[29] Bra me up, Scotty.

I dislike bra shopping. Shocking, I know.

I don’t hate it, let’s get that clear. I just dislike it. Like brushing my teeth, or washing the car, or taxes. Necessary, but still a pain in the ass. I’ve gotten good at mixing efficiency with a kind of blasé armour, like: Yes, I am looking at lingerie, and now you are blocking my light. Please move.

I should explain. I am now gendered as male by the average person about 97% of the time. That gets into your head after a while — so much so that I’m shocked, really truly shocked, if someone calls me ‘Ma’am’, or ‘love’, or ‘sweetheart’, or anything remotely feminine. I triple-take. I get flustered. I fall over my own feet if someone opens a door for me. I got female-gendered at a fast food joint the other day and spent the next half hour hissing “What did she see?” at the friend eating with me. True to form, my friend just laughed.

Anyway, getting back to bras. I haven’t bought a new one in at least a year, probably more. I’ve been putting it off as long as possible. Hell, binders work just as well anyway — and better, even, if you team them up with the still-passable imitation of the underthing you should have thrown away months ago. Binders are brilliant. Bras are the final, uncomfortable, exclusively-female piece of clothing I still have to wear if I don’t want to injure myself while running.

Buying a bra when everyone in the store thinks you’re a man is a whole new experience. You get looks. And I don’t just mean ‘Gosh, that person is doing something a little strange’ looks. I mean ‘Holy crap, what is that pervert doing, somebody get a pitchfork’ looks.

Men, as it turns out, are not allowed to eye woman’s underthings speculatively in public. It is Not Done. Particularly if he then proceeds to leaf through the variety of underthings on sale, blatantly checking out the sizing, before rubbing the material between his fingers in a thoughtful way.

Seriously. I got the kind of looks you’d normally need peanut butter, feathers, and a full strip tease in front of the Houses of Parliament to achieve. It was like I’d lit my trousers on fire, donned a plucked turkey as a hat, and whistled Pretty Lady through a vibrator. In front of the Queen.

Okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, but it felt like that.

The strangest part, though, was turning around with my hands full of delicate lacy things and catching sight of this disgruntled man-face on the other side of the aisle. Y’know, half a nanosecond before realizing that was my own reflection.

This transgressive-gender thing, it makes life weird.