Priscilla night out!

Pics of two of my bestest friends, my wife Ann-Maria and Penny outside the Palace theatre

I’m feeling really chilled and relaxed, totally at one with being who and what I am.  A great night last night in London, we were up early and back mid-morning.  While my wife was out shopping I spent best part of an hour unpacking our two cases, putting all our clothes away, tidying up my make-up and jewelery, washing my ‘hair’, just gently coming down from the highs of the previous evening.  Nothing too much to do on a Sunday, so down to the pc taking the photos of the camera and re-living the whole thing now by writing a blog.  After the events of recent weeks, the kids knowing about Tina, I guess there had always been a chance that it would impact on the freedoms we have to do what we want.  My wife might have said, ‘right, that’s enough’, ‘I didn’t want the kids to find out, let’s put Tina to bed for a while’.  But quite the opposite, she is a real toughie and just doesn’t let anything get in the way of making our relationship thrive in the best way possible, by going out and having fun.

The evening had been organised a couple of months ago by A-M and good friend Penny Rusham, initially as a surprise as it was one of my Christmas presents.  A trip to London to see the show Priscilla Queen of the desert which is one of best shows playing to packed houses at the Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue.  Very simply, it is about 3 drag queens that take a battered bus (called Priscilla) through the Australian outback from Sydney to Alice Springs.  It has plenty of songs that you know and love, like ‘i will survive’, ‘go west’  ‘whats love got to do with it’ etc, all very lively and singalong and although we have never especially been musical fans, A-M and I loved it.  It opened in London, March 09 with Jason Donovan but has clearly survived his departure and although I’d not heard of  any of the stars, don’t let that put you off.  It’s a great all-round show ~ our taxi driver said that Priscilla and Wicked are the two hottest shows in the West End at the moment.  Hit this link for the Wikipedia entry.

I’d thought it would be an ideal show for tgirls and was surprised not to see lots more, not that that worries us.  I think any theatre is a great place for girls to have a night out, there were a dozen (gg’s of course) having a girls night out in the row in front of us, and we three ‘girl’s (well 2+1)  just felt totally in tune with the atmosphere chatting to anyone near enough and during the drinks interval, one lady even complimented us on how nice we all looked.  Why thank you!

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There has been a lot said recently as to what type of exposure, promulgates acceptance of tgirls; there was a show in the States:  the SNL Estro-Maxx skit that was satiring bearded ladies.  CDjanie (click link to see it) highlighted the latest issue of (Canadian?) Vogue that featured Kate Moss kissing Brazilian tg model Lea T.  Is there any publicity that is bad publicity?   I’m tending to the view that we are following in the footsetps of what gays went through 20-30 years ago.  Historically always the butt of jokes, few straight people of the younger generation would think twice now about watching a TV show featuring gays or gay topics.  Priscilla to my mind reinforces the stereotypical idea that all drag queens are gay (which I think most probably are) and certainly gets played for a lot of laughs (but not obsessively so) and there is always a danger that the whole transgendered spectrum are considered gay by association (which is blatantly not true).  But to me any successful show with a tg theme, giving us more exposure to a thousand or so punters a night,  has to help the cause and that’s what it is all about.

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I am so pleased that we can just go any where we like (with care) when we like and can be treated as just fun people out for a fun time.  We went into a pub, mixed with the throngs in the queues and in the theatre, had a lovely post theatre meal just around the corner from the theatre at Bistro1 in Frith St, Soho (very reasonably priced, good quality food & wine, lively atmosphere) plus a couple of taxi rides and were treated the entire time just as we should be.  That makes me feel good; it makes my wife feel good and I am sure she will look forward to the next event almost as much as me.

When we got back to our favourite London hotel, the Barbican thistle, there was as usual a good lively crowd in the bar and it’s always a pleasure to end the evening there, chatting to new people, finding out where they come from, what they’ve been doing etc.  Penny took no time at all to start chatting to a rather inebriated, but no less enthusiastic Irish guy from Cheltenham, who at 28 is my sons age.  And we were soon talking  about our love of all things Irish including the black stuff and the ‘diddly di’ and then he was buying the 3 of us a drink.  There was also a large dutch theatre group that had been playing the Barbican for 5 weeks.  I think it was their last night so they were very jovial and perfectly happy to invite us over and chat for an hour.

I do have to have a few words about our outfits.  I’ll start with Penny.  She wore this gorgeous black & white number,  figure hugging, short but elegant.  It had these very fine net panels, which is a story in itself, having bought the dress (in male mode) from a designer boutique in Leeds a few weeks previously.  Arriving home and excitement gathering at the prospect of actually trying it on, she was mortified to discover a run in the material, just like a ladder in stockings.  Given that she lives 200 miles away from said shop, not the easiest thing to pop back to exchange, even if she does go on business fairly regularly.  Not to be beaten, she rings the shop to check they have a replacement and arranges a meeting  to pick it up.  But it was worth it;  she looked really pretty all night and with those long legs fully on show, was it any wonder that everyone wanted to talk to her?!  (Incidentally she also uses those long legs with great skill for wind-surfing purposes, to build up the muscles so she can walk very quickly in high heels and leave Tina lagging behind!)

My wife was also looking gorgeous and again there is a story behind it.  As part of the Christmas gift exchange which does on occasion reach silly proportions in our household, I had suggested a corset.  Now fortunately corsets-uk offer a 3for2 (and still do in case you are interested).  Now my thinking was, if I get you 2 corsets, does Tina get one too?  The answer was positive, and this was the first opportunity, bar a practice evening at home when we discovered how these things actually work.  I have to say, I find the whole of the idea of corsets quite exciting, in terms of what they can do to your figure, especially when at my age, you need a little support in the tummy regions!  Well A-M chose the black & white satin one to wear this evening ….. and the previous evening we concluded they would be best with her leather trousers and boots.  As an aside, I was pleased to see that she had as standby one of Tina’s skirts in case there was a problem on the evening, now that is a first.

I was also to wear my corset which we had already decided would go best with a favourite velvety black skirt and thin veiled wrap tied around the bust.

So last night we had to lace each other into our corsets.  I have practiced and can almost achieve what I want, but my attempts to tighten A-M’s corset to near anywhere the level we had practiced previously was met with cries of ‘too tight, I can’t breathe’.  Anyway a girl has to suffer for her cause, and she looked great, just sufficiently different in her own choice of outfit that she felt comfortable being out with two trannies.  Talking of comfort I wore my stilettos and tried to keep up with these two as we chased taxis, but when we got back to the hotel bar I had to change into my comfort boots.

Well I’m biased but I think we all 3  looked good.  Everyone we met said so (as you do of course, cos this is a girly thing) and it all contributed to the ambience of a wonderful evening out.

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What next?  Well there is a relaxed chill at Fabuliss on Wednesday.  I’ve a trip to Brighton with the pompey girls later this month.  Actually last night was such a successful little jaunt which we all enjoyed that we are rather hoping that Tina will be making rather more than an odd impromptu appearance at a long weekend in Paris that we are hoping to arrange with friends Davina & Jackie, Astrid & Sandra towards the end of May.   Yes, ‘choppy waters’ returning to a calm flat sea, I am feeling good.

If you have got this far, very many thanks for reading.

Hugs TinaCortina xx