Attitude adjustment

My work took me to the nearby city of Cessnock today. I didn't have a lot of time to spare, but stopped to look in op shops between jobs. Obviously, that means browsing dress racks in boy mode.

I walked into an op shop and went straight to the dress rack, which happened to be close to the front counter. One of the 2 women at the counter asked "are you going to a fancy dress party?" I smiled and looked at her somewhat quizzically, which confused her a little, and she repeated the question, adding a comment about the fact that I was looking at the dress rack.

I smiled again, and got my internet tablet out of my bag and said "I'll show you something." While I was waiting for it to boot up, the other woman noticed my nails and commented "Look at his nails! They're beautiful." I loaded up the above photo, which was from last week's Central Coast cafe night, and showed it to them. It took a couple of seconds for the penny to drop, but they suddenly realised that the photo was of me, and asked a few of the usual questions like did I do drag shows (no), how did I get that cleavage? (an adhesive bra and mastectomy breast forms), was I homosexual or heterosexual (heterosexual and married). I mentioned that most of the crossdressers that I know are heterosexual and many are married.

There was more conversation along the same lines, during which I showed them a few older photos in which I was wearing auburn wigs. Both women complimented me on my appearance. When I got to a photo in a black wig (the one in my earlier blog post My holy grail of bras), the woman who had started it all asked if the photo was of my wife. "No, that's me." She apologised for her original quip several times during the conversation and made it clear that until then, she had assumed that all crossdressers were gay.

So in the space of a few minutes, I'd not only outed myself to a couple of shop staff but I'd educated them about crossdressers. When a customer brought something to the counter to pay, I alerted the women to her arrival and went to browse the dress rack. As I worked my way along, I found 8 dresses that I wanted to try on. Knowing that the normal rules for this chain of shops was a limit of 3 items in the change room, I told the woman at the counter that I had found 8 dresses that I'd like to try and would it be okay if I took all of them into the dressing room. She again apologised for her earlier comment, and assured me that it would be fine to take the 8 dresses in and try them.

Obviously, it took me a little while to try them all on, and some were good and others no good. By the time I'd finished, I'd decided that I'd like to get 4 dresses including a halter neck evening gown that I have no idea when I'll get an opportunity to wear it. It was tagged $10, while the other 3 were all tagged $7. Without me asking, the now quite chatty and friendly woman put them all through for $5 each.

Having spent so much time in that one shop, I didn't have any time left to look at the other 3 op shops nearby. I returned to my car and continued with my work day. When I got home, I showed the dresses to my wife, who was uncommital about the first 3 that I showed her, and quite interested in the final one. That probably means that she'll be trying it on soon and if it fits her, she'll borrow it from time to time or it will find its way into her wardrobe and I'll have to borrow it back. :)

As a follow-up to my last post (Frankening), I bought a cheap pearl white nail polish tonight, so I'll be doing some more Frankening and re-doing my nails very soon (probably tomorrow night).