Going out in Drag -- Growth from Ignorance

As I’m transgender, I don’t consider going out in “Full Girlie Mode” to be drag. It’s just going out as who I really am. That being said, if you read the first post, you probably can figure out that my neighbors, friends and relatives would consider a genetic male dressed up as a woman to be something to joke about… so I rarely do it.

Last Friday, when I got home from work, I put on my make-up and dressed up in a really cute dress. When I looked in the mirror I really liked the way I looked! “Screw it! I’m going to that Transgender Night that I saw advertised online!”

The bar was inside Peabody Marriott. I eventually found the hotel, arriving around 11 PM. There was no signage for a bar and the parking lot was somewhat empty. It was advertised as being from 8:30 PM to 2 AM, so the event had to be going on somewhere inside the building!

I walked around the building in vane, trying to find the entrance for the bar. There was none that I could find. I didn’t want to go into the lobby as there were guests checking in, so I wound up calling the hotel (asking for the bar) from my cell phone.

I was told, “We close the bar early on nights where it’s dead”. REALLY? You advertise a specific event at specific times, and people are driving 30 to 50 miles out of their way to get there…

The man on the other end of the line offered no apologies and no legitimate explanations. What should have been a wonderful evening was destroyed… not by the fact that the bar closed early, but by the lack of professionalism and/or compassion by whoever answered the phone inside the bar.

Their loss. I was going stay at the Peabody Marriott in 2 weeks for the First Night event, but out of principle, I refuse to spend any of my money in that hotel!

The one good thing that came from that night was that I finally got the nerve to leave my house dressed-up exactly as I wanted to… without it being for a Halloween party and without caring about the neighbor’s reactions… and have every day since.