The Men Who Dressed Me: Buscemi, Cash & Dad
by: Honor Wilson , October 31, 2024
by: Honor Wilson , October 31, 2024
The first time I knew I was a man was when I watched Steve Buscemi in Fargo (1996). There’s one scene in particular that sticks with me still: Buscemi’s character—the weaselly, pencil-moustachioed Carl Showalter—bent crooked and blood-stained in his turtleneck, wheezing with impeccable sleaze to his dead-eyed accomplice, ‘You should see the other guy.’ In that instance I was bewitched, body and soul.
Later, while the credits rolled, I rushed over to the set of drawers in my university bedroom and rifled through until I found one of my old binders. Rolling it on before putting back on my shirt, I then, for a long while, simply sat on the floor and watched myself in the mirror, euphoric and terrified.
Screenshot from Fargo (1996): Steve Buscemi as Carl Showalter.
Of course, this wasn’t my first trans-awakening, though I wish it was. In a pinch it’s the story I tell people, but the reality is I had already come out in 2020, a full two years prior to my Buscemi-revelation, but that was a bad time. Turns out I had dropped something of a bomb upon my unwitting parents, who, despite having always previously prided themselves on my unconventional aspects (the hair-dye, the aversion to dresses, the politics, the unabashed bisexuality), nevertheless found this development beyond their acceptable realm of ‘different.’
‘We don’t understand,’ was all they’d say. Well, neither did I.
Not wanting to make them uncomfortable (God forbid!) I slunk back into the closet two months later, grew my hair out, invested in some lingerie and laughed the whole thing off as just some hazy lockdown-induced gender crisis; until that night when I decided to expand my cinematic tastes with Fargo. Not long beforehand I had broken up with my boyfriend, suddenly understanding why it had enraged me so much whenever he complemented my figure, adoring the very same things I had loathed since puberty, every squeeze or heavy pet seeming to carry this immense, sickly weight of gender, like he was pouring hot glue over me to help the femininity stick better. The binder helped it all slide off, a plate of armour that kept everything flat and up for debate.
Due to my chest size, there are only so many things binding can help with. I’ve always preferred colder weather over hot, but especially so since coming out. Summer involves risking heat stroke in your old-faithful hoodie and baggy trousers, your lungs straining for air as sweat drips under your vest, running over every curve you’re desperate to forget. In preparation for a holiday in Lake Como with two friends (both cis women) I bought a vintage pair of swimming trunks from Hugo Boss, though they never saw the water. When it came time to swim, I abstained, my fun ruined an hour prior when I looked at a picture my friend took of the three of us and I saw that I was very much not channelling the same brick-jawed masculinity of the Hugo Boss models I was thinking of when I first bought the trunks. Due to the hot weather and Ryanair carry-on limits, I had had to deplete my layers and so in the picture the slight lump of my binder was out and proud for all to see, though I was far from proud. Most likely, no one noticed, but I did, and that’s all that I needed. The femininity had reared its lurid head, leaving me to sulk on the shoreline while my friends splashed about in their bathing suits.
It was a confusing dichotomy, of being pleased with my body one minute and then outright disgusted, thinking I was Hasselhoff bounding along the beach in Baywatch, then Shirley MacLaine in her ‘barely there bikini’ (to quote Lilah Ramzi’s description) in What a Way to Go! (1964). I had short hair, hairy legs, was wearing men’s trunks, and yet I still had to bind if I had any relative hope of passing. What more could I do? Anything short of drawing on a moustache each morning à la lobby boy Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) seemed like overkill.
My chest has always been a point of insecurity, even before transitioning. As a teenager I would routinely scroll through the breast-reduction surgery page on the NHS website, wanting nothing more than for my clothes to hang off me like they did on the improbably lanky store mannequins. At an age where I was still only thinking in binary terms, boys were ones and girls were zeroes, and so badly did I want the height and slenderness of a ‘1.’ So seeing scrawny, screeching Carl Showalter scrambling through the Minnesotan snow with darkly comedic Coen Brothers effect years later had hit me something like a tidal wave. To this day, I continue to collect turtlenecks with his character in mind.
