Detox

After five days at Dee-Va Las Vegas (or as my GG friend Ms. Dee-ism says, “Viva Dee-Vegas”), I didn’t want to go cold turkey on dressing–I needed some detox. 

My weekend after returning home from DeeLV provided me two opportunities. 

The first was our monthly St. Louis Gender Foundation dinner. As I have written before, our group used to meet in private in a hotel meeting room. A couple of years ago, we evolved into having our Satur-Dee night monthly dinners at the same St. Louis restaurant. Our normal waitress is happy to see us (she said she liked my dress), the bartender at the bar knows what our members usually drink, and it’s made life a lot simpler for the group organizers. 

It also shows how society has evolved in the acceptance of Transgender individuals to be able to dine at a restaurant in public. We usually have about a dozen members attend, although the numbers vary from month to month.

As this was October dinner–the month of Halloween–and my first SLGF dinner was in October 2017 (when I came as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz), I decided to wear my Wonder Woman dress. I knew I couldn’t wear it FOR Halloween–my friend Michelle had claimed dibs on it (and you’ll see why soon)–so this was my compromise. 

We had a nice dinner and as I hadn’t been to dinner for a couple of months, good to catch up with the other members. After dinner, some of the others went to a bar with a band at a local hotel, and I was tempted to join them, but I had an early obligation the next morning. 

The St. Louis Go organization has two big races every year, a marathon weekend in the spring and a Halloween race in the fall, usually about ten days before Halloween. Costumes are encouraged, and there is a costume contest with prizes. I decided to run it again in Dee mode, as I did a few years ago.

I used to run the Half-marathon in the spring and fall, but in 2023 I switched to the 10K. For the four 10K races I had participated in since I made the switch, I had finished first in my age group twice and second twice. My goal was to finish in the top three again, because the award for top three is a pumpkin pie, and I wanted another pie.

A few weeks prior to the race I used a Dick’s Sporting Goods gift card I had to buy a navy blue matching sports bra and shorts. I then spent a couple of weeks trying to minimize my midriff to not look too ridiculous while doing the race. I wore my first (and smallest) wig, put on some light makeup and lipstick, and added my normal Cardinals race visor. 

Parking at the race start was limited, so I parked at a remote lot and jumped on the bus shuttle, figuring the lit sign showing the bus as “Route Dee” was a good omen.

The race start–7 AM–was a bit chilly, but after a delayed start–delayed because of parking issues–I warmed up fairly quickly, especially as the start was mostly uphill. I found my stride, and even though I had spent more time the week before in heels and dresses than running shoes and shorts, I ran a decent race.

As it turns out, I was guaranteed a pumpkin pie, as there were only three in my age group. I finished in a little over 58 minutes, for a 9:24/mile pace, pretty good. I kept my streak of finishing first or second intact, as I finished second, only ten seconds behind the winner, so I’m now five for five.

My look was probably a little worse for wear by the finish line–not really a great look at the finish line–but no one really said anything. After the race, I was chatting with a husband and wife dressed as the Grady twins for the movie “The Shining”, so I wasn’t the only guy who ran dressed. They ended up winning the costume contest, and as it turned out, they’re from my hometown (he’s stationed at the nearby Air Force base). I took their picture getting their award and shared it with them afterwards, for which they were grateful. 

A few days after, the results website added finish line pictures and a short video. If anyone clicks on my race results, at the bottom of the page, after the times and statistics, both my finish line picture and the video of me finishing appears. A few years ago that might have freaked me out, but now, so be it. It is a Halloween race, after all–and the chances of anyone actually clicking on my results are pretty small. Given the number of racers over the weekend, it’s probably the website with the most views that Dee has ever appeared on.

OTOH, I often do race reports on Facebook after my races to report my results (for some reason, I get lots of positive feedback when I do). However, in this case, this will be my only race report with pictures, and I assume you can understand why.

In all, I was able to dress seven days in a row, from sports bras and bikinis to slinky dresses and high heels. A fun week for me, and I hope you enjoyed coming along too.