Sunday, January 5 That was exhausting, but turned out better than I could ever have hoped.
I spent the week between Christmas and New Years hanging out with "rich kids from the east coast". Yeah, I visited my extended family, and with a few cold shoulders and some probing questions, they tolerated me OK.
That said, the whole time I was with my family, I was fairly androgenous -- jeans, plain shirts, sneakers, almost not makeup, hair pulled back and... well... androgenous. Maybe if I'd been in-their-face trans it would have been different, but playing it cool I could be in girl mode (at least on the inside) and not trying to be stealth. Did I "pass"?
No way of telling, because my family had preconceived notions of who I was in the first place.
Then Mom dragged Becca and me to that conference, and I say dragged' (or is it drug?) because no way I would have gone on my own, but now I can't wait for next year. OK, I'm from the left coast' and we're kinda liberal out here in a strange sort of way (conservative in some ways, liberal in others... hard to describe) and I hang out with a fairly progressive bunch so I'm absolutely spoiled. I went into the week expecting trouble and tried to split the difference between being out' but not to terribly visible'. Other than my normal effeminate-boy look, when I first got there, I didn't try at all to stand out, but then again, I didn't hide that I was a girl with some boy-plumbing problems.
So guess what? No one gave a shit. Sure, for maybe 5 minutes I was the go-to authority on everything trans. Then I found out there were gay people there and some raunchy conservatives there and everyone in between, and I admitted to everyone that I was no where near being the authority on the LGBTQ experience, and after that, I could just chill and be one of the girls. The girls didn't give me a second look. The boys treated me like... yeah... one of the girls.
The conference ran for 4 nights. The first night, I was in semi-stealth mode (no makeup, jeans, standard androgenous shirt, sneakers, etc.) but admitting to anyone who asked that I was a girl. The second night, I wore more girl-type clothes and actual makeup (somewhat to the encouragement of Mom and Becca) and looked more like a 14 year old HS girl. The third night, I actually wore a dress. Yes. A dress. Nothing fancy, but a very plain dress with flats and my regular bra (the one with some padding, not the flat bralette I'd been wearing before).
The 4th night -- New Years Eve -- I wore the same outfit I'd worn to the theater gala: the black dress with the spaghetti straps, and thus a well-padded black strapless bra. Again, I wore pair of black lace panties with a little black cup in the crotchy area to hide my little bit of junk, black hose, a black heels, and some gorgeous green jade bracelets and matching jade neckace and earrings. Once again, I felt ready to do the runway. I looked damn good. A very careful study in the mirror only revealed not the slightest traces of boy-ness remaining.
The New Years Eve party started with dinner at 7. Actually, there was a cocktail party for the adults at 6, and so a bunch of us agreed to meet upstairs in one of the rooms that had a balcony and someone had some weed so that was a great idea. I fit in perfectly with the girls. Becca calls it a "northeastern prep school pretty-plainness" which means just pretty enough to breed, but not so pretty that it's going to get in the way of playing field hockey. I'm not sure I understand that, but hey, I went for it.
We all kinda drizzled downstairs in groups of 3 or 4. I tagged along with some kids my age and we dove into the buffet as weed will lead you to do and grabbed an empty table next to the back wall. There was music and presentations by a bunch of stuff shirts and we wandered in and out and apparently the weed room upstairs was an open lounge for us until the party really started at midnight.
I made it back downstairs about 11:30 and everyone was hanging out and trying to look marvelous and champagne was being passed around close to midnight. No one seemed to look sideways at the teens all grabbing glasses of bubbly, and apparently a lot of these kids come from households where that's not a big deal. Anyway, by this point, I'd had a few tokes on a fattie and a couple of glasses of cheap bubbly and was feeling really, really great. Bill, the little guy who was following me around all week, ended up at my side and I threw my arm around his shoulder and told him to be a gentleman and prop me up, which he did graciously.
Suddenly, without warning, there was a countdown and then everyone started yelling "Happy New Year" and the piano started playing and people started smacking faces. So naturally, I turned to Bill (or is it Billy? Definitely not William or Willie or Will) and began to swap spit with him like he was the last boy on earth.
Yep. He's gayer than a purse full of kittens.
Sometime around 2, the lights went down and a DJ came out and the whole place turned into a dance floor. I danced with a couple of guys (yeah, even Bill or Billy or whatever liked to dance, even if he didn't really appear to like girls that much) and lots of guys spun us around I guess mainly to let us flash our panties to the crowd.
By about 4, I wandered upstairs. I took a peek into the weed lounge, and a handful of people, both girls and guys, were randomly passed out on the beds. I headed back up to our suite, only to see it was empty. I had a gut feeling that both Mom and Becca were "entertaining rich gentlemen" somewhere, and while part of that grossed me out a bit, I was glad to see Mom having a great, great time.
I slept until noon on New Years Day. By that time, Mom and Becca were back in the suite and I crept around to not disturb them. I was famished, realizing I hadn't eaten in 18 hours and had drunk more than I'd ever drunk in one sitting (two... count `em TWO glasses of cheap bubbly) and found a snack bar with gut grenades and fries and a coke.
The conference was officially over, and we were checking out at 2 (really?) to drive up to Granny's house, spend one more night there, and then fly home on the 2nd.
By the time I got back to the room, Mom and Becca were half-way packed, and I started tossing my stuff into my suitcases and backpack. Mom called for the bellman and the valet parking and we meandered out of there about 2pm.
I can't imagine how Mom managed to drive. The three of us hardly spoke.
Becca and Mom grabbed burgers (I was fine with another coke) and then Mom and Becca swapped out driving about half way when we all had to stop and pee. We got to Granny's about 9 and she looked at the three of us and just laughed. We all fell into random beds and passed out.
Thursday morning, Granny woke us up with a huge breakfast. Still, very little was said among us. We slowly re-packed for the flight, which was leaving about 4, and finally around lunch time we began recounting the events of the weekend. Granny reminded us that she and Granddad used to do all of that, and she misses it but just can't see herself doing it anymore. Mom nodded, and said, "I think it's important for Christy and Becca to meet these folks and get to know that there's something outside of the west coast."
Grandma nodded in agreement.
The flight home was inconsequential. We changed planes in Atlanta and I watched a couple of old meaningless movies. The plane landed on the left coast around 11 and we were home in bed by midnight on the 2nd.
Early Friday morning, Carlos called and I asked him to come over. Becca was busy doing laundry and re-packing to head back to school on Saturday.
We just sat in the basement with the music playing and talked about everything and nothing and how my birthday was coming up in two weeks (he remembered!!!) and asked me what I wanted to do and I asked him if the driving range was open at his Dad's golf club and he said yeah and we made a date for THAT. I kissed him a lot and nothing really came of it and he headed home before dinner.
Lots of tears and hugs as Mom and I drove Becca to the airport to catch the plane back to school. Yeah, she didn't need to go back until tomorrow, but it was smart to get a day's head start and get back in the dorm before the rush.
On the drive back, Mom asked me if I'd met any b-o-y-s' at the thing, and I laughed and told her a lot of em and told her about kidding Billy and she thought that was funny. She asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, and I said a small party and maybe I could just invite the Sisterwives and their dates if they had any and Carlos. Mom added Jason and Lilly to the list, which I thought was just fine.
Today we went to Church and I did the whole youth group thingie and we went around the room talking about what we did over the holidays. I talked about our trip to the east coast and my family and such. No biggie. We talked about the ski trip coming up in two weeks (right before my birthday!) and I told them I was in.
School tomorrow. Gotta plan a birthday party.