Critic Cal

A tipsily cheerful, older-than-me chap in the pub where I go to write recently informed me that, d'you know, he'd walked past my table a couple of times and  he couldn't decide whether I was a man or a woman! To be fair to my new friend, I wasn't dressed as a woman. I wasn't dressed 'as' anything. I was just there in jeans and a conference hoodie – ideal for the (coldish) weather and the errand-y to-dos on my list, but hardly apt to give a person curves they don't already possess. My medium-length hair had been styled by the elements, my complexion was as even and clear as OK-ish hydration and cleansing would have it, and I hadn't so much as sketched a single facial feature. And yet, here I was outside the confines of my own home and apparently quite comfortable to be seen in public. It does seem like more the sort of thing a man would do... Not that all men choose to present themselves 'as-is', but at least it's socially acceptab...

On a bad day on the inside of my head, of which there were many, my arms were the arms of a gorilla. On better days, they were the arms of a man. On no day at all did they pass as the arms of a female teenager, or indeed a female anything. Except maybe a female gorilla. This was just one of the many many points on which I failed to meet the spec. I was desperate to bring myself up to it somehow ... but how? Not a clue. I'd picked up some hints about things  not  to do. For example, attacking the excesses with razors precipitated an increase of future excesses. So ... what exactly? If anyone of my acquaintance was an expert on the subject, they kept that shameful fact appropriately quiet – but, even if I'd known whom to approach, I doubt it would ever have occurred to me that such a drastic measure as asking was a legitimate option. So I just dragged my gorilla arms around with me, one on each side. And, along with them, the weighty consciousness of them. They (and ...