Hello, Guys and Girls!
Shopping today! And I’m now joyously wearing a part of my well-earned booty from this expedition. This outing was a long, long time in coming—far too long. Last night I was like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning: I slept for perhaps an hour, finally gave it up around 4 and got out of bed. But as usual, there were lessons to be learned from the day’s events.
[1] First, a word to the GG’s. Now, ladies, everyone who knows me is well aware how often I have expressed my profound admiration and regard for the fair sex—but I must admit that at times today I had feelings towards you that might be described as a wee bit ungenerous. There have been endless discussions on this forum, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, relating to the fact that some time ago you women stopped almost altogether wearing dresses and skirts (and without asking permission, I might add). The effect that this has had on the lives of us CDers has been enormous, and never has that lesson been driven home so forcefully as today.
The main mission of the day’s outing was to find some nice skirts. I went to shop after shop without finding much of anything. Oh, yes, racks and racks of trousers, but where were the skirts? I looked high and low for them with little success. And we’re talking about some of the big-name department stores in the heart of Dublin. Now maybe they were there, and I just missed them. But if they were there, they were well hidden. I suppose our Dublin sisters know where to find skirts in their Fair City, but I had to look a long time before I found a couple that suited me.
Really, ladies, do you not see what you’re doing to us? If this desperate situation is to be restored, it’s entirely in your hands. You know what they say: “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.” And your right not to wear dresses ends where my right to wear them begins. So I implore you: go back to dresses and skirts, out of sympathy for and solidarity with a downtrodden and hard-pressed minority. There is another saying that has never been so apt as at this juncture: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” That’s all I have to say on this topic.
[2] I was a bit nervous when I started out this morning, which is rather odd, given that in my glory days I could buy girly stuff with no discomfort whatsoever. I realized that in the past I had been playing mind games with myself. You see, in those days I was married. My wife knew about my CDing and was cool with it. So whenever I went into a shop to buy stuff, I could tell myself, “I’m a married man. They’ll assume that I’m buying it for the wife.”
But I’m no longer married, so I didn’t have that little stratagem to fall back on. Which is of course ridiculous. Because when they see a guy buying girly stuff, they may assume he’s buying it for the wife or they may not, because how do they know whether he’s married or not to begin with? So the lesson is that you don’t need any cute little stratagems. You just do it.
For example, one little shop I went into was full of women—and me. I just went about my business, and nobody paid me any mind. I eventually bought a cardigan there, and that was that. In fact, the whole day was like this. Nobody said a word to me.
And there were some potentially embarrassing situations that proved to be no problem. E.g., in order to take a stick of lipstick, I had to walk right into the middle of a crowd of young girls. No problem: I took it and went and paid for it. And my favourite moment was when I was selecting a couple of slips. There’s little old me in the midst of a lot of women, plus a mass of bras, panties, corsets, etc, and I was cool. I was saying to myself, “Back in the groove, baby, you’re back in the groove!”
One point of interest: I made purchases at several different stores, and three times I was checked out by a guy. None of them said a word to me, not even the one from whom I was buying two tops, two skirts and two slips. He was cool with it, and I was cool with it. The third guy, the one from whom I bought the lipstick, gave me what I interpreted to be a "knowing look": "Aha! You're one of them, are you?" Maybe I'm wrong, because he was a foreigner, and foreigners can sometimes be hard to read. In any case, he didn't say anything but "Thanks very much", and by that time I was past caring what anybody thought about anything. I was enjoying myself too much.
Of course, two things to note: I was shopping in drab, and I didn’t ask to try anything on, which I really wanted to do at times. Trying stuff on might well have changed the situation. At any rate, shopping in drab is no big deal, and it’s a start.
[3] The day wasn’t entirely about shopping. I was also meeting a contact in a TG centre. She’s a T-girl in the middle of transitioning, which she says is going well. At the end of our meeting we left together since we were going the same way. So there we were strolling right through the fat middle of Dublin, and no one was paying the least bit of attention to us. That astonished me—until I realized that we were just walking along and chatting to each other and not paying any attention to anyone else. So why should anyone be paying any attention to us?
I did ask her if she suffered any harassment. She said that once every four or five months on average she might get a bit. A couple of weeks earlier some kids had shouted after her, “Hey, Mister!” So to my amazement that sort of thing is possible. It was the first time I had witnessed it personally. A revelation. She did agree however that parading publicly en femme in the little town I’m living in would be a different matter altogether. You need sufficient numbers to be able to blend in. In our town you’d stick out like a sore thumb. So that’s something to think about.
[4] Finally, to end this long, long post, I was texting my son a lot today, and this proved to be a bit of a problem. Lately I’ve been letting my nails grow, and they’re to the length now that I can’t figure out how to hit the keys. But I’m letting them grow. I’ve been a life-long nail-biter (and that should tell you something), and the practice has to stop. It certainly isn’t lady-like, is it? So I’ll have to figure this one out. In the meantime, the lesson learned is: it’s so hard being a girl! But I’m not complaining about anything this evening. I’m just happily exhausted and planning to go to bed soon.
Best wishes, Annabelle the Joyous
Originally Posted by suzy1
If you don't like the way I'm livin', you just leave this long haired country girl alone:
