Wilmington NC

Spent this week in Wilmington North Carolina. My company had already sent one of my peers TWICE to get a system up and running, and he had failed both times, so now they were throwing ME at it. I wont bore you with all the tech details, but it was a unique system and not our standard product, and so I was more than a little nervous heading out. It�s a unique system I�ve never seen or been trained on and one of my peers had already failed twice � not a good situation to walk into. The good news? I did all of my reading in the nights before I went and so I had it up and running in less than an hour. J
Not much to write about as far as TG time as very little happened of interest. This might be a great place to hang out most of the time, but just doesn�t appear to me to be a great place for cross dressing. Both nights I went out, my confidence was shot all to hell. The first night I was there I did nothing and just went to bed early. I�ve been sick for a couple of weeks now and it�s starting to take its toll on me.
The next night, I tried on a couple of dresses I took with me just for the purpose of pretty pics. Sorry for the blurry images � my new camera has a problem when used with the timer. (Please don�t flood me with recommendations for things to try � I�ve tried them all and nothing helps).
The first dress is all sequins and it feels absolutely decadant the way it hugs you and fits like a glove. I bought this dress about 7 years ago and at the time could not fit into it. At that time, I started to diet and exorcise and lost 40 lbs just to wear this dress. (I�ve since gained half that back and am working to drop it again)

The next is a dress that I almost threw out for being �too small�. Silly me, this dress was MEANT to be tight. Pretty sure the concept was that a woman with a figure would be wearing it and she would want to show that figure off. Well, my figure isn�t all that but hey . . .

In the end, this is the outfit I wore out:

I went to the only gay bar I found out about: Ibiza. Supposedly they do Karaoki tonight (Thursday).
So I parked the car and was walking on the side walk to the club when a guy in his 20�s walked by me. He took a look at me, looked away, then looked back again. As we cross each other he looks straight in my eyes and more or less yells �Hah!� very loudly. POOF � there went my confidence, thank you SO much.
Entered the bar at about 930 to find it absolutely empty. I am literally the only customer there. I got a drink and chatted with the bartender a bit. He tells me there are Drag shows that start at 1230 and the place will probably be full then. Maybe I�m old, or a whimp, but there is no way in hell I am going to just start my night out at 1230 when I have to work the next day.
Turns out they do NOT do karaoke so I asked him if he knew of a place that does. He turned me on to Valino's Restaurant & Martha's Karaoke Lounge and told me it was �more or less a Lesbian� place.
That�s fine with me as I am usually a good deal more comfortable around Lesbians than at your typical gay bar anyway. I went and checked the place out and discovered it was attached to a family restaurant. Hmmm . . . . doesn�t look like the sort of place you would expect to be �friendly� and so I didn�t bother to go in.
Returned to the hotel and went to the lounge where I chatted with the bartender there. He had just got out of the Army and seemed very friendly so we chatted for about an hour. I got in the elevator to get to my room and there were two gentlemen and a little girl (6ish) in it already. As it got to my floor (and theirs apparently), one of the men looks at me and with out any hint of sarcasm waves toward the door �Please, ladies first�. I turned a bright shade of red and told him �Thank you!� So, one guy laughs at me, and another treats me like a lady. I�m confused � am I passing or not?
The next night I found a Goodwill, and so got dressed and went shopping!

I�d been there maybe 5 minutes when I walked by a young lady I�d guess was around 15 or 16. As I walked by her, she looked me up and down and gave me the meanest, most unambiguous, �you disgust me� look I have ever had pointed in my direction. POOF � there went my confidence again. Confidence gone, I finished shopping the store, went back to the hotel, cleaned up, and went drab. Now in boy mode, I headed back to Valino's Restaurant & Martha's Karaoke Lounge where I ate dinner and then did the karaoke thing. The restaurant made no effort at pretension. It�s d�cor was very 1950/1960 and I didn�t care in the least. The service was great, the food was outstanding, and it didn�t cost me an arm and a leg. I WILL eat there the next time I�m in town.
Karaoke got started at about 10:45 - a lot latter than I liked considering I had a 7AM flight in the morning to get home, but I did have fun for an hour or so. Still haven�t decided if I would go there dressed or not next time. (I probably will)