What is it about the shoes?!

Well hell, there really isn’t much to say from the last couple of weeks. Been pretty busy, but very little of it had to do with this part of my life.

I had to make a long and nerve wracking service call to Manassas VA, but I couldn’t leave the house dressed because my wonderful Mother-in-law was staying with us. For those of you that haven’t managed to keep up on every little aspect of my life, my mother-in-law stayed with us a couple of years ago, and while my wife and I were both at work, she apparently went snooping through the house. I still have no idea at all what she found or saw, but she was kind enough to tell everyone that mattered in my wife’s family that I am a cross dresser. My wife’s aunt and uncle in San Antonio were kind enough to actually tell me this and it explained quite a few things, for example, why the husband of my wife’s sister wont stay in the same room with me. Anyway, let’s just say that for carelessly and thoughtlessly hurting my wife, she is WAY down there on my favorite person list.

When I arrived in Manassas, it turns out that my customer was no where even close to being ready for me to be there, despite the fact that they were the ones that demanded they needed me right then. They had taken one of our machines that was idle apart to farm out a lot of it’s components to other systems that had broken down over the years. Now that they had it in pieces, half of which were missing, they wanted me to come put Humpty Dumpty back together again and make it work. To really complicate things, this is normally a very reliable machine, and so I work on it very rarely, and this means that I have to pretty much learn the thing from scratch every time I go work on one. Anyway, I arrived to try and put the thing back together and make it functional again just to find out that they didn’t have any of the plumbing or power connected to it! It’s really hard to repair, setup, and test a complex machine when it has none of the gasses, water, and power that it requires to operate, and so I wound up spending an entire week unable to do much work on it until they got their end of things done.

Does this mean that Kimberly got to spend a lot of time out and about? Nope! Instead I spent that week taking an online OSHA course to get a certificate that another customer of ours is demanding we have in order to work in their fab. When I wasn’t working on that OSHA course, I was reading the manuals and training materials that I had for the machine that I was here to put back together so that I would hopefully have a clue when it came time for me to get my hands on the thing. After a week of late nights studying OSHA and the machine I was there to repair, I suddenly found my self burned out on a Sunday morning and decided it was time for Kim to get out of the hotel for a bit.

I recently bought this gorgeous 100% silk dress on closeout sale without trying it on and I was horribly disappointed to discover that it was just a hair too tight around the chest area. I probably could get away with wearing it, but if I did, I would spend the entire time wondering if I looked like some desperate old woman trying to look “sexy” by wearing a dress that was clearly too small. In the end, I decided that I just cant do it, and so I took a picture of it so that I can put it on Ebay.

The next dress I tried on was one I just got from JC Penny’s and I was also going to put it on ebay, but changed my mind after I saw it on. I was gonna get rid of it because I thought it was just too short, but the more I looked at the photo, the more I thought it looked terrific, and so it is a keeper!

Well, the short dress might be a keeper, but my confidence wasn’t all of that high today and so I really didn’t want to be out and about in something that was likely to attract that much attention. Instead, I chose a skirt and top for a bit more of a casual look. I had brought three wigs with me, and spent an hour bouncing back and forth between them, absolutely convinced that they all looked terrible no matter what I did with them. In the end, I took the plunge and went with my short flippy hair. It makes me look older, but at least I feel reasonably confident in it.

I started off by going . . . where else . . . to the mall. Bargain shopping has become something of a hobby for me, with my hitting all of the department stores and raiding the closeout and 75% off sales racks looking for treasures. One of the up sides of being a cross dresser is that I like many of the things that your average woman apparently doesn’t, and so surprisingly often I find things that I think are awesome on closeout racks being almost given away. The sky was dark and ominous as I made my way from my rental car and into Macy’s. No rain yet but it was clearly about to seriously unload on the world. I briefly considered heading back to the hotel before I got caught in a downpour, but I was pretty sure that if I spent one more uninterrupted day in that hotel room I was gonna shoot myself in the head. As I entered Macy’s, the door hadn’t even finished closing behind me when a sales associate appeared in front of me.

“Can I help you with anything?” She asked very nicely and with a friendly smile.

“Sure! Where can I find shoes?” I asked her with a grin, and why not? Doesn’t everyone want to go shoe shopping?

“Are you looking for men’s shoes or women’s?” she asked me. I hesitate a moment trying to figure out if she had just slammed me, or if that was a sincere question. She seemed honestly nice and friendly, so I didn’t think that it was a not so subtle way of saying “I know you’re a guy”

“Women’s please.” I replied, and then made my way in the pointed direction.

Well, I made my way through the entire Manassas Mall and didn’t find a single thing that I just couldn’t pass up. The bad news is that I also felt my confidence flagging with just about every step, and by the time I got back to the Macy’s door where I had entered the mall, I was really ready to get back out to the car where I could relax. It wasn’t gonna be quite that easy though, because the rain had decided that this was a good time to wash the world, and it was coming down with impressive power. It was raining so hard that when it hit the pavement it was sending spray back up into the air a good foot or more. I had brought my umbrella with me, but with rain and wind that hard, it wasn’t going to do me much good. Instead, I took one of several chairs by the door and decided to wait for it to at least slow down a bit before heading out in to it. I’d been sitting there for maybe five minutes when an older couple came up and reached the same conclusion that I had. The woman looked at me, smiled, and then turned to speak to her husband.

“I think this young lady has the right idea. How about we just take a seat and wait for a bit?” she asked him.

“Oh I dunno, I can go get the car and bring at around for you.” He said doubtfully while staring out of the glass door at the heavy rain.

“No, no – I know you! You will run and you might slip and fall. Let’s just take a seat and wait for a while.”

Well apparently this was a grand idea, because in moments there were about a dozen people all gathered at the door and watching the rain pound the snot outta the pavement. After about 15 minutes it finally slowed enough that my desire to get away from the crowd at the door exceeded my desire for dry feet, and so out into the thunder storm I went.

I have no idea why my self confidence was so low, but I returned to my hotel fully intending to take a shower and go back to being a guy, but I just hated the idea of having spent two hours to get ready, just to take it all off after only an hour. I looked in the mirror and thought that I actually looked pretty decent, but I just didn’t feel confident. Still, I had spent two hours getting ready and I’ll be damned if I was gonna let it all go to waste, so I headed out to the movie theater to see “8 MM”.

I guess a lot of people wanted to pass their wet Sunday watching movies because the place was absolutely packed and I had to park way to hell and gone out in the parking lot and make a hike up to the counter. As I approached the door, there were two teenaged girls wearing identical burnt orange shirts standing outside chatting, and they both stopped talking to watch me approach. As I got within three or four feet of them I gave them a great big smile and then watched their reflection in the glass doors as they turned to watch me walk past. When I got to the ticket counter, I found myself face to face with a young lady with absolutely awesome eyes and very elaborate eye shadow and eye liner applied. I got the usual reaction from her that I seem to get from most young women – a moment of confusion while her mind tried to figure out what it was about me that just wasn’t “quite right”, and then a huge grin as she figured it out. As I handed over my money and she prepared my tickets, I kept trying to figure out exactly how she had done her eye makeup, but ultimately I gave up and just decided to appreciate the fact that her eyes were incredible. The very thought of getting into another line of people for soda and candy just made my stomach do flip-flops, and so I just headed directly into the theater.

