One in Every Crowd (16 page)

I CAN ONLY SURMISE FROM OUR RECENT INTERACTION that I startled you in the women's washroom at the mall today. I guess I don't look much like what you seem to think a female washroom user should. This is not the first time this has happened to me; in fact, this was not the first time this has happened to me this week. Forgive me if I was not as patient with you as you seemed to feel I should have been, but I would like to point out that your high pitched squeal startled me, and I needed to urinate very badly. Perhaps I was not as gracious as I could have been.

To ensure that the next time this happens to you, or me, things go more smoothly for everyone involved, I have jotted down a couple of notes for your reference.

Not everyone fits easily into one of the two options provided on your standard public washroom doors. In my world, gender is a spectrum, not a binary. Just because an individual does not present as what you feel a woman should look like, does not mean that they do not belong there. Public washrooms are just that: public. This means that you do not get to decide whom you share them with. I would like to remind you that everyone, regardless of their gender identity or presentation, needs to pee.

For some of us, public washrooms are stressful places. We generally avoid them whenever possible. Please, rest assured that if I have chosen to enter a public washroom in spite of my long and arduous history with them, that I have taken the time to carefully note which door I am about to walk into, and that I am confident I have chosen the lesser of two evils. I am, in fact, hyper aware of which bathroom I am in. It is not necessary for you to stare at me, pointedly refer to the graphic on the door, or discuss my decision loudly with your companions. Gawking, elbowing your friend, and repeatedly clearing your throat are also not helpful. Trust me, I will be in and out as quick as is humanly possible.

The next time this happens to you, I would like you to think twice before screaming. I would like you to imagine what it feels like to be me. Imagine being screeched at by a perfect stranger. Now imagine being screeched at when you really need to pee, or your tampon gave out twenty minutes ago. Sucks, doesn't it?

I want you to know that I understand wanting to feel safe from men while using the bathroom in a public place. This is, in fact, the primary reason I don't just use the other bathroom. That, and I have a very delicate sense of smell, and don't like returning filthy toilet seats to the down position.

I also would like you to know that trans and gender queer people suffer from many more bladder infections, urinary tract issues, and general pee-related health problems than the general population. I humbly ask you to consider why this might be the case.

I would also like you to know that I have had the great pleasure of spending time with a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old tomboy lately. Both young girls have experienced serious bullying at school and day camp over their gender presentation, especially in and around the question of gendered bathrooms. They have both come home from school in tears, and one of them even quit science camp because of it. Hearing that these two sweet, kind, amazing children have both already experienced “the bathroom problem” that I so often face myself not only broke my heart, it enraged me. I feel that this type of bullying has impeded their ability to access a public education, and impacted their desire to participate in valuable activities outside of school as well. I would like you to consider how this might affect their self-esteem, their grades, and their sense of self-worth. I remind you that they are just little kids. They are only in elementary school, and it has started already. Not such a little thing after all, is it?

I ask you to forgive me my impatience with you at the mall today. But how could I possibly not think of my two little friends, and feel anything but rage?

See, when you scream at me without thinking in the women's washroom, you are implicating yourself in a rigid, two-party gender system that tells others that it is okay to discriminate against people like me. Even little children who are like me. This is the very same attitude that results in queer youth suicides, and high school murderers being acquitted because the dead boy asked for it by wearing a skirt and makeup. It is this same attitude that turns its head when trans women are shot at by off duty police officers, and denied services at women's shelters. It is this kind of sentiment that says it is okay to deny us housing, or a job, or the right to adopt children or dance on a freaking reality television show. If you think I am making any of this up, then I encourage you to open up your newspaper and have another look.

I would like to remind you that this very same two-party gender system is enforced on me and others like me everyday, policed by people just like you. It starts very young, and sometimes is subtle, as small as a second look on the way out of a bathroom stall, but sometimes it is deafening, and painful, and violent, even murderous.

So, the next time you meet up with someone like me in the ‘ladies room,' please think twice before screaming. I am not there by accident. In fact, I spent a lot more time looking at the sign on the door than you ever have.

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I WAS BACKSTAGE AT A little music festival with my friend and guitar player, Richard. It was a breezy blue-skied July day, drawing quite a decent crowd for a small town. I pulled back the velvet curtain a crack to have a sneak peek at our audience. The entire first row was a beefy, bleeding, tattooed wall of biker-looking types. I swallowed and pulled the curtain back.

“Rico …” I whispered. “I think we’re gonna have to change up our set a little. I think maybe we need to drop the Francis story and do the fishing story instead.”

