The experiment

I walked around inside the mall, and on the sidewalk just outside the mall, but I avoided Nordstrom on the possibility of someone there recognizing me.

Putting on my nerd hat, I parsed out the purpose of this experiment. Clearly, there were two objectives: one was to see if I could pass, and the second was to see if I could be comfortable being a girl. I was just on the edge, but I pushed on.

And it seemed the experiment was successful on both counts so far: as I walked, no one took notice of me, or rather no one reacted badly: to my newbie eyes, I thought I got lots of attention actually, but all of them seemed to be friendly, especially the attention from the boys. But I rationalized that it might just be me wishing that everything would be okay, so that’s how I perceived things to be. Still, I thought I was doing fine. It was even a bit fun, given all the attention. I also decided I was out of my mind…

I tried not to speak, though, since my voice might be too masculine, but I had to reply to this old lady who asked for directions to the food court.

“Just walk straight down this way, ma’am,” I gestured. “Keep to the right and you’ll see some signs. Follow them and you won’t get lost.”

“Thank you, young lady,” she said. “You’re very kind.” And she walked away in the direction that I pointed. No bad reactions - it was lucky she wasn’t paying attention to my voice, I reasoned, but more to the directions I gave.

I found that I had to slow down my pace – I suspected I looked too nervous or agitated or something as I walked around. Which I was. But I might catch the bad kind of attention, especially from the mall cops. So I stopped for a moment, listened to my slightly pounding heart, and tried to calm myself down. I forced myself to walk at a more normal pace, and though I wasn’t completely calm, at least I could fake it.

I tried to adopt the persona of a girl window-shopping. That way, my random walkabout wouldn’t look aimless. So, therefore, I would need to browse in stores and such and look at girl-type things (since I was a girl). It’d be more practice for me, at least, which was something I’d need.

In some stores, I only bumped into a few kids my age, but then I didn’t expect to see many - most of them would be in school, after all. Speaking of which…

An older gentleman who was in one of the stores I went to noticed me.

“Young lady, shouldn’t you be in school?” he said.

I looked at him, ducked my head in embarrassment, and mumbled a response.

“Speak up!” he said impatiently.

I cleared my throat. “I said I got excused from classes today…”

“I don’t believe you,” he said and started looking around, presumably for someone in authority.

I reached into a side pocket of my backpack, brought out the folded note Mr. Daimon gave me, and held it out.

The man reached for it, read the note, folded it back and returned it to me.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said, contritely. “Please excuse me. It wasn’t my business.”

I gave him a shrug.

“Are you okay?” He asked. He noticed my agitation.

“More or less,” I said noncommittally.

“Well, I’m sure it’ll get better. Enjoy the rest of your day, my dear.”

He gave me a friendly smile, nodded, and walked away.

Well…

I never bothered to look at the note before so I unfolded it.

“This excuses Ms Val Goodchilde from classes today due to a medical condition - Andreas Daimon, Vice Principal, Delos High School for Science and Technology – Chicago, Il.”

Anyway, because of that encounter, I decided to leave the mall and go somewhere else.

Roasted Peanuts

Like I said, I didn’t know the town as well as I wanted to, so I decided to go to Millennium Park – that was one of the first places my family went to after we relocated and wanted a break, so at least I knew the place. We enjoyed the ice skating rink a lot, as well as the hot pretzels Dad bought us.

From the mall, I got onto Grand Avenue, turned left, and crossed the street via the corner pedestrian crossing between the buildings. I then turned left and crossed Hubbard, turned right on Michigan, climbed the stairs to the pedestrian overpass, got back on Michigan, turned left onto Chicago Riverwalk, crossed over to Wacker Drive (yeah… “Wacker,” not Walker…), and then after a bit I could see the park.

It was pretty cold out, especially for April: It was pretty sunny, but I checked my phone and it was supposed to be 50 degrees. I was glad for the sweater and the thermal tights.

There were lots of people walking around me even though it was early in the afternoon and it was still far from quitting time. Most of them were walking from work to lunch, or walking back to work after lunch, I guess - lots of the guys were in ties and lots of the girls were in dressier office attire. It was the Loop, after all, so the folks around here were more the higher-end professional white-collar types.

As you would in most crowds, I kept my eyes to myself, as did everyone around me, but I had this sneaking suspicion that a lot of people were staring at me, although when I turned to check, they would be looking elsewhere. I did catch some guys and a few girls looking, but when I did catch them, they’d look away, embarrassed. I guess this confirmed to me that the people around me knew I was a guy dressed up as a girl, or at least something was funny about me, but then some of the better-looking or more confident ones caught my eye, and they’d smile back. Some even gave me a wink. Besides making me walk away faster, they also made me re-think things as well.

