I’m in a coffee shop today, dressed as boy, and this friendly older woman sits down beside me, glancing at me and smiling as she deals with her difficulty of maneuvering her older and overweight body onto her seat. I’m sitting at a window and the sun is shining directly at me, and the heat is almost unbearable, my body having become accustomed to the cold I just had to deal with outside. Luckily, I am dressed in layers and pull off my v-neck sweater. As I do, the lady looks at me and does a double-take and says, “I thought you were a girl!”

I smile at her, considering my various responses, and after a short pause she says, “Well, you have beautiful hair anyway.”

Perhaps, I wondered, my crossdressing is having some undesirable consequences on the man part of me. It’s a bit of a concern because I am, after all, only one person, even if it feels like there may be 2 inside. I worry that it may have been more than just my hair that deceived this poor woman, and frankly I have no desire to undermine that part of me that is a man. Most disturbingly in this respect is that it seems that the only thing gave me away as a man was that I hadn’t shaved (my face) in 5 days!

So, I am left to wonder whether I am becoming more womanly in general manner and aura, or whether this nice lady was just a bit out-to-lunch. Clearly the man that I am and ol’ Janie will have differing perceptions of the desirability of this potential development.

I’m going to dismiss this as a one-off event, but if it happens again, I may have to consider seriously whether or not it is possible to keep my two sides separate and thriving. That I didn’t really know whether to be offended by this woman’s comment hints at the answer, but let’s not jump to conclusions.