Red, White, or Blue????

By Sparkle-Dee

In mid-May I attended our monthly St. Louis Gender Foundation dinner, and as usual, I dressed early to make a few stops at favorite shopping outlets.

My shopping stop was the St. Louis Galleria, and first up was Nordstrom. I scour the discount racks, looking for fun stuff at reasonable prices. The Mean Girls t-shirt was a mandatory try-on, and although fun, I would never choose to wear it anywhere, so it was a no.

Included with the discount dresses were sequin dresses in red, white (OK, silver), and blue. I had tried them on before, and I have a multi-color sequin dress of the same style that I love and have worn before, most recently to Moulin Rouge. Now on the discount racks, they were especially tempting. I follow my friend Renee’s advice; buy the dress and figure out a place to wear it.

I liked all of them, and texted pictures to Renee and Ms. Dee-ism. Ms. Dee-ism always says blue is my color (it’s my favorite color), but I really, really, really liked the red. The price on the blue was actually about $10 cheaper, but Ms. Dee-ism suggested I ask if the Sales Angel if they could match the price. Good advice! The Sales Angel commented to me she hadn’t seen me in a while (true), and agreed to lower the price on the red dress to match the lower price of the blue one. With tax, the price was about $25–now I just need to figure out the place to wear it.

With enough time to make another stop, I wandered over to Akira, a very fun store not aimed at my age demographic. They have multiple discount racks of usually skimpy (sexy) clothes, including the sequin halter dress, and a Goldfinger dress that showed off more of me than proper. Neither made the purchase list.

Time was up for shopping, so I changed into a more formal dress and headed off to our dinner, where I caught up with the other group members, after a five month hiatus. We meet every month at a local restaurant, where the staff treats us well and the bartender remembers drink orders from month to month. From many years of dinners in private rooms, that we now dine in the open at a public restaurant is remarkable evidence of progress for those on the Transgender spectrum. 

Several of the other attendees mentioned to me they were headed to a casino to listen to a band, and asked if I wished to join them. My answer would have been yes, except that boy me had a triathlon to complete starting at 7 AM the next morning, so I said no. Like my day out, the race was a success, finishing in a solid time and third in my age group.