A lot of people don’t understand about P’s ‘thing’ about P’s gender. It’s assumed that it’s an attention-seeking exercise, or a piss-take, or a massively bizarre Statement of hitherto unwitnessed pretension. Some people think it’s, like, cool. It’s none of those things. P doesn’t feel male or female, and wishes there was a third pronoun that wasn’t ‘it,’ as ‘it’ is a bit demeaning.
All very confusing, especially as P’s chromosomal gender, as it were, is all too evident. The main mistake people make, in fact, is in assuming that P isn’t stressed about the whole thing as well.
No-one talks about it, we don’t discuss the difficulty of avoiding pronouns or dodging other gender-specific words when talking about P, either in P’s presence or behind P’s back. In other words, we’re generally super-British about it.
Generally.
*
“Well,” says P briskly, complete with hand-rubbing, “that was refreshing, wasn’t it?”
“I’m going to kill you,” says J, “with a stick, if you ever try that kind of stunt again. Or at least within the next week.”
“24 hours?”
“48.”
“Done.”
They stroll on for a bit.
“Listen,” she says. “Are we just playing ‘let’s cheer up J’ or is there a purpose to this perambulation?”
“Weeell,” says P slowly. “We also have to buy a present or card or drink or something for Kiri. For tonight?” is added when J looks blank. “Party? Tonight? Kiri’s birthday? Kiri? Thirty-year-old, queer, Scottish, artist bird? Blonde almost-dreads and multiple piercings? Regrettable tendency not to wear a bra?”
“Regrettable?”
“Hah, so you do remember her.”
“Dude, I know who she is, I’d just... forgotten about the party tonight.”
P’s face creases. “See, now I’m definitely worried.”
“Don’t be. Look, let’s buy a present of a suitably cheesy nature and you can present it with my apologies.”
“What?”
“Well...”
“Oh, come on.”
“Dude, she’s your friend more than mine. I barely know the bird.”
“Right, yeah, coz that’s stopped you before...”
“I’m not in the...”
“... mood? Fuck that, then your mood needs to be changed.”
J grumbles under her breath, then says: “So, what do you buy the thirty-year-old queer artist with her own studio?”
P heaves a large breath, then continues, breezily. “Well, it has to either be insanely cool and fitting, or insanely cheesy and of no artistic, practical or taste merit whatsoever.”
“Can it not be both?”
“We only have a few hours, and I for one am aiming for a disco nap at some time beforehand. Last night was fairly intense; we all stayed up late chatting afterwards as well.”
“I bet.”
“Shit, babe, I...”
“Presents?”
“Gotcha.” P picks up the stride, heading towards the arcades end of town and away from the more brand-name shops. “And if all else fails we buy candles, right?”
“Right. I reckon we just peer around and, if something strikes us as cool and fitting really quickly, we buy it, otherwise keep looking and go cheesy, or an embarrassing profusion of candles. With holders.”
“It’s got a certain merit all by itself.”
“Oooh, ooh!” exclaims J. “No, screw the fitting and cool versus cheesy – I tell you what we’re going to do... candles from every shop or every colour and/ or horrible scent we can think of. Both cool ones and cheesy. One from each shop. And bizarre holders. What’s the budget?”
“You want to go joint?”
“Why the hell not, buddy?”
“We’ll kick off rumours.”
“What, more than there are already?”
“Fair.”
*
And so we do, traipsing around every shop in the Not-Queen-Street Quarter and buying a suitable candle from each. We even buy a packet of cheap tea lights from Poundstretcher. P persuades me to wear yellow to the party. Well, it’s more like a dare, really. Yellow does suit me, but it’s so... girly... that the inner dyke says no! Meh. I concede that one item of clothing will be yellow. I’m told it has to be an entire item and that it can’t be underwear. I grimace and we bicker under an ever-increasing load of wax products. Whose clever idea was this? We’re going to a house full of inflammable substances (paint, turps, thinner, canvas, paper, charcoal); so much so that she only allows smoking in specific areas, apparently.
Bloody hell.
Luckily, we find cool and fitting candleholders and both of us like different ones. P’s is quite stark and chrome-y from Habitat (where we play spot-the-queer and lose count) and mine is, well, again quite simple but from The Pier, so more organic-looking. And green. P tells me that Kiri’s favourite colour is not green. I say tough. She doesn’t hate it, does she? Well then.
And so to our respective homes, each with our respective holders to wrap and P, who claims better upper-body strength, with bulging bags of tumbled wax. We are not going to wrap these bloody candles. No.