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| My Trans Friend Racquel and Friend. |
In many ways, this is only a continuation of yesterday’s post about seismic gender shifts. This time though, I am going to focus on my foray into leaving gay bars behind and beginning to go to several of the major sports bars in the area where I live.
As I see it now, going to lesbian bars was more of a
learning experience but being accepted in sports bars was a dream come true. As
far as the sports bars were concerned, I can break them down into two types. The
smaller more diverse ones such as TGIF Fridays (which catered to single women)
and the larger ones which catered to more of a beer drinking, wing consuming
male crowd. I knew quite a bit about both from my male days being out and about
with my drinking buddies. Not to mention, I had managed a major competitor to
Fridays in the area. I only knew the number of times I was jealous of women who
took advantage of going to both venues.
It was not until I seriously began to consider going to a
sports venue where I enjoyed the cold beer and sports on the big screen
televisions, did I begin to look around and see many other cisgender women
mixed in with the rest of the patrons. I began to think, if they could do it,
why could not I?
Before I even considered my adventure, I needed to insure my
femininized presentation was up to the challenge of being in an atmosphere where
I would be one of the very few transgender women (or cross dressers) in the
venue. All in all, the process took every bit of courage I could summon and
still was very scary. Even though I was scared, I pushed forward to see if I
could achieve my dream. From my business experience, I knew if I could make it
to the bar without being noticed, most of my risk would be averted. Bartenders
are greedy creatures and are primarily focused on service and tips which would
not be a problem for me.
My biggest problem was acting as if I was not a single woman
in the bar area. One of my tricks was to always use my cell phone as a prop to
act like I was expecting company. For the most part I think it worked until I
began to meet another transgender woman for drinks and there was strength in numbers.
I was fortunate too; in that I was slightly ahead of the curve of cisgender
women enjoying sports as much as men. When my lesbian friends and I were together
enjoying the games, no one cared, and we fit in.
Through it all, there were only a few occasions when I was
called out and embarrassed. One of which occurred when I was in a red neck leaning
sports bar and had the local police called on me for using the women’s room.
After a brief discussion with a female cop, I was sent on my way to a venue up
the road where I knew I had rest room privileges.
Probably the most glaring and potentially problematic time I
had was one night at a smaller sports bar I had gone to often with no problems.
That night, my transgender friend Racquel and I were sitting at the bar minding
our own business when suddenly, “Dude Looks Like a Lady” by Arrowsmith
comes on the juke box. Not once, not twice but four times in a row, and to make
matters worse, the new manager came up to us and said it was time to go. So, we
did and went up the street to a bigger venue where we knew we would be welcome.
Never to come back, or so we thought.
Several weeks later, one of the bartenders from the venue we
were kicked out of found me and apologized. She went on to say, the manager who
had banned me had been fired for drug abuse and I was invited back. I happily
went back and never had another problem except a bathroom experience which I
will save for another blog post.
More than likely, all the success I had in establishing
myself in sports bar venues had to do with knowing the people on the other side
of the bar were there for the money as much as the store clothing clerks I used
to see in my old shopping days in malls when all they cared about was my
attitude and the color of my money. On the other hand, the people in the gay
bars treated me much worse and often I had to wait for service altogether.
At the end of the day (or several) my transition into the
big sports bars was much easier than I ever thought it would be.
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