Jan 25, 2009

Friday Sept 16th

As mentioned in the Thursday post we had 3 women with us that have a very strong presence at times and they will tell you how it is. One of the issues that has plagued me is the fact that I now have a chest and I have a hard time having it show when I am with people who knew me before. In those instances I tend to wear a sports bra that pushes the girls down and sure enough my friend Sherrie called me on it.


Sherrie told me that when someone was intentionally trying to swear something that is smaller and hold them down that is stands out worse giving the opposing effect. In other words Karyn, you're not fooling anyone. It's hard to let the people who knew you one way see you in a totally different way and I tend to be self conscious about that.

Friday morning when Dee and I awoke we got up and headed downstairs for the included breakfast that the hotel serves. After we were finished and started back up to the room we stopped at our friends room briefly and headed back to ours for a shower. Today I had every intention of taking Sherries' advice and wearing my normal bra.

After getting dressed and asking Dee what she thought she pointed out that I had what appeared to be a red splotch on my cheek. That meant it would be a foundation day for sure. Foundation is a funny thing with me, some days my skin look very uneven to me and others it looks fine, today was one of those day that my skin wasn't going to play nice.

After getting ready and meeting up with the others we caught the shuttle over to the convention center and decided to head right up to the Charvel/Jackson booth. The big day had arrived and I had been incredibly nervous because I wasn't sure if anyone knew about what was up with me. Last time I was at the show I was Kevin, not Karyn. One of the issues I had previously been concerned over was how I would now fit into the group in a different manner and this was to be a big part of that concern.

I spent a lot of time building friendships and working relationships with some rather well known people from Musicians all the way up to major guitar builders. For a very long time I had worried that those friendships would suffer and I'd be shunned so when we entered the booth I had the biggest butterflies I'd had in a long time.

As we entered Mike noticed Diane and immediately came over and gave her a hug. Mike is a well know luthier who has worked and built guitars for some of the most famous people in the business. I am lucky enough to have several of his guitars but more so I had been lucky enough to consider Mike a friend.

After hugging Diane and talking to her, Mike turned and went back about his business as a rep for the company and then it hit me. Mike didn't even recognize me. I'd have to say that was probably one of the hardest things for me. I can totally understand why but I spent a lot of time nurturing those relationships and now I was virtually unknown … not cool .

Todd came over and asked me if I was going to talk to the guys and I replied that I probably wouldn't because apparently nobody knew, maybe it just wasn't the place. Todd explained to me that I was going to have to do it sooner or later and sooner would be better. At that point I swallowed my nerves and decided to say Hi to Mike.

I walked over and stood about 5 or 6 feet from Mike, he looked over at me, nodded and looked away. Geez I thought, this is going to be tougher than I thought. When he looked back at me the 2nd time he had a puzzled "why are you staring at me" look on his face. At that point I finally let the words roll over my lips. "Mike, you're not getting it are you" Mike looked at me again with a puzzled look and then all of a sudden it hit him, "omg I get it" he said. "You're looking a lot different" he stated. He appeared visibly stunned but I'll give him credit, he still seemed cool about it. At least I made some progress but it still kills me that I went from being known to being unknown so easily!

After a while and some walking around, several bloody marys and such we were standing off to the side when I noticed my friend Brad talking to his buddy Howie. Being an Empath and being very good at reading lips can be a bit of a bad thing at times. It became apparent that I was the topic of conversation and it hit me pretty hard. Was I being read? Was he not happy with me being there? All different things enter your head.

I did my best to pay attention after that throughout the day to see if people were ignoring me or whatever, I noticed no other "odd" looks but on a few occasions with friends I knew I was the topic of conversation.

I guess the highlight of Friday besides spending time with my friends was getting to see the Bangles do an acoustic set for daisy rock guitars. Emotionally it had been a terribly overwhelming day for me.



The Bangles


Suzzana Hoffs (Bangles)



At one point during the show we had been all standing around talking and one of the guys in the group who I didn't know looked incredibly familiar to me but I put no mind to it, I just assumed I had seen him with my friend before.

One of the girls suddenly blurted out "Ha, he looks just like that soup nazi dude from Seinfeld" when one of the guys in our group retorted "That's because he IS the soup nazi". It WAS him and the cool thing was that it was from my favorite Seinfeld episode, I just had to get a picture so Dee stood next to him and I snapped it. He seemed like a super nice guy and he was just in our group enjoying the show! Who would have thought .. right under our noses ..LOL

Larry Thomas (AKA The Soup Nazi)



~K~

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've always wanted to to the NAMM show, at least once, just to see all the stuff that's there. Probably more amps and guitars than I could take in at once! I love the old tube amps, I have 2 old Fender bass heads and an old Fender Princeton from my playing days. To see all the new tube amps would be really cool!
I think you should just be you, if you're going down the transition road, you'll have to out yourself at some point anyway, so why not just get on with it? Some will understand, some won't, that's the way it goes. If you're in the business, they'll deal with you anyway, after all, your money is still just as green as it used to be. :-)