Chapter Two:

The Grand Epiphany of the Brightly-Lit Department Store

After all, what really was the big deal?  It was all just cloth. 

But if so, why had those women noticeably reacted to the sight of a girl getting an exclusively boy wardrobe?  I had to smile ruefully when I thought about the opposite, too.  What if I’d been a boy who wanted to wear girl’s clothes?  The biddy brigade was bemused by the tomboy, but the sissy would have been almost completely unacceptable. 

Emily could wear guy jeans or one of my old shirts and no one would think anything of it.  As long as Emily kept her long hair and wore some mascara and remained kind of lanky and sleek, she was within acceptable parameters and had quite a bit of leeway within them.  Let her little cousin have a semi-short haircut and wear y-fronts and they thought it a little odd.

Let her grow up and shave her head and dress like a construction worker, or have someone with a dick wear a skirt, and those concepts were way too fucked up for them to process. 

I felt confused by it all, almost dizzy and headachey.  Here I was sticking to guy stuff, somehow resistant to the idea of putting on anything made for a girl, despite cotton threads in the cloth being molecularly identical no matter for whom the clothing manufacturers wove it.  Therefore, I was full of the same prejudices.

If I did without said prejudices, what was my objection to wearing a girl’s swimsuit after all?  And was going the t-shirt and shorts route any escape?  Boy or girl or whatever, people wanted you to conform to their expectations.  I concluded people’s minds were full of shitty, mean ideas and this simple stupid shopping trip was forcing me to confront things I’d never before considered.  Received gender notions accepted without contemplation.  Traditions.  Mores.  Yuck, I thought.

While I thought about that, the three of us drifted with our bags full of inadvertent gender rebelliousness into the girl’s section.  Now I saw all this fashion stuff with a field observer’s objectivity.

On first blush, the girl clothes weren’t that different from the ones over in pre-teen boys.  T-shirts, button-up shirts, twill and denim shorts.  Jeans.  On second, almost all of the tees were colors I’d always associated with femininity without even thinking about it.  Pinks and purples and pale pastels.  The prints, too.  Florals.  Powerpuff Girls.  Minnie Mouse.  “Surfer Girl.”  “Princess.”

And it struck me that most girls must actually this stuff.  But was it because society taught them to, or was it because of their biology?  I had this feeling I was going to find out firsthand, that I was some kind of test case in spite of myself.

For a while, anyways.  Then boredom set in.  It was still shopping no matter what kind of philosophical nonsense I brought to it.  It was time to get it over with.

“I guess I’ll… you know,” I said and gave the swimsuit section—a riot of flowers, ruffles and neon colors—a glance.  “But I want something one-piece.  And not too frilly.” 

Apparently, despite my epiphany, I wasn’t about to start a gender revolution right then and there.  And after all, there were plenty of girls and women who hated the stuff marketed towards them.  Which made me for a split second wonder if maybe I was reacting to this stuff as a girl, not as a guy after all.

Once again, confusion.

“Whatever, dude,” Emily said.

I found this orange one-piece suit.  Smart-ass Emily jokingly held up a day-glo pink one I crinkled my nose at in disgust, and I waved my find at her. 

“I’m gonna try this one,” I said. 

“Cute,” Mrs. Komori said, and her eyes darted away. 

The sales woman let me into the fitting room without so much as a protest, and I discovered the suit was a bit too small.  The shoulder straps kind of compressed me a little and made me not want to stand up straight for fear of bursting a seam.  Then I was worried we wouldn’t find another orange one.  Green would’ve been okay, and I might have accepted one with maybe an embroidered sailboat or sun on the front.  Maybe a frolicking dolphin.  Anything but that bright pink travesty.

“I’m sorry, we don’t seem to have another one in that color,” the sales woman told me.

Luckily, there was a green one.

“Kinda plain,” Emily said, disappointed.

“I like plain,” I told her.

“Just try this,” she said, holding up a blue two-piece.  It had a little ruffle trim.

I winced.

“Just try it, Amy,” she said.  “It’s not really so different than what you’re used to.  That one-piece might feel a little confining.  Kinda.”

“It’s a bikini.”

“Technically.  Think of it as… um… trunks and a top.”

Back into the fitting room, where I tried on the bikini and found it was actually a lot more comfortable than the one-piece.  Only it felt bizarre to have to cover up something I didn’t even really have.  It suddenly struck me as unfair that guys got to go topless if they wanted.  Especially when so many had larger breasts than a lot of the women I knew.  And so what?

Why were breasts so bad they had to be covered?

Then I got a little thrill of fear and discomfort.  I didn’t want anyone staring at my breasts.  When I had them.  They would be mine, not someone else’s to own through his eyes.  I couldn’t even conceive of one day showing them to a lover.  Fuck that.  Fuck it with a lit stick of dynamite.

A minute or so later, I was bopping out of the changing booth to show Emily and Mrs. Komori.  Emily had this look of narrow-eyed interest, somewhat sardonic.  But Mrs. Komori beamed happily.

On the way to the cashier’s station, we passed a long rack of dresses.  I wasn’t planning to give them so much as a glance, but curiosity got the better of me and I peeked.  Nothing, nothing… and then, something.  Stainless steel rack.  A hanger.  There were these little string bows, like the ones you tie in your shoelaces, the topmost part of the thin straps of this sundress with teensy flowers all over it in blues, greens and yellows.  My breath stopped for a beat.  Within the space of that beat, I thought about how I’d looked in the mirror before and how that dress would look on me.  My breath resumed its normal cycle.

And Emily saw it happen.  She smiled at me and I tried to act like it was no big deal.

