My Story Part 3

This is a continuing series that I am writing based on events that have happened in my life that I have had as a result of being transgender. This series was inspired by watching theater by Scott Turner Schofield where he preformed skits based on his life.

Next week in Provincetown MA. is Fantasia Fair the oldest transgender conference in the nation and it starts on the Sunday and last until the following Sunday. The first weekend over laps with Women’s week and ends on the weekend that the gay AA comes up there for their week. Fantasia Fair was started back in 1975 and unlike other conferences, it s not limited to one hotel but is spread out all over town.

Provincetown is located on the very tip of Cape Cod and is an old Portuguese fishing village that during the summer mushrooms in to a tourist destination, my parents use to call it an “artist colony” The year population is a little over 3,000 people but during the summer the streets become jammed with pedestrians. The town was known for it summer stock with Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, and Susan Glaspell and also its street artist that lined the side walks.

I had just started going to the Connecticut Outreach Society support group a year earlier and I heard about the conference when several of the members came back from the conference in 1999. In 2000, a friend was going up to the fair on Thursday and she offered to share the room, I figured it would a good way to see if I liked the fair. So I started making plans to attend the conference. One of the first problems that I had to tell my parents and my brother where I was going, so the first little white lie was that I was attending a computer conference outside of Boston. They also wanted to know how to contact me in case of an emergency. For most people that wouldn’t be a problem, but since I was suppose to be going to Boston, I couldn’t give them a Provincetown phone number, becuase P’town has a reputation as being a “Gay Resort” and I was afraid that I would "Out" myself. That problem was over come by a friend offering to let me use her cell phone number, so brought about the second little white lie, the phone charges at the hotel was too expensive so call this number and she will get in touch with me to call them (I bought my cell phone as soon as I got home).

When I got to P’town, the first thing that I needed to do was remove my body hair. This lead to a big, big, BIG mistake! I got the bright idea to use Nair. Well Nair is not made to remove thick male body hair so I left it on an extra long time, my body started to sting and when I went to wash it off some Nair go on my nipple… I think they could hear me whimper through out the whole B&B. For the first couple of days I could not wear any tight fitting clothes over my red body.

Sometimes it was humorous, like the time I was walking down the main street, Commercial Street, and a tour bus went by and I could hear them say over the buses’ loudspeaker… “This week is Fantasia Fair when all the crossdressers and transsexual come up.” I looked up and there staring out the windows were all these gray hair people with their faces pressed up against the windows. Another time I was walking down the street and I overheard a couple say, “There must be a women’s basketball team in town, look at all these tall women!”

Sometimes it can be paranoid, a friend who hang gliders come up to North Truro for a hang glider meet and sometimes it is on the same weekend that I am up there for FF. One time a group of us were eating at a restaurant when I overheard a bit on conversation, “...the winds will be coming out of the north…” I looked around and there was my friend, his wife and two other couples that I knew! In order for us to leave the restaurant, we had to walk right by them, as we passed them my friends looked at us as we walked by and didn’t recognized us (latter when I came out to them they didn’t ever remember the incident, even though it was burned into my memory). That week every time I saw a car with a hang glider in it, I hid.

There were many firsts for me at the fair among them, the first time out in public, the first time I felt rain on my stockings, the first time someone ever called me ma’am and the first time I ever went shopping by myself as Diana. And this will be the first time I didn’t go to the fair since I starting going back in 2000.

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I have been busy with homework so my blogging has taken a backseat. I will try to keep up with memes and “My Story” but all other blogging will have to be on an “as time allows” basis.