Flop
Today is a big day. A very big day. I am going to a job interview, as Hannah. It is a role in an office that focusses on gender diversity. But while I know they have gay and lesbian staff, I’m not sure they’ve had any trans people. Accepting, certainly, but this will be new ground for us all.
I stand in my bathroom. I have on an ornately patterned floral dress with cap sleeves, a round but high neckline, a small cut-out in the back (not too much, or it couldn’t be workwear), and some slight ruching across the front. The hem is mid-length and the fabric is quite fitted and stretchy. At my age, this is an outfit that calls for shapewear. So, beneath the dress I have, in addition to underwear and bra, a smooth elasticated corset. I am doing my makeup. I have big hair, held in place with mousse and aided by styling it for five minutes while bent double so my hair was hanging upside down from my head. My back hurts.
I’m most of the way through and am applying bronzer at the sides of my jaw. Various items of makeup are cluttering the small section of bench beside the sink, and the fat little bronzer brush skitters onto the floor. I pick it up, and keep applying. Once that is done, I just need to do lipstick.
Suddenly, as I look at myself in the mirror, my stomach turns. I see a distorted body. I am somehow malformed, my spine has crumpled as though I turned ninety in just seconds, my body parts like sloppy gel barely held together. My pupils dilate, my heart bulges. I might faint. There is a technical term for this - vasovagal syncope, as my blood pressure plummets for a moment.
The terror passes once I make sense of what I am looking at. A breast form has dislodged from my bra and slumped down the front of the dress until it has come to rest on my belly, checked by the tightness of the ruching that goes from one hip across to my waist.
Shakily, I lift the dress up and let the dead silicone fish flop into my hand. I contemplate the situation. The dress is fitted and high in the neck, so I have to take it completely off to put the breastform back where it belongs.
I feel physically sick. Not because of seeing myself mis-shapen. Not because I am ashamed of who I am. But because I confront the fact that, if it had not been for the mirror, I wouldn’t have known what had just occurred. I had not felt the breastform fall. I am about to walk across the central business district and into an important meeting with strangers, and I could have looked like someone with a single mastectomy and a giant tumour in their gut.
Breathe in. And out. I put on lipstick. I turn out the light. I leave the flat. When my hands grip the steering wheel, they are shaking still.
