Gigantic Men Dressed as Women

Sometimes I ride the bus to work.  I could pretend this is because I am really a great environmentalist or because I am a true patriot but it's not.  It's not even that it saves a ton of money, because it doesn't.  A little probably but not much.  Anyway, sometimes I just ride the bus to work.

Aside from the fact that the printed schedule of departure times for the trip home is frequently meaningless, it's usually pretty routine.

Tonight, however, it was a freak show.  That's probably insensitive so let me rephrase it.  Tonight there were some very interesting people on the bus.  I think it's still ok to call people interesting.

The first interesting person was interesting because she was too normal looking.  That probably makes no sense.  She was sitting near the front of the bus and seemed to watch as I stuffed pennies into the box (I can tell the driver hates it for some reason I can't understand but what else are you going to do with pennies?).

I noticed her because her dark hair was cut short like a crew cut except at the very top and around the center of the back of her head where it was spiked into a very tidy mohawk.  I also noticed the ring in her lower lip and the earings that are more like tubes than earings and make big giant holes in your ears.  The holes in her ears looked like you could just about fit a Sharpie pen through them.

All of that is relatively normal.  Or at least normal enough in L.A. not to be interesting.  What was not normal is that she was clearly lacking the finishing touches on her look.

First off, her hair was a natural dark brown color.   This threw me off because my initial assumption was that she was a hair stylist but if she was her hair would almost certainly be hairdresser red.  Next, she lacked the pained, disaffected scowl that should accompany this look.  In fact, she was cheerfully chit chatting with Manuel the pastry chef (I've met him before and I secretly suspect he just bakes cookies).  Also missing were the trademark Ramones T-shirt and Army Boots.  She had on a pastel colored tank top, clean jeans and flip flops.

This chick needs to work on her clothes and her attitude if she doesn't want guys like me looking at her like a freak on the bus.

The next interesting person was a homeless guy evidently migrating to my neighborhood.  I could tell because he had all his belongings neatly packed into a couple of those black plastic fold-up file boxes you can buy at Office Depot.  These, in turn, were strapped to a little wheelie cart thing with bungie cords.

He seemed very organized for a guy that was real dirty and smelled bad.

He looked like Grizzly Adams but had his beard trimmed relatively neatly.  He never removed his mirror sunglasses.

I thought he was interesting because there's a part of me that thinks there is something really cool about just being able to pack up and move across town whenever you feel like it for $1.25.

The coup de grace, as the title suggests, were the Gigantic Men Dressed As Women. These guys (women?) were huge.  Easily 6' 3" each with big thick arms and big thick legs.  Not fat.  Thick.  And they had the full cross dresser thing going on.

They were both in dresses, with nylons and heels (as if they needed to be taller!).  Their outfits were not attractive and neither were they.  One had bleached white shortish hair with little rubber banded pony tails randomly sticking up all over the place.  The other had longer scraggly, thin shoulder length hair that looked like it was supposed to be gray but had been somewhat covered up with a copper/bronze/reddish color that was semi-transparent or something.

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw them because I was back benching it and there was nowhere for them to sit except right next to me.

Now I consider myself a pretty open-minded guy and I couldn't really care less what these two Gigantic Men Dressed As Women are up to.  But they were too big and too dirty (as in not clean) to want them next to me.

But they did sit down right next to me.  And to avoid being considered a dick I did not bolt immediately to stand at the front of the bus by the mohawk chick like I wanted to.

Naturally, I had to inspect them more closely.  I only had enough time to conclude that they must care about each other deeply because rather than one of them taking all of the blue fingernail polish, they had shared it even though this meant each of them could only paint half their fingernails and half their toenails.

I was unable to inspect them further because they pretty much immediately started making out with each other.  Not really bad slobbery making out but bad enough.

This would make me uncomfortable if it was my best friend and his wife but when it was two Gigantic Men Dressed As Women it was somehow worse.

More troubling than that, I was very confused now because I had no idea how properly to categorize this behavior.

What do you call two Gigantic Men Dressed As Women that are making out with each other?  Are they homosexuals?  Lesbians?  Does it matter if one or both of them has actually been surgically transgendered or whatever you call it?  Even if one of them has and one of them hasn't, they're still both dressed as women.

The thing of it is, I am certain that there is a name for it.  I mean a nice PC name.  I just don't know what it is.

I guess it doesn't really matter but it was very confusing for me.  And interesting.

All of this interesting stuff for just $1.25.  I think everyone should ride the bus once in awhile.