©1997

A bedsit, a mirror, and you.
Michel.
The curtain nets frayed sunbeams. Posters frame the mirror.
You wait for the knock.
One poster has a ‘magic eye’ pattern. You stare. You fail to draw out the 3-d image.
Images immure but strengthen you, as you skim an anarchistic text about ‘queers’. The cane ‘throne’ by the bed blooms with gorgeous blouses.
The wind quavers at the crazed window. A gust spatters the pane. Bees bump it. Spring’s begun.
“But not my life.”
You perceive … a beanfield, and not in the poster. Your early years were spent on a vegetable farm. Bean-shadows paint your face, painting over pain. You lie, mottled, in a sepia skirt, outstaring the sun on the edge of the field. The smell entrances.
The sky’s a banjo drumskin, humming with childhood.
You fantasise, at cross purposes. High tension wires span the valley from millennium to millennium. Tall glasses of sun tower between the clouds.
With a rustle, and a rush of tears, you stir. Where are the people, the people like you?
Declassée spring ladies clatter by.
You read on, waiting for your nails to dry.

The walls are papered with famous men-as-women. You wait, with Julian Eltinge, Rrose Sélavy, Holly Woodlawn …
Your favourite poster is the one of a man in a blue-grey suit who upon much staring becomes a lady in pink.
“C’est la vie.”
At the centre of a quincunx of posters, a polaroid self-portrait is bluetacked to the wall. In it, apart from your black irises, you resemble Whoopi Goldberg.
Jejune jars of cold cream, flattened tubes of gel, lipsticks, eyeliner, mascara, rouge, eyelash curlers, tweezers, depilatory wax, pink shavers, an Epilady, glistening barrettes, springy hairbands, mother-of-pearl combs, foundation, discarded tights like fallen cobweb, junk jewellery, perfume … The vocabulary of your sartorial tongue, ranged before you.
You daydream about owning a co-op boutique, with other cross-dressers. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology leans against the mirror, pockmarked; beside it, a dart.
“Just 1% are this way. Bit like being a millionaire.”
Some are millionaires, you recall ruefully, fingering the glassware of your own private laboratory. Jekyll and Heidi, the neighbour calls you. Your cat Porphyry leaps into your lap. You touch her ear; a stab of static electricity makes you both jump. She squeals like a smoke alarm, then settles. You’re entranced by a whiff of lilac from outside. In half an hour, work.
Seek a better milieu – but how? Take one of these bottles and rub it, perhaps.
You brush your hair, root-permed and recently dyed auburn. It frames a smooth, hard-won face. But you feel threatened. Yesterday, Agatha spied the foam-filled bra and the pink Made in China panties on the line.
“Fetishist. Where’d you pinch these?”
Despite the decades of guilt, you’ve always believed your motivation was inborn, even beautiful. You have a female soul. You explore it, as a writer explores the silence beyond words.
You recall a car sticker: ‘Why be normal, when you can be yourself?’
Agatha foul-hooked you with ‘radical feminist’ diatribe about stereotypes.
“Bought ‘em.” you retort. In the local Cannon’s. Old fashioned service in a brand new way.
She blushed. She shops there too.
“So ‘radical’ – yet such hidebound notions about clothing.” you snapped, but got merely a privileged shrug. (Her boyfriend’s an evangelical entrepreneur – you cop this stuff from both sides.)
“Clothes’re just coloured cloth.” she flounced.
“So’s the Mona Lisa.”
A mauve velvet dress, fluttering in a draught, hangs from the closet doorknob. Once, you mail-ordered such things, and got fleeced. Later, op shops. This you boldly bought in Katie’s; the young shop assistant didn’t turn a coiffured hair when you asked, for the first time, to try it on.
“I won’t be the only one in a dress.” you mumble, dropping it deftly over your head, glad these things are more accepted than when you were a child. Even your feminist ex-girlfriend approved of dresses, “because they’re airy”.
The effect in the other, full-length mirror is pleasing. The dress is waistless, it has a figured pattern on the front in the same colour, it recalls the sixties. Do you see yourself as others will? They couldn’t plausibly compare you to some caber-tossing Scotsman in a kilt.
You’ve softened them up for a year, wearing golden coils of bangles on your waxed arms, then pink stretch pants, then stockings under these, with low-heeled gold sandals and a trace of lipstick. Today you call yourself ‘multicultural’. Fortunately, none are Dworkinites.
“Silk stockings today?” said one.
“Silk? Payless, actually.”
You ate the toffee she gave you, rice-paper wrapper and all. You felt special. How far dare you go? You’re not sure. Some might wish to interrupt your exploration.
You spy Agatha across the road, hitching up her oversized khaki shorts. She smells of rain on a hot road. She’s staring at the house as if a 3-d image of Edna Everage might pop out of it.
“I prefer dresses. They’re sort of – airy.” you told her yesterday.
“Airy-fairy in your case.”
Despite her dares, you’ve made no full-dress public appearances. Instead you contacted a group of ‘t.v.s’ through the personal column. All were hiding It from their partners. You were drawn into a conspiracy of the sort attributed to anarchists.
