Travels With Lizzy

This is a post about a trip.  It was a watershed trip for me, for one very simple reason: it was the longest time spent in trans-mode.  Ever.  As my renaissance has progressed, and I have become increasingly proficient at presenting as the female me, I have hankered to be Lizzy for increasing lengths of time.

Approximate route of my trek

My daylight experience has been, until now, limited.  So, I decided to inch out into the daylit realms with my usual caution and prudence:  I set out from my home Somewhere in West Alabama, bound for Somewhere in North Georgia.  Trip time: five hours each way.  Route: a busy I-20/59 to Birmingham, then I-20 to Atlanta, then the dreaded Georgia 400 (and smaller two-lanes) to my destination.

I was going for a job interview, which was in two parts: dinner with the hiring committee on Friday evening, then interviews with each member the next morning.  I was determined to spend as much time as Lizzy as I possibly could.


So: I transformed at the house, all but the wig and lipstick, since I'm barely out to myself, much less the neighbors.  Because I thought donning a wig at a stoplight would have attracted too much attention, I pulled into the next rest area up the freeway, which I had cleverly checked out on a previous trip.  It was then that the TG goddesses started messing with me: what I'd thought would be a lonely stretch of parking lot, far from the hordes of young families (eek! that's a man!), was instead filled with long-haul truckers.  And they are not known for being tolerant of gender variance.

Ah well, I thought -- in for a penny, in for a pound.  I parked and quickly put on the wig, then then applied the lippy, and had no problems, except for a proposition from a driver named Billy Ray in a pink tank top.  We couldn't get together, as our schedules just didn't match, but he wrote my name and number (BR-549) on a panty-hose wrapper. Billy Ray is so old school.

Before long, I was on the way to Birmingham, in full Lizzy mode, and Somewhere on I-20/59, I snapped the picture to the left.  And I only have one question: will I ever get used to looking like my sister?