Commentary : Finding Warm Pleasure in a Shy Smile

At first I didn’t notice he was not a she.

As I put my box of diapers on the counter in the check-out line at Safeway, a quick glance told me I was behind a middle-aged woman with ash-blonde hair. And if the rubber batons that separate customers’ groceries had been available, I probably would never have noticed the woman was a man. I would have scribbled my check, puzzled over the National Enquirer’s headlines and never given her a second thought. But because there was nothing to keep her bread neatly isolated on the counter, she became flustered when the conveyor belt started to move.

She didn’t want her loaf of cracked wheat to get mixed in with the apples in line before her or my diapers looming behind. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that her nervous tugs at the bread weren’t keeping things separated. To ward off the checker’s grab at the loaf, she said: “The bread’s mine.”

That’s all she said, but the voice was so peculiar it triggered my attention. It sounded like a man trying to impersonate a woman. Something like the corny falsettos leading men use in old comedies when they dress in drag.

The sound sucked my eyes off the Star News headlines and right to its source.

Another quick glance didn’t reveal much. Short and raw-boned but not bulky. Black high-heeled sandals, textured black stockings, a black skirt with pastel specks scattered across it and a bright multicolored, granny-square cardigan. The sweater was an odd choice to go with the skirt, but it wasn’t anything weird.

It was the hands and neck that gave it away. They didn’t belong to a woman. Short, stubbly hairs, the kind that are shaved at the back of a man’s neck when his hair is cut, crept out from under her ash-blonde hair. At second glance, the hair looked a lot like a wig. The neck had a tough, leathery, masculine look, like a construction worker or farmer who has spent years out in the sun with a short haircut. Then there were the hands, small with big-knuckled fingers and a hair pattern heavier and more prominent than a woman’s. The fingernails were torn and jagged. They belonged to a man who works with his hands.

Surprisingly, his face was not heavily made up. There was some powder on the cheeks but none on the chin or upper lip. From a few feet away the beard was barely perceptible. He must be a baby-faced young man.

As I puzzled over the chin and cheeks, he turned his head and our eyes met. I smiled, a little embarrassed at being caught staring, and he smiled back. A nice smile, shy and sweet over a square jaw.

By now I realized she was a he and I was a little shocked at the discovery. But my surprise didn’t turn to humor. The smile was too nice to be funny.

No, my surprise changed to a curious kind of pleasure, the type you feel at meeting someone nice, or having an interesting chat with a stranger while waiting in line. The smile was so sweet and innocent that any laughter I might have had disappeared.

I watched as he paid for the bread, and I murmured, “Have a nice evening” as he left. He looked back with a pleased glance and whispered, “You too” in his betraying voice. The smile flitted across his face again, and I turned to the register.

Then the checker ruined it. She giggled.

“Was that what I think it was?” she snickered.

“Probably,” I said.

“You can always tell by the walk. They waddle in heels.”

She giggled again and turned to look out across the parking lot at the black-heeled figure making its way toward a car, the loaf of bread dangling alongside the swaying skirt.

I felt sick.

“As long as a person’s happy, who cares?” I snapped self-righteously. She turned a little pink and stuffed my check in her register.

I ducked my head, grabbed my ID and diapers from the counter and left. My pleasure had fled with her first snicker and in its place was an angry sadness.

On my way home I mulled over the incident, trying to figure out why I was sad. Was it because that man felt the need to dress as a woman? No, that didn’t bother me. Just because he was cross dressing didn’t mean he was unhappy. It was the snickering that got to me.

Until she giggled I was pleased, I had enjoyed that man’s smile--it was warm. It revealed a tiny piece of him and gave me the same feeling I get when I watch a man hold a small baby or see an elderly couple holding hands. There is a pleasure in glimpsing an intimate piece of a person. There is a pleasure in catching those tiny pieces and stowing them away. They make the world warmer and help take the chill out of supermarkets and fast-food franchises.

I was sad because that checker didn’t see the sweet, shy smile, hadn’t caught the tiny spark that made the skirt and heels unimportant, that pulled the man out from behind the granny-square sweater and made him simply a person.

All she saw was the nervous tugging on the bread and the stilted, wobbly walk. That’s all a lot of people would see and that’s why I was sad. Most people would never see the smile.