It looked as though my timing was just right, because just as I was taking my seat, the lights dimmed and the previews started. Soaring music began to fill the theater and a line of bright and flashing stars started to progress across the screen and everyone in the theater leaned forward in anticipation . . .  and then everything stopped. The music stopped and the dancing stars froze mid way across the screen, halted dead in their tracks. We all just kept watching the screen, convinced that any moment now the stars would resume their interrupted journey, but it was in vain – the stars refused to move and the music refused to play. In about five minutes people started to get annoyed and loud, and at least half a dozen people walked out, presumably with the goal of rounding up an employee to resolve the issue. About ten minutes after the screen froze, a young woman with a radio and a flashlight entered the theater and we could hear her talking to someone over the radio about the frozen movie.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry, but there appears to be a glitch of some sort and we have someone looking at the projector right now. It should only be a moment.” She announced to the crowd.

The stars disappeared and the screen went dark. The house lights came up, then dimmed, then came up, and then dimmed again, but still no movie.

“Well, it looks like the problem is more serious than we thought, but we have a technician on the way right now to look at it. We will have the movie started shortly, and I will also meet each and every one of you after the movie to give you a free ticket to the movie of your choice. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.” The young lady with the flashlight loudly told us. Of course you could hardly hear her apology at the end because the crowd was applauding and shouting their approval at the idea of free tickets to another movie.

The movie was all right. Not awesome, but not bad, and clearly intended for the youngsters, but I knew that when I went in to it. It surprised and impressed me by focusing far more on the emotional interactions between the people than it did on the “monster movie” aspects of the film. I would say that it is worth seeing, but you should probably wait to see it on video instead of paying for the theater experience. As I was leaving the theater after the movie, I felt like a big, ugly, old cross dresser, and not at all like a woman, and so I all but ran for my rental car with out even considering sticking around to redeem my free movie ticket. Only four to five hours after spending two hours of effort to try and look like a woman, I was in the shower washing it all off, and for the very first time in almost a decade, I seriously considered purging – throwing away all of my female things. Don’t panic folks - I only considered it, I didn’t do it.

After my shower I sat at the desk in front of my laptop just staring at it. When I found myself seriously considering taking my two thousand dollar company laptop and heaving it against the wall, I decided that maybe I would go and see that free movie after all. Back in boy mode I was once again at the theater, and once again face to face with the young woman with the awesome eyes, and this time I decided to tell her so.

“You know I have to tell you, you have really awesome eyes.”

“Thank you.” She said with a smile as she handed me my tickets. Unless I miss my guess, she is probably told that a lot and has long since stopped being surprised by that compliment.

The next movie I saw was the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” and it was a good deal of fun. I wont spoil the movie for you, but let’s just say that I’m never gonna watch “The Little Mermaid” in quite the same way again.

A little bit at a time, my customer was managing to get the required electrical, water, and gasses that my machine required plumbed to it, and so I was able to do a little work on it Monday, and by Tuesday, my work was able to start in earnest. No great surprise to me, but Tuesday morning when my machine at last had all of the things that were required for it to operate, I found that it had many problems, and I was not able to make it work correctly. I spent the next two days pounding my head against it with no success, and by Wednesday night, with my face red with shame, I was sending emails to my customer and my manager letting them know that I had failed to find the root causes and resolve all of the issues, and that we were probably going to have to bring someone from our factory in Berlin over to pick up my slack. That was a pretty bad moment and day for me, because in the 16 years that I have worked for this company, I have never failed to fix an instrument just because I couldn’t figure out what the root cause of the failure was. I have failed to fix instruments because they required work that can only be performed at the factory, but never because I wasn’t smart enough to figure out what the problem was.

I went to bed that night feeling horribly depressed and ashamed of myself. I’d been laying in bed for about an hour, listening to people in the hallways, slamming doors, and the sounds of someone moving around in the room above me, when my eyes flew open – I had it! I hadn’t even realized that I was thinking about it, but just like that and completely unbidden, the solution to my customers failing instrument had come to me!

The following morning I charged into my customer fab (factory) and just about ran to my machine where I adjusted one stupid little gas regulator from the low end of our spec (75 PSI) up to the high end of our spec (85 PSI). I moved around to the front where the control panel is located and initiated the start-up process, and all but held my breath while everything began to come on line. I’m not sure, but I think I actually shouted “YES!” at the top of my lungs when the thing started to function flawlessly! At least it was operating flawlessly right up until the Ozone safety monitor started to howl at me, warning me that my machine was leaking a HUGE amount of Ozone inside of its cabinet, and if I didn’t shut it down, things and people were going to start getting hurt. I was still laughing though, because leaks I can find and address, and now there was no question that I was going to go home leaving a working machine behind me and a happy customer.

By about 3PM on Thursday, my customer and I were both satisfied with the performance of the machine, and I found myself sitting in a very hot rental car in the customers parking lot trying to decide what to do with the rest of my afternoon. There wasn’t enough time to get ready and to do anything pretty, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of returning to the hotel room where I’d spent the vast majority of the last two weeks cooped up. In the end I decided to indulge my bargain hunting hobby and raid the sales racks at all of the local department stores that weren’t in the mall that I had already raided. I went to Sears, Marshalls, Ross, and at last found myself at the Burlington Coat Factory. I found three tops selling for $10 or less each and then found a cute light green lace top on the clearance rack. It didn’t have a price tag on it, and I figured that might be a problem, but I decided to take it to the counter with me anyway. I got into one of the two check out lines, and when it was my turn, I laid the top in front of the young lady.

“This was on the clearance rack in the back of the store, but it doesn’t have a price tag on it. Does this mean I don’t gitta take it home?” I asked her while batting my eyes at her. “Not a problem! I’ll just look it up!” she told me after stopped laughing. She started entering a lot of numbers into her PC off of the tag, but it was in vain – the machine kept coming back empty handed.

“Uh oh, this doesn’t look good for the home team!” I told her with a grin. She told me not to worry about it, and then called a manager over who then trotted off to see if she could find the same top with a price tag still on it, or one that was at least a lot like it. We stood there waiting for at least five minutes, which is a long time when you have a long line of people glaring at you for holding them up. Not exactly an ideal situation if you’re a guy buying several womens tops and you had really wanted to stay under the radar.

“You know, I like that top, but I’m not sure I want it that bad!” I told her at last.

“No problem!” she said, and was just starting to set the cute little green top aside when the manager finally showed up, holding a top that was similar but not quite the same as the one I had wanted to buy.

“OK, just sell it to him for the same price as this one.” The out of breath manager told the cashier as she was handing the garment and its tag to her. I was pleased to see that it was also less than $10 and then I noticed that I really kind of liked the top that the manger had brought.

“You know what? I like that one too and I can’t believe that I missed it when I was shopping. Why don’t you go ahead and chuck that one in the bag too?!” I told her with a wink.

Friday, almost two full weeks after leaving my wife and children behind, it was finally time to head back home. I spent a lot of time trying to decide if I should fly home as Matt or as Kim. My confidence has been exceedingly low lately and that can be a problem if your gonna enter the airline system. Once you take the plunge and start your trip, your pretty much committed, because once you leave the hotel there isn’t much you can do if you suddenly decide “Gee, I’m not having fun and wish I hadn’t done this.” On the other hand, every time I have taken a flight as Matt that I could have taken as Kim, I spend the entire day beating myself up, and hating myself every time I see a woman in an outfit I like. It seems like my choices were between spending the day anxious and self conscious as Kim or angry and jealous as Matt. The more I thought on it, the more I figured it was a  “get back on the horse and ride” kind of thing, and so I started getting ready to go as Kim.

