Fantastic night out in the Gayborhood
Last night my friend Kerry (a fellow CD) and I got dressed to the nines and went into Philly for a girl's night out. It was a rather last minute thing. It turned out my wife and kids were going to be out of town Thursday and Friday night, so I quickly put a call out to my friends. It turned out that Kerry didn't have plans on Friday either, and we quickly zeroed in on wanting to go into the city. Thursday night I scoured my closet but felt like I had worn all of my nice outfits too recently. So the next morning I went shopping before work, and ended up with two dresses and a pair of shoes for just a little over $100. Everything was on sale and I got an additional coupon at the door. After work, I got home, tried on my new dresses, chose one, accessorized it, and drove to Kerry's place. I drove in drab, but underdressed, which is a good thing, because I'm pretty sure at one light I was stopped next to a coworker. I didn't look too closely cause I didn't want to draw attention to myself.
I changed at Kerry's and then she drove us to the "gayborhood." The Gayborhood is essentially the center of gay life in Philly, with a large number of gay bars and club. All of the crosswalks are painted in rainbow colors, which is so cool! Of course, the crowd in this area is pretty accepting of whatever your bag is. We had a tasty dinner at Tavern on Camac and then asked our waiter for recommendations about where to go dancing. We had seen a place called iCandy around the block, but he said, "You don't want to go there, it's very young." We pretended to be offended, and asked, "Do we look like a pair of old maids?" and he said, "No, I was using young as a euphemism. It's a fine place if you want to get beer spilled on you." That settled it: he recommended their upstairs or a bar called Woody's. We decided on a change of scenery and after walking around a little just to see what else there was, ended up at Woody's. We interacted with so many cool people there. There were Bacardi girls (GGs) in red miniskirts and knee high boots. I don't think they were used to being so ignored at a bar, but Hello, this was a gay bar, and most of the clientele were men. One Bacardi girl wanted to give us free "rum and coke" samples, and I said "I'll try one, but only if you tell me where you got your boots," and then we got into such a girly conversation about Jessica Simpson brand shoes. There were some tall gay guys trying on these ultra-high heels and we gave them some pointers on how to walk. Some people had glowsticks, and we asked one lady how she got it, and then she just gave it to us. Later, we ran into two young women (again GGs) and I just had to tell one that I loved her figure-hugging floral print dress, and they in turn coveted our newly won glowstick. At one point, one of the two girls was asking me what fashion mags I read. "Vogue? No, are you a Cosmo girl?" She also helped me fix my hair after it got messed up from trying the virtual reality goggles that was part of the Bacardi girls' shtick. Somehow the four of us became BFFs for the night and we ended up going upstairs and dancing with them. The dance floor is incredible, with an awesome light wall. There was also steam and lasers and a disco ball. Pretty crazy stuff. While we were up there, this gorgeous blond from the UK had to come over and tell Kerry and I that she thought we looked fabulous. Everybody was so nice, and all of them were cisgendered. What a great feeling it was to go out and just be accepted for you.
We finally left around 1:30am and got back to Kerry's by about 2:30am. It was 3:30am before I got into my own bed. I was exhausted, but it was worth it.
