crazywonderful

I had to go out to buy lunch the other day and I was already grumpy for a myriad of small and cumulative reasons. I’d run out of hair gel and with my floppy red swoop of bangs I looked like Peppermint Patty. I’d packed my lunch and then forgotten it on the kitchen counter. My new printer at work was skipping jobs for no discernable reason. Since giving up beef, pork and chicken my take-out options have been seriously compromised, and having to think about what I’m going to ingest pisses me off. I’m not a big fan of tofu, beans or lentils, and I am not someone who can live off of salad, because I get hungry about forty minutes later, which quickly leads to a feeling of homicidal apathy (I feel like killing people, but I haven’t got the energy to get off my ass and do anything about it) and then segues nicely into overwhelming self-pity.
So I stood in the food court line up, nibbling french fries and waiting to order my nutritionally redeeming salad. The woman behind the counter glanced up and then back down at her register and said, “And what would you like, Sir?” (Marcie? Marcie, is that you? It’s me! Patty!)
The two people in front of me had already been helped, and had gone preternaturally still in that way strangers will when they desperately do not want to risk even sympathetic eye contact. There was no one behind me. I just waited. The server looked up, flinched, apologized profusely and referred to me as Ma’am about fifteen times in the course of fixing my order. I laughed a little too heartily and retreated to my table where I was quickly consumed by bigger problems, like how to respectably fit whole leaves of dressing soaked lettuce in my mouth using only a wimpy plastic fork. (Bite sized pieces and correct gender identification. Is that really so much to ask?)
When I was a child, people frequently mistook me for a boy. Since growing breasts this hasn’t happened as much, but I still harbour some residual sensitivity around the gender issue. Pre-breasthood, my mother used to joke about getting my ears pierced or buying me a training bra to help clue people in, but for some reason, she chose instead to help me display my femininity by making me get a perm every year. Yes, I’ll admit, this did help people correctly identify which sex I was. But only because I was a dead ringer for Little Orphan Annie.
I really fucking hate being called a boy.
The good news is, as little as a year ago something like this would have knocked me flat on my ass for about a week. Or, rather, the good news is, something like this no longer makes me feel like dog shit for days on end.
It helped that I shared this incident with one of my co-workers when I got back from lunch and she did two very nice things. One, she seemed genuinely baffled by the thought of anyone mistaking me for a guy. Then she told me the story about how a man walking past her not too long ago turned and said, “You’re going to have a beautiful baby.” Which she said might have made her feel really great, if only she’d been pregnant.
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Questioning/Examining:
How can it possibly be the end of January already?
Grateful/Relieved:
For bacon flavoured potato chips.
Regret/Deny:
Not being able to fix it with a laying on of hands.
Pondering/Obsessing:
What kind of sick freak breaks into a girl’s home and steals (among other more readily pawned items) her soccer socks and a half empty bottle of concealer?
Whistling/Humming:
Lola – Kinks
Reading/Scanning:
Madeline’s World – Brian Hall
Shout out to:
The Queen of Trance Massage.