His Name is Connie

I see a man dressed as a woman - he's really tried hard to become what he is today. Too skinny to be recognized as a man unless closely observed, yet too masculine to be permanently recognized as a woman. He's grown his hair out long and fingernails to look like a woman. He is wearing a short skirt, heals, turtleneck and vest. He also has a stuffed bra - it's so obvious.

I am astonished at the shameless observations he is making of women around him, he's very much like a child - looking, staring, mimicking. It's as if he's studying how women talk, sit, and carry themselves to master it for himself. Then he'll be noticed, then he'll be loved, then he'll be cared for and special. What a tragedy.

He knods suggestively to a man who enters the restaurant. He's wired and distracted by his obsession. Talking to himself faintly and quietly, he's coaching himself to be this identity that causes me pain because it's so obvious he's not. He's obvious he's "not all there." Across the room stands a tall, slender, pretty young woman - she catches his eye and he takes in her appearance like data into a computer.

Coughing every now and then gives away his masculine tone of voice. The table of women he was studying leaves and a look for forlornness hangs in his eyes. Now he doesn't know what to do, who to be. His head spins to get a last look at them before they are really gone. He takes out from the back pocket of his skirt a folded napkin with scribblings on it, reads it and looks slyly over his shoulder while folding it again and placing it back in the pocket.

A woman sitting near by glances at him once and then twice but looks a little longer. I can hear her thoughts, "Is she a he, really? Oh wow, that's disgusting. Ok, don't look at him again. Don't look." But she steals a look out of the corner of her eye.

He sits with his purse shoved closely to his groin, feet crossed at the ankles. The large vanes in his arms give him away. As he stands to leave his heals click on the floor and he grabs his Wal-Mart bag, pushes in his chair, refills his soda and leaves.

No one here seems to notice that a man who once knew himself and now doesn't know who to be or what to be has come and gone from their world. Those who noticed are now more at ease since he's gone. Those who didn't, well they just didn't notice.

Minutes pass and an employee approaches the table he sat at and wipes off the cookie crumbs that he left. Now all evidence of this man is wiped from this place....