When I got to Millennium Park, I saw a peanut vendor pushing his cart along the path. Like I said, this was the Loop, so you wouldn’t see vendors around, but this one was specially licensed to sell his stuff at the parks inside the Loop, like Connors Park, Washington Square Park, and Millennium Park (I learned later that there were a bunch of them, especially commissioned by the Tourism Department of the city). Plus his cart was so much better than the carts in the streets back home, and he was in an actual uniform complete with a paper hat just like the old-timey vendors.

The bag of nuts he sold me was also fifteen dollars (!!) But then, the bag was ginormous. So I walked around munching delicious peanuts. This time, there was no mistaking it – people were really looking at me but in a friendly way. I must have looked cute eating peanuts from a bag and enjoying the afternoon sun. It was a good thing I picked a thermal sweater because it was still cold for April (it must have been sixty degrees). As I was walking around looking at the flowers, a friendly uniformed park policeman came up to me.

“Good afternoon, miss,” he said and tipped his hat, in that traditional way you see on TV and in movies.

“Yes, officer?” I said. I was super aware of my voice, but I decided to brave it and speak up. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Not at all, miss. I just wanted to remind you not to feed any animals you see, and to not litter in the park.” He looked at my peanuts.

“All right, officer,” I said, trying to be polite. “I won’t. Thank you.”

“Enjoy the park.” He tipped his hat again, and walked away to continue his “patrol.” He didn’t seem to be weirded out by my voice. Thank god for that.

I went to where the ice skating rink was and found it gone. It was April, so I wondered why I thought it would still be there. In its place was a big open-air restaurant. I checked it out and felt sad that I had already had lunch. The grilled food they were making smelled fantastic.

As I walked away, I had that suspicion again that the people eating were staring at me. I looked back and caught several looking away as I did, just like earlier in the street, but this time there were several that didn’t try and hide their staring. None of them appeared hostile although several had expressions that scared me, like they wanted to eat me or something. Or maybe because they were in a restaurant eating that made me think that.

There was a little boy, though, who was smiling adorably. I couldn’t help but smile back and wave. The boy, delighted, stood and waved both arms. I giggled, waved a final time, and walked away.

I found myself walking on this gorgeous undulating pedestrian bridge and crossed over Columbus Drive going to the Pritzker Pavillion, but since nothing was going on over there, I walked back.

I saw lots of flowers and sculptures (a lot of individual private works of art were displayed along the trails – pictures were on easels while sculptures stood on their own, though some of the small pieces were on stands: the park was also used as a venue to display works by private artists). And beautiful structures, too: I ended up by the Millennium Monument in a part of the park called Wrigley Square. It was a large peristyle, this one had its columns arranged in a semi-circular row surrounding the circular base of a fountain.

The monument’s columns were reminiscent of some ancient Greek or Roman structure and, oddly, it made the monument look beautiful to my eyes, and I felt at home. I sat on the base and enjoyed my still-warm roasted peanuts, listened to the pleasant splish-splash of the fountain behind me, and did some people-watching.

Like in the street and at the open-air restaurant, the people who walked by me were all looking. They unabashedly stared this time and didn’t look away. Those that caught my eye more often smiled back, so I didn’t feel too scared or weirded out (except for the few that had vaguely hostile, or, I guess predatorily hungry expressions I didn’t understand). Chicago wasn’t known for being friendly (not that Chicagoans weren’t), so being surrounded by this many friendly strangers was a surprise.

I noticed the sun was fairly low already, and I guessed it was about 4:30 or 5 PM. I decided that I should start making my way home in a while so I could give rush hour a miss. But then I didn’t want to leave because it was pleasant sitting in the park in the cool afternoon air feeling snug and warm - I should really get more sweaters.

“Val?” someone said, and I looked in that direction. it was Ma and Dad.

“Don’t panic, Val,” Dad said. “It’s okay.”

I was very aware of how I was dressed and was about to jump out of my skin and run away but Ma rushed to me before I had a chance to, and wrapped me in a tight hug.

Dad then wrapped us both in a big hug. He was a big guy at six-six so he did that easily. “You’re okay, Val,” he said. “We’re okay.”

“We love you, honey,” she said. “Don’t be scared.”

“Oh, Ma,” I said and started to cry. Being so scared and being surprised pushed me over the edge.

“You’re fine, honey. Please stop crying.”

“I’m so sorry, Ma. I’m…”

“Shhh… shhh…”

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