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rabbit's heart
Apr. 18th, 2008 10:56 amPeople frequently call me sir, and it took me a long time to understand this or embrace it.
In girls' school being perceived in any way that was masculine was a step well below mere ugliness; it was a blight that came with physical risk: to be mistaken for a boy or told you could be was to be afraid. And it's with a certain sort of shame I remember standing shirtless in an un-airconditioned restaurant in Little Italy with my parents as we waited for a table when I was seven; or someone's mother pulling at my clothes at You Gotta Have Park when I was eight because she did not believe me when I said I wasn't a boy; they wanted boys to paint benches.
I am narrow, like a knife, and because I am quick and nervous and possess a rabbit's heart I am too skilled at darting through crowds.
The subway, in New York, is where you learn whether or not other people think you have a right to exist. I have learnt that I do not, and I understand that this is unexceptional. It is what most women learn on the subway. Because I am slight, I am expected to turn sideways when exiting the car so people can board before I even get off. But I refuse; I do not believe it should be a woman's lot to slide through this world. God gave me shoulders, even if they are small.
I had the male lead in lots of our plays in girls' school. I was Ko-ko in the Mikado and Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 100 years ago my classmates would have had "smashes" on me. But I was not given to that world, and those were the first times I started to suspect that my success came from a type of ugliness.
At the bank, people call me sir. Particularly when I wear my hair long and down. It happens even when I wear lipstick.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roadnotes theorizes it is because I take up space. I do not stand with my ankles crossed in heels so as to look like an insect on a pin.
A rabbit is always frightened. It doesn't mean to be. But its heart just beats so fast it can seem to tremble. It believes the lies of its body, just like I have often believed the lies of mine and the lies of the subway, our crowded streets, and a school for girls.
But I do have a right to exist. And if that makes me a man, so be it. I will take that and my vicious smile as I refuse to beg and press and cajole my way off the train over the supposed sins of my fur any day.
In girls' school being perceived in any way that was masculine was a step well below mere ugliness; it was a blight that came with physical risk: to be mistaken for a boy or told you could be was to be afraid. And it's with a certain sort of shame I remember standing shirtless in an un-airconditioned restaurant in Little Italy with my parents as we waited for a table when I was seven; or someone's mother pulling at my clothes at You Gotta Have Park when I was eight because she did not believe me when I said I wasn't a boy; they wanted boys to paint benches.
I am narrow, like a knife, and because I am quick and nervous and possess a rabbit's heart I am too skilled at darting through crowds.
The subway, in New York, is where you learn whether or not other people think you have a right to exist. I have learnt that I do not, and I understand that this is unexceptional. It is what most women learn on the subway. Because I am slight, I am expected to turn sideways when exiting the car so people can board before I even get off. But I refuse; I do not believe it should be a woman's lot to slide through this world. God gave me shoulders, even if they are small.
I had the male lead in lots of our plays in girls' school. I was Ko-ko in the Mikado and Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 100 years ago my classmates would have had "smashes" on me. But I was not given to that world, and those were the first times I started to suspect that my success came from a type of ugliness.
At the bank, people call me sir. Particularly when I wear my hair long and down. It happens even when I wear lipstick.
roadnotes theorizes it is because I take up space. I do not stand with my ankles crossed in heels so as to look like an insect on a pin.A rabbit is always frightened. It doesn't mean to be. But its heart just beats so fast it can seem to tremble. It believes the lies of its body, just like I have often believed the lies of mine and the lies of the subway, our crowded streets, and a school for girls.
But I do have a right to exist. And if that makes me a man, so be it. I will take that and my vicious smile as I refuse to beg and press and cajole my way off the train over the supposed sins of my fur any day.
