Dude Looks Like A Lady

Twelve year-old Maxim entered the living room wearing a long blue wig, lip gloss, black pantyhose, black knee-high boots and, the killer, a stuffed bra under his dress.

“Wow!” laughed my husband not sure what kind of comment was appropriate.

Eva was bedazzled and stared with a big grin on her face. Claire pulled on his sleeve “Hi! Hi!”

“Mommy, why is he wearing that?” Eva pointed to his long blue locks.

“Oh, just for fun,” I tried to explain, “do you like his wig?”

Eva nodded yes. Long hair is one of her preoccupations.

Maxim stood in the entrance. He held his head back exposing his neck. Then he doused it with woman’s perfume. “Voilà,” he breathed. The final touch. He was now ready. He went around the room with pursed lips, kissing the cheeks of all the dinner guests with his shiny peach lip gloss.

It wasn’t the first time he had captured the crowd’s attention. Several months earlier, he had shown up to our house in a white Mozart shirt, ruffles down the chest and long swooping sleeves. This seemed more like a fashion statement and I actually liked it. I had no doubt he was homosexual and his mother being somewhat macho and provocative seemed like a perfect mother for a homosexual child to have. She would be open-minded, tolerant, and let her son express himself to the max. Wouldn’t she?

Trying to break the ice a little, I turned to her after Maxim left the room and with the intentions to proffer a compliment, I said jokingly, “Maxim is lucky to have a cool mom like you.”

Her eyes widened and she stepped in a little closer to me. Her gray spiky hair just inches away from my face. “What do you mean?” she was waiting for a special response, one that I wasn’t tough enough to give.

“Well, not many mothers would be okay letting their son dress like that,” I instantly regretted having opened my mouth at all.

“It’s totally normal for children to dress up,” big brown eyes bore into me. “It’s okay for girls to dress like boys. My daughter used to wear suits and ties and no one thought there was anything wrong with that. But when a boy dresses like a girl, it’s not okay?”

I held her stare. She wasn’t going to intimidate me. However, I dared not say what I was thinking:

“Your son is wearing a bra stuffed with tissues under his dress. Did your daughter stuff her fucking pants with a sock to look like a man with a dick and balls? Did she draw a mustache on her face and wear men’s cologne? Because that my dear is fucking weird. And I highly doubt your daughter looked like a man. Your son is not just wearing a dress or just a wig, he is in drag. How many teenage boys willingly and solo, dress up like women at parties? Zero boys, that’s how many because it is NOT normal. And I don’t care what your son wears, but if you think it’s normal, you are fucking blind.”

That’s what I wanted to say. But, I couldn’t say that so I said, “Yeah. I suppose you’re right…” and hoped it was enough to remove whatever pole I had accidentally rammed into her ass.

As more guests arrived to the dinner party, I watched people’s expression as Maxim sashayed into the room, shriveled sausages dangling from a fork in a dangerous way as he asked who wanted one. (His father put him in charge of the BBQ. “I don’t care if you look like a woman, you are my son and males are always in charge of the BBQ whether they wear dresses are not,” could have been one of his reasons.)

“Are we going to find melted blue hairs in our food?” Joked my husband as Maxim flung a sausage onto Claire’s plate. I laughed. No one else did.

People wore plastered smiles. I observed each person as they said hello to Maxim. Some said, “Bonsoir, Mademoiselle,” in a light-hearted way. But I have telepathy and I could hear their thoughts, “Holy shit! Smile. Look normal. God damn! I’m glad my kid doesn’t dress like that! What the fuck? Smile, pretend it’s totally normal!”

“Where did you get those stockings?” asked my husband. Maxim obviously could not have borrowed them from his sisters or mother considering he was much taller and, shall we say, a “plus size.”

“Did you buy those for him?” my husband asked Maxim’s father. My husband was treading in dangerous waters. I wanted him to shut up. Maxim’s father chuckled, but did not share. I laughed nervously. A vision of Maxim swaying down the pantyhose aisle in a luxurious department store flashed in my mind. Did his mother take him? Did he go alone? What about his enormous boots? Did he buy those too in the women’s department or does he actually, miraculously wear the same size as his scary mom?

More families arrived with more children. Some other boys around the same age as Maxim entered the house. They were the same age, but they were from different planets. They had messy hair that was slightly dirty, boys who liked being boys. No interest whatsoever in how they looked or what they wore. No identity crises going on in that corner. They saw Maxim and laughed. Boy, that Maxim! He sure was funny. They were too young to realize Maxim was most likely having gender issues and probably wanted to be a girl.

Later in the evening, all the children were upstairs. I went up to see how things were going. All the children, ages 3-12, were spread out on the floor playing games, smiling, innocent wide eyes, and crumby faces. Who do you think sat by himself at a console in front of a mirror? You guessed it. Enraptured with his own image, Maxim sat with his long blue wig and a curling iron in front of a well-lit mirror as if he worked at Burlesque and was preparing for his next act. The scene was mind-blowing. One could say, “Oh, he was just having fun.” Yep. He sure knows how to get into a role.

