Seven years ago, I had my first tutorial in becoming a man.
The idea for this book came to me then, when I went out for the first time
in drag. I was living in the East Village at the time, undergoing a
significantly delayed adolescence, drinking and drugging a little too much,
and indulging in all the sidewalk freak show opportunities that New York City
has to offer.
Back then I was hanging around a lot with a drag king whom I had met
through friends. She used to like to dress up and have me take pictures of her
in costume. One night she dared me to dress up with her and go out on the
town. I'd always wanted to try passing as a man in public, just to see if I
could do it, so I agreed enthusiastically.
She had developed her own technique for creating a beard whereby you cut
half inch chunks of hair from unobtrusive parts of your own head, cut them
into smaller pieces, and then more or less glopped them onto your face with
spirit gum. Using a small round freestanding mirror on her desk, she showed me
how to do it in the dim, greenish light of her cramped studio apartment. It
wasn't at all precise and it wouldn't have passed muster in the daylight, but
it was good enough for the stage, and it would work well enough for our
purposes in dark bars at night. I made myself a goatee and mustache, and a
pair of baroque sideburns. I put on a baseball cap, loose-fitting jeans and a
flannel shirt. In the full-length mirror I looked like a frat boy - sort of.
She did her thing-which was more willowy and soft, more like a young hippie
guy who couldn't really grow much of a beard - and we went out like that for a
few hours.
We passed, as far as I could tell, but I was too afraid to really interact
with anyone, except to give one guy brief directions on the street. He thanked
me as "dude" and walked on.
Mostly though we just walked the streets of the Village scanning people's
faces to see if anyone took a second or third look. But no one did. And that,
oddly enough, was the thing that struck me the most about that evening. It was
the only thing of real note that happened. But it was significant.
I had lived in that neighborhood for years, walking its streets where men
lurk outside of bodegas, on stoops and in doorways much of the day. As a
woman, you couldn't walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of
desire or at least semi-prurient interest to the men who waited there, even if
you weren't pretty - that, or you were just another piece of pussy to be put in
its place. Either way, their eyes followed you all the way up and down the
street, never wavering, asserting their dominance as a matter of course. If
you were female and you lived there, you got used to being stared down,
because it happened every day and there wasn't anything you could do about it.
But that night in drag, we walked by those same stoops and doorways and
bodegas. We walked right by those same groups of men. Only this time they
didn't stare. On the contrary, when they met my eyes they looked away
immediately and concertedly and never looked back. It was astounding, the
difference, the respect they showed me by not looking at me, by purposely not
staring.
That was it. That was what had annoyed me so much about meeting their gaze
as a woman, not the desire, if that was ever there, but the disrespect, the
entitlement. It was rude, and it was meant to be rude, and seeing those guys
looking away deferentially when they thought I was male, I could validate in
retrospect the true hostility of their former stares.
But that wasn't quite all there was to it. There was something more than
plain respect being communicated in their averted gaze, something subtler,
less direct. It was more like a disinclination to show disrespect. For them,
to look away was to decline a challenge, to adhere to a code of behavior that
kept the peace among human males in certain spheres just as surely as it kept
the peace and the pecking order among male animals. To look another male in
the eye and hold his gaze is to invite conflict, either that or a homosexual
encounter. To look away is to accept the status quo, to leave each man to his
tiny sphere of influence, the small buffer of pride and poise that surrounds
and keeps him.
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