by Suzi Parker
kickin’ it with skirtman
Skirt Lengths and Liberals
LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS – For months, Skirtman eluded me.”You know the guy I’m talking about,” a friend insisted. “He has these great muscular legs, better than any woman I know, and wears these really short skirts.”No, I could honestly say I had never seen such a creature. And in Little Rock, someone described like this wouldn’t get easily lost in the crowd.One summer afternoon, at the opening of a new patio for a local restaurant, I spotted him. The first thing that caught my eye was his wardrobe -a silver lame minidress that would have made Diana Ross and the Supremes pea-green with envy. He pranced around the restaurant in his shimmering getup, his aerobicized tanned legs accented by stiletto heels. He carried a cute vintage handbag that screamed Doris Day.
Every person in the restaurant, and I do mean every one, stopped and stared, but Skirtman walked around as if he was sporting cargo shorts and a T-shirt. He grabbed a packet of sugar and walked back to the table where he sat happily sipping his coffee, his legs daintily crossed. A B-list Hollywood television star with Arkansas connections who happened to be in the coffee shop freaked when he saw Skirtman. Surely, I thought, he had seen such men in La-La Land where he lived.
“You won’t believe this, but that guy is famous,” the Hollywood star said, motioning to Skirtman.
“Oh yeah?” asked an obviously smitten young woman. “Yeah, a friend of mine in Paris sent me his Web site. Everyone goes to it,” he said. “Here, you’ve got to take a picture of me with him.” The TV star handed a disposable camera to the girl and walked over to Skirtman. He put his arm around him and they chatted for a few minutes. Skirtman took the situation in stride, and I’m not even sure if he realized the actor starred on television. Skirtman just acted like the local celebrity that he is, pausing for a moment to have his photo snapped with a fan.
Fact: He likes to fly kites.
Fact: He generated controversy at the university where he works by wearing a skirt.
Fact: He’s a computer geek.
Fact: His favorite ice cream is Baskin-Robbins Love Potion #31.
Fact: He has lived his entire life in Arkansas.
Fact: If he could be any Winnie-the-Pooh character, he’d be Tigger. Why? He can just enjoy whatever comes along in life.
But questions swirl about this man who prefers skirts to pants. Like, why does he wear one? I’m a girl and I hate skirts and dresses, panty hose and heels. Is Dale a transvestite? He doesn’t look like a woman, but more a like a genderblended centaur. Does he shave or wax? And what exactly is under those skirts? Boxers or briefs?
Dale orders a coffee concoction with whipped cream. “Do you mind if I go ahead and eat my whipped cream before it melts?”
“No, no,” I say, never wanting to keep a man away from something creamy and delectable.
This is the biographical info I initially learn from Dale: He was born in a Catholic hospital in little Rock and grew up as a Southern Baptist in Sylvan Hills, the kind of place that can breed redneck conformity in some and bring out latent desires in others. Like so many kids who later in life hear their nonconformity calling, high school for Dale wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences. Dale says that even in high school he longed to wear a skirt, but he didn’t.
“I wish I had. If I could go back, I’d do it,” he says.
Dale was obsessed with computers before such gadgets were cool. If he had grown up in Seattle, Washington, he could have been Bill Gates’s business partner. He admits he was a nerd. Like the majority of the state’s high school students, he went away to the big campus in the Ozarks – the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, home of the Razorbacks. His time there was limited to two years because he studied less than he partied. Dale tried on his first skirt in Fayetteville when he was nineteen but, shy and not yet confident enough, he dismissed his notion.
Dale moved on to the University of Arkansas campus in Little Rock, still wearing pants, and earned a degree in computer science. But while he was there, Dale performed some groundbreaking computer wizardry. He helped create a computer program that linked several universities in the state to each other – a forerunner of what we now call the Internet.
A bad marriage encourages unusual behavior in folks, and Dale is no exception. With his relationship disintegrating, Dale, in his midthirties, searched for an escape route from matrimony. He found it in the home of Mickey Mouse and ska and rap groups – Anaheim, California – at a computer convention surrounded by science-fiction buffs and computer know-it-alls.
“If you are going to try something, try it at a conference full of nerds. They are the least judgmental group you’ll ever see,” he says.
Among the kinder and gentler love of the technology geeks, Dale discovered his identity. He explored a new side of shopping, dismissing the men’s department and finding a fresh exciting universe in the woman’s department. Piece by piece, he morphed into Skirtman and walked boldly into the southern California computer conference.
“I figured no one was going to care, and they didn’t,” he recalls with a shrug.
