Where do you think you're going, dressed like that?

Last night I got dressed up and went out to a party. This was a party held every week whose theme is “express yourself”. I think that I expressed myself pretty well. I wore silver-glitter flared trousers, a mesh crop top, and a fur vest. I had a purse shaped like a ray gun that said “zap<” on the side. A relative of mine (it’s complicated, but family is always complicated) helped me get dressed. He wore a black latex head piece like a tail sprouting from his head. I was the side kick, as it were.

It’s difficult to tell the story cohesively, because it’s so boring. I feel as though the Nelson Sullivan fish-eye approach is the best way to show the experience; it’s very difficult to capture in writing. It was a lot like the night club scene from Basic Instinct, if you’ve seen that movie.

I never was a person who dressed up to go out, partially because I was always in a very straight context. In St Andrews, people were very accepting and did dress up to go out, but there was never a space that I felt was unambiguously queer. Maybe I didn’t do enough to seek it out.

I’m struggling for words—I don’t know how to distill or explain it. My relative says that dressing up is “intoxicating”, which is as good of a description as any. I find that social interactions are performances: conversation is improvisation. Dressing up to go to a party creates a character: who is she? why is she dressed that way? When I meet people they don’t see me in a sweater and button down; the first thing that they know about me is that I’m dressed as disco Han Solo. In some sense, it’s a ticket to be in the place: when your outfit is good, people respect your role in the conversation. We tell stories through costume; we create characters, personalities, roles for ourselves. Who am I going to be tonight?