A Full Femme Friday - Część Druga

After my workshop at the True Colors Conference, one student came up to me to ask some questions that she did not want to ask in front of the other attendees. I happily answered all her questions and she went away a happy camper. (Check out tomorrow's post for the questions and answers.)

I returned to the Student Union to turn in my paperwork and meet up with Diana and Maryann to head out to the Adams Mills Restaurant for an early dinner. I gave Maryann the address of the restaurant so she could program it into her smart phone's GPS, then we went our separate ways to retrieve our vehicles and drive to the restaurant.

Thirty-five minutes later, I arrived at the restaurant. Diana's car was already there, but Maryann's car was not. I went inside, found Diana seated in the upper dining room, ordered a drink and we bided our time until Maryann showed up.

Forty-five minutes later, we gave up on Maryann and ordered our meals. Our male waiter referred to us as ladies and he could have not been nicer. I ordered baked stuffed shrimp with rice pilaf and grilled vegetables. The meal was delicious.

We left the restaurant around 5:30 PM and I headed in the general direction of home. Google Maps indicated that the route I normally take was a mess on the west side of Hartford, which is typical for a weekday evening. The alternate southern route was not so messy, so that's the route I took.

There were a couple of areas where the traffic slowed down, but in general, it was not bad and since I was in no hurry to go home and had gotten my second wind after eating, I decided to visit my favorite Roz & Ali (nee Dress Barn), which was located only a few exits further than I normally would exit to go home.

Entering the store, I did not see any of the sales reps I knew by name and vice versa. This did not surprise me because they usually work days, but I was hoping one of them would be working later so I could see and greet them, but it was not to be.

I had received a $10 Roz & Ali coupon in the mail for my birthday that I had to use by the end of the month and I had recently taken notice of a polka dot jumpsuit on their website, so it was a perfect shopping storm.

I found the rack containing the jumpsuits (see the photo above) and took a size 12 and size 14 to the dressing room. The size 12 fit perfectly, so I returned the 14 to the rack and took the 12 to the cash registers.

The sales rep asked for my phone number, typed it into the terminal, which I assume turned up separate accounts for my wife and myself.

"And you are... ?" she asked.

"Stanley," I replied.

As expected, she did not react negatively and rang up my purchase. And that's all I have to say about that.

During the 30-minute trip home, I reflected on my full femme Friday and felt that it had been very fulfilling and I look forward to more days like it.

Wearing ModCloth (Source: ModCloth)

Polish girl wearing polka dots

A Full Femme Friday

Friday was a full day out en femme. My primary objective for the day was to go to my alma mater, the University of Connecticut, to attend the True Colors Conference and conduct a workshop titled "Cross-Living: Out Among the Civilians." There were also other planned stops during the day.

Getting going was a problem. My 15-year-old blind dog started barking while I was doing my makeup, so I had to stop what I was doing, put her on a leash and take her outside in case she had to do business with the great outdoors. This occurred four times and as a result, I left the house about 30 minutes later than I intended. Once on the road, I encountered a five-mile backup on the Interstate due to a truck fire, so I lost another 30 minutes.

By the way, I wore a houndstooth sheath dress from Dress Barn, black opaque tights from Hue, black bag and black patent high heel pumps from Payless, a black scarf and white and gold watch from Avon and silver hoop earrings from Napier. I also wore a white fake fur jacket from Fashion Bug.

My first stop was the Christmas Tree Shop to exchange a purchase that was broken out of the box. It was actually my sister's purchase and she planned to make the 80-mile roundtrip to exchange her broken purchase. Since the store was on my way to UConn, I offered to make the exchange for her and so I did.

It was uneventful. I had to deal with a woman staffing the customer service desk and a man who fetched the replacement from the stockroom. No one reacted negatively to me and other customers paid me no mind. The only concern I had was loading and unloading a 20-pound box between my car and a shopping carriage without breaking a nail!

I arrived at UConn, parked my car and walked two blocks to the Student Union, which was the epicenter of the conference. The weather was similar to the past few True Colors Conferences — temperature hovering around the freezing point with a steady brisk wind that made it feel a lot colder and caused me worry that my wig might take flight!

After checking in to obtain my workshop paperwork and ID badge, I immediately began encountering old friends and acquaintances (Arlene, Diana, Holly, Lee Ann, Maryann, Robin and another Robin).

I also ran into Bob, who is someone I see at most ham radio conventions I attend. Even though he is openly gay, I did not expect to see him at True Colors Conference and he was just as surprised to see me. He was staffing the booth for a church that supports LGBTQ folks. We talked about his church and my involvement with the conference. As we parted ways, I said, "See you at Hamvention in two months!"

My workshop was at 1:15 PM in another building. Since it was lunch time, my assigned room would be empty, so I decided to go there to get my act together in peace and quiet. I had requested a room with a computer and large display to view photos of me out among the civilians. Turned out that the room had a huge display — approximately 6 x 8 feet, but I forgot my USB flash drive of photos. However, I was able to use the computer to access the Internet and use my blog and flickr account for the visual portion of my workshop.

I had a small, but attentive audience. No one walked out on me and there were pertinent questions and comments.

I emphasized that whether you think you pass or not, just get out there and experience the real world as a woman because in this day and age (especially in our neck of the woods), most civilians won't notice you and even if they do, they probably won't care.

Then I went on to tell them about my positive experiences out among the civilians, especially those times that I seemed to be accepted as a woman by other women. That triggered a comment from one of the students, who said that initially she thought I was a cisgender female! Her comment made my day, but it kind of blew the premise of my workshop out of the water.

And so it goes.

Wearing Madeleine (Source: Madeleine)

Helmut Zierl (center) femulating in the 1997 German television series Ein Mann steht seine Frau (A Man Stands His Wife).

True Colors Conference

Today, I am at the University of Connecticut campus in Storrs to attend the True Colors Conference, "the largest and most comprehensive conference in the country focused on LGBTQ youth issues."

At the conference, I will conduct a workshop titled "Cross-Living: Out Among the Civilians," which is intended to teach and encourage male-to-female crossdressers to escape from fantasy-land and experience the real world as females.

The Conference is usually a reunion for me where I run into LGBTQ people I don't usually encounter out among the civilians. So in addition to taking in all that the Conference has to offer, I also look forward to getting reacquainted with folks I may only see once a year.

In the next post or two, I will recount my Friday at the Conference and elsewhere, so stay tuned.

A scholastic womanless beauty pageant photo that Starla recently discovered on Facebook.