Dear William . . .

A few months ago, my oldest son, my little boy, went to and graduated from basic training in the United States Navy. Words just cant describe the mixed feelings that this brought about in my own heart. Overwhelming pride in my son, sadness that he was now gone from our home, and worry about the hard things and times that he had in store for him. It also brought back a flood of memories from my own past when I joined the United States Army.
Basic training is probably one of the hardest things that most people will ever go through, both physically and emotionally, and so I wanted to write him a few letters that might help him to pass the time. In the end, all I could think of to write to him about was my own experience. and so two or three very long letters were born.
 The other day I was looking through my computer looking for things that I can get rid of to clean it out and I came across these letters. The more I looked at the letters, the more that I thought it might be kind of cool to post them here as a blog. And so, here is the first of three or four letters to my son . . .

Dear William,

You have absolutely no idea how proud we are of you that you have chosen to serve your country. There are very things that you will ever say in your life that will make you feel as proud as saying “I defend the United States of America”. One of the very few things that you may one day be able to say that will make you feel that proud would be “My child has chosen to serve his country and defend the United States.”  We are so very proud of you . . .

My own trip through basic training was over 27 years ago, and you have no idea how that thought stuns me on so many levels. Considering how poor my memory is, one of the amazing things here is that I remember so much of my Basic training so well. You don’t know it yet, but you are probably already surrounded by guys that will be your best friends for the rest of your life. Bonds that you build going through basic together are like nothing else you have experienced. I am STILL in touch with several of the men I went through basic training with. You are in fact named largely in honor of two of them – William Mozzetti and John Jeffereson.

I know that you will have very little time for reading letters, and even less time for writing them, but I also recall just how very precious a letter was. For the few moments you have while reading letters from home, it takes your mind away from what you are going through, and reminds you that you do have a life that doesn’t revolve around Drill Sergeants, trainees, exercise, and studying. I don’t have much of interest to share with you, but will make it a point to try and write you at least once a week anyway. We would appreciate it if you send us even the shortest of notes as you find time. Even if it is only to say “I’m alive, this sucks, and I’m gonna slug you when I get home for not talking me out of this.” Even a short note would be most welcome.

I have no idea what to write to you that will be of any interest to you. It’s not as if you don’t know what my life consists of these days, so maybe I will write to you about the time in my life when I joined the military. If it bores you, you can rip it up and throw it out. If it interests you and takes your mind away from Basic Training for a few minutes, then I will have succeeded!

My life was in fairly poor shape at the time that I joined the Army at the age of 17. We lived in a one room cabin, about two miles from our nearest neighbor, and twenty miles from the nearest town – Yucca Valley.

I know this sounds like the typical jokes you hear about parents and grand parents telling children about walking miles through the snow, barefoot, and up hill both ways, but it really was a little like that for me. For the first few years that we lived there, my brother and I had to walk three miles just to catch the bus that we then had to ride for another 40 minutes to school. After school, we had to make the same three mile walk back home. Once home, I would drop off my books, IF I’d bothered to bring them home at all. Let’s face it, knowing that I had to carry them six miles round trip, I wasn’t really motivated to bring them home from school. I would then walk three miles the other direction to work on a small ranch where I groomed the horses, cleaned corrals, and that sort of thing. Dirty, nasty, and often disgusting work, and then I had to make the trip home after working. In later years things got a little better when they moved the bus stop closer to home so we only had to walk one mile each way, and I eventually bought a ten speed bike to get me to work and back.

We had very little money and virtually no luxuries. I only had the one pair of shoes and so I often went to school with my shoes reeking of horse, cow, pig, and chicken manure. You can just imagine how very popular this made me at school. In the early years we were so damned poor we couldn’t even afford to get water – a commodity that had to be delivered by truck. I recall my brother and I making treks through the desert to the water tanks at cabins people had for vacations and stealing water that we then had to carry home in washed out milk jugs. Trip after trip after trip carrying jugs of water. I suppose I should feel guilty about it, I mean, it was stealing after all, but I just can’t find it in myself to feel guilty about having been so desperate.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t really the lack of money and luxuries that drove me to want to leave home though, but rather it was a combination of several other things and events that all added up.