The dress I decided to wear was another thrift store find. What tickled the hell outta me was that I paid about $10 for it at the thrift store and had just seen the same dress on sale at either Marshalls or Ross for over $30 the day before. As I got dressed I realized that this dress was just about as short as the one that I had almost put up on Ebay for being too short. To hell with that though, because I liked the darn thing! When it came time to choose and prepare my hair, I pretty much had a mental break down. I brought three wigs with me – my short flippy hair, my long all time favorite that is just about worn out, and the new one I had just bought to replace it. The short one looked OK, but I felt kind of old looking. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get either of the two long ones to look good. My all time favorite is so old and worn, that it doesn’t really fit well anymore, and at the slightest breeze the tabs on the side would be clearly obvious. The new long one just looked like hell no matter what I did with it. I couldn’t get it to style anywhere close to the way I wanted it, and it is full of tight little curls that scream “I’m a wig” to all that see it. I cycled through each of the wigs over and over, repeatedly standing in front if the mirror and desperately trying to make them presentable, until I hit the point where I had to make the choice and leave or miss my plane. I thought I looked like an old lady, but I decided to stick with the short one. It might make me look old, but at least it looked real.

As you enter the Washington-Dulles airport, there is a long ramp that you walk down that takes you from where the rental car shuttle drops you off to where the escalators are that take you up to ticket counters. I was about mid way down that ramp, hauling my rolling tool box and my large suitcase behind me, when a woman came up from behind me and leaned in towards me as she walked by.

“That’s a great dress!” she told me in kind of a conspiratorial way as if we were sharing a secret. I laughed and thanked her, but she never slowed down - she just kept walking.

I think that I might have been the first TG that the TSA inspector checking tickets had ever seen, because he looked at me and my ID pretty long and hard before scrawling his approval across my ticket. One thing for sure, there was no fear this time of my being frisked for wearing a skirt or dress that was too long! After the guy that checks your ticket waves you through, you still have to get into another line that goes through the metal detector or full body scanner. It was kind of a luck of the draw thing whether you were going to have to go through the full body scanner or just the metal detector, and I was a bit relieved when I was waved through the metal detector line. I was relieved because every time I’ve gone through the full body scanner I’ve been stopped and had my chest patted down because of my breast forms. I would really rather not have he hassle. When I got up to the metal detector, there was a large African American TSA inspector running it and she waved me through with a smile. I walked through and then joined yet another line of people waiting at the X-ray machines output for their bags to come through. There was some idiot standing there and he left his bins on the X-ray belt while he was slowly taking each of the items out and putting them away. With all of his bins blocking the belt, no one else behind him could get their things. Six or seven of us stood there in line watching him very slowly reach in and pick up his watch and put it on. Then at the pace of a glacier he picked up his belt and slowly put it on, picked up his wallet and put it away, picked up one shoe and slowly leaned down to put it on. The guy running the machine had finally decided that he had enough and started the belt running again, forcing the slow poke to pick up his bin and move to the countless benches that they provide for people to put it all away. I was just about to reach up and grab my things to carry them off and put them on when I realized that the female TSA guard was trying to get my attention.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?” she called two or three times before I realized that it was me she was calling to. Kind of wondering what I might have done wrong, I looked up at her.

“Yes ma’am?” I asked.

“How high are those heels? About five inches?”

“No, they aren’t that high!” I replied, relieved that she didn’t want anything official to do with me. “I think they are three and half inches.”

“They are so cute! I noticed you while you were standing in line and all I could think of was how much I liked them!”

“Well thank you! They are kind of cute aren’t they?” I told her. “I got ‘em at JC Penny’s a while back on clearance.”

“Yeah, but don’t they hurt your feet?”

“Well . . .  maybe just a little bit!” I told her with a laugh while holding up my thumb and forefinger up and about half an inch apart.

No one paid me the slightest bit of attention on the flight, but when it landed in Austin and I was making my way up the jet bridge, the Delta customer service rep that had operated the jet bridge stopped me as I was walking by.

“I LOVE your shoes!” she told me. I couldn’t help myself – I just started to laugh.

“Well thank you. You know, I’m getting that quite a lot today?!”

“I’ll bet you do!” she said with a laugh.

A walk through kimberly's closet on the way to Chicago

I was squeezing my way in and out of my tightly packed closet looking for all of the odds and ends I needed for packing for my three day trip to the Chicago area when it struck me just how wrong most people were regarding my closet and wardrobe. I often get comments along the lines of “You must have a fantastic closet!” and “Wow, your closet must be huge!”. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth as in reality I have a tiny closet that is packed to the point of being ready to go critical and explode. If this baby goes, it’s gonna hurt someone! I often pick on my wife and poke fun at myself when it comes to our respective closets, because when we moved in, I gave her the large walk-in closet.

“Let me get this straight dear! I love beautiful clothing and have to maintain two entire wardrobes, and yet you get the walk in closet? Do you see something wrong with that picture?!” I ask her every so often. Every time I poke her with that stick, she just gives me that innocent look with a couple of slow blinks and says “Why no, no I don’t see anything wrong with that at all!”

My closet is so packed that even I have trouble getting in to it and I am not all that large. My wife wont even try to get in to it anymore to hang my guy clothes after she washes them. When you open the door, the first thing you see is the shoe rack hanging from the inside of the door. It’s not a huge collection, but it’s big enough to restrict your entry into the closet itself. Off on your right is a shelf up high littered with wigs and other odds and ends. Under that shelf is a hanger bar that stretches the entire depth of the closet. This is the small portion dedicated to Matt’s clothing, and I really resent the hell outta his taking up such valuable real-estate that could have gone to things so much prettier. Under that rail is another rail where I have the majority of my tops. Now if you face the back of the closet, you find another shelf up high. This is the “it’s outta season” and “It doesn’t fit but I can’t bear the thought of throwing it out” shelf. Under that is a hanger rail where I keep the dresses and skirts. I’ve had to replace that rail recently because the sheer weight of all of my skirts tore it’s mounting hardware outta the wall, so I had to replace all of that and install a brace in the middle to help support the weight. At first glance, it might not look too overwhelming, but as you take a closer look you may realize that each of the skirt hangers is actually five hangers in one. These hangers have only one hook for the hanger bar, but have five sets of clamps one atop the other, allowing me to hang five skirts in the space normally required for one. I haven’t counted all of my skirts and I don’t think I should, because I don’t want to really know just how far over board I have really gone in collecting them. Until recently, this was all of the hanger space I had, and it just wasn’t cutting it, so I did a little remodeling and installed two more hanger bars on the left side. The one up top I had to attach above the door, so it is fairly high and a bit difficult to use. Due to the empty space of the door, there really wasn’t a good way to put in a brace for a lower bar, so I used steel line to hang a lower bar from the upper one. This turns out to be a good idea, because it is really hard to get in to the closet with these two new hanger bars in place, and having the bottom one hang from the top one allows me to shove it to the side a little to make more room for me to get in and out. So – the next time you see someone comment “Kim, you must have a huge closet!” you will understand why I break out in to hysterical laughter.

This week I was headed off to a town about half an hour north of Chicago. I was going to wear a black with white polka dot “retro” dress I bought a while back, and  instead of a black belt and shoes I wore the last time, I was gonna pair it with red shoes and belt. The thing is, it is fairly long and was sure to get me the personal inspection by the TSA, and I just didn’t feel like the hassle this morning so I went with plan B – a white top, jade green skirt, and white 4.5 inch heels. I was disappointed to find that the photos I took do not do the skirt justice. It is kind of a satin type material, very shiny and pretty, and with embroidered flowers all over it. Unfortunately, I assume due to the flash, the photos just make it look like one big white blur.

