pansy divisions

Happy late birthday Madame Mariah Carey! (March 27)

My spring break is almost over, and I’ve now lugged my fat ass up to New York from Philadelphia. I’ve just come back to the lovely home of my friend and comrade P (aka PP Greek Mama), from a night of attempted wilddancing at a certain guppie club in Hell’s Kitchen. Just for the record: the place: not my idea. I was meeting my friend EB, who is a very cute and petit Asian boy who seemed to be very popular—and deservedly so. EB danced very well, with his whole body into it. I, on the the other hand, was channeling my old grunge mosh pitting chick days, thrashing my hair about, doing the funky chicken only from the ribs up. Then I noticed that a couple different gaggles of several muscly fags pointed towards me and tittered. Was it my dancing—hearing the Darling Buds while Madonna is playing in reality? More likely it was my ensemble:

-a grey jersey tee with a v-neck so deep my breast bones are the star;

-dark Cheap Monday jeans rolled up...

-...to reveal striped socks and my new manga-monkey Vans slip-ons;

(By the way: who knew Philadelphia was such a shopping town? In addition to the shoes, I also bought a pair of Japanese jeans with the lovely name “good society,” a red resin/ plastic ring in the shape of an owl, and the sweater-subject of this post. By contrast, I had to struggle to find a fucking pair of jeans in New York.)

-...and my glunge (grunge plus glamour) piece-de-resistance: a vintage angora/ wool cardigan with pansies patterned along the shoulder.

To me, this cardigan made me a sweater-girl. I felt good in it. P's six-yearl old kid said to me, "You look like an old lady looking for stuff in her purse." And I was like, "Yes! That's what I am!" But who the hell knows what I looked like to the fags at this club. Failed tranny? Hopelessly unstylish? At this club, I felt a kind of femme-alienation I haven’t felt since my college days in Virginia, when my shaved head and doorknocker earrings used to get the same reaction. But I didn’t feel angry or sad or unwanted. (Well, maybe unwanted, but boys without messy facial hair, body odor, and messiness in general are not wanted by me anyways.) Rather, glunging around EB in my pansy-cardigan, I felt so like...a fag hag! Is that possible? Yes! And it feels kinda great: In the words that 19th Century African American writer Frances E. W. Harper put into the lips of her mulatta heroine Iola Leroy, “I am a wonder to myself.” I mean, I am a fag, and yet, I am a hag to another fag.

March 29: postscript about last night from EB: a guy who was interested in EB, who had seen him with me, asked him, after I had left: "Where's your girlfriend?"