Living in a desolate area so far from town, the only way you could possibly socialize with others your age, or even participate in school events, would be if you had access to a car. My mother couldn’t afford drivers training and I understood this. What I couldn’t tolerate though was that I had convinced my school to give me the drivers ed class for free, all it required was my mothers signature. She refused to sign it, fearing that if I had an accident while in the class, she would be responsible and they would take our home as it was the only thing we had of value. Since my mother was in fairly poor physical condition, and quite honestly not the type to go too far out of her way to make it possible for her children to participate in school events or be social, this essentially meant that I was spending the vast majority of my high school experience confined to a cabin in the middle of no where. I don’t know if I was right or wrong, but I never did forgive my mother for this.

The small ranch that I worked at was owned by a popular jazz singer named Nancy Wilson. Nancy was a fine person, but it was really her father Olden or “Butch” that my brother and I came to love. He was in his 60’s, and when he was away from the women, he had one of the dirtiest minds and mouths that I have ever known. The man could make a rough and seasoned sailor blush, and so you can just imagine the effect he had on someone as shy and introverted as I was. Despite his “dirty” mind, he was probably the number one best human being that I have ever known. Within six months of moving to our canyon, he knew far more people than we had met in the years that we had been there. He never once drove past someone walking through the desert without stopping to ask if they needed help. He was always doing something good and decent for us, and for strangers and the other people that he knew. In very short order I think everyone in that canyon, and most in Yucca Valley, loved that man to death.

As I already mentioned, I was a painfully shy teenager. Between my being so shy, living so far from town and the other kids at my school, and having no transportation to get to town for anything social, I had very few friends and no chance in hell of having a girl friend. One evening I was in Nancy’s home, probably playing cards with Butch since that was his favorite thing in the world to do, when I heard someone playing the piano. I’d never actually heard a piano played live and in person before and so this was immensely interesting to me and I made my way to the piano room for a look and listen.

As I entered the room, I saw Nancy’s two young daughters standing around the piano, and a pretty girl about my own age was playing it. She hadn’t noticed me yet and so I had the chance to watch and listen for a while. The music was lovely and unique, often slowing and building the anticipation before it would soar to something intense and moving. I could hear her speaking to the girls as she played, describing the scene of a battle field with God’s Angels on one side, and devils and demons on the other. As they joined to battle, the piano music would soar, becoming immense and filling the room as God’s angels of course prevailed. She was about my own age, had a full head of long and glorious dark hair, and when her looks were combined with her music, she was probably the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She played several more songs that she had written herself, and I sat there listening, absolutely lost in her and in her music. I never had a chance – I instantly fell head over heals in love with her and I even managed to overcome my shyness enough to talk to her quite a bit that night. Her name was Angela and she was there to baby sit Nancy’s daughters. As you may have guessed based on my description of the narration of her song, Angela was a very religious girl. In fact, I had never met or seen her before because she went to a private school at the Baptist Church in town. Since I had not believed at all in God at that point, there was absolutely no chance for us to have ever met before. I spent the next two days obsessed at the very thought of her, and finally I called Butch and asked for her phone number. I stewed over it for a few days, with my stomach twisting, turning, and spinning at the very thought of calling her. She was beautiful, talented, and a three times a week church goer - what did a poor kid like me, with no car, and wearing shoes that reeked of the horse and cow manure I worked in possibly have to offer a girl like her?

Believe it or not, she did indeed agree to meet with me, and even go to a movie with me – I think it was “The Dark Crystal”. I have no idea why, but she eventually did become my girl friend and my very first serious heart throb. It turns out that in addition to the piano, she also played guitar, something that I had always been interested in but never pursued up to that point. Of course she had to drive anytime we got together since she had a car and a drivers license, and you can imagine how embarrassed that made me. I dated her for at least a year, and during most of that time, I went to church with her and her grandparents every week.

I went to a church/school function with her one night and they had some sort of competition on the football field that I joined in on. I can’t even remember what it was, but I remember that no one there could even come close to running as fast as I could. With all of the exercise I got every single day of my life, I was in fairly good shape, and left every one of their best jocks in the dust. Less than a week later, her school contacted my mother and offered me a scholarship to attend their school if I would agree to compete in their athletics program. I was of course thrilled at the very thought! What do you know – someone was impressed with me, actually wanted me, and had gone through effort to get me! I could get a private school education and go to the same school that Angela did! To me, it was like a dream! At least it was until my mother refused to allow it. . .