The white shoes are a whole story themselves. I bought them years ago at DSW, and as far as what they are worth, they are far and away the most expensive shoes I own. That was some time ago and so I no longer recall the exact price, but the original price was something like $400 and I recall my wife and my shock at finding them on clearance at DSW for something like $30. The heels are a bit taller than I really prefer, but given that they are all leather, they are remarkably comfortable shoes – at least they would be if they fit me. Despite being size 10, they are a bit large on me, and when wearing nylons, my feet slide around in them just enough to make them a problem. So the bad news is I found myself in the lobby area of the airport exchanging them for a pair of black Mary Janes I had in my luggage. Anyone wanna buy a pair of killer white all leather shoes that have only been worn twice? LOL

I was kind of surprised to find that the airport was packed. Usually you only see that kind of crowd first thing in the morning, but here it was around 10AM and the place was crowded and there was a huge line a the Delta counter. I made my way to the “elite” line reserved for frequent fliers and soon found myself being helped by a customer service rep that I didn’t recognize.

“Welcome back! We haven’t seen you in a little while!” she told me with a huge grin.

“Oh, I dunno, I’ve been flying Delta quite a bit lately!” I replied with a laugh.

“Well then, you must be flying earlier in the morning when I’m not usually here.” She said with a smile.

“That could be it!” I told her with a smile, appreciating the fact that she was trying to make conversation with me.

I was a little nervous going through the TSA security, because this wasn’t a long skirt, but it wasn’t exactly a short skirt either, and being some what full there was a chance they might still send me through the pat down process that I am truly coming to resent. Say - did you know that the Texas legislature recently debated making the TSA pat down a misdemeanor offence and thus against the law in Texas? The cowards backed down at the last moment though when the feds said “Fine – then all flights from Texas will stop as we can not guarantee the safety of air travelers anywhere in the system.”  I was just starting to get my hopes up too. Anyway, they did not send me through the molestation process but the TSA inspector at the metal detector did get in parting shot at me as told me I was free to carry on and get my things.

”Have a nice day bud!” he said. It’s kind of irritating to go to so much effort to be seen as and perceived as a woman just to have someone go out of their way to refer to you as a guy, but he really did say it in an entirely friendly way, and without a trace of sarcasm or meanness. I wonder if he just doesn’t know that that is kind of a rude thing to do? So as I’m sitting there putting my laptop away, and putting shoes back on I can hear the conversation of a group of people that have just gone through the same inspection process. It’s an older couple and a woman about my own age, and they gave me the impression that the couple was probably the womans parents.

“Well did they pat you down this time?” The younger woman asks him.

“I wish!” he replied with laughing eyes and a giggle in his voice. “That’s the closest thing I get to sex these days!”

Believe me, I wasn’t the only one laughing at that one.

I was sitting in the gate area just a few minutes before the flight boarded when the Delta gate representative came over the intercom.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you will, please have your ID’s out and ready as you approach the gate. Delta does not need to see them, but the TSA is doing random inspections and may ask you for it.”  I literally laughed out loud, thinking to myself that I had evaded the pat down / molestation, just to be caught and inconvenienced right here at the gate. A moment later, they announced that the first class section was welcome to board, and so I joined the line that had already formed there. The TSA did ask a few people for their ID, but much to my own amusement and relief they skipped right over me.

The guy standing in front of me was a huge African American, easily six and a half feet tall and with arms bigger than my thighs. I could hear him talking on his cell phone and was suitably impressed to hear what had to be the deepest voice I have ever heard in my life. I swear this guy could make Barry White sound like a tenor. I was just kind of zoning and thinking about this when he happened to glance back at me. Still chatting on the phone, he stepped to the side, gave me a huge smile, and waved me in front of him! Kind of surprised, I gave him my thanks, and handed my ticket to the gate agent while the gentleman fell back in to place behind me.

“Well hello there! I haven’t seen you in a while! How are you?” the female gate agent said in almost a carbon copy of the conversation I had had with the other woman at the ticket counter a few minutes ago. This time I just let it roll though.

“I just couldn’t be any gooder thanks for asking! How are you?” I asked, and was relieved to hear her laugh at my silly redneck joke.

“Fine, just fine thank you. Enjoy your flight.” She said, and then reached for the ticket of the gentleman behind me.

I was getting situated on the airplane by getting out my IPOD and my book, when the flight attendant started to make her rounds of the first class section before the general boarding started. She stopped next to a gentleman sitting across the isle from me.

“Can I get you something to drink Mr . . .” she paused while consulting a print out in her hand “Jones?”

 She then moved on to the man sitting next to me.

“And how about for you Mr . . . Smith?” (No, I don’t recall their real names)

Of course I know that my number is up next, and since she is looking at the passenger printout, she will clearly be well aware of what I am and so it should be interesting to see how she handles it.

“And for you Ms Huddle . . . “ she started, then got a confused look on her face.

“Well hold on a sec, that’s not you!” she said with a laugh, clearly having noted that the “Huddle” on her manifest was a “Mr” with the first name of “Matt”

“Umm, yep, it is me” I told her with a grin, and then batted my eyes at her just for the giggle factor. She looked confused for just a second more and then you could see it click.

“Well, what would you like to drink then Ms Huddle?” she said with playful grin.

Once we landed in the Chicago O’Hare airport , I was making my way to the baggage claim area and I found myself on a tall escalator standing behind four young men. One of them was facing backwards toward me and talking to the others, and it was all I could do to not laugh out loud when he took a look at me and then leaned forward to whisper to the others. Watching those three guys trying to find some excuse to turn around and look at me, without looking like they were looking at me, was just about the funniest thing I have seen since the Three Stooges. I briefly contemplated saying something cute like “Subtle guys, real subtle . . . “ but I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. They might have laughed, but they might not have . . .

As I stepped out of the airport, I was delighted to be greeted by the relatively cool air, such a relief after the heat in Austin Texas. I was not delighted however to find that once again Avis did not have my contract and keys ready, and so I found myself in a line of about ten other people who were in the same boat I was. All of us were freely chatting back and forth, most of the conversation poking fun at Avis for never getting it quite right.

“I think they need to try a LOT harder!” one of them quipped, making fun of their advertising campaign. I was gratified that those in line were perfectly willing to have a conversation with me, and never once batted an eye.

There were several other minor interactions that occurred that day that really did wonders for my confidence. None of them were really unique, significant, or blog worthy, but just nice person to person interactions. All in all, I was having a wonderful day, at least I was until I heard about the Tornado that destroyed Joplin Missouri. Joplin is less than ten miles from Quapaw Oklahoma where I have traveled to twice just recently. I was in fact in Joplin only a week ago, and so it broke my heart to think of that pretty town and its people being decimated. . .

The next day was a bust work wise, but I’ll have to tell you a little bit about infrared mass spectrometers for you to understand why. Bear with me – I promise that the lesson wont last long. When you are going to use Infrared (IR) to examine a gas, you have to have an assortment of windows. Some for the operation of the instrument and manipulation of the IR itself, and some windows to keep the nasty gas you are testing away from the expensive components that you don’t want damaged by it, while still allowing the IR to pass through the gas you are studying. Now the bad news is that your normal glass windows block IR and so glass can’t be used. Not to worry though, because those clever little chemists came up with a way around that – they make windows out of a sodium material called KBR. More or less you can think of it as clear and polished salt that looks and works exactly like glass except that it does NOT block IR. Another way that it is different from a glass window is the crux of our problem here though – it can not tolerate moisture, not even the typical humidity that you find in the very air around you. There is a simple way to keep this from being a problem though – you make sure that the KBR windows have a constant flow of dry nitrogen gas around them to keep the moist air away from them. As long as you spend a little money on nitrogen gas, you can avoid spending a fortune having your instrument repaired and all of its KBR windows replaced. Well, someone at this customers company apparently didn’t read the memo and decided to use the instrument long term in a humid environment without providing it with nitrogen purge gas, and every single KBR component in it was destroyed. This includes some windows with special coatings and requiring extremely precise alignments that have to be performed at the factory. In thirty minutes I had determined that his instrument was beyond being repaired in the field and would have to be returned to the factory for a major overhaul. So it took about half an hour to tear the instrument apart and show the customer everything that had been damaged and explain why it had to be repaired at the factory, and then another half an hour to put it all back together for him. Tack in about two more hours of emails and paper work when I got back to the hotel and then I was free for the rest of the day!

