Dressing Like A Lady, and Everything Else That I Suck At

In situations that you partake in "for the experience" (and good lord am I tired of that phrase) the selfish westerner often reflects on the breadth of experiences around them in terms of what they learned about themselves. That, for better or worse is true of the experience that I am having right now, and the positive or negative nature of that self reflection vacillates everyday. The other night, for example, I was singing my own praises after cracking up a group of 4 on the 2nd floor for hours talking about my childhood as a Catholic, coming out to my family and reenacting the particularly heinous nuances of other clubmates and so forth. On the next day I felt worthless and stupid realizing that I don't know how to dress myself- like, at all, and suddenly the 9th cloud that I was floating on the night before was deflated and uninteresting. 

Admitting that I have zero body of knowledge when it comes to dressing like a girl has little to do with being gay, and more, I think, to do with pure laziness and a lack of visual creativity. I am also from Seattle, where the name of fashion is function, and it is appropriate to spend all night in a bar still wearing your cycling shoes. I have never been particularly over-the-top feminine, petite, cute, soft, or whatever other adjectives you might apply to dressy-tanks and short-shorts wearing girls, which I have been able to shrug off previously; and the type of self-learning that I expected to do here was not of this nature. But that is the learning part I suppose: expect the unexpected and laugh at yourself with your big revelation is just that you are a sucky dresser. 

I learned this due to the evening dress code here, that basically allows guys to dress more casually than women, and I had a mini freak out thinking that I wouldn't be allowed to dress as as casually as the boys. An emergency KMart trip, a borrowed strapless bra, and some overall female backstage support helped me get through my first couple of uncomfortable dress up nights here, but I have been living in a constant state of fear that I will run out of anything acceptable to wear. It is already getting better as I watch all the local lesbians stake claim over their long shorts, their pressed collared shirts, and their stud diamond earrings. Granted, locals hires walk around here with more ownership and leeway than off island hires, but if these ladies can rock the boy dress code, than I think that I can too. I'm loosening up a little and realizing I don't have to look uber femme to look presentably for dinner. 

But more learning comes in here, because as it turns out, even as far as presentable dyke attire goes I'm still pretty out in left field. Everything that I own contains a layer of permanent sweat, rain and grime from Seattle living, and all of the nice clothes I could have afforded this summer were washed down by $5 pints of beer, which left me a little too hippy for some of my acceptable nicer shirts. I wear the same two pairs of shorts from Target nearly every day, and my favorite t shirts number in the count-on-one-hand category. Like I said, it isn't about being gay, its about being a bad dresser, which is why I freaked and bought some lady clothes, because I don't have any of my usual community here to say yay or nay to boy-cut dress shirts and belts that go with large pairs of plaid pants. 

So I suck. Ok. Maybe I will learn and I wont suck when I come back, but that's probably a stretch, and I'm ok with it. I am figuring out though, the truth in things that I didn't believe in before: that there are occasions which rightfully call for a presentable appearance, that jewelry is not always superfluous and wasteful spending (although beer might be), that shoes do make an outfit, and that blow dryers are necessary, even in Micronesia.

 I'm working a job where I get to be a kid all day but I'm still learning to tweak all these little things to make me more adult, or at least cleaned up enough to look like one. 

O yea, other things I suck at....Or do too much

1. Talking shit. I can't stop. New places, new gossip, new conflicts- it is never ending. 

2. Eating. My relationship to my hips is always going to be a struggle.

3. Calling/Writing people back. Some of this isn't my fault, I really don't have time to do anything.

4. Reading the fine print (see last entry). 

5. Going to bed early.

6. Taking the time to write things down. There is just so much, and so little time.

7. Saving money. I left broke, and I will return broke.