05/23/08
I was sitting in my new office later this afternoon. My mobile phone rang. I saw that it was a “restricted” number. Initially, I was concerned that it might be some sort of emergency and someone I cared about was calling from a hospital or something.

I took a deep breathe and answered.

“Hello, this is Lauri, can I help you?” I normally don’t answer like that. Weird.

“Um,yeah, if you hate the transsexuals so much, you should shave your face you stupid fucking bitch!”

Seriously? Who does that? I know third graders more mature than that. I am pretty sure I know who this person was. I am aware of why she is angry with me. But still, be an adult. There is no need to be so hateful and attempt to intimidate me.

Thank God I have dealt with my gender issues to the extent that I have and that I no longer allow such mean spirited comments to impact me the way that they used to. The shock of this phone call and accusation was certainly startling. I forget in my day to day life that the average person doesn’t know how to process ‘me’. They tend to fear me and judge me upon first interaction and, to their detriment, don’t get the opportunity to know me and appreciate having me in their lives.

So I send out some good energy to all the gender bender folks out there who don’t fit the mold we are told to fit and who are subject to hatred, judgment and physical or verbal assaults for just being themselves…

We went to a Halloween party Friday night.  We got invited months ago.  A friend of mine was the host/party planner.  It was a fundraiser for a good cause and I wanted to support her hard work.  However, I was anxious, like normal, about going to an event with a lot of people, most of whom would be strangers.  Then it occurred to me that I could wear a mask and nobody would be able to look at me. 

If they can’t see my face or my body then they can’t judge whether or not they think I am male or female.  If they aren’t trying to make that judgment – they won’t have to react awkwardly or negatively towards me if they think I am not conforming to my given gender appropriately enough for their standards.

Even though I “knew” that having a costume on would be safer for me; I was pleasantly surprised at how true this actually was.  Right away, walking in the door, instead of the usual questioning and potentially judgmental looks, nobody batted an eye that Darth Vader was walking in.

I was fully dressed in black.  I had on black boots, black pants, a black turtle neck and button down shirt, and a thin black stocking cap on.  The Darth Vader mask covered my face.  My black cloak with the hood up finished off the outfit of darkness.  I really felt like I had an ‘invisibility cloak’ covering me.  Granted, I was noticed walking through the crowd – but not for the same reasons as normal.

Interestingly enough though, the costume caused other problems.  Like, I could hardly see out of the eye area on the mask, everything was a blur.  I noticed eventually that my hearing was also impaired with the mask on.  So I was able to walk around and not have to worry about people’s reactions to my lack of gender congruity – the only problem was that I had to walk around worried that I would run into someone and that I couldn’t understand what anyone said to me.

All the more reason to stand pretty much in one place.  We found a couple of our friends.  Feeling safe enough around the people I knew, I was able to lift my mask and see and hear them while we chatted.  I have to admit though that it was highly comforting to know and be able to flip the mask down anytime a stranger approached.

With my costume on, I was able to simply be part of the crowd.  I was one of the many who had put time and energy into a costume.  I was one of the many who were enjoying taking on a different persona for the evening.  I was a recognizable character.  Even though I was “scary” looking given who I was representing… I was just part of the crowd.  I was not a threat to anyone’s reality of how men and women are supposed to act or behave.

Besides, Halloween had the added bonus that it is certainly a holiday that it is acceptable to play the part of the opposite gender without warranting a negative reaction.  Not only would people assume I was a man in my Darth costume, they would not freak out if they found out I was a woman instead.

Boys can dress like girls on Halloween.  Girls can dress like boys on Halloween.

Wollner can fit in amongst strangers on Halloween.

 And carry a light saber…

I woke up on Saturday morning and oriented myself as much as possible, walking carefully on the unfamiliar carpet of the hotel floor, hoping not to run into the desk or anything.  My feet hit the colder tile floor in the bathroom and I made my way to the toilet.  That is when I opened my eyes.  The lights were out but some sun was sneaking into the room enough that I was able to see one of the hotel glasses on the floor in front of me, upside down.   It was too dark to make out what or if there was something inside of the glass.  I saw a blurr but couldn’t tell what I was seeing.  My brain was swirling around slowly with thoughts about the happy hour from the previous night and what I wanted to do with myself for the day.  Mostly though, I was excited to crawl back into the king size bed and watch TV.  Trudy was working and I was alone for the day.  Or so I thought.  I got up and, while I washed my hands, I noticed a note from Trudy.  She wrote “Don’t let the cockroach out!  I want management to see this thing!”  Sure enough, with the light on, I could see the cockroach.  It was magnified somewhat by the clear glass it was trapped under, and it was huge.  It was at least two inches in length, and pretty thick.  I wasn’t going to let this little creature ruin my time in the fancy hotel and went about my goal of lounging and ordering room service.  There was a TV mounted into the wall above the faucet in the tub so I was pleasantly unaware, for the most part, of the cockroach in the room with me.

