The week in non-binary 2

Well, things have somewhat moved on this week. I'll come onto the meat of that statement later so keep reading.

I usually struggle to get to go on shopping trips, what with family commitments and all, but I'd engineered a trip to a local Next Outlet after a gym session last week and found some great bargains, namely a couple of skirts, a couple of tops, a pair of shoes and a gym vest. The vest I tried and initially thought it was too tight. However, I tried it again and decided to try wearing it for Spin on Saturday morning and concluded it was actually a great fit. It is fairly tight on the top (almost like a sports bra in fit), but has a nice flair at the waist, and, I discovered, it wicks sweat nicely too so it could become one of my favourite gym tops. Don't get me wrong, it would look better if I had tits and a curvy waist, but it still looked great.

My new Next gym top I really like it. I need to look and see if they have any others in different colours. It was a bargain at only £6!

I'd hatched the idea of a girly night out with a friend in town later in the week when I had a couple of days off work. I've been out for a few drinks with my pal a frew times. It is the greatest euphoria hit to be just assumed to be a woman when I go into bars. I admit the first time we went for a couple of drinks I was screaming inside with general fear and had images of someone in the bar standing up, pointing at me and shrieking, like Donald Sutherland at the end of the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and that I'd end up being tarred and feathered. However, it didn't happen and we were in fact asked if we were mother and daughter or sisters. I mean, I do not look old enough to be my pal's mother, but I do love the feeling that someone thought I could be. Anway, we'd been out for the odd night since, plus sometimes gone to a bar after my comedy night for a nightcap.

How I was worried people might react to me wearing a skirt in a straight bar

So, it came to pass that I wore some of my new haul from Next, namely a grey pleated skirt, a green (almost khaki) long-sleeved t-shirt with a boat neck and the shoes. I'd wondered which Snag tights to wear with the outfit (i'll add an update on how I've been radicalised by Snag, but in the best way possible, at some point), but then it becane obvious from my recent haul that the pair I had in Thicket Green were an actual perfect match for the top so went with that. I had a go at contouring when I did my makeup and did a decent job on making my hair curly. I got my stuff together (handbag, wallet, phone, a few bits of makeup), slipped on my favourite denim jacket, slid my feet into my shoes, summoned an Uber and went into town to meet my friend.

Not sure if it had much effect, but I tried a bit of coutouring from my night out I'm just loving my hair now. I've been ambivalent about my wavy red hair all my life, but in femme presentation it's fab. This is another update I'll add at a future date

We'd thought about a couple of bars to start but found out that a lot of places were actually shut which was a surprise, given it was a Thursday night. We'd found places were open previosuly on Thursdays, so this is a worrying sign of how hard things are in the leisure industry. Our secondary purpose was to check out possible comedy venues also, but I'm not going to lie, I just really wanted to just have a few drinks on a girls' night out. We went to quite a few places, I didn't get called out, and we were greeted by doormen as "ladies".

In a pub toilet. Classy or what?

I had a fantastic time, complete with the obligatory selfies to show off my outfit. I was off work he next day so promptly posted them. And this is where things got... interesting. I'd created a new Instagram account to post pics of my non-binary expression and particularly in relation to comedy (as I now always perform comedy in androgynous or female presentation). Unbeknown to me, I'd set the new Insta account to share to my regular (male) FB page so my post proclaining how great my girly night out was, along with describing how I really loved presenting as a woman, got posted onto my regular timeline on Facebook. I didn't realise for a while, unsure how long, but it was long enough to get 15 reacts and god knows how many views before I realised and promptly deleted it.

Now the truth is out there I know it's not me, but we're both short and ginger

I couldn't tell who the reacts were from after I deleted it. One (male) friend, who I didn't think had liked the post, but had clearly seen it messaged me later in the day saying ot was brave, where I had to say it wasn't brave, it was stupid, but he was lovely about it. I'll follow up on any further fall-out from this in my next update as I wasn't in work until the following Monday.

Clubbercise on Hallowe'en

Otherwise, I wasn't aware of any other miss-genderings this week. I did 6 gym session throughout, all of them in fabulous Tikiboos, including a great Hallowe'en ensemble for Clubbercise on Tuesday which was fun (See pic above). I think I'll include a video of a great song in every post in this blog starting now, and this time, I think this absolute banger from Queens of the Stone Age called The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret, seems appropriate in light of my Facebook outing.