“Excuse Me, Sir… Ma’am, Do You Have A Penis?”

The Japanese have a very different sense of humor from any other culture. I often do not agree with things they find ‘funny,’ whether it be the ridiculousness that is the mega superstar “Hard Gay” or my pronunciation of the Japanese language. They laugh equally hard at both these things. Now my lack of understanding could be for the obvious reason that I can’t comprehend a good 95% of the words that are being emitted from their proper little mouths. But even if I could, I have an inkling that it would not cause the milk I am drinking to resurface via my nose.

However, there is some humor that crosses cultural gaps – namely some mild forms of bathroom humor, dirty jokes, and cross dressing males. Seeing a man dressed up in a skirt and blouse, perhaps wearing an unflattering shade of heinous fuchsia lipstick and some fake, fluttery eyelashes is something that many cultures curiously seem to embrace as a form of entertainment. We get a kick out of it; I’m not exactly sure why, but we do. After watching a few episodes of Monty Python, I’d say that the British have indeed nailed this form of humor. They simply have a monopoly on it. There’s nothing better than a Brit dressed up as a prissy old lady. Except maybe Brad Pitt in a skirt.

The Japanese have two forms of this entertainment that breaches the rules of gender, the first being kabuki. Now I have never actually seen a kabuki show, but in my head it is a lavish affair that takes place on a barren, austere, wooden Japanese stage where the he/she/it paints his face a ghostly and (apparently) incredibly attractive shade of pastey, paper-mache white, adds on tiny red, pursed lips, perhaps two black faux dimples on each cheek and prances around slowly and deliberately on stage in front of a single paper screen, sometimes balancing on one leg all the while dressed in an elaborately decorated silk kimono. This is all speculation mind you.

Whenever I hear people talk about these transvestites they tend to use phrases such as, “Wow. He was just so beautiful! Simply stunning!” A stunning, beautiful Japanese man-woman. Quite frankly, as far as the latter part of that statement is concerned, I’d say that describes most of (eye-brow plucking) Japanese men as it is, even without any makeup or flowery dresses. Man-woman, indeed.

Now the other form of cross-dressing that I have encountered in Japan is on a slightly less sophisticated cultural level. To get a rise out of an audience in say, high schools, the boys are often forced borrow a page out of Ru-Paul’s book and dress up as the fairer sex. They will don a girl’s sailor uniform – complete with skirt, knee-length socks and on occasion, when they’re trying to be authentic, a wig.

One of these he-she Dame Edna catastrophes popped up in my class today at the East High School. I walked in and was greeted with a sea of smiling faces all ‘properly’ dressed according to their gender and this one boy wearing a skirt. He was a bit chubby, ghastly overweight by Japanese standards, had a close page-boy hair cut and his socks weren’t doing such a stellar job of covering his rather hirsute legs. I had seen this before at two English “Challenge” camps I attended over the summer.

Once, a boy dressed up as a very homely Cinderella for a play. Another time one of the male graduate student-teachers borrowed a girl’s uniform and was seen quite comfortably prancing around school making all the girls jealous of his legs.

Naturally, the normal reaction to this male/female cross-over identity shift is to laugh. If you’re Japanese you whip out your keitai/cellphone and snap a picture to preserve the moment forever. Otherwise, you point, laugh, ridicule, mock, jeer – all things that I’m excellent at. You give the boy strange, humorous looks as if to say, “Ah, I see what you’ve done there. You’re a clever one. How very entertaining. You’re wearing a skirt! And you’re a BOY!” And you all share a good nervous chuckle as a result of not being able to laugh at anything that involves banter within a common language.

However, one should NOT do this when the he-she in question is in fact a FEMALE, was born a female, has ALWAYS been a female, and hasn’t breached any ‘appropriate’ gender-dressing lines AT ALL.

I am an awful human being. The absolute worst person EVAR.

I thought they had just finished up from a class play of sorts. Maybe he was playing Little Red Riding Hood or Pocahontas or Goldilocks. Maybe ‘he’ had lost a bet or a jan-ken match with his chums. I walked into the classroom, assumed that this was some form of a Japanese joke and was giving the students the appropriate questioning looks and raised eyebrows as I nodded over foolishly to the cross-dressed offender.

The kids were looking at me with stranger expressions than usual. “What’s wrong with the weird American chick?”

And then it hit me.

That’s a girl you complete nitwit.

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

There goes my teaching award of the year.
I am the worst ALT ever.
I am a horrible, insensitive wench who has likely just made some poor little girl more insecure than ever.
I am going to hell.

I can only find consolation in the fact that I didn’t go over to her, give her a nudge and wink and say, “Oh come now, what’s the meaning of this? A skirt? Who do you think you’re kidding?”

I spent the rest of the class shooting smiles at her in a pathetic and futile attempt to make up for the fact that I thought she was, in fact, in possession of a penis.

Details:

You’re currently reading ““Excuse Me, Sir… Ma’am, Do You Have A Penis?”,”

Published:
10.5.06 / 5pm
Category:
classroom antics, amusing incidents