Even if his fellow computer geeks didn’t give a damn about his attire, his wife certainly did. When Dale arrived home from Anaheim wearing a skirt when he exited the plane, his wife had a hissy fit. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, deal with it. And Dale? Having reached the point of no return in the relationship, he just didn’t care about saving his marriage anymore.
“She was a good little Southern Baptist girl, and it didn’t work that way. This is not how men dress down here,” Dale says.
Indeed, not. Men don’t prance around in skirts and heels in Dixie. They wear Brooks Brothers business suits and Cole Haan shoes. They like plaid flannel shirts and jeans on the weekend. They prefer collared polo shirts and starched khakis at the country club. If they are more Bubba than banker, men may wear a NASCAR or some other sportsthemed T-shirt and camouflage pants with work boots.
In Dale’s early days as Skirtman, his wardrobe was a tad more conventional. He often wore a man’s dress shirt, a tie, and a blazer with his skirts. It looked like he just accidentally picked up his wife’s skirt instead of his pants on the way out the door to the office. While his top half looked guy-normal, his bottom half was slightly off-kilter, commanding a doubletake from those who passed him. He calls those days his frumpy conservative days.
“I lost a bunch of weight so that opened up a whole new way to dress,” he says.
Boy, did it.
Nowadays he wears what he likes to see women wear – tight and revealing skirts and blouses. He calls his wardrobe “tacky,” and he loves it, especially in summer.
“You can wear less and I do,” Dale says.
Because of his high-tech savvy, Dale enjoyed serving on the church’s television ministry and making sure the sound and visual equipment were in tip-top working order. Dale also set up scripture and titles at the bottom of the screen. He often went to the church to make sure everything was ready for Sunday mornings. One Saturday, he popped into church wearing a skirt. He attended to the technology matters and left. The next day, he went to church wearing pants and ran the television switcher. None of the congregation seemed the wiser to Dale’s preferable type of attire as they shook hands and said hello. But he received a call a few days later from a prominent well-known Little Rock personality and Immanuel Baptist Church member.
“You need to separate yourself from the television ministry,” the businessman told Dale. He also instructed Dale to return a set of keys to the church office.
Dale, who once taught children Sunday school in his preSkirtman days, thought, Who cares what I wear, God doesn’t? But apparently someone did.
The next Sunday, Dale, a little perturbed by his church dissing, entered the church just like he did any Sunday of any week, but this time he wore a skirt. People looked, a few said hello, but most just pretended he wasn’t in the sanctuary. Thinking that church members were understanding, Dale attended church the next Sunday in a skirt, and this time, an usher stopped him in the foyer. Soon, an associate pastor appeared and requested that Dale not attend church in a skirt.
“What bothered me was that he took time to alert an usher to stop me when he had had the entire previous week to talk to me about it. He had my cell phone number, my home phone, work phone, pager number, e-mail . . .”
Dale trails off shaking his head. Needless to say, Immanuel Baptist officials say they don’t remember this at all, and Dale doesn’t go to church anymore, saying organized religion isn’t for him. He’s visited a few churches around the city, but more and more, Dale just doesn’t bother with religion.
‘Jesus wore a robe. I wear a skirt. What’s the big deal?”
The big deal, many people say, comes from the Bible, Deuteronomy 22:5. “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all who do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.”
Dale points out that in the same chapter, it states not to wear garments of mixed fibers such as cotton and polyester or leather and lace, and to build parapets around the edges of your roof so that no one can fall off and hurt themselves.
He’s certainly done his homework in this area.
Trouble arrived in the form of a letter written by the chain’s attorney with lots of legal mumbo jumbo. Dale had violated some sort of copyright laws by featuring the pictures on his personal Web site. Never mind, he says, that he actually bought the pictures from the restaurant. He fired a letter off to the attorney, rejecting her claims, removed the pictures for a while, and went on with his life.
“I think it was because I had a skirt on,” he says.
Probably because his legs looked better, I say. Women will put up with a lot from a man, but they draw the line at being out-gammed.
It was during the university controversy that Dale became known as Skirtman when a local television station coined the term, and his life hasn’t been the same since. His business cards even have SKIRTMAN printed on them, and his credit card has a picture of himself in a skirt.
“I know it’s a no-no in February to wear white shoes, but I don’t care. I can wear white shoes if I want, if I am wearing a red skirt and a tight tank top,” he says.
I laugh. Chatting for a few minutes, I mention there is a drag show at Vino’s, a pizza dive downtown. Interestingly enough, Dale says he doesn’t like drag shows, but he is ready to head to the party. Skirtman doesn’t like drag shows? Go figure. Too much competition, perhaps? Dale drives a sparkly silver sports car with a vanity license plate that reads SKRTMAN. Cute. One thing can be said about Dale: He likes who he is.
