Variations on How It Feels Being Trans When Trans Issues Are In The News (A Non-Exhaustive List)
• Like listening to a 45-minute loop of car tires screeching on pavement, and feeling the same overload of adrenaline you’d feel if you were in an actual car skidding across the actual pavement for the entire 45 minutes
• Like walking through a cursed forest late at night knowing perfectly well that it isn’t safe but not having any other route available, and every few minutes some guys sticks his head up out of a bush and yells, “IT’S DANGEROUS OUT HERE,” as if you don’t know — as if you aren’t incredibly familiar with this cursed forest, as if you don’t walk through it every night — and then vanishes without offering any help or solutions
• Like you’re at a party, and you’re talking to an otherwise inoffensive person who is telling you something totally wrong with perfect confidence — something hideously, obviously incorrect, like “The sky is green,” or “Turtles can fly,” — and every time you open your mouth to say, “Hey, listen, that’s totally fucking wrong,” Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” starts blasting from a speaker directly next to your face
• Like putting your feet in your slippers and realizing too late that they’re both filled with corn syrup
• Like that scene in Scrubs where Cox and Jordan tie up the doctor who botched Cox’s vasectomy, and have Ted’s band (which does covers of commercial jingles) start singing “I want my baby back, baby back, baby back,” over and over, and when the doctor, desperate, is like, “Dear god, when are they going say ribs?” Cox is like, “Never. They’ll never say ribs”
• Like waking up one morning and realizing there is a large, Looney Tunesian anvil hanging over you head, suspended by exactly nothing, that follows you wherever you go, so you spend your whole day alternating between pretending it isn’t there so you can function, and nervously glancing at it while hoping desperately that this isn’t the moment it decides to fall
• Like there’s a knock on your door, and you answer it, and there’s a salesperson there like, “Hey there, have you considered having all your organs turned to liquid? It hurts a lot and you’ll die!” And when you try to explain that no, of course you’re not interested in that, the salesperson becomes very offended and wants to know if you’ve considered how selfish remaining alive with intact organs is
• Like being rear-ended while at a dead stop two minutes from your destination, and when you get out to exchange info the other driver’s all, “I can’t believe you did that, I can’t believe you hit my car,” even though they essentially drove into your parked vehicle and you did absolutely nothing wrong
• Like peeling an orange and finding nothing but beetles inside
• Like some stranger is popping up from behind corners and out of trash cans to say things like “Don’t you think there’s two sides to this issue?” and “I’m just asking questions,” about shit like your choice of outfit, or what kind of coffee you’re getting, or anything else you do, while you’re just trying to live your ridiculous little life in relative peace
• Like going to your high school reunion directly after a witch cursed you with being unable to end conversations or contradict anyone, so you just have to stand there, smile pasted on, as Melanie from eleventh grade Econ describes the most recent multi-level marketing scheme she’s fallen for
• Like a bunch of your neighbors coming to stand on your lawn, and when you’re like, “What are you doing out here?” they’re like, “We’re concerned about what you’re doing in there,” and when you’re like, “But why? It doesn’t affect you and you don’t know anything about it,” they’re like, “We’re CONCERNED”
• Like spending the day working hard in the dirt and getting covered with mud only to come home and realize your shower is broken
• Like running for your life from some monstrous threat, screaming at the top of your lungs, and everybody you run past is either like, “What a fascinating, artisanal scream; hauntingly beautiful,” or “I don’t care for that scream, and I am going to do what I can to make sure you are punished for it,” while totally ignoring the actual threat that is still actively trying to kill you
• Like trying to explain a meme containing four or more layers of obscure internet culture to the person I once worked with who thought that when you sent an email attachment the file was just gone, like sending things in the physical mail
• Like hiking up a mountain on the weight of your own determination and grit, reaching the top, slipping on a banana peel left behind by some inconsiderate litterer with no interest in the beauty you’re here to experience, and hitting every single goddamned rock on the way down
• Like having your name finally called after a long wait at the deli, but when you go to pick up your sandwich somebody slaps you with a wet fish instead
• Like posting an ad on Craigslist like “Looking for someone to buy my microwave,” and then waking up the next day to find your whole yard covered in microwaves
• Like being controlled by a Sims-style mechanism that is walking you directly towards a brick wall, and you see it, and you yell “THAT’S A BRICK WALL,” but whoever is at the helm is unconcerned, or not paying attention, or really just wants to see you run into the goddamn wall, so you keep walking, knowing with each step that it’s coming, that you’re going to run into the brick wall, it’s right there, it’s so OBVIOUS, but still somehow when you do run into it, you’re surprised to have struck it, and surprised that it hurts.
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