17th October 1998
1:25am Tuesday night 17th October 1998
Thought that I should break this very long diary entry up over two pages, so that people don't get bored reading it.
Anyway, we arrived at the front door, and I had to admit that I was quite nervous since I had no idea what to expect. Back at the hotel it was worse simply because I didn't even know whether there would be other TG's there. Well thankfully there was. We were not too early, and there was a good collection of people there already. There were a fair number of queen's and some other Trannie's, plus a lot of gay men. Ariel and I were probably the youngest people there, I didn't really spot too many people under 25. There was a masquerade ball going on upstairs at the same time, I'm not sure of the exact theme, but I guess it must have been Damsels and Buccaneer's (circa 17th Century costume).
Anyway, I started talking to a few people whom Ariel knew, and although I didn't have too much to say at the start, by the end of the night we were getting on quite well. I was still quite apprehensive, but after about and hour and several champagne's, I was starting to settle into the swing of things. Christine and her partner Julio (?) were there (apparently by some mix-up they nearly missed out on their tickets), and it was good to see them. I met a lot of other people, many of whose names escape me, Joanne (a GG), Jennifer (a TS from Canberra) and quite a few others.
Julio taught me how to cha-cha, so that was really sweet of him, I coned/begged Jennifer into dancing with me to the Blue Danube. Neither of us knew how to waltz, but when I was being twirled around the floor at the crescendo, it was like a dream come true. What a fantastically happy moment for me. I was talking to another queen by the name of Garry who had been conned into coming in drag, we had chats all evening on and off, and he was really fun to talk to. He couldn't stop drooling over all the young boys who came down from the Masquerade Ball upstairs.
Anyway, the whole point of the evening was to judge the annual Gown competition. The was quite a wide range, and there were 10 finalists. One grrl from our table won second prize, I didn't think too much of her dress, it was nice, but nothing fantastic. But the grrl who won first prize absolutely deserved it. Her dress was absolutely stunning. I'm very glad she won, it was so beautiful. It was greenish/black with a beautiful neck and a wonderful little hand attachment for holding up the long train. Her name was Raven, she was very good looking herself, and I was lucky enough to be able to get a photo with her.
After dinner which was a bit skimpy, there was dancing, and like I said, I did my fair share of that. New York, New York was played, and everyone loved that.
We finally got kicked out at about 1:30am (I think) and Szusza and myself got a lift with Jennifer to the Taxi Club. Ariel didn't come because she broke a heel on the way to the car. I didn't think too much of the Taxi club, it was quite late, and neither Jennifer or myself liked the extremely noisy dance floor, though downstairs we had a good chat. Szusza danced upstairs for a bit, and then Jennifer was nice enough to offer us a lift back to our hotel, this was very kind of her. By the time we got home and I had returned to my boring self, and packed away all my stuff, it was 4:00am. I didn't sleep very well, but eventually I managed to drift off to sleep.