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Samantha – getting deeper – getting out
Source: SMH http://blogs.smh.com.au/allmenareliars/archives/2006/10/goodbye_samanth.html
The thing about Samantha is she had a lot of help her first day of existence. Stylist Sofia Fitzpatrick dressed her. Make-up artist Stephanie Tetu did her face and hair. Anna McPherson at June Dally-Watkins helped her walk. Day two, that all disappeared and things started to go pear-shaped. After a few brutal attempts jabbing myself in the eye with mascara, I looked like the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote after a stick of dynamite has blown up in his face. A Current Affair was due at my apartment to begin filming Samantha undercover, so I had to hustle. This is why it pays to know models. Kate Bell has pretty much done it all when it comes to catwalks, clothes and cosmetics and thankfully she lives nearby. I got her on the blower Saturday morning and blubbered my plea: “Katie, we need your help”…
Fortunately for Samantha, ACA reporter Ben McCormack wanted to interview Sam the man first up, so the bison, sans make-up, was put out to pasture until the cosmetics cavalry arrived.
Cameraman, Mitchell Bailey was back on the job setting up lights, telling me how ugly I’d looked the night before, until I mentioned Peanuts (see yesterday’s post).
“Fair dinkum, you pulled? I’m buying myself a dress,” he said.
After more than 15 years as a reporter, I reckon I know most of the obvious traps journos lay for their subjects. None of the glaring ones appeared during Ben’s interview, so maybe, just maybe, ACA will surprise me and not take the piss too hard in their piece, which airs either tonight or Monday.
If they do make an idiot of me, Benny, Samantha’s joining you at your local to tell all your mates about our wild weekend at Sleaze.
Kate Bell’s arrival made me realise some chicks are just better at the whole ‘girl thing’ than others. Later in the weekend, my friend Camille, admittedly a bit of a tom boy, did my lipstick and it looked like it had been applied with a carrot by a drunken chimp.
“Don’t blame me, I hardly wear the stuff,” she said defensively.
Kate on the other hand was a deft touch after years of her face being poked and polished for ad campaigns and seemed to get a kick out of turning the bison into a babe (well almost).
“I think you look beautiful,” she said and her attitude mirrored pretty much every female’s I met over the weekend.
Women, overall, seemed grateful I was taking the time to understand them (albeit superficially) and constantly told me how good I looked, how pretty my Charlie Brown dress was and what great legs I had (alright, I’m making that bit up).
Even in bathrooms, women seemed perfectly at ease with my presence, the subtext being ‘if you’re gonna go to all that trouble to look like a woman, I’m happy to treat you like one.’
With ACA’s Mitchell screaming “hurry up, sweetheart”, I pretty much dressed myself, ignoring the selections stylist Sofia Fitzpatrick had left for my day out. What follows is her disclaimer.
“Disobeying strict instructions, Samantha decided to put her own touch on the outfit, confirming the truth of the idiom, less is more. The dress was intended to be worn with sheer pantyhose and a string of vintage beads to complement the sophistication of the print.”
So, while I was meant to look like this (see top of article), I got a little Audrey Hepburn gone Goth and went for this.
Which makes all the difference, apparently.
Really, I just wanted to try black, footless tights because I’ve seen so many hot chicks wearing them lately and they do something for me I’m not prepared to talk about just yet.
The whole episode brought home to me that there are so many more ways to embarrass yourself with make-up and women’s clothes than with men’s shmutter.
I used to feel sorry for women with bad taste, now I also empathise with chicks who have no idea when it comes to make-up, sporting ridiculous Japanese eyes or Cats-like renderings of blush and mascara. Thank your lucky stars you don’t have to deal with this crap, boys, it’s much harder than it looks.
ACA in tow, we decided to first destroy my masculine credibility in my neighbourhood by visiting a local cafe. I stood inside for a solid ten seconds before the blokes behind the counter twigged.
“It’s me, the guy who lives across the road,” I said.
“Jesus,” said one and looked like he suppressed a shiver.
Next, we did a walk through crowds on Paddington’s Oxford Street as Mitch shot me with a long lens, trying to recreate some scene from Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire or whatever the hell movie it was.
With my height, awash in dark hair and my fantastic footless tights, I felt magnificent. Many, many people stared, mostly because I resembled a footballer on a Mad Monday drinking binge but some stared because I just looked goooood.
It was around this time I realised that when you’re dressed as a woman, you can talk to any chick you like and she’ll not only chat, but get quite interested in what you have to say.
I must have approached half a dozen hotties just to ask them what dress size they were and did they make it in a 16? This could be my pick-up line for the rest of 2007.
Finally, it was off to Paddington RSL for an AFL grand final brunch armed with the A Current Affair mainstay, the hidden camera.
Another of my girlfriends, Marczynska, herself a stunning 5’10” in flats, met me to provide feminine support and later said our trip to the women’s toilets together had ended any chance I had of shagging her.
“This has ruined all sexual tension between us, you know that, don’t you?”
