me. I was just starting to get irritated with myself for not checking out the mall location a bit better before heading out for it, when one of the stores in the little strip mall caught my eye – Saks Fifth Avenue  “Off Broadway shoe store”. Hmmm . . . as long as I’m here, this is worth a quick look see! I walked up and down each isle but didn’t see anything that I just had to have and so was about to leave when I noted a sale rack and went to look. On it, I found a pair of Kalvin Klein Mary Janes, with 3.5 to 4 inch stilettos. They normally sold for over $100 but were now on sale for $55. I’ve never cared even a little tiny bit about name brands on anything I buy, and I couldn’t care less that they were Kalvin Klein, but when I tried them on I was instantly sold. They were a touch higher than I wanted, but were remarkably comfortable, and so I snatched them.

“Would you like a gift receipt to go with that?” the SA asks me.

“No ma’am, I live in central Texas and so a trip to return them would be a bit out of the question.” I told her.

“Not to mention you wouldn’t want to come back to the cold!” she added with a small laugh as she rang them up. I got back in the car and tried to puzzle out where I had gone wrong, as this clearly was not the mall that I remember from prior trips here. I turned on my crippled GPS and searched for “Macy’s” figuring that there was a Macy’s at pretty much every mall, and so if I was close it should tell me. Surprise, surprise, the huge mall I recalled was only about 0.3 miles from me, and so off I went.

My primary intent for this shopping trip was to get a “Ariel” doll from “The Little Mermaid” for my daughter. My wife had told me that this is something she had wanted, along with the male figure so they could ‘go on dates’. My mistake was entering the mall through Macy’s though, and so on my way through Macy’s to the Disney store, I had to walk past the shoe department. There are limits to my self control, and so I stopped to at least look in their sales rack, and was stunned at what I found. I found a killer pair of Mary Janes in a plaid cloth, priced at $70 and with a “Take 75% off marked price” sticker on them. I did some rough math in my head and figured that this meant that these awesome $70 shoes were now selling for around $15! I snatched it up and took it to the counter where the SA range it up at around $40.

“Hold on now!” I told her. “I know my math sucks, but it’s still good enough to guesstimate that %75 off of $70 is somewhere in the  ball park of $15, NOT $40.” She got this real surprised look on her face and started examining the price tag and the sale sticker.

“Your right!” she said. “It must have been miss-marked or else someone moved the sales sticker.”

“So you think someone was playing with the sales stickers and moved it to this pair? I asked her.

“Yeah, it happens all of the time!” she said while shaking her head. I thought about it for a moment and then decided to do the right thing.

“Well, if you think someone did that to you then I wont hold you to the price, but I also don’t care to buy them then. If you were gonna practically give them to me I was gonna grab em, but I don’t want them for $40.” I told her.

“Oh no, not at all!” she said with a huge smile. “That’s what they are marked at, and that is what we are going to charge you!”  She then took out a calculator and figured the cost at around $17 and shook her head as she started ringing it up and modifying the discount.

“Are you sure?” I asked her, not wanting to take advantage of something caused by someone that had clearly intended to steal from the store. “This is your last chance. If you think a customer swapped that sales sticker to take advantage of you, I wont make a fuss or hold you to that price.”

“Nope – that’s what it is marked and that’s what we are gonna charge you. Hold on a moment – I have to call security so they don’t think that I am trying to steal from them by modifying the discount.” She said with a laugh. I sat there wondering if she wasn’t really calling security to come get me, thinking that maybe I was the one that played with the stickers, but I heard her entire conversation to them describing the situation. Shortly I had a very colorful pair of awesome $70 shoes for $15 and was on my way to the Disney store where I bought three Barbie doll style Disney characters for my daughter.

