When I started attending the Connecticut Outreach Society’s meeting twice a month, I wanted to go out more than two days a month.
COS used to go out to stores that opened at night just for us so now I had another night to go out as Diana. There used to be a Boutique store in West Hartford where once a years the owner would open her store to us and we used to have a blast trying on clothes, I think that I still have some clothes that I bought there. Also Irene’s Lingerie in New Britain and then later in Plainville used to open her store to us and she also used to give talks at the meeting about how to buy lingerie. We also used to go to Tonkin’s Wigs in Waterbury each year, she was very trans friendly but sadly she retired a couple of years ago.
COS also held an annual Banquet with guest keynote speakers, the banquet allowed me to go out over night, I then found out about conferences… First Event was the first conference that I went to
COS used to have regular Board meetings and I decided to attend because it was a third night that I could go out a month. So now I was on the COS Board and one of the things that the Board tasked me with is finding more way to help get our members out in public, and I organized dinners and movies nights. We went to restaurants in the area like the Pond House in Elizabeth Park, Gold Roc, and Coyote Flaco. The first movies that I attended was the Out Film Festival at Cinestudio at Trinity College in Hartford and I attend it now just about every year.
I started to attend conferences. At First Event there was a good number of COS members who regularly attended the conference, one year there were ten members there, I used to go up on Thursday and stayed until Sunday. Then there is Fantasia Fair. I first attended it back 2000 for a 3 days weekend but I was hooked.
Then I met Jerimarie from the CT TransAdvocacy Coalition and as they say the rest is history.
My Story is a series of blog posts about my transition and observation of life as a trans-person.
~~~~~~~~~
I don't know why but it seems like nobody wants to go out anymore. It seems like they are content to just attending meetings. I stopped organizing dinners because people said that they wanted to go but no one showed up. Now it is nearly impossible to even get people to go safe places like the Out Film Festival.
I was hoping you would continue with these stories. The stories are so important as they give us a sense of ourstories. (I hate that word his story.)
ReplyDelete