"You're beautiful!"

I had a new experience yesterday. A woman said "You're beautiful!" to me, and meant it. Amazingly, she already knew me as a male, and she said it after she had realised who I was. :)

I had been intending to get out a few times while I was on holidays, but aside from the cafe nights that I go to throughout the year, yesterday was the first time that I got out. On Thursday night, an infrequent crossdresser from the next suburb showed up in a chat room and informed me that their partner was away until Saturday afternoon. We arranged that, when she got home around 10pm, she'd come into the chat room and let me know, and I'd go and visit for a while.

With the late evening visit in mind, I decided that I'd go out shopping during the day and stay dressed until I got back from visiting her. I had a late start and ended up having lunch before I ventured out. I drove to Westfield Kotara, and had just about given up doing laps of the carpark and was on my way to the exit when someone got into their car and left, giving me a space quite close to one of the entrances.

I had 3 things that I was really after. A wide black belt to go with a certain dress, which I'll probably wear to the cafe within the next week or two, a new black bag to replace the too-small backpack style one that I've been using for some time, and wrap dresses. I walked around looking for belts in some of the cheaper shops without success.

While I was walking around, I had a woman from a little stall apparently selling hair straighteners or curlers ask if I'd come over to their stall, obviously intending to try to demonstrate their product on my hair... Since I'm quite attached to this particular synthetic wig and she apparently had no idea that it was a wig, I declined. :)

I worked my way through the more expensive places, and found a nice black leather belt and a bag on sale at Esprit. The belt had a RRP of $69.95 and a discounted tag showing $34.95. The bag had a RRP of $89.95 and was reduced to $33.95. I decided to look around at a few more places including a specialist bag store, but ended up going back to Esprit. When I took the belt and bag to the counter, the belt turned out to be reduced even further, meaning that I paid just $26.95 for it. It wasn't until I was typing this blog post that I looked at the receipt closely enough to realise that the bag is polyurethane and not leather, but with the frequency of use it's likely to have I doubt that will be a problem. It matches the belt and my black leather Tony Bianco stilettos, so it'll do. :)

Having finished at Westfield, I decided to drop into 3 op shops that I often go to, and have bought many clothes from. In two of the three, some of the staff have seen photos of me, but only one had seen me en femme before, and that was some time ago when my makeup wasnt as good as it is now and I was in a brunette wig. The two women I recognised at the first shop didn't show any sign of recognition, the staff of the second didn't even look at me, but I only managed about a minute in the 3rd shop before the first woman realised who I was.Apparently I smiled too much, and my smile is (un)fairly distinctive. A few seconds later, the manager came out of the back room into the shop and looked at me. Her expression was priceless. It went from a normal neutral look of someone who is busy with her work to jaw dropped wide open in about a second. Once she'd picked her jaw up off the floor, she exclaimed "You're beautiful!" She took 2 photos with her phone, the other woman took one photo with her camera and one with my mobile.

I didn't find any wrap dresses, so I'm intending to try to get out again sometime next week to look in a few other places. Maybe I'll scour the local op shops for Tightrope brand dresses in size 14, since that's what my two favourite dresses are.

Sadly, after hanging around in the chat room until 11pm, the girl from the next suburb didn't show up, so I changed, showered and went to bed.

As I mentioned in my last post, I set myself a goal of getting out on average once every 5 days this year, double my average from last year. By the and of the 8th, I'd been out twice, and I anticipate going out again next Tuesday, which is the 12th. Looks like I might be revising my goal to average once every 4 days!