When Trudy called to check in she asked me if I could take care of that situation.  She still wanted management to see it.  I too thought that this would be helpful for the hotel to have the evidence of this creature to share with their pest control folks so I called the front desk.  A woman answered “how can I help you?”

“I’m not sure but there is a huge cockroach… (she gasped and hardly let me finish my sentence) in our room.”

“I’ll send an engineer up right away.”

I picked things up somewhat around the room.  I finished getting dressed for the day.  I paced.  It wasn’t “right away” in my opinion by a long shot but I don’t really officially know how long it took.  Finally, there was a knock on the door.  I found myself reaching for it for the second time (room service earlier) without using the peephole or hesitating in any way prior to opening the door.  I am way too trusting sometimes.

This white man, whom I would guess to be in his mid to late fifties walked in.  He was talking on a two-way radio.  I walked into the bathroom, hoping he would follow, and pointed to the upside-down glass on the floor.  He finished his conversation, grabbed a “welcome…” card from the sink area and attempted to slide it under the cup to get the cockroach. 

He picked it up, the glass that is, and he dropped the cockroach.  He quickly caught the cockroach.  I gave him something sturdier to put under the cup and was trying to suggest he use the paper lid that came on the cup to secure it -when he dropped the cockroach again.  This time, he trapped it between his two boots and preceded to squoosh it and then stomp on it, smashing it down.  He grabbed a tissue and dumped it into the toilet.  He grabbed another tissue and wiped up the remainder of the guts from the floor and his boots.

As he was leaving he said, in all sincerity, “Have a nice day sir”.

I was NOT horrified, as in years past, by being called “sir”.  Instead, I wondered what kind of a man he thought I was – wondering what kind of a wimp he thought I was that I couldn’t squoosh the cockroach myself.  He didn’t seem to have those dots connected either.  It was very normal, for him, that I was “sir” and didn’t register to him that I should be ‘man enough’ to kill the cockroach myself.

I was embarrassed about that.  I wanted to explain that I assumed management would indeed want to see it, that they would want evidence of this unwelcome visitor among us.  I wanted to say I could have killed the cockroach on my own had I known that was all his engineer skills were going to provide for me.  I wanted to say that I wasn’t afraid of the cockroach.  Instead, I thanked him and told him to have a nice day too.

I suppose that, later in the day, he might have laughed about the “gay guy” that he had to rescue from the cockroach.  I was embarrassed but this was better than feeling threatened.

When I left the hotel, the male staff members holding open the door called me “sir”.

When I got a visit from my friend Isabella, now five years old but nearly six, she whispered (loudly) in her mother’s ear to ask if I was a boy or a girl.  She said I had a mustache so that means I am a boy.  The good thing about her though is that I was able to give her an answer to her question and we moved on.

Trudy invited me for drinks with her co-workers when she finished work for the day.  I found myself standing outside in an alley (smoking a cigarette) behind a bar downtown with three other “real men”/”strait men” who were beer-drinkin’, hammer-usin’, sports-watchin’, go-to-strip-clubs men.  Two of them knew me (they work with Trudy) but one of them was a complete stranger.  It never occurred to him that I was not ‘one of the guys’.  This had the added twist of having to talk about sex when he asked me what I did for a living.

“What do you do for a living man?” he asked.

“I work at an AIDS service organization.”

“My son doesn’t use condoms…”

I am convinced, although admittedly I cannot be certain, that this man never once caught on that I was a woman.  He was the type who might have reacted poorly had he figured this out.

I got called “sir” every time I went to and from the hotel all day long.  I couldn’t really count actually how many times my gender was misinterpreted or questioned today.  It was “Sir Saturday” apparently.

Was it the baseball cap?

How do they miss my breasts?  My voice?  My hands, fingers, rings…?

I don’t mind… like I used to…

I am not trying for this reaction.  I am not sure what to do with it all when it happens.  What I do know is that I felt safer today than normal around the strangers who simply assumed I was a man.  And that was interesting to notice.