Growing up in small-town America, my parents fought custody battles over my gender. My father wanted to take me on hikes, teach me Latin and basketball; my mother wanted to take me shopping for clothes that looked "presentable," i.e. feminine. But I was the only water sign in a family of five--fluid, mutable; two Alpha-male brothers weighted their side three-to-one. I grew to become three parts man to one part woman. Most people close to me didn't notice. The woman in me tried hardest, is still trying. I'm thirty but still hope to become a strong Woman who can encompass all these contradictions and be the role model I didn't have.
The woman (the femme) in me is located most insistently in my hips. That's what I remember as Jake is trying to teach me how to walk like a man down the hallway. Stop wiggling your hips! Sideways movement should be from your shoulders! (Passing, the way I have, never involved getting the walk right.)
Finally, it's my turn for final touches of make-up and wardrobe. The producers decide that I "need" a beard (for purposes of truly confounding the audience); later they decide I "need" a (bright orange knit) hat: My character in the end looks like Remington Steele going undercover to the ghetto, and getting his disguise wrong. I feel stripped of my maleness, my sureness. I worry about tomorrow's studio audience: I'll be on stage parading a character I'm not inhabiting.
Tomorrow arrives, we're at the studios bright and early. My day starts strangely, considering. I'm wearing a red evening gown with matching scarf, sling back shoes, nude hose; I'm sitting getting my (femme) make-up done and then my hair blow-dried. It's for a pre-taping of my "reveal," the moment where they disclose our "real gender" to the audience.
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| |  | | Karen Lillis is a writer and artist based in Brooklyn. In 2000, she self-published the novel, i, scorpion: foul belly- crawler of the desert, which fucks with gender whenever possible. She also performed a series of costumed readings of the novel, in New York and across the country. See highlights at: http://www.geocities.com/eyescorpion Contact: Eyescorp@aol.com |
