It's evening already. The sun has set, people are trying to escape the cold, moving fast on the streets.
There are three of us in the pub. Two girls and me. The first girl I've spent the afternoon with: she's fine. She talks a lot, about lots of different things, and sometimes it's interesting. As if she was locked away for months, and now I'm the only one who'll listen to her. The other girl is her friend, just met her: she's laid back, low voiced, but seems cool.
The pub we're at? It's cheap. Workers come here, sinking their miserable lifes into alcohol, getting cheerfull from the cheapest available drugs, smiling despite their misery. The jukebox is playing horrible music, but the atmosphere is familiar: I had spent three years in places like this. I know these people, even though I see them for the first time. We're different, but I speak their language.
This is where the magic happens.
A lady comes to us, asking for a light. She's already spiced up, maybe even drunk. She's fat, and aged around 50. She's in a chatty mood, and strikes up a conversation with us. Tells the girls they're pretty. Tells me I'm pretty. Asks us if we like each other. If the first girl is my girlfriend. She blushes, says no, but she would be. That's new. But we move on. She tells me I have a cute, girly babyface.
"Yeah" I answer "I do work as a transvestite".
And things get weird.
"A transvestite? You mean a crossdresser?"
"Yes. Girly face was a right bet."
And the weird turns pro.
She doesn't believe me at first, but I assure her that I'm not lying. The girls, they don't laugh, but rather reinforce me. They were also disgusted at first, but it's true. I am, indeed, a crossdresser.
I tell her about everything. How it works. The lingerine, the high heels, the skirts and the mascara. The eye liner, and the homosexuals I have to escape. How they pay me a fat sum of money every once in a while if I do a gig. How the heels killed me at first, and had to practice at home when my dad wasn't at home. That I would never tell this to him. Oh, I don't enjoy it, but it pays the bills. It's the fucked up jobs that get things going. I tell her that I ended up like this because they weren't any vacancies at the mortuary for another corpse cleaner. "They make even more money" I say, lighting another cigarette "and they don't even have to dance around in pantyhose".
She has questions. What do I do. Am I gay? No, I'm perfectly straight. The others, most of them are gay, but not me. They do it for enjoyment, some of them looking like this day and night. I only dress up if they pay me. I tell her about the road show we did - dressing up like women, going to the rural regions, and singing karaoke songs. Then asking money for getting smacked. We made a lot of money this way, and surprisingly enough, the girls can hit just as hard. No, it's not bad, not for this fat sum anyway. It only sucks if the local tough guy stands in line to pack a punch.
The girls are taking a video of this, as the drunken lady pays close attention to what I say. She questions, she's intrigued, she's worried. This is new to her, she never met a transvestite before. We talk about media coverage, about some well known crossdresser, and have I met him? Yes, yes, but he doesn't do it anymore. He has kids to raise now, adopted ones, and he stopped doing it. They write all sorts of shit about him though. One of the girls says: oh they write shit about you too. Remember the article which said that you put a toothbrush up your ass?
"You did what?" she asks "A toothbrush?"
"That's a lie" I exclaim "the motherfucker made it up. I'm close to finding him though... what's the deal with that anyway? It's me up there on the stage, trying to get away from all those fags buying me drinks, looking like a moron, emberassing myself wearing clothes you should never ever wear as a man, and he just rips me off with that." I'm almost screaming at this point. Well in the role, I'm as pissed off as I should be. "I'll fucking kick his intestines out, the squeek, shove that toothbrush up his ass. Then he can think about lying."
The conversation goes on for a bit, but we get a call. We really should be going, we say, drink our beers, get dressed up, and leave. "See you around" she says. I pat her on the back "See you too. And take care miss", we say goodbye. She's smiling. Drunk-happy, with post-vomit euforia.
We step out the door. The girls start laughing. I start laughing.
I take a bow. I'd like to thank the Academy...