The Francis story was a tale about a little boy who liked to wear dresses. I thought maybe a less faggy, more fishing-oriented piece might go over a little better with this crowd.

Richard took a deep breath and gave me his I-am-about-to-tell-you-something-for-your-own-good look.

“First of all,” he began, “the truck is parked right backstage. Second, artists are always allowed to talk about stuff that other people would get punched out for bringing up, remember? It’s part of the deal.”

I nodded, because this was true. Richard inhaled again, obviously not finished yet.

“But most important of all is, don’t be a chicken, Coyote. Have some balls. What, you only going to tell that story to people who don’t need to hear it?”

“You bastard.” I smiled at him.

He shrugged. He knew me. Knew what to say to activate my stubborn streak.

The biggest and most bad-assed-looking of the bikers stood there in the front row, his veiny forearms crossed over his black t-shirt, for the first ten minutes of my set. He even laughed here and there, the skin around his eyes crinkling into well-worn crow’s feet every time he smiled. I started to relax a little, and when I started the first couple of lines of the Francis story, Richard tipped his head in my direction in approval and played like an angel beside me.

Halfway through the story, I watched the gigantic man in the front row start to unpeel himself right in front of me. First he uncrossed his arms and let them fall to his sides. Then he bit his lower lip, and his handlebar moustache began to quiver a little. By the end, he was crying giant man-sized tears, unabashedly letting them roll down his dusty cheeks and disappear into his beard. He almost got me choked up too, just watching him. I was used to the drag queens losing it in the last couple of paragraphs of the Francis story, but this was something else altogether.

After, when Richard and I were loading gear into the back of his pick-up, I looked up and he was standing next to the table that held the cheese trays and the juice cooler, waiting to talk to me.

He rushed toward me and picked me right up off the ground in a cigar-scented hug. When he let me back down to the ground, he still held both of my hands in his baseball glove-sized hands, squeezing them until it almost hurt.

“I just had to thank you. Just had to tell you how much that story you told meant to me.” He pulled me up close to him, and lowered his voice a couple of decibels. “My baby brother James died from AIDS, ten years ago tomorrow. My only brother. I loved him like crazy when we were kids, but my dad … well … let’s just say the old man wasn’t very flexible in his beliefs about certain things. He never understood Jamie, right from the get-go, and Christ, he was hard on the kid. Beat the living shit out of him one time when he caught him wearing my sister Donna’s lipstick. Finally kicked him out when Jamie was fifteen. Nobody knew, back then, and by the time we did, it was too late. I never stuck up for him, never said a word, and to this day I have never forgiven myself for it. My baby brother, out on the street. How else was he going to get by? He was only a kid.”

He looked me right in the eyes. By this time, both of us were crying.

“He was the sweetest fucking kid in the world. Your little friend in that story reminded me of James. There were five of us kids, but he was always my mom’s favourite. The old man blamed her, said she babied him, but we all knew he was just born like that. That was just who he always was.” He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes on the hair on the back of his hands. Looked a bit sheepish all of a sudden. “Anyways, just wanted to thank you for that. Good stuff.”

Then he shook my hand and was gone. I’ve never forgotten him, and I imagine him standing behind me whenever I find myself scared of the next story I am about to tell, or afraid of the people I’m about to tell it to.

Last week I walked into a classroom at the college in Powell River, to tell stories to a bunch of Adult Education students. Working-class town, working-class guys all lined up in the back row. I found myself wishing with my whole heart I had not chosen to wear a paisley dress shirt that morning. What was I thinking?

Then I took a deep breath and told them a story. I started with the one about my dad. The one where I had almost given up wishing he would quit drinking, but then one day he did. Afterward, this guy with biceps the size of my thighs came up and thanked me. He had sleeve tattoos and could barely squeeze his muscles into his white Stanfield crewneck.

“I really liked the one about your dad,” he explained. “I could totally relate to him. I used to be a welder, too.”

IT WAS A FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SUNNY AND LAZY. I ran into my friend Sir coming out of her apartment building, and we went for a coffee. She grabbed a table outside on the deck in the warm sun and I went inside for two Americanos.

I squeezed past the lady in the hippie dress and sat beside Sir and her cowboy hat, across from two biker types and their overfilled ashtray. Sir passed me a piece of the newspaper.

“Business section?” I asked her. “What am I gonna do with this? Check my stocks?” She passed me the New Homes, smiling. “Smart ass,” I said. “At least give me the Lower Mainland bit. Don’t make me roll up Fashion and pummel you with it.”