Screenshot from Fargo (1996): Gaer Grimsrud (Peter Stromare) & Carl Showalter (Steven Buscemi)
But why Buscemi? Well, I found comradery in his being ‘funny lookin’,’ to borrow the film’s description. A fervent, whiny, wiry hitman, hilariously disproportionate when stood next to his 6′ 2″ partner, Gaear Grimsrud (played by Peter Stormare) rang home for someone who often feels like a shrill estimation of the cis men I find myself standing alongside when ordering at a bar or waiting for a bus. By many standards (usually heterosexual cisgender ones), I too am a pretty funny lookin’ man. A similarly relatable role of Buscemi’s is the naïve bowling-enthusiast Donny in The Big Lebowski (1998), a character from yet another Coen Brothers romp who is described by Jeffrey Adams as an ‘indeterminate’ shadow, strangely lacking in a film otherwise chock-full of zany characters (2015: 133) Again, the absurdity of Buscemi, whenever stood next to his more immense castmates, John Goodman and Jeff Bridges, hits close to home. The gag of his personalised bowling shirts that, upon closer inspection, boast a different name each time can be metaphorized as a transman assuming the different identities of the men whose shirts he finds in thrift stores. This interpretation is wholly steeped in my own experience, based on my decision to buy second-hand clothes from charity shops and thrifting apps, such as Vinted and Depop, in an effort to be environmentally conscious whilst also excusing myself from the discomfort of shopping in the strictly gendered floors of name brand stores. If I’m lucky Mum will shrink one of Dad’s Saville Row knits down to my size in the wash, or I’ll score a not-entirely stained graphic tee at the local British Heart Foundation. I prefer wearing clothes that I at least know, at some point, a man might have actually worn, rather than the blank slates that permeate the hangars at H&M or Zara, the aisles of polyester husks of which I feel too green in the ways of masculinity to fill.
Screenshots from The Big Lebowski (1998): Theodore Donald ‘Donny’ Karabatsos (Steve Buscemi).
Buscemi is only the tip of the iceberg. I have a collection of men, amassed over time. Any popular figure under 6 ft. is automatically added. Kieran Culkin, Kendrick Lamar, Bob Dylan, Buster Keaton, to name just a few. I am one centimetre taller than Al Pacino, and I cling to this desperately. I found it important early on in my transition to remember than even most cis men don’t fit the stereotypical constraints of ‘man.’ On the train I’ll look for small hands, big eyes, soft jaws, full lips. When it’s not features, it’s fabrics. It’s jeans, it’s rolled-up shirt sleeves or heavy brass belt buckles. And black. More often than not, I’m wearing something black. Such loyalty, beyond a temporary emo phase in secondary school, was inspired by a famous picture of Johnny Cash, snapped outside Folsom Prison in 1968.
This was a guy who could hold his own on a stage in front of a hall full of inmates, playing concerts at Folsom and San Quentin State Prison, who could be both stoic and poetic, hardy yet all the while maintaining a level of interiority I admired. His picture outside Folsom is another staple, the classic all-black suit with blood red lining giving him the appearance of a blue-collar Dracula, as noted by Liza Corsillo in her 2016 GQ style analysis of the look:
His posture—right toe pointed like a thoroughbred horse, right hand grasping the metal gate, and the residual cloud of cigarette smoke frozen in front of his chest—is the stuff of Renaissance paintings.
