Pronoun Check on Register #4, Drag Queens and being an Emissary of Satan.
Everyone reacts to me differently.
So, there I was, dressed like a 90s video game sex demon.
I stumbled out of one of the laughably few gay clubs left in this town. You know the sort. It’s one of those clubs that historically have been full to the brim with glorious faggots, queens, dykes, and god… just fucking QUEERSSSSSS!!!!! But this nightspot advertises themselves as merely “queer-friendly.” I guess the “twenty-something girlie who wants to dance unmolested with her friends while her boyfriend necks beers with nothing to do” dollar is too hard to pass up?
A churning crowd of heterosexuals undulated by. There were some strong reactions. But nothing bad. From hoof to horn, I was about seven feet tall. That coupled with the neckline plunging near to navel, the thighs bared to the night air, the gleaming mirror-bright chain-mail, I can understand that maybe I stood out a little? Maybe I was too far afield of the standard beige-chinos-blue-shirt combo of heteronormativity? I can understand how some young men gave a little gasp when they looked up from their late-night stumble to the cab rank and found me gazing down at them. I’m not surprised one of them even muttered the word “mother?” and another bellowed to the night sky, “Now THAT is my taste!”
I won’t lie, it was a delight.
A terrifying goth trans woman, covered in mail and spikes and boots perfect for crushing you underfoot? From my time on the internet, I can tell you that this package is absolutely what some would call a “dream come true.” I’d have been happy to stay immersed in that crowd of loving, though a little creepy, adoration but the night was wearing thin and even giant goth demons need their sleep. It had been a wonderful night and the whole thing was only slightly diminished when the cab driver refused to take me because… get this…
He “won’t take Satan.”
I stood at the taxi rank, head of the queue. The two Indian blokes marshalling us drunken, nocturnal miscreants of the Valley looked from the cab driver leaning out the window. They were as surprised as I was. They looked over at me, well, actually, they looked UP at me. Like I said… seven-foot-tall sex demon… at a loss for what to do. I leaned down to the cab driver, certain I’d misheard, “What was that?” He leaned out further into the thumping night, steadfastly refusing eye contact. Presumably, I was going to steal his soul if he gazed into my eyes. “I won’t TAKE Satan!” he repeated before retreating to the safety of his vehicle and rolling up the window. Honestly, if I were an emissary of Satan, your car window isn’t going to stop me. So, I looked down at the Indian blokes. They looked up at me. We all shrugged, and I went to the next cab and went home.
Strange night, but it’s nice to have my corrupting power acknowledged for a change.
Early in my transition, I was navigating the difficulty of women’s fashion. I found myself tentatively creeping into the ladies’ section at department stores. Or shoe shops. Or fit wear outlets. At every turn, I expected some gatekeeper of femininity to leap out. A gnarled crone with the face of my year five teacher, Mrs. Hill, ready to twist my arm behind my back and frog-march me out of the store for daring to invade women’s spaces. Of course, that never happened, and even if it did, I’m not the sort of person that’s easily moved. What I found was that most people are quite happy to help the burly, six-foot trans woman in their never-ending (and often fruitless) search for just the right fit.
Picture it: a near 100 kg, powerlifting body. Thick in the middle like a rugby player, strolling into a shoe store and looking at black patent-leather heels. I mean, I had no fucking clue. Firstly, these shoes would never have supported this mass. They are literally designed to be worn by people half my weight. But still, I pressed on. The only thing holding back the tide of a full-blown public freakout was my vice-like grip on my wife’s hand.
Tentatively, the shop assistant came over.
The sort of woman who makes you think of your divorced, middle-aged aunties who’d let you sneak sips of Shiraz (on ice) at the family barbecue when you were a teenager. Certainly nothing like the hatchet-faced embodiment of the long-dead primary school teacher, but instead a face of kindness. At first, she thought I was buying the shoes for someone else—a natural assumption. I did that thing where you can tell someone hasn’t cottoned on to the situation. That thing where you don’t do it explicitly but instead drop clues so obvious they feel like they clang when they hit the floor. Clues dropped so that the person you are talking to can pick them up, and everyone can pretend like they understood the situation the whole time.