I raided two Goodwills and found nothing worth buying at either of them and so I moved on to the Woodfield mall that my friend Phyllis Brown had told me about. I went through DSW, Macy’s, and JC Penny without finding a single thing that I just had to have and could afford. I did find a brown dress on clearance at Macy’s that I liked, but even on clearance they wanted $80 for it and so I sadly left it behind.

That evening I met with Phyllis and her friend Erica for dinner at a fairly nice steak house. With the three of us together, and Erica being a fairly tall post-op TS, it was a real giggle when the hostess seated us. There was a young girl I’d guess to be in her twenties at the table next to us, and she just couldn’t help looking our way over and over again with a grin from ear to ear.

Phyllis I’ve mentioned before. She and I have been online friends, trading emails and chats for probably more than five years and we finally got around to meeting each other a month or so ago in Peoria IL. Her friend Erica I had never met before, and I quite liked her. She was a very upbeat, confident, and energetic person to talk to, and chatting with the two of them made for a more than pleasant evening.

You know, for some reason I have been less than confident and kind of unhappy about myself for the last six months or so, but these last two days were different. For the first time in quite a while I felt confident and happy, and actually enjoyed my “Kimberly” time quite a lot. It’s not that I felt like I was passing, that had nothing to do with it. It was more that I just felt comfortable and happy with who and what I am. It’s amazing how big a difference your attitude can make. 

Not a high heel kind of job

So over the weekend, my wife told me that she wanted to go shopping at Whole Foods. For those of you not in the know, it’s kind of a grocery store for organic and health food nuts. In my opinion, it’s kind of pricey and I wouldn’t spend my money there, but it pleases my wife, and so I hold my tongue. I used to hate going there with her until the day I noticed that there was a Nordstroms Rack department store in the same parking lot. Since that happy day, I’m all for it because my wife goes to one store, and I shop the other! This time my big treasure find was a black and white dress with a pattern that helps give the illusion that I have a waist. Not only that, but it was on clearance, so I got the $150 dress for only $35! YAY!

As is becoming my habit these days, I started this trip off by having breakfast at Denny’s. It’s not far from the airport and so it’s a convenient place to kill some time eating and sucking down caffeine while waiting for my flights. The hostess greeted me in much the same manner that the folks at the Delta counter do these days – very friendly and clearly remembering me.

“Hey, good morning and welcome back!” she said, and then as she guided me to the table “Coffee and a large milk?” she asked, somehow remembering my preferences from my last visit.

“Sure!” I told her with a grin. “I’ve got time to kill before my flight and so I thought I’d come irritate you again.”

“Oh your no bother at all!” she said with a cheerful laugh. You know, there are worse ways to start your morning than with the laughter of a pretty young lady. . .

After breakfast I headed just a short way down the street where there was an office building up for rent. There is no one at this huge building, but they are still maintaining the landscaping because they are trying to entice renters. This makes it pretty much the perfect place for taking some pictures out in the sunshine without a bunch of people looking and wondering why in the hell that woman is taking so many pictures of herself.

My new camera has one of those functions where it can detect your smile and take the photo when it does. Sounds a little better than it is though, because you have to be pretty darn close to the thing for it to work. I guess I was standing a bit too far away, because I couldn’t get it to take the photo. looking for that perfect distance where it would function, I kept edging closer, grin like an idiot, edge closer, idiot grin, closer, idiot, closer, idiot . . .  

You know the way these things work - I was leaning in to be sure the camera could see my face an had just given up when the camera flash went off twice. After I stopped laughing, I took a look at the silly pics and decided that I really liked them!

On the way to the airport I saw a unique car that just defies description, so I’m not even gonna try. You just have to see this one:

Oh, and now I know where dying rental cars are supposed to go:

Since I was wearing a short dress, the TSA didn’t molest me this time. Speaking of the TSA molesting me, I think that maybe the next time I wear a long skirt, I’m gonna hide a mouse trap under it just to “amuse” the person that frisks me. But again I digress . . .   After I went through the TSA check point, I was sitting on a bench putting my shoes and sparklies back on when a woman I’d guess to be in her early fifties walked up to use the same bench for the same purpose.

“That is a wonderful outfit.” She quietly said after taking a look at my dress and shoes. She wasn’t gushing and she didn’t appear to be terribly excited about it, she was just calling it the way she saw it.

“Well thank you! I just got it Saturday and have to admit that I think I love it.” I replied. “So did they frisk you for having the audacity to wear a long skirt?” I added after a look at her relatively long blue jean skirt.

“Not this time, but I have been through that before, and didn’t care at all for it!” she said with a loud laugh.

I made my way to my gate where I began to realize that there was a flaw with my time killing plan of swilling cup after cup of coffee at Dennys – I had to use the bathroom, and I had to use it BAD! The awkward thing was, the janitor was working in the “Special Needs” bathroom, and she appeared to be prepared to make a career out of cleaning that one small room. I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and after half an hour my eyeballs were starting to float. I recall reading a news story about a transgender woman in Houston being arrested for using the Women’s Bathroom, and so I have always avoided doing that in the Austin airport. Normally it’s not a problem, because they have the special needs bathroom, but the darn janitor had now been working on it for half an hour, my flight was about to board, and I had to go bad, and so in I went. Yeah I know – someone out there is saying “OMG – is she really blogging about going to the bathroom?!” but I’m telling ya, it’s pretty scary when you know that someone else has been arrested for doing that very thing. So there I sat with my heart in my throat the entire time, waiting to find out if the Austin airport security folks have been waiting for me to do this so that they could nab me! The good news is that they apparently didn’t have any axes to grind with me, and so I went on about my merry way.

When I arrived at the Baltimore-Washington International airport, I was starting to drag my tail behind me a bit, and so my 50 pound suitcase and 50 pound tool box both felt like they had gained an awful lot of weight when it came time to pick them up and get them on to the rental car shuttle bus. I guess it showed, because a gentleman behind me spoke up with a laugh.

“Would you like a hand with that? It really doesn’t look like a high heels kind of job!”

“Thank you, but I think that I’ve got it.” I replied like an idiot. I say ‘like an idiot’ because I damn near killed myself trying to get the suitcase up on the rack. Fortunately the fellow behind me ignored me and stepped up to help me lift it on the top rack – the only space available. The tool box I left in the middle of the floor because there just wasn’t any other place to put it. When the shuttle bus arrived at the lot, I waited for everyone else to get their bags and then more or less threw my tool box off of the bus, and then got my bag down. As I stepped off of the bus with my suitcase and bent down to extend my tool boxes handle, I found a different man standing there and waiting for me.

“Miss, would you like a hand with those?” he asked me, with a sincere and kind tone of voice. There was something about the way he asked, I don’t know if it was his tone or his eyes, or what, but I just got the impression that he knew very well what I am and was still sincerely offering to help me.

“No thank you.” I answered with a smile that I hope made it clear that I really did appreciate the offer.

“Are you sure?”

“I very much appreciate the offer, but I drag these things all over the country. They have probably seen more miles than most flight attendants.” I replied with a laugh.

He gave a small laugh and wished me a good night, and off I went to find my rental car.

When you are part of their “preferred” program, Avis is supposed to have your car ready for you when you arrive, but more and more lately they appear to be unable to get it right, and today was more of the same. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that my name and space was not on their board, and so I had to go to the counter. I found a pretty young African American woman sitting inside the booth, told her my last name and that I had a reservation but my car wasn’t on her board.

“And what’s your first name please?” she asked me.