 

 

 

Once again in my car, I headed south to go to the Sisters of Boston meeting at a hotel in Peabody. I tried to exit I93 to I95 and discovered that it was STILL a parking lot, with a huge line of cars all fighting each other to get where they wanted to go, and the line wasn’t moving at all. As far as you could see were lines of stopped cars moving perhaps one car length every two or three minutes. I decided to leave that stalled line and just travel a bit further south and work my way back to the highway a bit further East. After hunting and pecking my way around the unfamiliar city with my dead GPS, I did eventually find my way to the meeting, and what a gathering it turned out to be! Not only was it the standard Sisters of Boston (SOB) meeting, but they were sort of celebrating both Christmas and Ashley’s birthday. Ashley is the founder of  SOB, she’s a real looker, and a very bold and brave TG that sort of sets the tone for the group.

 

 

It turns out that we set a new record for the group, with an all time high attendance of 35 people! So many familiar faces in the crowd. People I have now known for half a decade or more, to include one of my very favorite people, Sally. I have a soft spot for Sally for several reasons. She and I have quite a bit in common, like many of the same things, have similar careers, and just get along great. In addition, it was Sally years ago that went out of her way to respond to me on a trip to Boston when I was all alone, inviting me to join with her and the sisters.

 

 

From that time forward, I’ve loved going to that area for the friendly and wonderful folks that live there. In fact, it may well have been that event years ago that kicked off my little hobby of meeting other TG’s when I travel.

We took up a collection for the Toys for Tots, and in addition to the $100 they had already collected before the meeting, we came up with another $150, giving us a total of $250 to donate. Believe it or not, a retired Marine came to our meeting to collect the donation, and he was a real trooper.



I had to giggle at the thought that he was the only Marine brave enough to come to this sort of meeting to collect the fund. He took it very well, laughing when he found himself surrounded by TG’s that towered over him because he was fairly short, and we were all wearing heels. He joked that he needed a box or something to stand on to even the playing field a bit. In the end, he seemed genuinely touched by the donation and thanked us all. It was a fine evening, among good people, with many smiles and lots of laughter.

 

Saturday morning I got ready for the flight home and headed to the Manchester Airport where no one batted too much of an eye at me. As I approached the TSA screening area, I saw two TSA agents standing there grinning at me. As I handed the first my ID and ticket, the second glances at my guitar and then looks up at me.

“How well do you play that thing?” he asked.

“Oh, fair to middling I guess.” I responded.

“Fair huh? Can you play ‘Clasiical Gas’?”  he askes me.

“I can play the very beginning of it, but not the whole thing.” I told him.

“Still, even the beginning means you must be fairly good.” He tells me with a smile.

“I just play the little I know, and then stop and act like I just got bored with it!” I told him, and they both laughed.

“Hmm. . . do YOU know how to play Classical Gas?” I asked him. “If you do, you can show me!”

“No, hell no I can’t play it! I don’t play guitar at all!” he said as the other agent returns my ticket and ID. I was reading a book as the flight from Manchester to Atlanta took off, and is they typically do, they turned off the cabin lights, plunging my book and I into darkness. Before I could react, I heard a click and my book was suddenly brilliantly lit! I glanced over and the gentleman sitting next to me had just turned my light on for me. I thanked him and gave him my very best smile.

 

On my flight from Atlanta to Austin I was once again fortunate enough to get a free upgrade to first class AND this plane had storage bins large enough to hold my guitar and so I carried it on with me. As I prepared to put it in the over head bin, one of the flight attendants stopped me.

“Look, I’m sorry but we can’t let you take the entire over head bin space in first class. Would you mind putting it a bit further down the plane and in the coach section?” he asks me.

“Honestly? I’d rather not because then your going to have me fighting to get back to my guitar against 100 passengers all trying to get off this plane when we arrive.” I told him. I wasn’t getting pissy or uppity with him, I was just telling him why I hated the idea. He gave me ‘what can I do?’ look.

“Well, we can gate check it then. They’ll put it in the hold last and take it off first?” he offers. It’s almost 8PM, I’ve been traveling all day, and am just too damn tired to argue about it.

“All right, but don’t you guys pull a United Airlines on me and ruin my guitar!” I scolded him, with a smile on my face to show him that I was teasing.

