Wearing the wrong clothes
A Pride story from the archives
Hi friends,
In celebration of Pride month, and to honor my need to take time off and rest when I’m sick, this week I’m re-sharing a true story I wrote for Pride last year. I feel that it’s still relevant and poignant, and I hope you enjoy it.
This is a story about what LGBT Pride means, what Pride month means to me, but first, it’s a story about me riding a bicycle.
I was biking home over the bridge when a white guy in a Celtics hat called sarcastically, “nice cape, you gonna fly off the bridge?” I contemplated my outfit, puzzled, as I was not wearing a cape, then I saw an Indian guy strolling on the sidewalk wearing a cape.
In the bike lane, you travel past a scene before you can think about it. I was long gone before it occurred to me to yell, “mind your own business. Be nicer!”
I remember wearing a cape for Halloween as a child, along with a tar-paper crown and some tied on rags floating all around me. What was I? Something created out of a basement full of craft supplies in about 15 minutes.
We went to a house in a good trick-or-treating neighborhood. The girls there usually shunned me for not being cool or popular or normal enough for them. But that night, they took me under their wing. When they asked me who I was, I said, “a witch, or something.” They accepted that, no questions asked, and my outfit passed the popular-test for the first time ever.
Even back then, I felt the injustice of it all. Wearing my everyday clothes, I was a monster who couldn’t fit in, but in this 15-minute objectively bad costume, I was one of the cool kids for one night only.
Halloween, at least in the 90’s, was an accidental refuge for trans and nonbinary kids who weren’t out, that cohort of us who repressed our feelings and still failed to fit in and didn’t have the words to process what we were going through. But one night a year, in our suburban traditional towns, we wore dresses and robes and capes and carried swords and were monsters and got to choose what joke we would be.
Dan Savage says Halloween is Pride for straight people. F that. Halloween is Pride for closeted kids. And Pride is Halloween for when us kids grow up.
I wore a black t-shirt over a binder and jeans to my first San Francisco Trans March. That’s right, I wore a plain black t-shirt to Pride, the festival known for its rainbow colors. Everyone makes mistakes when they first come out.
Walking through the Mission on the way to Dolores Park, I glanced at a stranger passing me and they glanced back. I felt raw and exposed in my flattened chest and hair pulled into a man-bun. They smiled, and I knew, they knew. They weren’t looking at me and desperately trying to see “woman,” they saw the baby trans person I was and acknowledged I was brave enough (or desperate enough, same difference) to walk to a public park looking masculine.
For that one afternoon, my “costume” was cool again.
I couldn’t stop grinning at the park. The people picnicking on the grass, strolling around, chatting, and listening to the speakers on stage were all trans or supported trans people. Do you know how rare that is? Three hundred people, all celebrating our collective identities in the same place. I cried. I listened to Gavin Grimm talk about his Supreme Court win. I picked up rainbow and trans bracelets, a small trans flag, and pronoun pins. I think I was just supposed to take one, but I took three. "They/She”, “They/Them”, and “They/He.” I pinned them all on the front of my shirt.
I’ve been to the outskirts of the main San Francisco Pride Parade, also, and that was loud, overwhelming, and disorienting. Lot of body paint. Very loud bass. I had a much better time at Trans March.
Since the pandemic started, showing pride online has become more important to me. Trans people are more visible than ever, especially online, and to be honest I’m not sure all the visibility always helps. Hateful people put a ton of time into spreading untrue vitriol about trans people and attempting to ruin our lives.
The discriminatory laws and the intensifying hate speech are two reasons why Pride this year feels like a fight. Sure, parties are great, but having the freedom to live our best lives same as everyone else is the goal.
Pride events honor and commemorate the Stonewall riots in 1969 and have always been a public protest.
“Be gay. Do crimes. Never be quiet. Pride is a protest. Stonewall was a riot.”
How can Pride be a protest and a riot and a party and a commercial vending area and a concert and a community space and Halloween? It is what we all bring to it—LGBTQIA+ people, allies, and employees of corporations.
Yes, you can go to Pride if you are an ally or you are not out or you “don’t look like an LGBTQ person,” whatever that means. I certainly did. You don’t need to be “trans enough” to go to Trans March.
If you’re not out, and not safe or comfortable to come out, you can still celebrate Pride, if you want. Perhaps a lowercase pride, pride in your identity and acceptance and love for your true self.
When I was biking over that bridge, and that man mocked someone (me?) for wearing a cape, for a second, I believed he might have seen a cape on me, even though I wasn’t wearing one. I believed he might rather I jump off the bridge than wear something that made him uncomfortable and challenged his traditions. Then, I realized he wasn’t talking about me at all. But that’s what being trans is like, all the time.
At least in June, we get to see more people celebrating who we are, and celebrate with them.
Happy (?) Pride!
Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.
Take care,
Rey
Made me cry (in a good way) when you wrote about being at the Trans pride march.
What a great repost! Happy Pride, my friend.