I first became a boy in that dingy old dressing room, accordion curtains behind me making ripples in the mirror. Those curtains separated the boys from the girls—a barricade of thick, off-white canvas that never quite managed to keep out the smell of sweat wafting in from the boys’ side. We always made sure to complain about it loud enough for them to hear.
Today, though, I was a boy in the girls’ dressing room. Hair clipped up on top of my head. Eyebrow paint slathered on thick. Overalls and a boxy shirt, with boots a few sizes too big.
From up on stage, who would know the difference?
I smeared the same brown paste that was in my eyebrows onto a scratchy sponge and began to pepper it across my chin and cheeks. The finishing touch, met with my friend’s solemn nod of approval from where she sat a few seats away. She was crafting the same look for herself, but in blonde. Not enough boys for the scene, the director had said. Any girls want to join in to fill them out a bit? My hand had been the first in the air.
Did I know, even then? The release of tension in my chest, the way the dusty bulbs lining the wall above the mirrors seemed to shine on me like a spotlight. The fear, but also the exhilaration, knowing that people would look at me and see a boy, even if it was all an act. They would play along. They had to.
After the show, everyone laughed together. My friend let her hair down, so I did the same. You were the manliest one of the bunch, they all said, but I knew they didn’t mean it. You look like Fabio, with all that hair! And I had to laugh along. Our stage manager exclaimed with delight: Wow, you’re a real live transvestite! My dad told him people couldn’t say things like that anymore, but even he was smiling. Like we were all in on the joke, a girl pretending, but only until she wiped off the eyeliner and face paint. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know it was all make-believe?
Alone in the dressing room, I stood before the wall of mirrors. They wrapped around both sides of the room, a pocket of repeated reflections with six chairs on each side. Everyone else had left, headed to the cast party, or the Taco Bell up the street, or maybe just to bed. All that remained of them was the faint scent of hairspray. I stayed behind, the good girl that I was, to help clean up backstage.
But really, I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t get the joke. And standing alone in that vortex of infinite imitation, I realized. The mirror didn’t quite get it either. Slowly, those too-bright vanity lights cheering me on, I replaced the pins in my hair, lifting it off my shoulders and back into my disguise. I turned, meeting the eyes of each reflection staring back at me. A boy in the girls’ dressing room.
A smile ghosted my lips, but it was gone before my eyes reached the next mirror panel. No, I didn’t know yet. Not quite. But I knew enough. It was good to be a boy, if only for a little while, if only for the audience composed of the many echoes of myself, bouncing off the walls of the dressing room. A soliloquy I could never find the words to say.
Wow, you even put bags under your eyes, my dad had said. That adds to the whole masculine look. What did you use, eyeliner? But those shadows had been real. I just didn’t know how to apply concealer the right way. Not the way girls are supposed to.
Maddox Emory Arnold (he/they) is a writer and Spanish teacher based in Southeast Michigan. His work has previously appeared in If There’s Anyone Left, HAD, NonBinary Review, and elsewhere. You can find him online at https://www.maddoxemoryarnold.com/home or on Twitter @maddox_emory