She passes me the front page. A true friend, indeed.

“It’s not the same as inside,” the bigger of the two bikers laments. “Inside there is a code, you know, a way of being that makes sense … then when you get out …”

“It’s an adjustment,” his buddy nods. “Took me over a year to be able to sleep past six a.m. Ate pork chops every Tuesday for a while, until I got used to Tuesday isn’t pork chop night for the whole planet. You’ve only been out a coupla weeks. It gets better. When’s your kid gonna be here?”

“Ten after.”

The second guy stands, extends his hand. Slaps the other guy on the shoulder. They half-hug, awkward. “So I’ll make a move, leave you to it. Take care, buddy. Same time, next week?”

My face is hidden behind pictures of Iraqi prisoners. I can’t face the news; instead I am eavesdropping on a rare bonding moment between these two men. I sneak a peek at Sir. She is watching the second man disappear around the corner; his wallet is wearing through the denim of his right back pocket, the chain swinging, smokes, cell phone, and truck keys in hand. The sound of his boots on pavement fades with him. She smiles at me. We were both witness.

A tall, pimply boy gets off the bus and crosses the street. He squints into the sun, holds up a knuckly hand across his eyes. He jumps over the guardrail and slumps into the empty chair. He is all right angles and straight lines. His feet seem impossibly big in brand new white runners. One shin is road-rashed and picked.

The biker leans across the table to hug him, the kid moves to meet him and knocks over a half-empty bottle of apple juice. His father catches it before it hits the table.

“Sorry, Dad.”

His dad smiles and surveys the boy. “You look great. I think you’re finally taller than your father.”

“By three-quarters of an inch.” The boy raises his eyebrows and grins.

“Your mom?” Dad is staring at his fingernails.

“She’s good. You staying at Uncle John’s?”

“For a while. I’m looking at a place this weekend. There’s a skatepark a block away. I’m getting a pull-out couch for you.”

They talk like this for a while. I’m smoking and getting involved in the sorry state of the planet, enough so I’m almost not eaves­dropping anymore, until I hear the man ask his kid if he’s having any luck with the ladies.

The kid swallows, his oversize Adam’s apple plunging in discomfort. He shakes his head. “There was that one chick from Kelowna, remember? She was staying at her Grandma’s? That was a while ago …”

“That was last summer, little dude. School’s almost out again.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not like you. Girls don’t like me too much, mostly. I don’t have the magic touch like you.”

“It’s not a magic touch. You want to know my secret? My fail-proof method?”

The kid leans forward. Behind my newspaper, I find I have leaned forward too. Sir has cocked her head, too. We are all waiting.

“Let me just grab myself another coffee, and I’ll tell you all about it. Hold that thought. You still drinking iced tea?”

The kid nods. His dad gets up and goes inside. All three of us sit back, impatient. I watch him make his way back to our table. Average height. Over-size biceps. Bleeding tattoos. Not an ugly man by any stretch, but, as my aunts would say, nothing to write home about. He resumes his seat, lights an Export ’A’, and stirs his coffee with a hand that makes the spoon look like it came from an Easy-Bake Oven Set.

“Where were we?”

“You were going to tell me how to meet chicks.”

“Right. I’ll tell you the one thing that women cannot resist in a man. The one thing that will always keep them coming back for more.”

For the love of Christ, spit it out already, man
, I’m thinking.
We all need to know here.

“Listen to them.”

The kid sits up straight with a sideways glance.

“I mean, really listen. Ask her about how her day went. Be interested. Don’t just act that way, I mean really be interested in her. What she has to say, what she thinks about things.”

“And then …?”

“That’s it, son. That’s all. You’d be surprised how many guys never figure that one out, but that’s it. My big secret. Really listen to her, and then if you’re lucky, when you come home from work, there will be a good woman there. Cooking for her every once in a while never hurt a guy in the long run, either.”

The kid looks at his father. I look at Sir. Sir looks at the biker, then she meets my eyes. Again, we were both witness.

The biker drains his coffee. “C’mon, kiddo, I’ll buy you a slice.”

The two of them stand up and walk together down the block—noisy black Dayton boots and silent white runners, respectively.

Sir is shaking her head, smiling. “That was just about the sweetest thing I ever heard. Did you get all that?” she asks me.

I nod reverently.

For the first time, the lady in the hippie dress lowers her paperback and speaks up, her eyes moist and bright blue. “Now if only someone would have told my husband that, I might still own half of that cabin on Salt Spring Island.”