The party, held in a box-shaped World War II-era home in a part of town known for its Dick-and-Jane quaintness, is in full-throttle when we arrive. A few men in their early twenties gawk at Dale as we walk up the concrete path, but they say or whisper nothing. Once inside, everyone smiles and introduces themselves. It doesn’t take more than ten minutes to realize one thing: Dale will be the hit of the party.
My prediction is correct-o-mundo. The women love him like he’s Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They ask him about his outfit, gush over his funky little tank top, and pepper him with questions about his wardrobe. Nearly every female in the room wants her picture taken with Dale. He obliges, gobbling up every second of the attention like a PMSing woman devouring chocolate kisses.
A newly elected male legislator who is learning the political ropes of Arkansas keeps staring at Dale with goofy wide eyes but doesn’t really talk to him. Not a good way to get a vote, even from a man in a skirt. A few other boy guests shake his hand and chat him up like he is the next political hotshot. Dale flirts and floats around the party like he is Zeus, and I stand around watching, munching on some fruit and cheese. He passes out business cards and makes a lot of new friends. By the end of the night, Dale owns the party. I half-expected someone to be appalled. Perhaps that would have happened if I had taken him to a Republican shindig.
Another time, Dale and a date both dressed in skirts while they were in Dallas. The date, who looked babelicious in her micromini and sexy high heels, stood at the bar waiting for a table. Dale was standing near a couple of guys listening to them talk about how hot his date was. When the hostess called their names for the table, Dale and his date connected and walked away together.
“It totally threw them off. They weren’t expecting that at all,” Dale recalls, laughing.
Still, if Dale lived in a more progressive non-Southern city, his dating prospects might be more open-minded and tolerant of his dress habits.
“Most women in Arkansas haven’t been out of the state, so to them I’m that weirdo,” he says. “I like the way I dress, but it’s definitely hurts my ability to get a date. Down here, the male is the one who asks for the date, not the female, and I’m bad about meeting people.”
That’s why Dale has posted his dating resume online. His qualifications?
- Capable of compiling lists of why women should go out with me.
- It does not bruise my ego to have a woman do something that is traditionally considered “man’s work.” ??? I am gainfully employed and have a comfortable lifestyle.
- Too honest for my own good.
- Willing to be strict or a pushover as necessary.
- Able to write Web pages that make women laugh.
- Not usually thought of as a “boring and unattractive blob of organic matter. “
If women saw Dale’s legs, they certainly wouldn’t consider him a blob of anything.
“I said you can wear this dress, but they didn’t think they had the body to pull it off. Of course, they could have worn it,” he said. “Some of my outfits just wouldn’t work on someone a size 28W. In other cases, it is simply that they have been conditioned to think that only someone with a perfect body should show it off. I think our culture tends to make women insecure about their bodies. I wish that was not the case, because I like to look.”
Dale says he thinks some of the women like what he wears and find it sexy. But in their real lives, they wouldn’t dare strut about town in his getups for fear of being labeled slutty. Other women tend to be more practical than Dale, who is as far from that as I am from starting for the Razorback football team.
One of Dale’s shortest skirts is twelve inches from waist to hem. Yes, that’s shorter than the skirts go-go dancers used to wear on Laugh-In. His latest purchase from eBay makes me look twice and giggle. It’s a pink sweater skirt with knitted white hearts at the bottom and a matching pink sweater vest with knitted white teddy bears on it. White teddy bear buttons accent the ensemble. Dale is giddy about the purchase.
“If I am going to stir things up, I might as well do a good job,” he says, holding the small skirt – a junior size 11 – up to himself.
If the pink girlie outfit doesn’t make people look three times, certainly Dale’s swimsuit will – a skimpy red suspender one-piece thong with a cup for his private package. Dale wears the suit wherever he can get away with it, but seldom at a public pool, he says. Initially, the swimsuit was a shocking hot pink, but Dale thought that was too wild for even him. He decided to dye the garment red before going to a foam party at a local club. Dale goes to foam parties? The thought boggles my mind. Pulling clothes from his closet, I feel like I’m visiting Auntie Mame instead of a university teacher with a penchant for skirts.
Soon, it is time for me to leave Dale’s house. As I get ready to leave, he flips on the porch light and watches me walk to the car to make sure I get in it safely. He stands on the side patio, waving, just like my mom and dad, until I am out of sight. It’s a reflection of normalcy, I think on my drive back into the city lights, of how Dale Miller aka Skirtman is like any other Arkansan. Albeit with better legs.