“Matthew” I told her, and almost bust out laughing when her head all but jerked up to look at me.

“Yeah, I know, not exactly the name you might have expected huh?”

She didn’t say anything, just grinned and waved her hand in a “It’s of no importance to me” fashion. In a moment, I had my rental car and was headed south toward Manassas  VA where my customer and my hotel were.

Not as much as you might think, but I was a little worried on the hour and a half drive there. You see, I was going to be working with a colleague on this service call, and he was not only staying at the same hotel I was, but I knew he was already there. I knew he was already there because I had two or three text messages asking if I had landed or not. I thought about it for a while and decided that my best bet was to ignore his text messages until after I had arrived at the hotel and gotten cleaned up. I didn’t really want him to know what time to expect me. After all, it just wouldn’t do to have him getting clever and waiting to meet me in the hotel lobby. I didn’t really think there was much worry about running into him as I checked in, because I’ve stayed at this hotel many times and know that it has a small lobby area with no seating, and so there wouldn’t be much reason for him to be loitering there. It was a bit of a gamble, but I turned out to be right. I did have a bad moment though when I entered the lobby to find that there was a man at the counter checking in. For just an instant I had feared that it might be him. He had just finished checking in and had his keys in his hand, but he stood at the counter for a second staring at me as I checked in. I just looked at him and grinned and he hastily gathered his things and scurried off to the elevator.

Fortunately the Holiday Inn is more efficient than Avis, because she did have my keys and contract waiting for me. In just a few moments I was on my way to the elevator where I found myself sharing it with yet another guy who kept staring at me. Sometimes I feel like “the” entertainment when I am out and about.

I let out a little laugh as I approached the door of the hotel room I had been assigned because it seems that the room was intended for the handicapped. I wonder I they were trying to tell me something when they assigned that room to me? Mentally handicapped maybe?

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 . . .

Tornadoes and Dirty Socks

Hmmm . . . what to write about, what to write about . . .

I’ve been fairly busy, but not much of it to do with my being transgendered (TG), which is the main focus of my blog I suppose.

So a few months or so ago we had a bit of a rodent problem in our home. When you live on the outside edge of a farming community this is just a fact of life and you deal with it. I had traps set everywhere that we thought was safe to put them – meaning everywhere we thought that our six year old and eighteen month old couldn’t reach. Weeks went by with no luck. Sometimes I’d find the traps in the attic tripped but with nothing caught, and that’s maddening. It’s kind of like the rodent is thumbing his nose at you – “nanny nanny boo boo”.

The good news is that I did finally catch the critter. The bad news is that the little basta. . .err . . . I mean the cute little thing, had apparently enjoyed some quality time in my closet before we got him. Can you picture just how thrilled I was when I pulled my brand new wig off of the shelf and discovered that Mickey Mouse had chewed away half of one of the plastic tabs above the ear?  

Brand new wig . . . wasn’t cheap . . . had already had it trimmed and styled . . .

If I hadn’t already got him, I’d have tracked him down and killed him with my bare hands.

Pretty much immediately I did three things:

1. I took the family down to the Austin animal shelter and we are now the proud parents of two very rambunctious and hyper kittens. My children think that they are cute, cuddly, and adorable and don’t get me wrong, I agree with them, but in the back of my mind I like to fondly think of them as my little mouse hunter / killers.
2. I contacted Amanda Richards of True Colors and ordered another copy of the wig that I had just bought from her. She was happy to place the order for me . . . after she stopped laughing . . .
3. When I received the wig, I took it to Bonnie at Austin’s “Top This” to get it trimmed, thinned, and styled.

Bonnie came highly recommended to me by others in the Austin TG community and I think that they had it just right. She is such a neat lady, good at what she does, and she is fun to talk to. She’s fairly active in the local TG community, having gone to several of the monthly lunches with TENT - a local TG group there. Among other things, what impresses me is that she doesn’t take advantage of TG’s. Let’s face it, a lot of TG’s are scared to death, hiding in closets, sneaking out to their cars in the dark of night, and then sneaking from the car into “friendly” bars. Some of those folks are nothing short of terrified that others will learn what they are, and a lot of businesses will take advantage of that fear. They will happily charge you an arm and a leg for their perceived discretion and for their tolerance and willingness to accept you as a customer. Not her, and not “Top This”. Both times I went to her, she made time to see me the very next morning when I was on my way to the airport. She treated me like any other customer, with a good mixture of professionalism and friendship, and she did a wonderful job for me at a reasonable price.

 

Do you remember that itty bitty town called “Quapaw” in NE Oklahoma that I went to a year or so ago? Yeah, I had to go back there again last week. The bad news is that the way this service call came down left me with no choice but to make the ten hour drive there, and to do it in the middle of the afternoon. As a result, I left my office at around noon, tore through my home at a dead run throwing clothes in a bag, and then I was on the road for the long and oh so boring drive. No time to get ready and to go pretty and no time or point to packing anything for being pretty while I was there. I kept awake and alert through the long drive by listening (and periodically glancing at) the second season of “Doctor Who” on my IPOD. Don’t ya just hate mind sucking, face stealing aliens that live in your TV set!? But I digress . . .

My customer there has a very old version of our FTIR and it was a pretty serious mess. Without boring you too much with the techie details, the instrument has a very expensive mirror that is mounted on a motor, and this mirror moves back and forth, back and forth, all day long. To keep track of the motion and speed of this motor, we use a laser, and replacing those lasers when they reach their end of life is the vast majority of the work I do in the field, including this service call. I was almost done with the installation and alignment of this laser, and was no more than five minutes from heading to the hotel, when I did something really stupid – I accidently let my adjustment tool interrupt the laser beam while it was running. Since the system is using that laser to track and control the motion of this expensive mirror assembly, it gets really, really, pissed off when you interrupt it, and it slams the thing back and forth. HARD. Hard enough to break it, and it did. . .   Here I had gone to extreme lengths like heading out on a ten hour drive at 1PM to help a desperate customer and to make my company a profit, and instead, I had just destroyed a six thousand dollar component that my company would have to provide. I sure can go from being a hero to a zero in a hurry . . .

Needless to say, I had to arrange to have a new part shipped to me, and I had to stay another night. It was just my luck that this would be the night that the area was slammed by Tornados, decimating several towns and killing people here and there. The wind was howling so hard outside my hotel that it was pushing the curtains around even though the window was closed. The following morning I discovered that in my rushed packing, I hadn’t packed a single pair of socks or underwear. Damaged equipment, tornados, and dirty socks - this just get’s gooder and gooder. . .

So this week I headed off to Detroit. When all else fails, I know that I’ll always be returning to Detroit periodically. I was flying US Airways because their flights cost a bit less when you book them on short notice. Booking the flight for the next day on Delta would have been $1,000, but on US Airways it was $700. That’s a shame, because I really do like Delta better. Much like “Top This” and Amanda Richards “True Colors”,  Delta has always treated me like any other good and respected customer. US Airways has done all right, but I sometimes get the feeling that I am just tolerated there, and not truly appreciated or welcome. Anyway, as you hand in your checked baggage, you have to hand over your ID, and so I handed the ladies behind the counter mine. In it, I was wearing my short and “flippy” hair, and one of the young ladies behind the counter looks at the other and points at it.

“Isn’t her hair cute?!” she asked with a grin.

“I think that one looks a bit more “real” and maybe even a bit more age appropriate.” I told her with a wink.

“Oh, I dunno about ‘age appropriate’ “ she replied “I just think it’s cute. I like the little ‘flip’ it has at the end.”

“Well thanks!“ I responded. Just then I had a terrible thought – I hadn’t checked to see if the mouse had nibbled on that one yet!

