The first time I remember wearing a suit, I was 15. It was me, my twin brother, my boyfriend – also maybe my brother’s boyfriend (?), and our mate Edwin. For reasons I can not recall, all four of us dressed up, in black suits, and went to town. The car broke down, and so we pushed Edwin’s red mini car, through the streets. I dunno, maybe it was a Blues Brother’s thing? I was one of the boys. I was pushing hard, and sweating. I liked it. I didn’t give the suit back, the boyfriend kept asking for it. I think all the suits had belonged to his grandfather. I’ve still got it. The boyfriend went with me to my high school dance, in white satin tails, and a pink fun-fur bowtie and top hat – so gay. Not long after that I started wearing a purple bowler hat, everywhere, as far as I was concerned, it went with everything. I amassed THE most impressive tie collection, to go with my suit, set the whole thing off, just right – stripes, polka dots, plain silk. Which really impressed the lesbians at the women’s dances I was going to by the time I was 20.
When I wear the suit: I am writer Radclyffe Hall, debonair – far from her Well of Loneliness. I am actor Marlene Dietrich, in top hat and tails, toasting from a proffered glass – tipping her hat to the audience’s rapturous applause. I am painter Frida Khalo, as a teenager, posing for a family portrait in a men’s 3 piece suit, leaning nonchalantly on her grandfathers shoulder. I am Anne Frank cross-dressing with her brother, Peter. I am Patti Smith – rockstar with a bass guitar. I am Grace Jones with a buzz cut, in suit and no shirt, all ebony skin and muscles – pull up to the bumper baby. I am Julie Andrews in the film Victor Victoria, – a woman, pretending to be a man, pretending to be a woman. I am chameleon Annie Lennox with red hair – making sweet dreams. I am mirror images the Topp Twins duo on the cover of their ‘wear something sexy’ album. I am ingénue k.d.lang barefoot on stage seducing with her crooning. I am me, aged 17, MC of the school principals leaving concert, in my fine grey cotton corduroy’s, with my brother’s matching suit jacket and trilby hat, rakishly tilted.
After I broke it off with the boyfriend, and my twin brother left town, so I didn’t have him to walk the streets with at night anymore, sometimes I’d meet up with Edwin. Just driving around, like me he didn’t want to stay home at night, we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to sleep. His stepfather, a military man, made his life a living hell, we never really talked about it, just sat in the car and talked about other things. There were the years before I left, I let the ties hanging on the mirror fill up all the space, so I could no longer see my growing female form, or the frightening blankness in my eyes – the lights were on but there was nobody home, alienated from my body by abuse. There were the years after I left, I pretended I wasn’t a woman, dressed in baggy clothes, designed to hide my curves, far away from the male gaze. At night, sleepless from the nightmares, walking the street, distantly trailing men, perfecting their walk, so no one would mess with me. If anyone came near, looked like they were thinking about it, I spat in the gutter.
There were the years I lived amongst women, slowly regaining the outline of my body, clothes became irrelevant, we were naked and proud sliding down a waterfall on our bare behinds. There were the years I played femme – to the boyfriend, and then the butch girlfriend. The years after I tried to be butch, real butches, the ones who didn’t put it on like a suit, laughed and affectionately teased me, called me camp – as row of tents, like a gay boy. These days butch and femme determine me as- defying definition. My androgynous girlfriend always said – ‘how’s my handsome girl?’
My mother, had me grow up wild in the countryside like some feral animal, then was exasperated when I walked like a farmer. Sent me to ballet to try to knock it out of me. I went willingly, thought I would learn how to leap the width of the stage, fly, like the male dancers. Neither of us got what we wanted. Whatever it was people saw in me as a child, which did not fit their idea of gender, my sister named it by the time I was 6 – Brian. Brian is a girl whose only friends are other animals, like them she was born in a litter – a twin. Brian is the person on the bus who no one will sit next to – except skinny androgynous kids in their hoodies and baseball caps pulled down low. And middle–eastern men – because we are similarly outcast by this society? They think I am a non-threatening man? Or maybe they recognize in my eyes the mirror of the tortured? When I am tired people think I’m angry, a threatening crazy person; when I’m sick, people think I’m vulnerable, a bearer of contagious illness. Either way, faggot is a word spat at me. Even if you don’t open your mouth, I can still hear you think it.
People are plagued by the question: what are you? Not who, what. In the boys surf shorts, girls sparkly sandals, and wheelchair. Puzzled by these parts which do not seem, to them, to fit together.
When I wear the suit, I am contained, protected, distinct, a one trick pony, a complete package, entirely suit-able, covered from head to toe. No longer vague, indeterminate, in between. There is no question in peoples minds’, they are absolutely sure, I am whatever it is they see, they desire; a man in a suit, a gay man in a suit, a woman in a suit, a lesbian in a suit, an androgynous person in a suit. A person, in a suit.
I wore the suit when I was the best man at one of my best buddies wedding, all his gay friends thought I was the best man there and flirted with me outrageously, wanted to know who my tailor was – ‘go on give us another spin’. So I flirted back, thought it was hilarious they didn’t realize I was actually a woman. My friend that I went with, similarly dressed, flirted with the female wait staff at the reception, they called her ‘bunny’, brought her perrier water and extra dessert. The photographer, who mostly worked straight weddings, was so excited he couldn’t stop taking boys-r-us type photos, of us in various configurations. Followed me into the washroom to take portraits in the mirror while I adjusted my shirt collar.
In the suit I am acceptable, confident, dressed formally, taken seriously, androgynous – dressed up good. In the suit I have history, a place, in the arts. I am fun, flirtatious, appealing. I feel sexy because underneath the crisp lines of the suit, are a woman’s curves.
