Drag

Speaking of disguises, I don’t usually do Halloween; but I live in San Francisco, which is Halloween Central. San Franciscans get drag. We learn to recognize and celebrate drag everywhere, anyhow. For example, I went so far as to change my surname because I liked the “x” in my fiancé’s name. There’s a sense that whatever it means to be a human is underneath all those surface effects. Drag is freedom. (But caution, children: those tattoos are permanent.)

So I took it seriously—the sudden desire to make myself into a Van Gogh self-portrait. That troubled interpreter of beauty was among the artists I had arrayed around my classroom walls, so I noticed him many times in a work week, and he was eyeing us all of the time.

I painted a jacket and pants. I bought the face paint and false beard. I had my hair dyed. On the very night before October 31st, I doctored the beard with scissors and acrylic color, and I painted my face for practice. In the morning, I did it for real.

And it worked.

But then there was everything I didn’t anticipate:

—The face paint and expanse of adhesive used to attach the beard to my face effectively froze my expression in place. I could not smile, so I was prosthetically forced to play the intent, watchful, and yet emotionally ambiguous Vincent of the self-portrait.

—My students didn’t recognize me, and even though I talked in my normal voice, they treated me shyly, as if I were their great aunt’s fragile best friend filling in as substitute teacher.

—My colleagues couldn’t recognize me either, and a few answered my cheerful “hello” with a stare of blank concern, trying to figure out who I was, if only to make sure that I wasn’t someone who had just walked in off the street.

Still, I’m glad that, one day, I went to work looking, and feeling, a little like Vincent Van Gogh.