Like Buscemi’s pipsqueak sleaze as Showalter, Cash’s dark, brooding country persona, lamenting about the wrongs of the world in deep baritone, struck a chord. The slick, shiny black hair, generously heeled loafers, and dramatic suit had been another awakening, and so into the collection Johnny went. Any all-black outfit I wear comprised of a button-down shirt and straight-leg trousers is worn in homage to him, even though my dad says it makes me look more like a waiter than the singer-songwriter. In sixth form I discovered his cover of Shel Silverstien’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’ and continue to interpret it as a transmasc anthem; the narrator’s loathing, brawling, and eventual reconciling with his father for giving him a girl’s name having in part inspired me to keep my own birth name post-transition. That, and the fact that last Christmas my uncle had gifted me a red leather travel wallet embossed in gold with my initials, and no other ‘H’ name seemed appropriate.
Once I decided to commit to the whole trans thing, I marched myself into the centre of my university city, determined to spend the last of my student loan on Man Clothes, only to be utterly horrified by the options. It was khakis and button-ups as far as the eye could see. Where were the aisles for the dandies of the world? From my dad’s extensive coffee table book collection, I used to pore over his copy of Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015, which detailed everything from the ‘Macaroni’ Englishman of the 1760’s, with his foppish character and lavish style, all the way up to the lacey denim suits of Vivienne Westwood’s 1992 Fall ‘Always on Camera’ show. Where, oh where, I asked on my knees in the men’s section of TK Maxx, are the clothes for the funny lookin’ men?
Perhaps my shock would have not been so profuse if I had had a more casual reference for masculinity in my father. This was the man who, once it finally clicked, accepted my transness with an immediate gift of a pair of wooden shoe trees from Jones Bootmaker, followed by an extensive lecture on the dos and don’ts of menswear. Don’t wear a belt a different colour to your shoes, don’t match black with navy, take suits to the dry cleaners, and keep jeans far, far away from the washing machine.
Even in girlhood, I envied my dad’s tie collection. The frequent wail of men’s fashion is its restrictiveness, seen firsthand in the way the boys at my school would wrench off their ties the second the final bell rang and noted likewise in The Guardian by Phineas Harper in his January article of this year: ‘Modern menswear is too often a parade of gloomy conformity, produced by an industry that contemptuously sees male shoppers as predictable and dull.’ I, however (prior to my self-actualisation and subsequent experimentation with clothes, at least) delighted in it. As a teenage girl, overwhelmed by the variety on offer in the women’s section, the idea that a man need only wear a suit to be considered somewhat fashionable was appealing. A tie does all the heavy lifting, a single splash of colour wielded in a single slip of fabric echoing back to earlier times of splendour, of the Elizabethan ruff or Lord Byron’s cravat. Like Cash’s crimson suit lining, ties speak of identity subtly, a prime example of this found in my dad’s collection—despite never being one to spend superfluously on himself, he has clearly invested in these ties. Intricate patterns from Gucci, Versace, Hermès, Harrods, Liberty, all of which I hope to inherit. For my graduation, though not wanting to outshine me on the day, he nevertheless permitted himself a slither of identity: a Gucci tie swimming with multi-coloured sketches of fish (pictured below, far left). Perhaps it is not so much his ties I wish to inherit as it is his masculinity. In wearing his ties, I might, in some way, convey to the world what I have inherited from my father, especially so now that I am on hormones and my face, already inclined towards his features even as a girl, bears similarity with his now more than ever. With no pictures of him as a young man to hold as a reference, it is in things like the ties that I can relate to him and, in him teaching me how to tie them, that he can make up for those rocky years where he at first didn’t understand me.
Dad’s ties. Photo by Honor Wilson.
