X-Girl

I have a super power. It's a power usually associated with superheros and science fiction rather than neurotic bloggers, but much like Wonder Woman, I did not choose this. It chose me.

(I actually have no idea what Wonder Woman's back story may be but I know she has some pretty awesome bracelets and since I love wearing bracelets, the comparisons are obvious.)

I don't know what rigmarole Wonder Woman went through to get her superpowers, but for me it's been a breeze. No tripping into barrels of nuclear waste, no spider bites...I once ate undercooked chicken with some pretty spectacular results, but I don't think the two are related.

If I had to think about it, my superpower began gradually in 2009 and reached full capacity in May of this year. It comes and goes, so whether I use it for good or for evil is really more of a scheduling issue.

You would think invisibility should be more convenient.

It's true. I have the power to be invisible. I show up in mirrors so I can safely rule out any vampire related causes, but otherwise it's a mystery.

I first noticed the phenomenon the handful of times I ventured out into nightclubs. I'd be standing somewhere, out of the way, sipping on my Diet Coke and wondering when all the underage girls stopped wearing pants when a group of guys would walk through me.

Not around me, through me. I'd be shoulder checked out of the way and then the next guy would plow forward shoving me into the nearest wall or table. They didn't look at me. They didn't seem to realize they had encountered solid mass in any way, which was puzzling. I was nothing if not solid mass. Add a pair of high heels and I'm towering solid mass. Not something easily missed.

It wasn't just the men. I quickly realized if I didn't want to see what the underside of a shirt worn without pants looked like I had best move out of the way to avoid being trampled to the floor. The women wouldn't even shoulder check, which could at least shove me aside to relative safety.

Women would just keep walking staring straight ahead without seeing me, even though I was the largest thing blocking their path. I started starfishing to the walls to avoid internal injuries and possible loss of my spleen.

When I would rejoin my friends, I'd ask if they could see me. Was I plainly visible? Don't lie. Am I shimmering in any way? Do I appear as a mirage? Are you alarmed that there appears to be an empty black tank top and jeans standing magically before you?

They would usually tell me to shut up and go get another drink, which told me the phenomenon was intermittent.


I tried to mitigate my superpower. Although clearly not visible to the human eye, I should still project sound. Occasionally saying excuse me to get by somewhere would result in somebody stepping aside to let me through, but more often I would be left standing there, looking like I was trying to join in the conversation instead of making my way from point A to B.

Forget about ordering a drink. I could no longer elbow my way to the front and should I happen to find a bar without a line-up, my powers of invisibility extended to bartenders.


Going out wasn't much fun when the safest spot for me to be was the far corner by the emergency exit, or hugging a stanchion for balance by the Coat Check. Eventually I stopped going out all together.


I stayed home every weekend since. Invisibility couldn't even get me ahead in the line up for the bathrooms, so I took it as a sign my days of dancing the night away were over. I am 34 years old after all - at some point I will have to accept that an exciting Saturday night means new back to back episodes of COPS.


Not to mention, I was grateful for all the extra Weight Watchers points I wouldn't be wasting or having spilled down the front of my shirt every time somebody took the direct route through my clearly invisible torso.


Then came Halloween, my favorite holiday of all time. I love Halloween. I will never not celebrate Halloween, and invisible or not I was leaving the house. Even being invisible could be fun on Halloween, the one time of year it's acceptable to be spectral and or creepy.


My costume was amazingness. I'm not even bragging. It took a lot of time and effort, but the only person who looked more Cleopatra than me was Cleopatra herself, and since she's dead she can't argue.

I nearly gave up my quest at one point for the perfect Cleopatra dress, but a friend encouraged me that I just had to go as her. Like me, Cleopatra was regal, bitchy and kind of conniving. He had a point, and I persevered.


I found the perfect long black halter dress. Gold chain belt. Matching metallic gold bracelet cuffs. Links of thick gold chain around my arm matching the belt. A black wig with the straight cut bangs and a bob that Anna Wintour herself would envy. Re-purposed glittery gold headband as a head piece fit for an Egyptian queen. Gold shimmering body powder, and enough black eyeliner to give me lead poisoning.


Add my sluttiest friend wearing what can best be described as Little Red Riding Hood lingerie, one shared bottle of champagne, several dances around my living room to the Monster Mash on repeat and we were ready to celebrate pagan style.


I let her go first into the club, because I was afraid the first person who tried to go through me could set my wig askew. She was in charge of getting the drinks because if experience was any indication I wouldn't be able to get us served before last call.


Eventually I had no choice to get up and find the washroom, setting out twenty minutes before I thought I may have to go just to give my invisible self time to get there. I wasn't willing to experiment with any philosophical questions such as if an invisible woman in costume pees herself and nobody around can see it, does she actually pee?

It's was right about this time when the weird shit started happening.


People moved aside for me and I didn't have to ask or wait there anxiously. Some even smiled. Two girls dressed as bananas high-fived me and an extremely convincing Russel Brand toasted his drink in my direction. Unprecedented.


It continued in the bathroom line-up. I had giggly conversations with girls who were still not wearing any pants but for costumes I could let it slide. The first girl who spoke to me said she loved my costume, nearly prompting me to ask if she could really see me.

I settled instead for asking if she knew who I was and she said of course - I was an Egyptian. Close enough. I was just happy being plainly visible.


Back at the table I settled into the only activity made better through stealth invisibility - checking out men. When you're invisible you can be downright disgusting about it, and I leaned forward every time I saw one particular cowboy walk by just to get a better look. He didn't see me, but this was not surprising, and for once, probably a good thing.

