The Huntingdon flop

So apparently I cannot crossdress. I don’t know what it was exactly, probably my voice, maybe the aforementioned doe eyes, but everybody in Huntingdon yesterday knew me for a double-X-chromosome at once.

I have also learned something. If a man tries to crossdress, and cannot do this convincingly, then he is likely to get, in the best case scenario, a lot of funny looks, and in the worst case scenario, a great deal of grief. If, however, a woman tries to crossdress, and cannot do it convincingly, then absolutely nobody will notice that she was trying in the first place unless she has gone to false-moustache lengths.(I didn’t.)

It makes the whole business with the duct tape seem like a lot of unnecessary pain, I must say. Whatever else I do with my life, I’m NOT doing that again.

It’s all somewhat annoying.

The day wasn’t a total loss, however. I had fun pottering about a couple of streets in Huntingdon, got a copy of Hotel Dusk and ate a very nice meal at the George Hotel.(A sort of platter consisting of a warm baguette and ham and cold roast chicken and a whole gooey baked Camembert cheese and cherry tomatoes and two sorts of pickle and olive-oil-and-vinegar dip on the side, and afterwards a suet pudding with blackberry-and-apple filling and custard.)I also liked the way I looked, dressed as a boy. I verged on androgynous, and that pleased me. If only it wasn’t so painful to bind my breasts…

Ah, well.

I have decided something, though, as a result of all this ruminating on the problem. Every Thursday there is a market in St Neots town square, selling normal markety things-food and drink, sweets, electrical goods, and clothes.

One of the clothes stalls sells shirts. Black button-up ones with pictures on them-skulls and roses, wolves, dragons both European and Asian, motorbikes, wizards…The fellow that runs it is a long-time marketgoer, he’s been coming to St Neots every Thursday for years. I’ve always rather admired those shirts, but I’ve never bought one. Because they are men’s shirts. Or rather, geek-boys’ shirts. But the boy bit stands. So, up till now, I’ve just sort of looked wistfully at them, and walked on.

But now there’s the echidna stirring under my skin, and I’m conscious all of a sudden of the bone spikes on my fists. Breaking boxes has to start somewhere.

I’ll buy the wolf shirt, or maybe the one with the purple dragon, or whatever one looks prettiest when I see what’s on offer. I’ll wear it with my skirts-that’ll cause some second looks-and I’ll get some glitter gel to put in my hair, because I like things that sparkle. Maybe I’ll spike it up. Maybe I’ll pull it back into a tail again; I rather like the way it looks when I do that, I realised today. It’s not exactly a rat-tail; it has far more aplomb than that.

There’s ways and ways to genderfuck.

Only that makes it sound like the payoff is counted in other people’s confusion and embarrassment, and it isn’t-or not mostly.

Really, it’s about having a bit more elbow room, carving out a little space for me to choose what I want and not cut off any limbs that might hang over the edges of the Procrustean bed. It’s a small thing, of course; just a choice of clothes. But every little helps.