What a drag

Last night I went to a friend's stag party so, naturally, I dragged up and affixed a fairly realistic handlebar moustache to my face with liberal quantities of eyelash glue. Now, I walk around the streets of London in all kinds of fancy dress outfits, so I'm used to getting odd looks, but no previous ensemble has ever attracted as much attention as this simple tweeded, pinstriped, facial-haired combo. So many people stared at me; some of them with genuine looks of alarm or distaste. A nutjob preacher outside Oxford Circus tube station screamed out that I was going to Hell. Most unnerving though, were the ones who tried to pretend not to look, while their eyes surreptitiously flicked over me. You could see the thought processes as they looked from the men's clothes to the long hair, to the moustache, to the figure and tried to work out whether I was male or female, or en-route from one to the other. It actually made me quite uncomfortable, and gave me a strong feeling of sympathy for trans people, who must attract this blatant assessment of their appearance on a regular basis.

Then this afternoon as I was coming home, still in the chap outfit but sans soup strainer, a smiling old man put out his hand to stop me as I passed.
"I saw you yesterday. Where's your moustache?" he asked.
"Oh, I took it off" I replied, "It was itchy".
"I'm Samir. I see you a lot. You're very different, aren't you?"
"I guess so", I answered, starting to feel slightly uneasy.
"I like it. And you walk with such confidence. Me and my wife, you make us smile when we see you. I lift my hat to you. Bless you."

And with that he shook my hand and was gone. I know my mad-magnet causes me a fair bit of hassle, but I think the times when it pulls in the lovely crazy people more than make up for the bad ones. I don't mind if street preachers think I'm going to burn for all eternity, so long as Samir and his missus are getting a kick out of the strange girl with all the outfits.