When we put the two swimsuits on the cashier’s station and the saleswoman rang it up for us, I couldn’t believe how expensive this trip was.  With my cooperation, we’d gotten carried away, bought much more than I’d need for three weeks at the beach, much less just one.  Mrs. Komori pulled out her credit card and paid for it all without a complaint, but I knew she was almost as shocked as I was.  How had this happened?

“You need shoes,” Mrs. Komori said.  This, instead of complaining about the money she’d blown.

“Okay,” I grunted.  I genuinely couldn’t believe after all she’d spent already she was still willing to go that extra mile for me.

On the way out of the pre-teen girl’s department, I tried to steal a glance back at the sundress, with this surprisingly poignant ache.  I wasn’t so much surprised to find myself wanting a dress for the first time in my life, but at the wanting, the desiring any piece of clothing.  What the fuck was happening to me all of a sudden?

Again, Emily spotted me.  She’d evidently been watching me intently ever since she caught me out looking kind of—I had to admit it—longingly at that dress.  I looked away and put it out of my mind, just banished it like a god-king would a failed general or something in some Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or an episode of “Xena, Warrior Princess.”

I saw Emily mouth, “You want it?” at me.  I shook my head.  Negative, sister. No way.  Not me.  Despite all my recent insights, I savagely thought only dumb girls and fags wore dresses, anything to shock some sense back into me.  Instantly pegging me for the liar I was, Emily nodded.  Then we were in the shoe section.

Shoe were easiest.  We got me some black Vans, smaller versions of the ones I’d treasured in another life.  I wore them out of Macy’s, with my Martin clodhoppers shoved into the box under my arm.  And my feet rejoiced.  The lightness in my legs served to inform me just how difficult it had been walking around in big-ass sneakers.

On the way through the mall, with our load of bags, I thought about all I’d seen and learned about the world and even myself.  I especially thought about that weird moment of transitory desire after seeing that stupid dress, which I was now in the process of convincing myself I hated.  What was that?  Why would I even think I wanted something like that?  And Emily.  She was going to be on top of me from then on.  I could feel the beginning of a fascination; it shimmered off my former girlfriend like the white mist that rose from hot asphalt streets after a summer rain.

I was officially under investigation.

“Who wants a Great American Cookie?” Mrs. Komori asked, as if to lighten the mood.

“No thanks,” I grumbled.

“No?  Okay, then.”  Mrs. Komori sounded a little disappointed.  Maybe she’d wanted a cookie for herself and needed one of us to act as enabler.  Oh well…

The skater punks had vanished like ghosts, and outside was like a sauna.  I practically danced with delight at being blasted by hot, moist air after the goosebumps-inducing fast freeze of Macy’s and the rest of the mall.  We found our car and threw all the bags in the trunk and I flung my little body into the backseat as soon as Mrs. Komori popped the door locks.  I slumped down as my elation faded and reaction set in.  I was exhausted, physically, emotionally, intellectually.  It was so hard to hold onto my new insights, if insights they were.  Already I could feel them jumbling, bumping against each other and becoming even more garbled than they’d been in Macy’s.

What had I left in there?  What had I found?

“Hey, Amy,” Emily said.  “When we come back from the beach, maybe we can go to Moldy Oldies.”  Moldy Oldies was a local vintage clothing store.  Emily and I both knew they didn’t sell guy clothes.

"Maybe," I muttered.  Amy?

After a supper where I’d barely talked, I went to my room, threw myself on the bed and buried my face in the pillow.  I missed being a guy so badly it hurt, and I was bewildered by all the things I’d suddenly felt and thought during the shopping trip.  I felt buffeted by forces beyond the farthest limits of my ability to comprehend.  Is this what it’s like to be a girl?  I thought.  Or is this what it’s like to be a girl who wants to be a boy?  What am I now?  What have I become?

I heard the door open and Emily peeked in.

"Can I come in?" she asked softly.

I grunted, or tried to. It sounded like some kind of little girl noise. Emily shut the door behind her and sat by me on the bed.  She was so close, I could feel her radiant body heat. No so long before things like that led to freaky sex until we fell asleep sometime after midnight. Now it just made my stomach feel sickly-sweet, like I'd drunk a bottle of Log Cabin maple syrup.

"Shopping sucks, dude,”  I said finally, my voice muffled by the pillow.  “And those old bitches in the boy’s section were staring at me like I’m some kind of freak.  I dunno, maybe I am.  Oh, and those fucking skater kids…”

"Amy--"

"Martin. When we're alone, I'm Martin."

That set her off, and led to a long discussion about "you've changed, probably for good" and "making the best of a bad situation until we figure something out." So I asked Emily if she wanted a tube to better blow smoke up my ass, and also reiterated my position that inside, I was all guy, the same Martin I'd always been and always would be.

I guess I wanted to fight with Emily, or make her cry so I could convince myself the guy thing was still true. If she screamed at me, we'd go to war. And not a month before, that's what would've happened; Emily would've torn me a new one.  Instead, she took it serenely. I couldn't stay angry with a calm Emily.  She was too rational, her voice was too assured and I was too much in love with her. I cooled, calmed.

With persistence and quiet determination, she soothed and comforted me.  We even talked a little about the gender thing and some of the thoughts I’d had at Macy’s, but neither of us contemplated it too much before today.  Well, Emily had a little, but only on a case-by-case basis.  The beginnings of an earnest back-and-forth on the matter sputtered and died.  Mostly, Emily just held forth that people were stupid about almost everything and their opinions counted for little.  And that somehow, I’d figure it all out in time.  But before that happened, I had to find some kind of personal peace.

"It's not your old life, I know," Emily pleaded. "But you're going to have to get your shit together sometime.  Be a boy, be a girl, be something in between, or something new.  It doesn’t matter.  Just, please, I don't want to lose you."

"Okay," I said with a sigh. "But no vintage clothes.  At least not now.  I wanna think this over some more.”

"Deal."