The longer I explore my identity, the more I find I enjoy not the binarism but the ambiguity of being transgender. Recent debates calling for politicians and gender studies professors to ‘define’ a woman are as exhaustive as they are unnecessary. Trans people are lambasted for adhering to antiquated gender norms, yet in the same breath are insulted if they are seen—by needling, self-imposed cis authorities—to not be putting enough effort into passing. Trans women face the worst of this, trans men less so. Everyone can understand wanting to be a man, but no one can comprehend why you would actually choose to be a woman. Something to do with all that horrific misogyny, perhaps. Whilst some trans people may only be satisfied adhering to a strict binary, this, as far as I’ve encountered, is a minority sentiment. The trans people I know frequently relish in the gaps of things, the second-takes, the question marks, wiggling into these pitfalls in understanding and making them wider; wide enough for everyone to fit and play inside. Writing in the 80s, Elizabeth Wilson remarks in Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity how recent decades have seemingly forgotten the ‘sacred’ androgyny of previous eras, leaving fashion as one of the few spaces one can still play with aspects of gender: ‘Fashion permits us to flirt with transvestism, precisely to divest it of all its danger and power’ (Wilson, 1987, 122).
I am scheduled for top surgery in the coming weeks and, beyond the obvious relief of no longer being at risk of spinal injury and lung damage (a hazard of continuous chest binding), I look forward most to seeing what the surgery welcomes in, what exciting new gaps it may open for me to explore. Despite having sold on or donated most of my ‘girl’ clothes, I nevertheless have kept aside some pieces—a blouse, a skirt, a pair of fishnets—stowing them in the back of my wardrobe, not to see the light of day until after surgery where, I hope, I will feel confident enough to wear them. The irony is not lost on me; it took becoming a man to finally feel like I can dress like a girl, but irony is a staple of the genderqueer experience. It is slippages, fragments. It is the black Christian Siriano velvet dress flowing out from under Billy Porter’s tuxedo on the 91st Academy Awards red carpet. It is the bedazzled eyeball fluttering its eyelashes (another Siriano gem) over Janelle Monáe’s breast at the 2019 Met Gala. It was the delightful, neon hedonism of the Club Kid culture of late 80s and early 90s in New York City. It is the uncertain Have a good day, Miss muttered by the pharmacist as he hands me over my testosterone. It is the bustier I intend to wear after my surgery where I will be, deliciously, ironically, sans bust.
It won’t be long now until my surgery. Never have I been so eager to be cut open. As the day approaches, I often recall trans model, April Ashley, recounting her sex-reassignment surgery in the television documentary What Am I? (1980): ‘As I went under the anaesthetic, my doctor [Georges Burou] said “Au revoir, Monsieur” and when I woke up, he said “Bonjour, Madame”.’ The idea of waking up as a new person is at once both dazzling and petrifying, not unlike what I felt that night with Fargo, meeting myself for the first time in my bedroom mirror. Nevertheless, I am keen to meet the man I will be after my procedure; it has been a hard fight to find him, and he and I must make up for lost time.
REFERENCES
Adams, Jeffrey (2015), The Cinema of the Coen Brothers: Hard-Boiled Entertainments, New York: Columbia University Press.
Corsillo, Liza (2016), ‘TBT: When Johnny Cash Suited-Up for His Legendary Folsom Prison Concert,’ GQ, 14 January, https://www.gq.com/story/tbt-johnny-cash-suit-folsom-prison (last accessed 31 October 2024).
Harper, Phineas, (2024), ‘So you’d never wear a skirt in public? Men, you don’t know what you’re missing,’ The Guardian, 3 January, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/skirts-men-fashion-feminism (last accessed 31 October 2024).
Ramzi, Lilah (2019), ‘An Ode to the Campiest Film You’ve Probably Never Seen,’ Vogue, 19 April, https://www.vogue.com/article/what-a-way-to-go-shirley-maclaine-camp-film (last accessed 13 April 2024).
Takeda, Sharon Sadako, Kaye Spilker & M. Esguerra Clarissa (2016), Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015. London: Prestel.
Wilson, Elizabeth (1987), Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Visual & Audiovisual Sources:
Big Lebowski, The (1998), dir. Joel Coen.
Fargo (1996), dir. Joel & Ethan Coen.
Poush, Dan (1968), Before the First Performance; Blowing Smoke Rings [Photograph]. John R. Cash Revocable Trust.
What Am I? (1980) [BFI Player]. The Media Archive for Central England.
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