A night at the Fox

Sometimes it's great to work without a net: dress up and go to venues where you're the only tranny; and sometimes it's nice to just dress up and go where you know you'll be welcome, in the company of other trannies.

I needed that kind of no-fuss night out last night. I happened to know that the Fox and Hounds in Little Bromley would have a few trannies in on a Friday night, including my friend Amanda who'd been working in the area, so I decided to make the trek across East Anglia to the oasis of camp that is the Fox.

It turned out that quite a few other t-girls had had the same idea. Walking into the bar I spotted Tina and Tracy (of T&T Epilation fame), Jaye Kaye (who's recently taken to Flickr like a duck to water), fellow King's Lynnite Amanda, as well as a few people who looked familiar but I couldn't quite place.

A good-looking guy with short blonde hair smiled and said "hello Becky!" with some familiarity, causing me to go into frantic "should I know who this is??" mode. I guessed it might be a tranny, so the mental identikit goes into operation...

...add some lipstick... a bit of eyeshadow... even out the skintone... now make the hair longer, maybe black? ... a bit of eyeshadow...

"Hanna?"

"Yep!"

Phew! It's always a bit weird meeting t-girls in boy-mode for the first time if you've only ever met them in girl-mode. It's also a minefield of tranny etiquette...

When a tranny in guy mode dares you to recognise them, you have to avoid guessing too quickly, even if it's blatantly obvious. If you get it straight away, it might suggest that they've not done as good a job of hiding their male identity as they'd hoped. For the record, Hanna's girl and boy modes are more strikingly different than most, and I don't think she'd be thin-skinned enough to be hurt if I had guessed immediately!

I was introduced to a couple of the other familiar faces I'd seen. One of them turned out to be Monica Cassidy, a girl I'd chatted to a few times online and had been trying to persuade me to come down to the Fox on a Friday for ages.

Friday night, I discovered, is Karaoke night at the Fox. I suggest that if you want to see Karaoke at its best, go to a gay pub. It's the only place you'll get a room full of people flamboyant enough to give their all at the microphone without the aid of copious amounts of alcohol (which while it loosens the inhibitions tends also to detract from the performance).

There's something quite special about a tranny doing karaoke with an unashamedly male voice. While Jaye Kaye belted out a fine rendition of "Smile Like You Mean It" by the killers, I texted Sophie...

They've got karaoke!

She texted back:

Do Louis Armstrong!

Sophie is one of the people who've witnessed my frankly uncanny ability to impersonate the vocal style of Satchmo. The first time I did it during a night out at the Pink Punters it virtually left her breathless with laughter. Did I dare inflict it on this unsuspecting Fox crowd? Especially as I'd never actually done it "properly" before.

I looked in the catalog of available tunes. There it was: "What a Wonderful World (L. Armstrong)".

Oh, what the hell.

There are some moments in my tranny career that I'll remember forever. Stepping up to the mic as the violin intro started and then watching the mouths drop open on the faces of audience as I started to sing full Satchmo style, is definitely a moment I'll treasure for a while! There was a huge cheer at the end, they seemed to enjoy it!

After that I got chatting to another t-girl who I vaguely recognised, Broxie. It turned out to be another example of just how interconnected the tranny scene in the UK is. We had lots of links in common. In a short conversation we discovered we were both on the Angels group, we'd both been at the Sparkle Fashion show (she'd been roped into modeling at the last minute), we both had blogs (but hers has managed to avoid being sucked into the tranniesphere, so far!), and we both knew people online like Jane from slothblog.

I look at the communities mingling joyously at the Fox, and the tightly-knit interconnectedness of the tranny scene in the UK, and the fact that we live in an age where a guy can dress up in a skirt and wig and nail Satchmo in karaoke...

and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

Ooooooooooooh yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. :-)