Dani's TV Debut

by Danielle Cox

I am often amazed at the caliber of friends that I have made in the TG Forum chat room. I have been meaning to visit my friend Revy for quite some time and was finally able to this past weekend. Thanks to TGF I also have several more friends in the LA area. One very special friend is LA Lisa who, despite incredibly short notice, was able to procure tickets for me for both the Howie Mandell show and The Tonight Show.

After illegally parking at NBC studios, we met Lisa for a personal walking tour. Lisa is well known at her work, so Revy and I knew we would receive extra scrutiny. I think it is a credit to Lisa as well as some enlightened policies at NBC that every one that we met treated us exactly as they should have. Lisa showed us several historic places, where she works, and my personal favorite, the mountain from the opening sequence in M*A*S*H. We finished the walking tour and killed time where Lisa would be working on The Howie Mandell Show. Lisa even arranged for our personal escort back to the studio for Howie.

We had incredible seats for Howie (Look for me in the brown dress right next to the Howie sign!), which made Revy and I think about the very real possibility that we would be on national TV! Neither Revy nor I are exactly in the closet however we both try to keep our employers from knowing about our T-ness. We both laughed it off, but I know I was a little nervous. To make things worse, I, without thinking, had bragged I was going to be on the show, so there was a real chance people could be watching! Of course there was nothing we could do at that point except enjoy the show.

When we had met Lisa, she had told us that in a strange coincidence, Dennis Rodman was going to be on both shows that we were watching. Howie tried to help Dennis fit in by wearing a wedding dress! Howie and Dennis even discussed a T-issue during the show about the impact of this on Dennis's family. Even though Howie wore the dress as a joke, he did it very tastefully and had fun with it. Howie worked in several jokes including the comment, "You know what's scaring me is that I'm actually comfortable." During the show, we saw ourselves on the overhead monitors several times indicating we would be on the show, however, we had such a good time, I think it was worth it.

Dennis Rodman was also the first guest with Jay Leno. While Jay didn't make any transgendered comments to Dennis, he did do a TS joke during the monologue! Jay's show was also a lot of fun and included one of the creators of South Park plugging his new movie. I was much more worried about being seen on The Tonight Show, but luckily that didn't happen.

Revy and I both had a wonderful time at NBC studios and hope that this public exposure won't hurt us at our jobs. Of course by then, any damage had been done.

After the tonight show, Lisa met us to go to dinner. After walking back to our cars, we braved the LA traffic and headed for a place called Ozz and even more fun!