Ann Drogyny: a tribute

 I'm very sad to have to write that my friend Ann Drogyny passed away last night. 

 

I am glad she is out of pain following accidents and a long illness. But I am sure she wouldn't want her friends to be mawkish and sad for too long as that would go against the whole grain of her life, her wicked sense of humour that she never lost to the last, and her love of upending expectations. The photo above of her enjoying a swim on a crowded beach in Spain sums it up. When people puzzled at this ebullient tattooed trans person from abroad splashing around with her family and asked why she holidayed en femme with her wife alongside, she'd simply reply that she liked it, her wife liked it and it didn't harm anyone. Which is kind of how any trans person wants to be.

I met Ann quite a few times in London. Here, for instance, at a bar ...

where I recall loving her beret. And here eating out with our friends ...

She just enjoyed doing things as a woman, such as visiting museums or taking her daily constitutional walk near home after retirement. This is how I remember her.

 

With her wife, she was a well-known figure on the fetish and fancy dress scene, too. For father's day, her daughter once captioned a photo of her and Ann going out somewhere in latex skirt suits, "the family that are weird together ... are weird together", a typical skit on the more homely mottoes that families are supposed to live by.

Ann centre stage at Magic Theatre at the Rivoli Ballroom

 

Ann's Flickr pages are a cornucopia of weird and wonderful outfits, modelled with typical exuberance, from floaty classics to sexy fetish.

I used to link here to Ann's blog, Androgynous Meanderings, but she stopped writing it some years ago. It's still a top example of what a TGirl living life to the full can get up to. 

Such a fun person and such a great sense of humour, from very dry and sardonic at times to quite knockabout at others. Her chosen name says it all!

I think my lovely friend Stephanie (on the right in the picture below) has today written the perfect farewell to Ann:

"You will be greatly missed, my friend. RIP you old tart."

Thanks for the good times, Ann. And for all the laughs. Will miss you greatly and am unlikely to forget you, for all the right reasons.

Sue x