My friend and I agreed that he was by far the best looking guy in the entire bar, and we should know having not done much else but sit on our bar stools and ogle like the baby cougars we are.

He appeared to be there with a group of guys, and was totally oblivious, allowing us to discuss his physical attributes in ways that would probably see men ordered into sensitivity training should the roles be reversed.


Finally it's time to rock out to Usher on the dance floor. (Does one rock out to Usher? Jam out to Usher? Groove out to Usher? Whatever it is kids do these days.) People chatting to me in the bathrooms and letting me get there at all had to be an anomaly, so I was being a bit silly. When channelling Cleopatra one must throw in a few classic walking like an Egyptian dance moves.

Ten thousand inspirational fridge magnets advise dancing like nobody's watching, and I can honestly say that dancing like nobody can see you is equally awesome.


I was so busy bouncing away that I didn't notice the cowboy was on the dance floor too until he turned around, stopped in his tracks and smiled at me. Naturally, I responded sensibly. I looked over my right shoulder, then my left shoulder to see how hot the girl has to be for this guy to be smiling at her like that.

Sure enough there's a tiny little blond girl wearing angel wings and not much else dancing away behind me, so I step aside to let the cowboy through to the winged lingerie model, and he steps around to stand in front of me again.

The cowboy hat has to be covering up some serious head trauma because he's obviously not getting that I'm being polite and letting him through. I appreciate that he seems able to see me and is not just plowing through me but could he not just go already?

I step aside again, clearing a wider path and by now almost completing a full backwards stepping circle. Again, he follows me. There was no time to think what this could possibly mean when he tugs on my chain belt and says, "Hey Cleo. Where are you trying to go?"

Holy fucking shit.

REALLY? Really? I'm invisible and now the hottest guy in the entire place either wants to dance with me or possibly mug me for my gold jewellery which actually seems more likely.

This shit just does not happen. At least not to me. Maybe to the little blond thing with the wings behind me, but somebody like me is pretty sure he's about to tell me to hand over my gold cuff bracelets or I won't get hurt. I'd have to tell him they're not real and I bought them at Claire's and then it would just get awkward.

This was one other reasonable explanation. We were experiencing some kind of worm hole that had opened into a parallel universe thanks to something involving string theory or the Large Hadron Collider and somebody better get Stephen Hawking on the phone. Stat.

As it turns out, he wanted to dance. We danced until my friend had to leave and then we kept dancing. Admittedly, sometimes we danced and other times I may have appeared to be trying to share his pants. Nothing more inappropriate than that however, because I'm 34 years old and I'm kind of past making out with hot guys in bars.


He knew all the words to Lady Gaga's Alejandro, which is how I knew he was a hallucination brought on by mixing champagne with anti-depressants. When he told me he was an army paratrooper I was amazed he had made it out for Halloween at all. The commute from Mount Olympus has got to be a bitch.

We sat and talked about everything. Our jobs, our hobbies, our families, where we've travelled to, religion and how we both really, really love Lady Gaga. Definitely a hallucination. A hallucination that smells really good and feels very lean and muscled but obviously I'm having some kind of episode.


When I had to go to the washroom yet again I thought he'd probably disappear. Hallucinations don't usually wait patiently outside. This one did. Exactly how much champagne did I have??


He's holding my hand and we're on our way back to the dance floor when some guy walked into me and bounced off. Now this is normal. I'm used to this - definitely a lot more than having my hand held.

Cowboy Wonderful turned around and called him out. "You just rammed into my girl buddy - not cool."


The dude was apologetic but mostly intoxicated, and by intoxicated I mean he's probably still drunk at this very moment. He said he was sorry, he totally didn't see me. In his drunken stupor he kept saying "I missed her," even though that made no sense at all, and yet it was all perfectly reasonable.

I have a superpower and it's not his fault. When you've actually had half a pitcher of beer sloshed across your chest because nobody could see you climbing up the stairs off a dance floor and nobody apologized even when you yelped, you tend to be forgiving and not terribly surprised.

Cowboy Wonderful seemed surprised though.


"How could you not see this girl?"


Now I'm embarrassed and totally mortified. He must mean I'm really hard to miss because I'm so freaking tall and just about nearly as wide. He's holding my hand and dancing with me out of some kind of joke. I know I'm down four dress sizes but apparently I have a long way to go before I'm no longer an obstacle so large I apparently have my own gravitational pull, and like many other large objects in space, completely invisible, only this is what happens to unattractive overweight women on earth too...


"Most beautiful girl in the place and you don't see her? Jesus buddy - you're wasted."

Or maybe I've got it wrong.


I'm 34 years old and I'm kind of past making out with hot guys in bars...ah fuck it. I grabbed Cowboy Wonderful and I kissed him so hard and so long it's quite possible we now share combined DNA.

It wasn't really surprising then that when he walked me outside to make sure I got safely into a taxi that he suddenly expressed concern and confusion over how he was going to get home. He lived far out of the city...his buddy has a hotel room somewhere...he doesn't have a key...how about he just comes home with me.

Yah-huh.

I kind of thought this would happen. The majority of my hallucinations do end in sex, if they're any good, and so I should have been better prepared. I had about ten seconds to think of something witty and charming that could convey even a trace of the whirlwind emotions I was suddenly facing.

"I am not fucking you," is what I settled on. Charming has never really been my thing. I told him he may even be relegated to the couch.

Cowboy Wonderful said that's perfectly fine. He's not about that anyway, and he's not just some creep who's only out for that, not like other guys.

Yah-huh.

Fine, I said. Grab us a taxi.