Saturday, May 14, 2011 17:01 ET
My life as a man in a skirt
I've worn women's clothing and cosmetics since the age of 16 -- but that doesn't mean what you might expect
By Jon-Jon Goulian
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/14/man_in_flannel_skirt/This article is an adapted excerpt from Jon-Jon Goulian's memoir "The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt," available from Random House on May 17.
For the great bulk of my adult life, beginning roughly when I was sixteen, and continuing, off and on, until now, at the age of forty, I have fallen short, sometimes dangerously short, of the conventional ideal of masculinity. From my taste in clothing (skirts and high heels and women's underwear), to my taste in cosmetics (pink lip gloss and eyeliner), to my taste in sex (I can't get aroused unless I'm submissive, and it helps if the woman looks like a boy), to my distaste for body fat and body hair and competition of any kind, to the two hours it still takes me to get ready to go out at night, I have behaved, in many respects -- and I have gotten no end of ->-bleeped-<- for it -- like a vain, prissy, neurotic, body-obsessed "woman." Or, in the words of a powerful Italian mobster named Jackie the Toad, with whom I worked very closely for a year after college, I have behaved, revoltingly, like "half-a-->-bleeped-<-."
