suits.

when i was a kid, i really hated to dress up. my mother and grandmother tried their damnedest to get me in a dress with a smile on my face, but “dress” and “smile” were mutually exclusive. i remember that the few times i was sent to school in a skirt, i spent the entire day in humiliated tears. church was a thing to be dreaded and weaseled out of, because nobody but me seemed to get that god wouldn’t care if i wore pants. i spent my childhood in fear of dress codes.

my senior year of high school, i inherited my dad’s old tuxedo to be used for concerts at school. the uniform was tuxedo shirt and cummerbund, and somehow i managed not to inform my parents that girls had a weird ribbon thing in lieu of a bow tie. oops. i felt like i had hit the jackpot. i would lock the door to my bedroom and put it on…wispy dress pants with a satin stripe up the leg, tucking the shirt into the too-high pants, clicking the cummerbund into place, hooking the pre-tied bow tie around my neck, and sliding into the too-big jacket. i was a puny james bond, and i loved every second of it. in that moment, i realized what the big deal was about dressing up. putting on nice clothes really could make a person feel attractive and special.

in college, finally free to be the butchest dyke i could be, i bought a couple of $2 suits at the local thrift store…pinstriped and ill-fitting, musty and ugly, but being the weird punk rock kid, that was part of the appeal. a few hideous ties later, i felt like the slickest kid in any queer bar i went to. those mothball-smelling jackets with the enormous shoulder pads were my armor against the constant refrain of “is that a man or a woman? what the fuck are you, anyway?” that had been haunting me since the age of 10. the pinstripes were my new badge of honor. i was a weirdo butch dyke, and everyone else could go fuck themselves if they didn’t like it.

fast-forward a few years.

slowly, my suits went from queer-as-fuck uniform, to something for special occasions, to actual dress up clothes. i was going from butch dyke, to drag king, to genderqueer, to transman, and the pinstripes and shoulder pads followed me. people quit being shocked that i was wearing a suit as it became more obvious that that was the only appropriate thing for me to wear on dressy occasions.

then one morning, i was on the bus, headed downtown for a job interview, wearing my first real suit. i’d gone to a suit store and been measured. the pants had been tailored to fit me. it was a decent color. it cost more than $5 and didn’t smell like old man. it was what i had wanted all those years ago when i had to make some heinous and ill-fitting compromises in the racks of the thrift stores.

it was not that exciting.

i was on the bus with plenty of other white guys in suits, all going to work. nobody was leering at me. nobody was pointing and snickering. nobody was questioning my gender with a sneer. nobody was noticing me at all.

my suits had quit being a hard-won badge of honor, a dress code anomaly.

they became an expectation.

they became a cloak of invisibility.