After the party, back at our home I lie in bed watching my husband hang up his clothes. “It’s more than just being gay,” I said to him. “I’ve had gay friends and they were happy to be men. They had no desire to be women at all except on special occasions when everyone dressed up together.”

My husband listened to me. “Well, we don’t know what his parents think or if they have tried to talk with him. It is very delicate and I’m sure they are not going to talk to their friends about this. But, what is sad is no matter what, Maxim is going to deal with gay crime at school and in life. It’s a fact.”

I thought about this. This made me sad. “You know, it’s more than just being gay,” I said again.

“What really freaked me out, Sunny, is not the dress or the wig, it’s the fake boobs,” said my husband.

“I know. I wonder if deep down Maxim feels like he should have been born a girl, you know?”

“Well, I don’t want to think about it.”

We were both silent for a while. An image of Maxim’s mother sitting on her couch alone watching a transsexual on TV popped into my head. A woman with manly hands is being interviewed. “I always knew I was supposed to be a girl”, she says in a husky voice, “It wasn’t a choice really. I had to have the operation. I have always been a woman inside and now I am finally one on the outside.”

You hear a bell toll once. The camera pans in on Maxim’s mother. We see her eyes widen as the camera goes in closer and closer. Her hands begin to shake. Quickly she covers her mouth. She shakes her head in denial, disbelief. And. Cut.

Or maybe I’m just being dramatic. Maybe Maxim is normal, just checking things out. There is always the possibility he’s doing it to avenge his parents. Let’s assume his parents act cool when guests are around but when they are alone, they rip into him. “Do you realize how embarrassing you are? Christ!” they scream. “Cut this faggy shit out! Can’t you just be a plain old regular teen?”

“Fuck you,” he mutters to himself as he marches up to his room and hatches a plan. The next morning before he leaves for school, he swipes 50 bucks out of his mother’s purse. Instead of going to school, he hops on the bus to Les Galleries Lafayette. He heads straight to the hosiery section and chooses a nice pair of black tights in XL. Then, he tries on numerous pairs of boots in the Women’s shoe department. He hides his loot under his bed and waits for D-Day. Saturday evening finally arrives. His parents are busy setting out bottles of liquor and wine, paper napkins and bowls of chips. Maxim finds his sister’s wig and curling iron, puts on his outfit and waits until he hears the voices of guests.

“Show time,” he says into the mirror with a smirk. He comes down the stairs and sways into the room flinging his long blue tresses over his shoulder. “Good evening, everyone,” he says as he rearranges his bra a little. He catches his mother’s eye. Her stare burns a hole through his heart. He winks at her enjoying every moment. It’s as if someone is spoon-feeding him chocolate mousse.

Or, there’s always the simple explanation that he’s just a drama queen and loves the attention. If it is just a taste for the thespian life, then next time we see him he could be dressed like the Hobbit or even Yoda, right? And years from now, just after he takes a bow from a stunning performance and the curtain goes down, his parents who are sitting in the audience will turn to their friends and say, “You know, for a moment there, we all thought our Maxim wanted to be a girl.” And his parents and their friends will all chuckle heartily and yuk it up. “Yeah, that sure was a scary time…ha ha ha!”

And is it true that girls dress-up like boys? Besides wearing a suit and a tie, maybe some masculine looking shoes and a short haircut, I’ve never seen a woman dress like a man to the same extreme as a man dresses up like a woman. Have any of you out there seen a transvestite woman? I mean the whole thing: flatten her breasts down to nothing with some kind of tunic, stuff the crotch of her pants, fake five o’clock shadow? Yes, women may dress in men clothing, but it is more of a fashion statement or even a feminist statement, like “Hey, I don’t need to show my tits and ass to be a woman.” It’s not intentionally done to make people think they are men.

And now, I must sidetrack because this gets really interesting! I have a Tantric explanation to this whole gender issue. Science has shown that all embryos are first female and then some become male after certain hormonal and developmental phases take place. In fact, if you cut an embryo bunny’s gonads, the embryo will automatically revert to a female which proves all life is female in the beginning; the male species develops from an original female state. Therefore, (this is the Tantric part), men often feel this desire to go back to their feminine side and this is why sometimes you see men dressing as women and these men can be heterosexual. On the contrary, it’s rare that a man finds his wife secretly trying on boxer shorts and shaving her face or that she has a special suitcase filled with men shirts and pants that she wears when he is out of the house. Isn’t this fascinating?

Well, to come back full circle, back to the humor in it all, I don’t think any of it is good or bad, right or wrong, it just is. Maxim made a big impression on me. He obviously got me thinking. Maybe his identity and gender issues will work themselves out in time. But today, dude looks like a lady.