“I find it so hard to find my size,” I told her. “I’m just outside of the usual size range.”
Which is true; the only places that consistently stock an 11 (that isn’t razor-thin narrow) are the places that only do so in a $3.50 sneaker. If I were one size smaller, just one, god my wardrobe would be so fucking different.
Like most things in transition, “so close, yet so far”.
I saw the light of recognition in my surrogate wine-aunt’s eyes. She gets it. She sees who, nay “what,” I am. “Oh, yeah, I can imagine it might be difficult,” she coos. “You know, there were some other… of your… who were here the other day. They looked fabulous.” She is struggling to find the words. I smile and grip my wife’s hand even harder. “They looked great. Gosh, I don’t know how they get so talented to be able to sing and dance like that.”
Oh.
She thinks I’m a drag queen.
I don’t quite remember how it all played out. I’m sure I did that thing where my face goes rigid, a smile locked in place, nodding affably while inside I’m screaming.
A couple of weeks ago, I stood in the grocery checkout queue. Decades of undiagnosed ADHD have eliminated my ability to just stand and wait for anything. So, I just talk to people around me. The lady behind me was negotiating with her toddler. A steely-eyed tot who was chewing on a green bean like Clint Eastwood chewing on his black cheroot cigar, eyeing me off like maybe I’d moseyed into these here parts fixin’ to cause trouble. Thank god the kid's mother didn’t mind the comparison, or else I’d have been run out of Dodge.
When it came to my turn with the clerk, he was only too happy to continue the chat as he rang up the items. This kid, a teenager probably, or only just having run the dials over into his 20s, stopped mid-sentence. Without a shadow of self-consciousness, he asked, “How do you identify?” There was a moment where I felt caught, worried something awful was about to unfold. I stared back, examining his face. Among the fading shadows of acne, an awkward haircut, and features that had yet to fully fill out, I saw… nothing. No malice. No ill intent. Just a kid treating me with the dignity necessary to educate himself with a respectful question. “She/Her,” I told him. He smiled back at me and we all continued to talk about the littlest sheriff in tiny-town who was still overseeing the entire encounter.
Everyone reacts to me differently.
Sometimes it’s too exhausting to even catalogue it in an entertaining anecdote. The friendly guy who wanted to pat my dog as I sat outside the café with one of my boys. It was a lovely encounter. All the way up to when he said, “You fellas have a great day,” and then left. Or when the staff at the bank, calling up central office to inquire why my loan documents are still not processed, say into the phone, “He… SHE submitted the paperwork weeks ago.” There are times when I have so little energy I walk through the world thinking, “Hurry up and just hate-crime me already! Get it over with! I’m tired of waiting for it to happen!”
There’s that ADHD impatience again.
In the three stories above—the terrified-Christian-cab-driver, the surrogate-wine-aunt-shoe-saleswoman, and the checkout-clerk-slash-deputy-to-the-sheriff-of-tiny-town—only one of them hurt. Believe it or not, it wasn’t the guy who thought I was the embodiment of the devil. I think I’d rather be accused of evil than have someone hum and haw and fall over their words. I’d rather someone look at me with disgust than look at me with terror for the embarrassment they were about to cause. Terror born out of their fear of saying the wrong thing. I want y’all to know that we can see it. We can see the pants-shitting fear. We can see that moment when your stomach goes cold, and your bowels turn to water. When the voice inside your head goes, “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.” Honestly, be like the kid who rang up my groceries.
Just ask.
Treating transgender people with dignity while you educate yourself isn’t hard. I want to be acknowledged, I want to be seen, and for people to understand. No one expects perfection. I come from the world of theatre. When you flub your lines, you don’t stop the show. You don’t draw attention to it. You keep going. You keep fucking talking, you correct where you need to, and you keep the fucking show going. It was only a flub. Nothing to be wracked with guilt over. Just make sure that tomorrow night when the curtain goes up you did a little more prep. It’s okay if you still stumble over that line, if you still get caught up on how it sounds. Just don’t stop the damn show for everyone else because you feel bad not being perfect.
Because unlike theatre, there will always be another night for you to get it right.
– S