Menswar

From stockings to scarves, hoop earrings and, yes, one tiara, all my new clothes are now women’s attire. Underwear is the one, occasional, exception. While preferring ladies’ lace and lycra, some skirts and dresses require firm control in the groin area. No bumps. Flimsy nylon will not cut it.

However, my men’s briefs are wearing out. They have holes in places that make them redundant. Today I must boldly venture where once I went for many years. I shopped menswear for three decades, including in this store because it had the best collection of fractional shirt sleeve fittings in the city (that being a low bar). This journey of a few metres should not be difficult, but it feels like failure.

To approach the menswear section, I must ascend a level from where, yesterday, I was fitted for a bra. As the escalator climbs, the makeup counter retreats behind columns and wall panels. The gridded iron steps grind upward. The women’s boots vanish, crushed out of sight by the descending concrete slab of the second floor. The lingerie is replaced with a brief glimpse of cement and then the moving stair spits me out facing three mannequins in hard grey office outfits. They are silent; they don’t need words. Fine wool suits, looking like steel and ironbark, standing to attention on unforgiving fibreglass body-forms. The edges of the clothes are sharp.

I slink between a wall of shirts and silent counter staff, toward the bays containing socks. The backlighting is a kind of threat. My hands have a tremor. I am a middle-aged woman in a silk blouse, long hair in an updo, face of filmy foundation and powder, and this is no longer my domain.

Is this how sexism works? Spaces built for exclusion through their materials, their shapes, their entitlement, their audience? I don’t know. I have not had fifty years to learn. As I arrive at the underwear, the first thing I see is a rack of name brand boxed boxers. Boxers in boxes: my mind is agitated. Fighters in arenas, I think. Why is the place where boxing takes place called a ring when it is a square? Those coarse ropes, abrasive, binding willing warriors.

Underwear encased in brittle clear plastic. I remember once cutting myself, opening them.

I turn into the next aisle, finding a woman with two children, on the last Sunday before Christmas, desperate to find a gift for dad. As I walk behind the group, the mother turns on the daughter and yells tightly, “don’t shout at me!” I twitch in shock; I hadn’t heard the girl, perhaps eleven, say anything. Moments later, I hear her parental growl with equal exasperation, “don’t snatch”. She edges down a notch from furious to grumpy, and snaps, “how much is it?”. The daughter obligingly reads the price. “What?!” A controlled screech. The poor daughter, misunderstanding the expression of incredulity for having not been heard, patiently repeats the exorbitant number. The repeating of the ransom gives the mother a fresh opportunity to vent anger. I wonder whether she resented her husband before she arrived in the store, or whether this is a new feeling. I decide it is not new.

As the child turns away, her eyes are dull. Wincing, I remember why I was here. I’m trying to concentrate on finding briefs to flatten my penis. It’s hard, boxed in by the violence of this parent and the oppressive masculine uniforms, presented in rows along the racks, a repeating military march in every store. Here is the diversity that men express: white, grey, black. The lone exception is the feature stand of gaudy boxer shorts covered in surfers, or aeroplanes, or, I am not making this up, platypuses. Then I realise – of course. With poisonous spurs on the hindlegs, they induce agony worse than being pumped full of shotgun pellets. Only males have them.

“Don’t snatch!” The woman snarls once more. This jolts me again; my feelings are mangled. I think to myself, I would snarl too; I expect your husband is horrible. Look at all this. They are all horrible. All of them. Thank goodness I’m not one of them. Then immediately I realise I am here specifically for clothes to accommodate my prick. Prick. I’m a prick.

Finally, the brawling pack leave in quibbling silence; I watch as the aisle ejects them; the woman’s face is set, hard. I make myself breathe, then breathe again.

I consider the wall in front of me. Steel pins cover it, all pointing outward, ready to penetrate any body that might be hurled against them. Mine, for instance. Or hers. My mind grunts – nothing can restrain men’s cocks. I snatch two pairs without even looking at their cut - and scuttle for the counter.

Menswear provides a monosyllabic male to serve me. My jittery hand taps my debit card, beep. It is embossed with a man’s name. Like a fraudster, I have turned it face down.

I am handed a bag that contains my junk. It is time to go.