A reader’s poem: The Tights Man Of Bexhill

Twisting himself around the rails
Hung with girlie clothes
Pawing each item
As though their emptiness would be filled
With his own androgynous form,
Fantasising how he would wear
The glittering gold lame dolly dress
To the De La Warr Pavilion
To see the star he’d idolised
Since the ’80s.

Glammed up with eyeliner
And rose petalled lips,
The stars he’d put on his face,
Girlie wedges revealing painted toe nails
Deepest blue like the night
Illuminated by a citron moon.
His long hair pony-tailed
Adorned with silver threads
Twisted like a spider’s web
Like a beautiful girl

But marred by a twisted beard
Pointing in front of him
The only hint of masculinity,
A hint of his desires.
Then I remembered the first time
I’d seen him on Queens Street, Brighton
In a shop wearing sheer white tights over a thong
Thick with pan-stick and crimson lipstick
Mouth pouting as if to make sexual contact
With the clothes, his body a filler-in.
The glam tights man from Bexhill.

By Sherifa Rashidally