“Well, I don’t know what United Airlines did to you, but we’ll take care of your guitar for you!” he promised as he carried my instrument away.

Soon I see a young man, probably in his early thirties walking on the airplane and looking at the seat next to me. He sort of points to the window seat next to me to let me know that I need to get up and let him in, and I see him smile and shake his head as he contemplates sitting next to a cross dresser. We both get comfortably seated and he sits back with his eyes closed, clearly intending to go to sleep, when suddenly a child in the first class section starts to cry and scream. My seat mate literally starts to laugh, still shaking his head from side - to side, clearly unable to believe his lick this flight – sitting next to a cross dresser and with a screaming child only a seat or two away. Well, look at the bright side – he’s going to have a great story to tell his friends.

 

About 20 minutes in to the flight, the flight attendant walks up and kneels besides my seat to talk to me.

“They can just hold their coats – I put your guitar in the coat closet instead of checking it.” He tells me in a stage whisper. I was so touched by this gesture that I almost teared up.

“Your awesome! Thank you so much!” I told him. Then I sat back and relaxed, knowing that my beautiful guitar was safe and warm. The world really does have a lot of decent and kind people in it you know?

Back to Detroit

Current mood:cold

    

 

You know, it’s gotten so that there is almost no point to blogging about my trips anymore. It seems that every place I go, people are so used to seeing me that nothing terribly amusing or interesting seems to happen anymore!

 

I had the usual start to my travel day, where I get my daughter off to school and then get myself ready. It had been kind of wet and drizzling in the Austin area for several days and this Tuesday morning was no different. Still, it was just kind of misting and not really raining, and so as has become my habit, I looked for a place that might make a nice back ground for some pics.  The little stream I found is probably dry as a bone most of the year, but due to all of the recent rain, it was a little raging torrent. Even with the unusual amount of water in it, to see it in person was still not terribly impressive, but I’ve learned that scenes like it can often still make fairly nice pics. So 40 degrees out, a drizzling mist, and there’s a stupid person standing outside taking pictures of herself.

 

 

 

I’ve probably explained this before, but I’m bored so I’ll do it again. Somewhere around 5 years ago I was getting bummed out and depressed, and would often pull out the only two or three pics that existed of me at the time so that I could remind myself of what I can be. I would look at them and think to myself “See, you weren’t always ugly – you have been pretty before and probably will again.”  I was looking at these old pics and thinking that at the time I hadn’t thought I was terribly attractive, but now I wished I had taken more pictures for the memories. It would have been nice to have more pictures from a time before the wrinkles found me, before the dark circles appeared under my eyes – before I had gotten old. It occurred to me that someday when I was 20 or 30 years older, I might well look back on today and think the same things – “Why the hell didn’t you take a few more pics before it was too late?” Well, I trotted out and bought a digital camera and started snapping pics each time I went out. In the two or three years that followed, I went from having four pictures to a couple of thousand! I guess I had made a habit or hobby out of it, and as with most things I do, I took it to the extreme. Now I find myself embarrassed when I see how many pics I have collected. It screams “Ego out of control here!” and yet that really is not the case. It’s more the rather pathetic effort of someone who see’s youth slipping away at an alarming rate trying to grab and grasp at it, desperately trying to salvage what little is left. Kind of sad huh?

 

I was walking from the Airport parking garage to the check in area, wearing my backpack and pulling my suitcase in one hand and my tool box with the other, when suddenly I hear this horrible squealing sound and my 50 Lb tool box suddenly feels like an anchor. ‘No problem’ I think to myself ‘the wheel has just been jammed by a rock.”  I stopped and pushed the tool box backwards to dislodge what ever it is, and then continue on my walk. That is, I continued for about 20 feet until the squealing sound returns, this time with a much deeper tone, and my box feels like it’s been nailed to the ground. This time I stop to inspect it and discover there is nothing jamming the wheel – the bearings are shot! One more time I manage to get the wheel turning, but again it only lasts for 20 or 30 feet before freezing up again, so I pretty much dragged it the remaining way to the airlines counter, leaving a dark streak behind me where the little wheel is being ground flat.

