Elizabeth's Excellent Adventures -- 11/2/2011

One of the many joys of regular therapy -- how many t-blog posts begin like that? -- is that it takes me to the Big City on a regular basis.  Well, it takes me to Birmingham, Alabama on a regular basis, and that's a reasonable facsimile thereof.

And when I go, I always try to get out and about some, either before or after the appointment.  I don't go to the session in female mode because even though that's what the counseling is largely about, as well as coping with my adult ADHD (yes, I am a basket-case), I don't want to stampede the, er, patients in the waiting room before hand.

Shoving Myself Out the Door: The Evil Beard

We all take them, don't we?  We all inch toward being "out" -- whatever that means to us -- step by step, a little at a time.  For me, it was my beard ... it used to be dark and intractable.  As I talked about here, over the years I tried most of the tricks ... Dermablend, the red-lipstick trick, to no avail.  The shadow still showed through.

Not my beard

So, at last, as I became determined to finally express who I am -- whatever that is -- for good, and to be who I am -- whoever that is -- out and about in the world, I naturally started there.  (Ok, ok ... I'll stop with the whatevers, already.) Besides gradually, painfully acquiring a wardrobe, I began with the foundation, attacking that shadow.  The thing is, it's mostly not there anymore:  it's almost all on my upper lip, and a little on my chin.

Still, I worried at the problem, attacking it and fulminating about it with all the analytical glee that this (former) research scientist could muster, but the problem hadn't gotten any easier. I tried the red lipstick thing.  Again.  I tried a thick, creamy foundation.  Again.  Still, no joy.  The rest of my beard may be white, with a few dark hairs scattered around for measure, but that upper lip still gave me away.  The blue-black shadow ruled, at least in the area above my lips.

The Perils of Presenting -- Greasy Face 101

Beard cover.  In the past, I've put way too much thought into it.  And for good reason: I had a pretty heavy black beard.  So fifteen years or so ago, in the early 90s, I worked up enough courage to go into a J.C. Penneys in the middle of the Colorado prairie.  Well, it was in a town, and it was on the prairie, but close to the edge, not the middle ... ok, it was in  Greeley.

Anyway, I entered the J.C. Penney and did the usual dry-run passes by the makeup counter.  I had concocted a fool-proof alibi that would spare me any embarrassment and leave the clerk totally clueless about the true nature of my mission.  The following is a recreation of that fateful day: