Viva Brighton Issue #30 August 2015

column...........................................Amy HoltzThe truth is, I’m a Minnesotan‘Can I wear this one?’ he asks,a tube of ruffled aquamarinedangling between his fingers.I am simultaneously mortifiedto be housing such a blatantlyfeminine piece and worried, asthere are several more inchesof my neighbour’s torso thanthere are in the cheap spandexfabric he’s holding up like adead rat.I frown. If he wears it, I cannever wear it again. Although,right now, I can’t imagine ever wanting to wear it.In the living room, my roommate is using up myfavourite eyeliner on a boy, who, unfairly, doesn’tneed it. Xtina’s Dirrty is blaring on our stereo andproviding inspiration. I lean around my doorframeand watch as two boys try to recreate her recentboob hammock out of a lilac scarf. They’re gettingbogged down with the knot, sausage-fingersfumbling with the slippery material.Gender is a complex performance, a rigidlypatrolled set of ‘parodic repetitions’ said my secondfavourite queer theorist, Judith Butler. Whichmakes sense, because I’ve always felt like I’m playinga bit at being a woman. Those days, I dressedlike a colour-blind fourteen-year-old extra fromThe Bad News Bears (the spandex top was an aberration).I can remember the regularity with whichthe words ‘gender normativity’ and ‘the binary’were murmured seductively to me over a can ofHamm’s. It usually worked.But twice a year, attending the Queer Unionball, we really dismantled the trickier parts of ourgendered selves with theearnestness of universitykids, high on subversiveness.There was a freedomin this - dressing up,dressing other, imitation.No commitment,just a little flirtation withyour mistress while yourwife looked on. It wassanctioned experimentation,for me, but especiallyfor the straight men Iknew who, having recently left their mothers’freshly laundered care, their sweaty locker roomexistences, their baseball caps and Acqua Di Gio,could feel a breeze between their thighs for thevery first time.It’s bittersweet thinking back though - a few yearsof hammering at our glass boxes, only to have ourtools taken away and the glass reinforced. There’smore people on the outside who seem to care thatyou stay inside.On my cycle home the other day, just past PrestonPark, I watched a teenaged boy get off a bus. Helocked eyes with me, warning me not to run himover. I looked down as his hands met the bottom ofhis black mini-skirt and tugged. Good, I thought.Someone’s finding a way out.My neighbour saunters from my bedroom. There’sa gruesome amount of black armpit hair explodingbeneath the coquettish ruffle of my top. In a fewyears, he’ll work for a bank. Neither of us willcompletely remember what it was like when we gotto be those other people we once masqueraded as.....30....