The AFL function was being held by the Double Bay Amateur Football Club in support of Mission Australia’s, Creative Youth Initiatives (feel free to make a donation) and, to be sure, on the blokey scale it stood somewhere between a billiard’s competition and a yachting regatta. I wasn’t going to get bashed here.
Still, I was surprised when I walked into the darkened function room, with West Coast already out to a 10 point lead, and twenty heads turned to gawk at the woman… man… “what the hell is that?”
Sadly, it was a little too dark to film with the hidden camera, so I had to hang at the bar, a tragic tranny waiting for some bloke to buy me a Bailey’s.
ACA wanted some action so I laid a few lines on blokes in pink polo shirts, ate a pie and perved at some banker’s girlfriend. She thought I just liked her shoes.
Overall I felt no aggression from men just a sense I was irrelevant, that if I was ignored, I would go away. I was a joke, but no-one laughed in my face.
For my evening date, my friend, documentary-maker Camille Hardman had organised something a little special; dinner with film producer Margaret Fink (My Brilliant Career, Candy) at a ritzy Circular Quay restaurant.
Walking to the train that night was the first time I’d been alone after dark. The march up through Kings Cross was painful (my feet were still killing me) so I took it slowly, a lumbering target for curb crawlers’ spite.
By now I knew to avoid the stares, but the comments were more difficult to ignore. As I passed a group of three blokes in bad leather jackets, they turned to leer at the tall brunette but once they realised I was a man, hissed “f—ing thing” at me. I can’t remember anyone in my life looking at me with the hatred of those guys.
Standing on the train platform, I could hear a group of backpackers talking about me, laughing now and then, so I held myself taller, realising why transgender people so often adopt such an immaculate, regal posture; you don’t want to give your critics any ammo.
I felt shaky, wounded that people who didn’t even know me were making judgments about my personality and morality, pissed off ugly men in bad clothes felt they had the right to say whatever they wanted to me.
At Martin Place I hailed a taxi and shrank into the back seat and said nothing — and I’m one of the world’s great cab conversationalists.
The movie My Brilliant Career, for those of you who don’t know, was based on the book of the same title written by Miles Franklin. Until Saturday night, I did not know she was a woman.
Franklin, born Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, dropped her first three names because they identified her as female, in order to get her work published. On her death, she bequeathed her estate to start the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award.
At dinner, Margaret Fink told me Franklin once said of God, “I find it hard to believe in someone who needs to be fed such everlasting praise” and “if he did that to a son, what would he have done to a daughter?” Cue the girly chuckles.
It’s a measure of Margaret’s reputation for broad mindedness that the handful of people who stopped by her table to say ‘hello’ didn’t bat an eye lid at the big bloke in a dress sitting next to her.
It’s also a measure of the restaurant that the waiter was sophisticated and polite enough to address our table as “ladies”. It’s hard to describe the little thrill of validation that simple address gave me, but I imagine for transgender people it feels like a big warm hug from a stranger.
For my last day as Samantha I had planned to watch the NRL grand final at the Viking Tavern at Milperra in Western Sydney (scene of the infamous Milperra biker massacre and now called the Milperra Palms).
I planned this because of the tabloid journo in me, who was looking for a more extreme story. However, after 36 hours as a transgender person, reality rang loud in my ears. It was just plain stupid.
I don’t know whether patrons at the Milperra Palms would have been any more aggressive or welcoming than the bankers at the Paddo RSL (and I apologise all round for the stereotypes) but I didn’t want to find out.
The longer I spent as a man in a frock, the more self-preservation kicked in. Seeking out groups of drunken straight men had ceased to be a lark, it had become upsetting, demeaning and even a little dangerous.
The truth is, my grand experiment had hit a wall. I wasn’t going to truly feel what life was like for a woman because I was patently not female. And though I had experienced a masculine intimidation similar to what women do, if things ever got too hairy I could kick off my heels and get some creep in a headlock. I had a set of biceps up my sleeve.
I had planned to try to book my car into a garage, walk past a construction site and go to church but, by now, my experiences were becoming repetitive. I had gone as deep as I could or, should I say, cared to. I wasn’t going to take the pill, shag a bloke or stuff myself full of tampons. I couldn’t bear children, develop cellulite or menstruate.
Instead? To say goodbye to Samantha I did what any ‘girl’ would do if offered. I had a photo shoot.
Sofia, wanting some quality images of her work, had asked photographer Nicholas Watt (who shot the worldwide stills campaign for the Qantas choir ad) if he’d bang off a few frames.
Sofia dressed me properly this time, while Stephanie arrived with her trusty make-up bag and Camille with the video camera. With Nick impressing all of us with his trained eye and professionalism, we then held a little Rocky Horror Picture Show revival in my flat-mate’s bedroom while he was off paddling a kayak.
As often happens when you’ve got a bunch of girls and a camera, things got a little weird.
But by now I could toggle back and forth between me and Samantha at will, it wasn’t an act, I didn’t even need the dress or the wig.
She was me. I was her. And we were pretty bloody proud of each other.
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