On absolute identies

Recently I performed. It had been a while and truthfully I was nervous about performing a piece so obviously about my struggle with Femme and identity, about the concepts of girhood, womanhood and power.

My audience was blank sheet of paper to me. Mostly middleaged or older, mostly realtives of others who perfomed that same night. I was sure they didn't know much about the identites I "claim", and they didn't know much about me. It was a test, but a healthy one, for the piece and for me.

I had longed to be on stage it had been so very long since I last made a point. Since I last made words into flesh. I am mostly a writer and a director these days. Somehow I see these roles, even though I love them dearly, as passive. I am a bystander, a watcher, a creater of surrondings and ideas which I don't get the chance to embody myself.

I did what I had to do. I wrote the piece entitled "Är det där min kvinnlighet?" ("You call that my womanhood") circling around the ideas what makes a woman rather than a girl.
I spoke about my body, my tits as cupcakes when they were made to fit the woman I was becoming. I spoke about odd bits and pieces wanting to fit all in me. All in the girl and the woman.
I memorized the piece, I pounded it into the walls and swirls of my brain. I took it into my body I accompained it with gestures and movements. I made it into flesh. It was seperat from its text, it was a twin to its text. And I perfromed it.

Not knowing what the audience would make of its raunchy and sexual nature, what they would make of me in my tuell skirt my firey make-up troubled me back stage. But as always, on stage all of that vanishes. I am a vessle. Truly being on stage is a supernatural experience for me.

I realized while standing there, feet held firmly down, head held up, that I took that space. It was mine, time was mine and I could lead it either way I wanted. I was a wizard, a magician of words and bodies, and I loved.

In the audience, right in front of me, were three men dressed as cowboys. They weren't drag-ing or playing with that identity. They were cowboys. It was an absolute identity and they owned it. They knew they were manly men, they knew their manhood was power. I didn't know what to make of them. They smiled when they looked at me, they sniggered.
So I decieded, as I have always done, to focus on them.

I brought them my piece. My raunchy, cripp-femme, power-journey, from girl to woman to a girlie kind of woman. Possesing place and time, turning to them demanding to know:
How about that, is that my feminity?

They were shocked. Squriming in their seats they didn't know what to make of me. I didn't fit their box, I didn't fit their mind. But they smiled, eventually they laughed. In the end they were soft. When I got off stage they YEEEHAA-ed.
Success was mine. The cowboys loved me!

Having wine and left-over cakes with the other performers when it was all over, the cowboys approached me. They wore spurrs making a distinct sound when they moved. Telling us they were coming, taking up space, sound, room. They were daunting, tall and strong. They shook my hand, and they thanked me. Said it was "the best they had ever seen". Then they left swinging their hats they way cowboys do.
(Even though I am a writer- this is the truth.)

Thinking about it now, it's not such a strange thing. My cripp-femme identity is an "absolute thing" to me, close to my heart and something I have put a lot of thought in to in some aspects, and only learned to embodied in others.
The cowboys identity seemed to be much the same. There was a brotherhood between us. A link of understanding between the girl and the manly men.
The sister and her brothers.