I almost choked when a young lady took the seat next to me on the airplane and slid her bag under the seat – the brand name on the bag was something like “Trans!” Cute – sitting next to a “Trans” while carrying a “Trans” bag.

It was 87 degrees when I boarded the airplane in Austin, and when I stepped off it in Detroit, it was around 38 degrees. It’s just plain weird to go through a 50 degree drop in temperature in six or seven hours, and it was made all the worse when I stepped into a two or three inch deep puddle of water in the rental car lot. It wasn’t so much the cold and wet feet that bothered me as the thought of what that water was going to do to my pretty red pumps.

I’m starting to get that “I need a vacation” feeling again . . .

The Broken Family Tree

Well let’s see! In my last blog, I mentioned having just recently found my estranged half-brothers through Facebook on the internet. Assuming that you bother to keep reading this, a little more background might help you to understand it all a little bit better. It’s not a real heart warming story, so if you’re inclined to serious depression, now would be a good time to hit the “back” button on your browser.

(Note – Huddle is my mothers maiden name - it is NOT my fathers last name. I use it here as a convenient way of protecting my families  privacy and I apologize to the Huddle name for attributing such behavior to it)

My half brothers and I had the same alcoholic and abusive father but we had different mothers, and so with the exception of a year or two here and there, we did not grow up in the same home. When my mother and father separated, I was lucky enough to go live with my mother, and they were left behind with a man who beat every wife he ever had, and abused and neglected his children.

Not surprisingly, the cycle of abuse continued with my brothers as they grew into men. The oldest half brother David turned to alcohol but I have no idea if he was ever abusive. My brother Mark, who as a teenager had more or less raised his younger brother and sister while our father drank himself to death, also turned to alcohol, got married to a wonderful German woman and had three daughters. The bad news is that he also turned to alcohol and according to his wife and daughters, took after my father in some ways when it came to abusing them too.

Right around 1993, back when I was still active duty Army, I took my wife and son to California to visit with my mother and family. Apparently my father caught wind that I was there and called my mothers home to speak to me. It seems that my father’s life of alcohol abuse had finally caught up to him and his liver had quite working. He was going to be dead in three to six months and he begged me to bring my son by so that he could meet him before he died. I considered this for a few hours, and seriously considered calling him back to tell him no, but in the end I decided to go ahead and take my son to meet him. When this was all done and over with, I didn’t want to be carrying any more guilt and emotional baggage around with me than I already had. My wife refused to go with me, and I can’t blame her, so my five year old son and I went to meet the boogieman together. When we got there, we found that he was living in a tiny little travel trailer – the type that many campers or hunters might take on a weekend trip to the woods. As we stepped up and into the humble little trailer, my father offered me a beer and I just looked at him in shock. Here he was, dying from alcohol abuse, and still he is working his way through a case of Coors.

“Well, it’s a little late to worry about it, isn’t it?” he told me after seeing the look of shock on my face.

The trailer he was living in belonged to a friend of his, and it was virtually empty. I suppose you could say that he was reaping the rewards of a lifetime of misery and abuse that he had metered out to others. He was dying in a tiny trailer, with nothing to his name, and no one who cared a great deal that he would soon be gone. We spoke about a whole lot of nothing for an hour or so, and then my son and I took our leave of him. The last I saw of him was in my rear view mirror with tears streaming down his face. With a tear or two in my own eyes, I took my sons hand and I told him that I loved him more than anything in the world.

The next time I heard from anyone bearing my own last name, it was Christmas morning, and my half brothers David and Mark called our home at about nine in the morning. My delight and surprise at hearing from them on Christmas morning soon turned to confusion and anger though, as I realized that they were both drunk and angry, and they were both taking turns yelling at me.

“We know you visited Dad right before he died, and you took EVERYTHING! All of the pictures, all of the guitars, everything!” they were yelling at me.

“Yeah I was there, but I got nothing from him. Guys, you weren’t there, you didn’t see it. He HAD nothing. There was nothing for him to give and there was nothing for me to take. I have nothing of his and I don’t WANT anything of his!” I told them. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was breaking one of the common sense rules for dealing with alcoholics – never try to reason with a drunk.

“Well you and all of the other kids that came after us are nothing but a bunch of God Damned mutts! Mark and I are the only real Huddles!” I was told by a slurred and drunken voice on the other end of the phone.

How very odd! All of my life I have been nothing short of ashamed of my last name. The only things associated with my last name were abuse, neglect, alcoholism, dirt, and filth. Despite all of that, this statement ‘you are nothing but a mutt, WE are the only REAL Huddles’ made me insanely angry. To this day, I don’t know why it made me THAT angry, but there you have it.

“Let me make this very clear. Do not EVER call me again. Not ever, and not for any reason!” I quietly said into the phone, and then promptly hung it up and sat there shaking in anger.

As you might imagine, after a decade or so I cooled off a little bit. It occurred to me that I had had my own bouts with alcohol abuse and yet I had managed to pull my head out of my backside, and it was just possible that over the years they had too. Even now, I thought, they may be reasonable men, with loving families, and regretting the bridges that they had burned and the ties that they had broken. With this fantasy, wish, or dream in mind, I started hunting for them, and a little over a month ago I found the Marks daughter on facebook. Of course I wasn’t sure it was his daughter, so I sent a relatively brief email and waited for a few days with my heart in my throat for a reply. When I got her reply after about a week, I almost cried from all of the pent up emotions. It seems that she had never heard of an Uncle Matt, and so had had to speak to her mother first to be sure I was who and what I said I was. I had to laugh when she described the way her mother had assured her that she remembered meeting me when I was very young, and that the people she had met in my mothers home were the only “sane” people she had met in their entire journey. I really have to wonder about the other people she must have met if she considered us the sane ones!

I spent a month or so chatting with my Half brothers ex-wife and three beautiful daughters, maybe getting to know them at least a little bit. His ex-wife called me and we spent an hour laughing and crying over the phone. She was so very happy to see that I was happily married, and that I had three children that were clearly loved and adored. She said it was so strange to see the facebook page of someone with my last name that showed a happy family. With great hesitation, she very subtly tried to warn me that I was probably going to be disappointed when I did reconnect with my half brothers. She assured me that my half brother David was a very mean alcoholic, and then warned me to be careful with her ex-husband Mark. Their marriage had not ended well, and only one of his daughters would speak to him on a regular basis. It became clear that the dream of my brothers having become good men, with happy families, was nothing more than a fantasy. Still, I was now in touch with three young ladies who were my nieces, now grown women, only one of whom I had met and even knew existed until now. No matter what happened with my brother, I would have the chance to get to know his daughters.

I’ve been fairly sick for the last month or so. Not ‘on deaths doorstep’ sick, don’t get me wrong, but sick enough that I had spent the better part of a week laying in bed shivering, followed by three or four weeks with a heavy cough. Let’s just say that I have not been anywhere near well enough to travel “pretty” and so I was a lot less than thrilled to hear that I had to be in Birmingham Alabama with only two days advanced notice. When I looked into flights, I found that the cheapest flights that I could get on such short notice were going to cost over $1,200 and required me to be on airplanes and in airports from 630AM until 1030PM! Horrified at the cost, and the many hours it was gonna take, I took a look and discovered that I could just rent a car and drive, and save my company over a thousand dollars AND get there earlier! It has been a while since I’ve made a road trip, and it sounded a little like fun, so that’s exactly what I planned to do. Imagine my surprise when my half brother Marks ex-wire tells me on facebook that she (and Mark) only live three hours or so away from Birmingham in Georgia. I was already going to be driving a hell of a long way, and so an additional four to six hours of driving to have the chance to see her, her daughters, and my brother Mark again, seemed like a no brainer. I set up a hotel in Birmingham for the first night and one in the area of Columbus Georgia for the second night, figuring that after I was done with my customer, I could head out to meet with them.

