Typography & design by
Richard Wolfströme

Exhibition and installation
by Standard 8

Website
Words William Shaw
Design Richard Wolfströme
Photography Kenny Laurenson

Publishing consultant Adrian Driscoll

An Unmadeup Production

"Do I amuse you? Do you find me amusing? Do I make you laugh?"

Pelican Crossing, North Street

The sex-change op is at least a year away, but already she’s Gina everywhere but work. The work persona is The Other Guy, his outfit a sober suit and tie. It’s those clothes that are the real drag, not the slacks she wears.

She has told everyone she feels she needs to tell. With varying results. Some dropped her immediately. Gay men, in particular, seem to view her as some kind of quisling. One said, "You’re only doing this because you can’t face up to admitting you’re a gay man." Most stuck around after she dropped the bomb, if only out of curiosity. She senses that for some she now ticks a useful box, next to "exotic ethnic minority friend."

Fridays like today she has off from work; she uses the time to walk around town, getting used to the hostile stares and catcalls she always knew would come, trying to learn the survival skill of invisibility.

Now, as she waits to cross North Street at the lights, two builder types stand either side of her at the roadside. One leans in close and starts to whisper in a flat, angry monotone, "Filthy pervert..."

And worse. He swears. He accuses Gina of paedophilia. An outpouring of seemingly endless venom. "...You scum..."

It has been a bad day for this kind of crap. She’s already been heckled by yobs once today.

She turns. In her best Scorsese growl she delivers Joe Pesci’s line playing the psychotic Tommy in Goodfellas. "Do I amuse you? Do you find me amusing? Do I make you laugh..."

Shocked, both men back off, muttering. She must have delivered something of Tommy’s psychosis.

The lights change. As Gina teeters off in her foot-crippling new heels, her pride and thick beard-covering makeup mercifully intact, she reprimands herself. What a stupid thing to do. She was lucky not to have been filled in right there.

And if she had, imagine how the subsequent chat with the local cops would go when they see The Other Guy’s police warrant card in her purse.