“A guy strides right up to me and pokes me in the middle of my chest. “Are you a female?” he squints at me. “Kind of,” I tell him. “What kind of an answer is that? he asks me. “What kind of a question is that?” I ask him back, and then add, “And what kind of man goes around poking strangers in the chest anyway?” He nods his head, like he agrees with me on that point. Then he gets into a black and navy blue late seventies El Camino and drives away. I have a choice: to feel pissed off that he touched me like that, talked to me like that, or vaguely triumphant that he seemed to reconsider his behavior, at least, if not apologize. I pick triumph. It was almost sunny that January morning and way too early in the day to turn my day the wrong way. I am a witness to a hit-and-run-accident. It is dark and raining. A sports car hits a pedestrian and then screeches away. I call an ambulance, wait with the older woman while it comes. A policeman takes my name and phone number and address and writes them in his book. He narrows his eyes at me under the knife shape of light coming from the streetlight above us. He appears to be considering something. “Do you, uh, have a gender?” he asks me. “Yes, I do,” I tell him. A long couple of seconds of silence hang in the dark between us. “No need to be smart about anything. Are we going to have a problem here?” His words are clipped, severe, like his brushcut. “Hey,” I said, “I’m the witness here. I stuck around, I called you guys. I thought I was the good guy.” “Well we can change that in a second if you don’t co-operate,” he informs me. “I am female,” I tell him. “You’re sure about that now?” he asks me. I don’t say anything. “That’s better,” he says. I am out to dinner with my sweetheart. She is wearing a little black dress and a rhinestone bracelet, and I am in a shirt and tie and dress pants. The waiter keeps mercilessly referring to both of us as ladies. Can I get you ladies some more coffee? Are you ladies going to have dessert? Can I bring you ladies the bill? I am obviously anything but a lady. I realize that the English language is sadly devoid of names for people like me. I try to cut the world some slack for this every day. All day. And the day after that, too. But the truth is that every time I am misgendered, a tiny little sliver of me disappears. A tiny little sliver of me is reminded that I do not fit, I am not this, I am not that, I am not seen, I can’t be recognized, I have no name. I remember that the truth of me is invisible, and a tiny little sliver of me disappears. Just a sliver, razored from the surface of my very thick skin most days, but other times right from my soul, sometimes felt so deep and other days simply shrugged off, but still. All those slivers add up to something much harder to pretend around.”
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