One, even in skirts, had come across like a bikie. He sneered at ‘the little wog’ in Katies who suggested a size 6 polyester sundress wasn’t for him.
Of woggish descent yourself, you felt decidedly marginalised.
Worse, your ‘ex-’ didn’t approve of dresses on you.
Put The Day off again? The closet door swings open.
But wholeness beckons.
In fantasy, you’ve left the farm and sit with women, actual or virtual (if not virtuous). They discuss … wearable art? Identity?
Too wooden. No, they talk about film, animation, compelling shots. A 3-d film for open-air cinemas. You debate in a sidewalk café in the Paris you’ve never visited.
As Michele, you’re in your element. There are pierrots, musicians …
One looks intriguing. At first you think she’s Simone Weil. She wears a great cape, despite the heat; her thick glasses give her a submarine look. And no khaki shorts for her! About her ankles flaps a shapeless linen skirt, setting off a ruffly blouse which might’ve been in the family since the Revolution. Yet she’s your age.
“Bonjour.” you say, exhausting your French. You adore grunge fashion.
She dumps a tattered manuscript on the kitchenette table. She smells of dark Elizabethan roses. Her hair looks as if she’s cut it herself without a mirror.
“I’m Emma. She abhors me.” she says, dragging off her specs. They leave red clefts astride her vast nose.
“And me. I loathe khaki shorts too.”
Emma looks quizzical.You swallow. “Coffee?”
She smiles. The room lights up.
“People are wary of my gold tooth.”
“Suits you.”
“It suits Madonna.”
Raising plucked brows, you pour Turkish, into a tiny cylindrical cup. It tastes of marijuana.
Her manuscript’s an essay called ‘The Best News’.
“The workable alternative to bureaucracy is democracy …”
“Er – that’s easy to say … ”
“Go on – criticism strengthens ideas.”
You’re surprised to hear that from the shining mouth of a radical, and say so.
The gold tooth again. She laughs in a hearty way that Agatha could never manage.
“To be radical is to go to the root, not the irrational.”
“S-sorry.” You daren’t think of teeth now. “You – don’t look radical either.”
“No? My ‘image’, n’est pas? ” she apologises.
“Different to mine.”
“Not entirely. Next party you get invited to, go in that dress. The symbolic transfiguration. Go to the root of yourself.”
You laugh now, but quietly revive the boutique idea. “It doesn’t bug you?”
“I support self-expression.” She inclines her head.“We’re”, you venture, “rare people. Let’s talk about – ”
“Mike – you home?”
You shudder. No knock this time. Emma fades, like a cheshire cat. Only her gold tooth lingers, glittering like a fairy in the corner of the room.
Porphyry’s bolted. The clock tut-tuts: forget this new-age rubbish and go to work.
But first, Agatha, rattling the security door. She’s always ‘popping in’ to see if you’re dressed up.
“Michel’s out.” you yell back.“You’re done up as Michele, aren’t you? I can tell by your voice.”
Can she? You clack to the door.
She goggles and giggles, but fortunately your transfiguration deflects her gaze from the gold tooth.“Hell, you’re a scream!”
If she guesses what absurd fantasies you’ve been having … you can’t keep the hurt from showing.
She relents. “Er – you’ve got quite good legs, um.”
A pang, of pleasure. Too rare to be simply sexual.
She continues, woodenly. “I’ve got like a friend who might be interested …”
Your purple Clints’ earrings shimmer. She barges in.
“… but weird. Big glasses, big nose.”
She then thunders about the dying of Mother Earth.
“This friend … ”
“Oh! Met her in Tilley’s. Nobody likes her – she rubbished the rad-fems!”
“So you thought, an ideal friend for me.”
“Well, yes.”
You sit, carefully. You offend people too. You told her boyfriend if he didn’t like this country he could go and live in Russia.
“Yeah, she’s anarchist or whatever. Tears you down. Always thinking. No consistency. Worse than you.”
“Red Emma.” you laugh, arranging your dress on your waxed and – despite the warmth – stockinged knees while she lounges upon the work clothes in your cane chair, one furry leg cocked over the armrest like a slob.
“Oh, her name’s not Goldman!”
“But – it is Emma?” You feel your own chair sink. The gold tooth brightens, a pulsar in the depths of space.
“Sure, how’d you guess?”
“Where’s she from?”
“Belgium, France or somewhere.”
“You’re joking.”
“No way. Well, since you’re slacking off …”
She notices the gold tooth, and stares.
You interrupt. “Does she live round here?”
“What? No – that a dust-mote? – but like she’s coming today. Must show me this essay or whatever, called, um, ‘Good, better, best’ or something. I’d rather you looked at it. That’s why I came over, stupid.”
She stands, yawning. The sun is patently not shining into the corner where the tooth glints. She hauls up her baggy designer shorts. You could kiss her, but she leaves the bedsit rapidly.
You ring in sick, anticipating the office Christmas Party with one purpose. The gold tooth has gone. You’re even about to ‘get’ the 3-d image. You cross your legs with practised grace, touch up your lipstick, and stare.
A bedsit, a mirror, and you.
Michele.
Utopia melds with the past. Your life has begun. Red Emma sounds interesting.

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