{"id":2192,"date":"2015-05-16T01:46:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T01:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/forums\/discussion\/first-serious-outing"},"modified":"2015-05-16T01:46:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-16T01:46:54","slug":"first-serious-outing","status":"publish","type":"topic","link":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/forums\/discussion\/first-serious-outing","title":{"rendered":"First Serious Outing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was having a chat with a friend, in another forum, we were reminiscing of our early days and the silly, in my case downright stupid, chances taken in our need. I mentioned how I would get in the wee hours of the night\/morning when mum and dad and sister were asleep. I would just wear some garment belonging to my sister and feel happy doing that but eventually this wasn't enough, I am sure you all have experienced this need, the obsession to have a proper outing. Mine had escalated to a humungus degree. I became obsessed with getting out and being among the general public, to be in some small way, accepted.<br \/>\nI had been taking some walks round streets where I lived and in working class, 1960's Belfast, this was downright stupid, dangerous in fact. Simply put, if a man wore dresses or skirts he was 'queer', that was it. No definitions or rationale were necessary or considered. He would get beaten up, badly.<br \/>\nI had a girlfriend who worked in the city, she knew about me and had helped in my purchase of my first wig and other things. I decided to 'surprise' her! Understatement?<br \/>\nI didn't have a car, 17 and no licence, so I took the suburban train. I won't go into all the details of preparation etc, you all  know what that involves so I won't bore you.<br \/>\nI made it into the city without attracting attention, well I think I did. I wandered round visiting larger department stores. Eventually I walked past the place where my girl friend worked, timing myself to be there when they took a smoke break, it was summer and they were all outside.<br \/>\nShe spotted me and came over. As it happened, she wasn't as surprised as I had expected, she reckoned that it was going to happen sooner or later! Very insightful girl.<br \/>\nNothing untoward happened, I got home safe. Boring but there it is.<br \/>\nSo, anyone else wish to share?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","topic-tag":[],"class_list":["post-2192","topic","type-topic","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/2192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/topic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/2192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"topic-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic-tag?post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}