I had been driving almost 17 hours when it occurred to me that I must have done something wrong when setting up my route, and so I pulled over and started checking the addresses and the GPS, and sure enough, I had screwed up. I had not realized that my hotel for the second night was actually in Alabama, right on the border of Alabama and Georgia, and so I had plugged the wrong hotel address into my GPS! I had just driven two hours past my hotel. Not much to be done about it though, so I put the right address into the GPS, and turned around. After starting my trip at 6AM, I pulled into the hotel just a little before 2AM and then collapsed into bed until 630AM when I had to get up and go to work. That afternoon when I finished with my repair, I headed out for Columbus Georgia – again . . .

Despite our exceedingly candid and emotional phone calls and emails, my brothers ex-wife chose to meet me in a public place rather than at her home or my hotel. I took no offense though, because I thought it was fairly intelligent and prudent of her given what she knew about men in my family. So, we sat in the shade and on the steps of the local high school and chatted for well over an hour. She told me all about her daughters, and how she had managed to get them through college on her own. Unfortunately two of her daughters don’t actually live in Columbus anymore, and the third had to work, and so I did not get to meet any of them. In no time at all, and hour and a half had gone by and my brother Mark called to see if I was ready for dinner. She and I shared a hug and off I went to see my half brother for the first time in better than 30 years.

When I got to his apartment, he met me out at the street and gave me the distinct impression that he didn’t want to invite me in. That was no problem though as it was around 730PM and I was starving, so we hugged for a moment, got into the car, and then headed off looking for someplace to eat dinner. As we were driving, he made apologies for our other brother David, telling me that he had extended my dinner invitation but was told that he had prior plans with his girlfriend. I couldn’t help but shake my head, thinking that I had driven across at least half of the United States, and he couldn’t be bothered to drive around the block to see me. I guess that sort of tells me everything I need to know about the guy.

The dinner with my brother wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, nor was it exactly comfortable. It was more or less two complete strangers sitting across from each other. Nothing much was said about our last conversation so many Christmases ago, in fact I’m not entirely sure that he recalls it at all. Much like the conversation with his wife, we traded stories about our children, and things we had done in the last few decades. One story he did share with me regarded our little sister Tracy. Remember I wrote about  finding her on the Internet a few months ago? In one of the few unselfish things I’d ever known my father to do, he adopted Tracy out to a couple when she was around five. Mark told me of the day that he was visiting my father when he was on leave from the Army. He was home with Tracy while my father was at work, and someone knocked on the door. When Mark answered the door, he was met by a couple who told him that they were there to pick up Tracy. He had no idea what they were talking about, and so he called our father. Our father told him that the couple was indeed there to adopt her and take her home with them, and he was told to help them get her stuff together. Mark at first refused, telling our father that he needed to come home and take care of this. Soon he graduated to pleading with our father, but he refused to come home, and begged Mark to do it because he couldn’t handle it himself. Sitting across the table from me, with tears streaming down his cheeks, my 50 year old brother described how he had to go into her bedroom and find her favorite blanket and favorite stuffed toy, and put his little sister into some strangers car to be driven away forever.

And people wonder why we all turned out so screwed up. . .

I had driven around 19 hours the night before, got only four hours of sleep, and had to turn around and do it all over again the next morning, so somewhere around 11PM we called it a night. It sure was a long drive back home the next day. . .

Just this last week I was finally starting to feel well enough to travel “pretty” again, and so I was actually kind of relieved when I heard that I had a service call for Peoria IL. I have got to be honest – it has gotten to the point where it’s just not that much fun to travel pretty anymore. Not that this was my motive for doing it, don’t get me wrong, but these days no one is surprised and I just don’t seem to have as much in the way of fun experiences with people as I used to. Of course some of that is probably me as I doubt that I’m a hell of a lot of fun to be around when I’m not feeling well.

As usual, Mona, my favorite customer service rep at the Delta Airline counter waved me forward to her position.

“Hello Matthew, how are you this morning?” she asked me with a smile.

“Well, since I had to be up a 230AM to make this flight, it’s entirely too early to know! How about you?”

“Oh, I’m OK, but I’ve got to tell you, I think I need a vacation.” She replied

“No kidding! What’s a vacation?!” I asked her with a grin and we both laughed. “Yeah, my last vacation was spent driving a mini van from here to Chicago and back to see my son graduate from Basic Training. We had two toddlers, my seven year old daughter, and my wife and daughter-in-law cooped up in the thing for the better part of a week!”

“So you needed a vacation from your vacation?!” She asked with a laugh.

“You got it!” I answered as I took the tickets she was handing out to me.

“Well, you have a great flight!” she told me and then moved on to the next customer.

When I arrived in Peoria, I first went to the rental car counter to get my car while I waited for the bags to hit the belt. The young lady behind the counter hesitated for just an instant as she looked at my drivers license, but she carried on without missing a beat! Contract and keys in hand, I returned to the baggage belt just in time to see my huge tool/parts box coming around. I grabbed it and was just setting it on the ground and pulling out the handle when a muscular and bald young man walked up to me. I’d have to admit that I was a bit nervous when I saw him walking in my direction, but there was no need for that.

“That is one hell of a box!” he said with huge smile.

“It sure is, but it’s how I make my living.”

“Is it a Pelican case?”

“It’s a lot like one, but no. I honestly don’t recall the name of the manufacturer.”

I was going to offer to find out for him, but he was already moving toward the parking lot with his bags in tow.

 

The following day, after I was done with work, I met Phyliss Brown for dinner! Phyliss and I go back a few years via the internet. Via the internet, we have chatted off and on for years, and she has hooked me up with TG’s all over the country, to include some that have turned out to be very good friends of mine. To finally have the chance to meet her was awesome! On the way through the hotel lobby to meet her, I had to stop at the front desk to let them know that my company had shipped me a package that should arrive first thing in the morning.

“How are you dear? I hope your enjoying your stay?” The customer service rep asks me as I approached the desk. As the one woman is speaking to me, another pretty young lady standing behind her is staring at me with a huge grin on her face. Noting the deeply amused look on the other ladies face, I decided to be funny.

“Well, no one has come to knock down my door and lynch the cross dresser, so we’re off to a great start!” I quipped. Both of them burst out with the best gut laugh I’ve gotten from anyone in a long time.

I made my way out into the hotels entry area where I found a car matching the description that Phyliss had given me and I reached for the passenger door before it struck me that it might not be a bad idea to at least take a look at the driver and be sure it was Phyliss before I got into the car. I bent down and took a peek in, and found Phyliss grinning back at me, almost as if she knew what I’d just been thinking.

Soon Phyliss and I were on the move, chatting and trying to figure out how to use her built in GPS to find the restaurant that I vaguely recalled having visited in the past. I’ve gotta tell ya’, for two reasonably smart people, we sure did have a hard time trying to figure out how to use her GPS, but we did eventually “git ‘er done”, and spent the rest of the evening sitting at a fairly nice restaurant called “Jonah’s” and swapping stories. As we were speaking, I can see three people sitting at a table off to the side of us, and they are quite blatantly staring at us, whispering back and forth, and grinning like idiots. I tried to grin back at one of the women we our eyes met, but I’d have to admit that my heart just wasn’t in it, so Phyliss and I just kind of smiled at them and went on about our dinner and talk.

After dinner, we went to the “Elbo Room” – the karaoke bar that I used to go to every time I came to Peoria, but we found the place absolutely dead. The only people there beside us were the bartender and his buddy. Quite a let down since the place used to always be packed AND it used to have a really cute female bartender.

The worlds going to hell in a hand basket I tell ya’ . . .