Inspired by Angela’s talent, I decided that I really wanted a guitar, the problem being of course, that I couldn’t come close to affording one. Remember I told you about Nancy’s father Butch always doing good things for people? Yeah, turns out he knew a guy with an old guitar and amplifier, and I think he twisted the mans arm to sell it to me for something like $150 – far less than it was worth. Butch gave me a ride to the mans home where I was thrilled to take ownership of a beautiful guitar and amplifier. Once again I was obsessed with something – this time the guitar. Other than Angela, it was all I cared about, all I spent time on. I took it to school with me so that I could practice during lunch and during the 80 minutes I spent on the bus every day. I stopped doing homework, I stopped reading books, I stopped going for bike rides and hikes, and instead I spent the time with the guitar, often playing it until three or four in the morning. In about six months I was playing at least as well as Angie and probably better, and it’s been a life long obsession and joy of mine ever since. In less than a year, being self taught and never having had a lesson, I had impressed the band teacher enough that he accepted me in to the high schools stage band. Ultimately though, I had to leave the band because I could not make it to events. I couldn’t get a drivers license and my mother wasn’t about to ferry me back and forth.

Things got complicated when my mother started dating, of all people, my own father. They had separated due to his alcoholism when I was about a year old. The only memories I had of him were from the occasions I had lived with or visited with him since then, and they were all bad. Memories of kicking Coors cans aside walking through the house and yard. Memories of the over powering stench of stale beer everywhere you turned. Memories of his berating, belittling, and beating my half brothers. Memories of his periodically trying to take me away from my mother and family. To this day I couldn’t tell you how they had met again, or what possessed my mother to believe that he had changed, or what she had on her mind when she allowed him to move in to our home, but she did. Anyone who has been around alcoholics could guess what was coming next, because it wasn’t long before he was drinking again and abusing those around him. This man that I had been ashamed of being related to for most of my life, was suddenly living in my house, and in many ways in charge of it. I couldn’t stand this . . .

Through the year or more that I dated Angie, I went to church with her and spent many Sunday afternoons and evenings at her grandparents home. Much to my own surprise, I actually began to question my own beliefs regarding the Universe. Until then, I was a fairly staunch atheist, absolutely convinced that there was no God, and no higher power.

I had started and continued going to church with her simply because it allowed me to be with her, and in her world, it was just something you were expected to do. Regardless of the reasons I had started going to church with her, I had gradually began to doubt my own beliefs. After all, is it really so much harder to believe that God exists than to believe that the matter of the entire universe just magically appeared in a small clump, exploded, and created the universe that we now live in? The world started to look different to me and to this very day I recall a moment when I was riding my bike to the ranch where I was to meet her for a horse ride and I swore I felt the very presence of God. The canyon was beautiful, the sky a dark and beautiful blue, and the air filled with the rich smells that you will only find in the Mojave desert. The world just looked and felt like a different place to me, a nicer place, a place of wonder . . . Of course it wasn’t going to last. About a month after this epiphany of mine, this change in my entire view of the world, Angela kindly and gently told me that she could no longer date me. It seems that she and her grandparents had decided that I was not a good enough Christian. How very ironic that she would give this as the reason for leaving me so soon after I had actually begun to believe what she beleived. I still remember standing in front of my bicycle watching her drive off after she dumped me. To say that my entire world shattered right there just doesn’t do the event justice.

• The only girl that had ever paid the slightest bit of attention to me had just told me that I wasn’t worthy of her.
• There was an abusive alcoholic that I had a lifetime of emotional baggage with living in my home and calling the shots.
• I had been denied the chance for a private and presumably better education because my mother didn’t like the fact that they were Baptists and believed in corporal punishment (as if I was ever in trouble or would have to worry about it).
• Most of the friends I had were gone to college or elsewhere while I still had another year of school to go.
• I was stuck in the middle of no where, with no drivers license, no friends, and a home I now hated going to.

It was time for me to leave . . .

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 . . .