 

So as I checked in with US Airways, I received an ambivalent reception from the lady behind the counter. She is an attractive woman, I think of middle east decent, and she looked at me with out a smile or a frown – pretty much no emotion at all.

“Well, we haven’t seen you here for a while. Not flying as often?” she says

“Oh I’m flying quite a bit, but they put me on what ever airline is cheapest so I’ve had to fly with your competition. Good news though – today YOU must have been the best deal!” I replied with a smile to show her I was sort of teasing. She still didn’t smile, and in fact didn’t smile the entire time I was there. It’s a shame – she is probably stunning when she smiles.

 

In Detroit I got my bags and found that the wheel on my tool box would roll for a few feet, freeze up solid for a few feet, roll for a few feet. . . .  Considering the thumping sound it made due to the flat spot it had now worn in the wheel, this made my moving tool box the loudest thing in the Detroit airport and every where I went I had people turning to look at me with a “What the hell is that awful racket?!” look on their faces.

 

Thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . . SQUEAL   SSS QQQ UUU EE AL . . .  thump. . . thump - All the way to the rental car shuttle stop. Standing there waiting for the shuttle, I was hot from embarrassment and the effort of dragging my bags, and the cool air felt great. I glanced up to see a woman my own age also waiting, and she is staring at me.

 

“Aren’t you cold? Didn’t you bring a coat?” She asks me. I almost laughed outright thinking to myself ‘Why is everyone so concerned with my wearing a coat these days?’, but I realized that she wouldn’t get the joke.

“I think the cold feels great, at least for a little while.” I replied, then after thinking for a second I continued “Of course it depends on how little that while is!”  We both laughed for a moment, and then continued to wait for the shuttle bus. Wait . . . and wait . . and wait. . .

About 10 minutes later, after I had cooled down from my walk, I looked at her and laughed.

“And that is long enough!” I told her and reached in to my bag for my coat as she laughed again.

 

As I was leaving the Avis lot with the car, the guard at the gate starts to give me the standard speech.

“And will you be needing a map . . . “ he starts to say, then thinks better of it and smiles. “Ah hell, you’re here all of the time, you know where you going by now don’t ya’?” he says with a laugh.

 

The next day was the typical work day for me and I wasn’t back to my hotel until around 4:30 PM. Good news! While I was fixing my customers instruments, I also managed to get a bit of oil for my tool box’s wheel and got it to roll again. Of course the wheel now has a huge flat spot on it, and the bearings are shot to hell, so it’s not gonna last long. It was damn cold to someone used to Austin weather as I drove to the hotel and the wind was just howling and shoving the car back and forth. I made up my mind pretty quick that I wasn’t going anywhere once I got in to my nice warm hotel room. I also decided that I was gonna fly home drab due to the cold and wind, but the more I thought about it, the smarter I thought it would be to go pretty. My boy coat is just a blue jean coat – NOT made for Detroit winters. My girl coat on the other hand, is a long, thick, and heavy affair that is often too heavy and warm for me to carry or wear. The way I saw it, that meant that if I really wanted to be warm, I ought to fly pretty, and so I did!

 

Dropping the car off at Avis, the bus driver came and grabbed my tool box for me and went way out of his way to chat with me as we sat on the bus waiting for others. I kind of like dealing with the Avis folks in Detroit. There is a minor tone of “picking on the crossdresser” there, but it’s playful and friendly, not mean. I would much rather have people deal with me by bullshitting that way rather than ignore me - Bull shitting is a lot more fun. Once the rental car shuttle dropped me off at the airport, I grabbed my bags and started off on the walk to the US Airways counter, with everyone again turning to watch me.

“Thump. . . thump . .  thump . . . thump . . . thump. .  thump . . . thump . . . thump” went the tool box, announcing my passage to all in the airport . . .