by Katrina Jagelski
Every time I leaned forward, my blouse puffed outwards and I would imagine my phantom breasts and it terrified me.
I bought that blouse much to my mother’s chagrin when I was a junior in high school. At this point, I had already told her about the ‘crossdressing.’ How I would try on her clothes while she wasn’t home. It was not a pleasant conversation, and the first time in my entire life of love with her that I ever experienced fear.
After many explosive arguments about who I wanted to be and how I wanted to be her, my mother begrudgingly agreed to drive me to Macy’s so I could buy something ‘tasteful.’ Something to keep me quiet.
My body blocky and underdeveloped, in the middle of puberty, it was difficult to envision myself wearing anything ‘female.’ My hair short and my self-esteem at an all time low, I resolved to buy something — or have my mom buy, I guess — something androgynous.
Shopping as a transwoman for the first time, you have nothing to hide your assigned-male-at-birth body. Your skin crawls and your head becomes hot as you can feel eyes from all over burrowing into your soul.
Can I pull this off?
This might bring out my shoulders too much…
Won’t it just sag in the front?
How the Hallelujah do I even put this on?
I wanted to ask for help but I couldn’t — I didn’t want to get laughed at. I didn’t want them to think I was some kind of pervert.
A baby fat-ridden face with a rat-like nose, crooked teeth and a pointed chin, lean eyes looking down from an unconscious slouch. Silence perceived as creepiness, but really coming from a fear of truly being heard. Of someone hearing my true self finally and seeing right through me.
Maybe it’s for the best that I experienced this trauma that day at Macy’s — it prepared me for my future.
***
Ducking behind clothes racks at Macy’s with the stealth and cunning of Solid Snake himself prepared me for the few months when I would routinely hide behind dumpsters to change into “female” clothing. Like Clark Kent donning his Superman costume.
Except when I did my speedy costume changes, I would wait until I was behind the dumpster before I would rip open my shirt to reveal the Superman logo on my dress.
Yet despite your sleuthing, you will be eventually spotted. Every stranger you lock eyes with while holding up that dress, could be the key to your unfortunate outing. But what is more likely is that they will just roll their eyes and walk away.
One of the most difficult parts about being trans is the selfishness you develop. You are so scared of the world around you that you withdraw, your thoughts only revolving around you. You become resentful, your self-hatred erupting into a chaotic campaign against everyone else. It becomes easier to create enemies – when there are none – as a way to reckon with your failure.
***
I didn’t dare enter the women’s dressing room, but the thought of going into the men’s dressing room wasn’t any better. So many fabrics and colours called to me, but one in particular, I can still recall: a sleeveless, high-cut dress with a rainbow of colours wrapped around it. I passed by it countless times, afraid to even touch it.
Unable to try anything on that felt like “me,” I had to settle for something I could throw on. This wound up being a a red blouse that buttoned all the way up to my neck, the most conservative version of the girl I wanted to be.
The next day, I wore that blouse to school and all I can really recall from that day is being hyper aware of my chest. Every time I would lean forward to talk to someone, the blouse would puff outwards to make room for my non-existent breasts, and I would then punch the blouse until it retracted to its flat-chested place.
While I was terrified someone would clock me as wearing a blouse, I’m pretty sure what everyone saw was some idiot who kept punching their chest all day.
I never wore that blouse publicly again. I was ashamed.
***
As much as I longed to be woman, the thought of actually engaging in the very physical transformation was unpleasant. The idea that breasts could grow from my ugly chest — I didn’t deserve it, I felt, and I must say, as they grow now, it still throws me for a loop. Is that really me?
Ever since I was eight years old, I ‘wanted’ to be a girl – the tragedy being that I always was one, I just couldn’t see it within me. Because I was ugly, and getting uglier over time.
Every year of hesitation, my shoulders would broaden, and my voice would deepen. I would grow farther and farther away from that imaginary me.
With every passing year, it became more and more clear that I could never come out; I did not have the means nor the will. I would try to be my authentic self but I would be rejected, my natural behaviour interpreted as put-on. No one wanted to accept that someone like me could be anything but a creepy, introverted nerd. Transition seemed impossible.
This broken version of myself took the red blouse in with resentment. Resigned to punishment.
The day I graduated from high school, I found myself alone in that blouse, laying flat on top of my bed, arms folded behind my head.
In three months, I was going to move to Boston and attend film school. I was going to be away from the hometown that held me back. I would be away from these people that I thought would hurt me if I came out. I could be me finally.
Yet despite that being all I had ever wanted, the gravitas of what that meant had begun to sink in. I wasn’t ready to be on my own yet, and I certainly wasn’t ready to embrace whatever that blouse meant to me.
So I reached downward, and one-by-one unbuttoned myself until the blouse laid against my sides, my bare chest towards the ceiling. I laid one hand onto that chest and felt it — felt my smooth, shaved skin — and said to myself:
“This is fine.”
Years later I would discover that a dog in a bowler hat once said that to himself while his house raged with fire.
That same night, I threw the blouse into the garbage, dismissing it at kids’ stuff, along with many others relics of a period of my childhood. I was going to school so I could be an adult and fulfil my potential; of what use was a red blouse? Every day I wish I could go back and give that upset teenage girl a hug and tell her it will be alright.
***
Six years later, I found myself wandering alone through a Macy’s, my hair long enough that I felt I could maybe “pass” as a cis-woman. Excited to be shopping, I ended up sneaking into a changing room with at least twenty different clothes hangers weighing down on my forearm.
One by one, I tried on dress after dress, and one after the other, I felt the same pains that the younger version of me did: was I good enough to wear this?
After what felt like hours, I turned my head and looked into the mirror and saw… me.
She looked comfortable in this pink dress with the patterns of a stained glass window. Her shoulders sloped at narrow angles beyond the straps of the dress, her hair perfectly shaped with the width of the outfit.
I knew I had to buy it, but I couldn’t get the zipper all the way up. I tried jumping up and down to get it up there, but it had become jammed at some point. So I took in a deep breath and did something I thought I would only be brave enough to try a few months down the line; I opened the door and walked out into the public, and marched straight up to the cashier.
She was a kind young girl who helped me zip up all the way, and rang me up for the dress.
It was the first time someone ever referred to me by she/her. I was too terrified to speak so I stayed mostly silent, and out of fear of going back into the dressing room to change back into my ‘male’ clothes and then have her see the ‘truth,’ that I wasn’t the ‘woman’ she expected me to be, I decided to leave in the dress instead of ruining her fantasy.
I rushed outside and engaged in the first and only power walk of my life, getting home as quickly as I could before I was spotted. The next week, I wore that dress into the city, and Robert Morse’s version of “Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying came on my iPod, and out of sheer bliss, surrounded by hundreds of people, I just started dancing.
Often when people begin to dance in public, it is awkward for every party involved. But that day, my joy was electric; the people who saw me smiled.
It took so many years to escalate from buying a blouse to getting a dress, but it only took weeks from buying that dress for me to come out as trans in full. All I had to do was go to a store and reach out for I wanted, and take it. And let myself be me.
Picture from https://www.flickr.com/photos/huzzahvintage/
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