CREATIVE NON-FICTION

The Joy of Thrift Store Shopping with My Community (Non-Binary People)

I felt like a kid in a candy store!

“I just want to be a man in a dress,” they said.

I knew exactly what they meant, having uttered those same words time and again. Getting gendered as a man wearing a dress would feel like the ultimate affirmation of who I am as a non-binary trans man.

I want to pass as a man. I really do. Just to prove that the test is bullshit. Then, I want to wear a dress and still pass as a man with flying colors to rub it in people’s faces that they truly cannot tell what the doctor thought of my gender when I was born. I want to have the ability to pass perfectly as a cis man, then just flat out refuse to do so a lot of the time. That won’t happen for a good while though, if ever.

Testosterone doesn’t instantly give you a full beard and a completely different body. This process takes time. Years. For some, it requires surgeries to pass as a man, depending on the circumstances under which we need or want that experience. I used to want to make medical changes to my body for others to see the real me; now I make them to help me feel like myself.

The possibility of passing as a man someday is more of a side benefit, a craving for some extra gender affirmation. I’ll be okay if I don’t reach it, but I’d still like to get to wear a dress and be seen as a man. At least I could do that in this community, without any more changes being needed. They understand. I’m a guy no matter what I wear.

About an hour before this conversation, I’d been trying on a jacket that threaded the needle beautifully between genders. I’d found it in the men’s section with a tag confirming no mistake had been made in its placement on the rack, but it was a dark blue jean jacket that was too short to cover my rainbow t-shirt completely. It was the kind of treasure you’d only find in a thrift store located on the gayest street in the city. As I admired my flat chest in the mirror, an employee approached.

“Ma’am, did you need a dressing room?”

I felt like a giant bucket of ice had been poured over me but managed to politely thank her and say “no”. I almost put the jacket back on the rack about 5 times, just because of getting misgendered. I’m definitely not ready yet to be a man in a dress around cis people, if I can’t even pass as a man while wearing something toeing the line between masculinity and femininity. Someday. My wife walked over.

“Does this make me look like a woman?” I asked.

“No, it makes you look masculine, but gender ambiguous,” they confirmed.

It was settled. I kept the jacket that I loved. I’d have to be careful where I wore it though. I can only trust people in my community to see me for who I am, for now, without my little gender tricks to help cis people understand. Then, I tried on and purchased several very different varieties of masculine apparel to match my daily moods throughout the coming winter.

This is one of the reasons I think so many of my people love thrift stores. It isn’t just that it’s a cheaper way to shop, though trans people are more likely to be unemployed or struggling to get by financially. It’s also that there are a wider variety of looks available all in one place, if you’re trying to figure out who you are, where you fit on the wide spectrum of gender.

I’m still not sure what kind of man I am, so this gives me the opportunity to try on different ways of being to see how I feel as each persona I try on is perceived by others. Their reactions help me orient myself. I tended to look in the mirror last, as I searched for a man’s winter wardrobe. First, I just walked around and noticed the response different people had to me. Did the response fit how I felt inside?

As we modeled various looks for each other, the group of us would often provide a neutral to positive assessment of the different personas we were viewing. Since I didn’t grow up trying on men’s clothing brands, I didn’t know how different looks would be perceived from the insider perspective. I needed help with this part of my socialization as a trans man. Does the cis stranger walking past me see Logan? Or did he spot some other dude who doesn’t quite fit me? I carefully read the eyes of different people that I passed, whether I knew them or not, to get a feel for how I was perceived. Every so often, I thought I saw myself reflected back at me in their eyes, but I’m still searching.

Another friend joked that I had stolen a jock’s look, as I proudly donned what was probably once some guy’s expensive mountaineering jacket. At 5'1'' in height, I’m pretty far from a jock. I still got the jacket, though, knowing it would keep me nice and warm through a morning hike in the mountains someday soon. I also picked up something that looked like a sleeveless emo sweater vest, handmade with zipper pockets in strategic places to make my chest look extra flat. This produced a long-coveted feminine masculinity that I’ve been working on. It could be a natural masculinized outgrowth of who I was in high school, right? It certainly works for weekend wear to layer with, so it passes my own practicality test.

A ridiculously soft flannel shirt completed my boy-next-door look. A couple of very bright, fluffy masculine sweaters were a must for days when I wanted to feel a little extra gay, embracing the feminine side of my masculinity, especially around people who understood. This guy needs his pastel and almost neon green sweaters to cozy up with in a coffee shop in December. I sometimes chose clothes more by how they felt than how they looked. I love clothing that is soft and comfortable for winter.

After, we grabbed some of the best Mexican food I’ve had so far in Colorado. I could taste the rice in the horchata, so I knew it was made from scratch, and the tamales were perfect! Spicy, but in a flavorful way. Then, we went to a park and shared stories. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. It was wonderful!

I have friends who are from a wide variety of communities. Most of my friends in North Carolina are some variety of queer, with a few notable and equally special exceptions, but I haven’t had a whole lot of enby (non-binary) friends who were close, besides my wife. It was really nice to hang out in person with a bunch of other people who understood this side of me without any of us needing to explain.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed being around more of my people. I certainly lean heavily on my Medium friends for a sense of community, regularly texting or writing on apps with trans, non-binary, gay, and/or queer friends throughout each day to feel connected to other LGBTQ+ writers. I also enjoy hearing from my cis and/or heterosexual allies and friends in comments. I smile at their patience with my shenanigans, as I make jokes about the Trans Council making demands of them.

I like having friends who challenge me to explain who I am for those who aren’t so familiar with what an enby life is like. I enjoy being surrounded by people with lots of different perspectives that they bring to the table. It’s good for us to learn and share with people who are very different from us. That said, I also need to have a comfort zone where I can recharge and feel safe to always be my full self. There’s always a special place in my heart for other enbies. It’s really nice to be around others who wordlessly understand that I’m counting down the minutes until I can just be seen as a bearded man in a dress.

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This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, My Queer World Looks Like THIS.

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