A Pilgrim’s Digression

The past couple weeks, I have been noticing someone new on the Metro platform where I wait for the train in the morning. You might think that in a metropolitan city, a new person at a train platform would not stand out from the crowd.

But I notice new faces.

People are funny…when given a choice between doing something different, and doing something in a consistent, familiar way, people generally choose familiarity.

The people I ride the bus with in the morning all sit in the same seats. On the Metro platform in the morning, people (including myself) stand in the same place, board the same car, sit in the same seat every morning, if possible. Afternoon and evening are a little different, because the crowd is usually heavier.

But at 5:30 AM, there are no crowds, so any slight variation in the usual suspects waiting for the train attracts attention.

This person, however, would attract attention anywhere.

For the sake of putting a name to a face, let’s call her Desiree. Now, Desiree is taller than me, probably around six foot. Actually, that makes her taller than many of the men waiting for the train.

As Desiree waits, listening to her iPod, men can’t help but steal a glance. We sneak peeks from behind our books, magazines, and newspapers. She’s something to look at, alright. In fact, setting aside sexual attraction, there is something different about her that keeps attracting eyes. What is it? I have not been able to figure it out. She’s just a good-looking woman. Seen it many times. Stolen peeks many times.

A woman looking at her would probably say that Desiree is a little skanky. Maybe that’s what seems odd to me; a skank certainly stands out from the crowd, but usually not to the point that I, personally, keep looking beyond one glance.

Today, Desiree was wearing a tight, gray, knee-length skirt that showed off her butt. She had ghetto butt, if I am allowed to use such a term. Butt packed so tightly in that skirt that each gluteus looked like a fat honey bun, the fabric of the skirt almost carefully tucked in under the curving edge of the muscle.

She wore a white denim jacket over a white blouse, but the way she held her arms up and almost defensively against her body prevented any observation of her chest. She wore large, Paris Hilton sunglasses on top of her head, although it was still dark out in the pre-dawn. Her long hair was blond, probably dyed. Her face was made-up, probably with a bit too much powder. She carried an enormous silver hand bag over one shoulder, various chains and bangles hanging off it.

The hand bag was what got me started thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

It was a damned ugly hand bag. Not that I know anything about purses, but I know that Coach, not Wal-Mart, is the style of choice for most women. This was an old woman’s Wal-Mart hand bag.

Our Desiree seemed self-conscious, standing there on the platform, probably because she had about fifteen men staring at her ass in that tight skirt. She kept skipping tracks on her iPod, looking intently at the screen and at no one one around her. She went to the edge of the platform to await the train a full two minutes before the train even came in sight around the bend.

Like I said, I have seen her on previous days, but the inkling of something wrong had never asserted itself like it did today. I felt like I needed to investigate this a little further. When the train arrived, I made sure I boarded the same car as her.

I don’t mean to sound like a stalker. By this point I was beyond the kind of lustful thoughts that course between the synapses of the normal heterosexual male brain every three seconds or so. I was just curious about her. Why was I getting this strange vibe from this woman?

Again, what is wrong with this picture?

As I sat down by the window on the right side of the car, Desiree did not sit, instead choosing to stand by the door on the left side and hold onto a pole. I knew from previous observations that she only rides the train one stop, but still, the fact that she chose not to sit, but to keep herself on display for all the men in the car, seemed odd to me.

“Maybe she’s a hooker,” I thought. That seemed very plausible, all of a sudden. Having never seen a hooker, except on TV, maybe I was witnessing one here for the first time. That would explain the gaudy hand bag, maybe. Maybe an enormous, ugly silver purse with cheap, fake bling is a hooker’s calling card.

I tried to read my book, while taking a discreet glance at her now and then. From where I was sitting, I could look at her from the waist down without seeming to stare. I noted that she was wearing what I have always thought of as “schoolmarm shoes”: big, blocky high-healed boots that button or buckle up the ankle. Just above the top of her shoe, on the side of her right calf, was a Chinese Dragon tattoo. The tattoo made it clear she was wearing pantyhose, not the sheer kind but the tan hose that really stands out if you have a tattoo on your calf.

Come to think of it, Desiree’s ankle and calf seemed rather thick for a woman. Not that there is anything wrong with extraordinarily tall, thick-ankled women. Ordinarily, I don’t think I’d have paid any attention, but the mass of details was starting to coalesce around a revelation.

There is something wrong here, damn it! And we were fast approaching her stop. I might have to delay finalizing my investigation another day if I didn’t figure out what was wrong soon.

So then I tried a trick I’ve used many times. The windows of the Metro cars are highly reflective surfaces from the inside, especially when the interior is well lit and the outside is completely dark.

Seeing the profile of her chin and cheekbones reflected in the window clinched it, and suddenly everything fell into place. She’s a man! (Cue Boy George here)

No woman going to work at 5:30 AM is going to dress like that, unless she is indeed a hooker. No, here we have a man who wants to look good as a woman, and so he dresses in a provocative way because that’s how he thinks women really dress.

Suddenly I started observing other women around me. There were other pretty women on the train, none of them dressed like the subject of my investigation. The woman sitting in front of me was dressed for work. She wore tan slacks, a pair of dainty heals, and a baby blue, fleece pullover over whatever shirt she was wearing to work. Her hair was pulled back in a simple pony tail. She wore little or no makeup.

Other women around me were all slacks-wearing women, usually dark or brown colors with light colored blouses. No one’s ass called attention to itself.

I was overjoyed at my successful detective work. The train pulled into the station and Desiree got off, male eyes following her as she exited.

Whether any of the men watching her realized what they were looking at, I don’t know. Maybe I am just extraordinarily naive, and so it took me longer to realize what other men spotted right off the bat. Somehow I don’t think so. This person was good at impersonating a woman, one of the best I’ve ever seen, and I have seen a few.

There is a person at my office who sometimes comes to work as Robert and sometimes as Roberta. Believe me, no one has any trouble distinguishing that Roberta is actually a man in woman’s clothing. I suspect that without sustained, close contact with Desiree, few people would be able to tell that she was born male.

It just goes to show, all you cross dressers and transvestites out there, it’s the details that make all the difference.