by Aimee Norin
“I told Mason about the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot back in the ‘60s.”
“What is that?” Simi asked.
“You don’t know? You’re not here for that?” Oceanna asked.
“What?”
“The Trans March. It’s in an hour. It’s associated with Pride weekend, here. Oldest trans march in the country. Transpeople of all sorts—”
“Lets go,” said Mason, standing confidently.
“Can we get to it in time?” Simi asked.
“Yes,” Oceanna said. “We take the bikes back to the hotel and catch a cab to Dolores Park. They’ll walk from there to Turk and Taylor, by our Hotel, where the riot was.”
Dolores Park was a popular spot for lesbian festivities during Pride weekend, and on Friday night before the parade was the Trans March.
The city had provided a route on city streets for them—partly on sidewalks, partly on streets, up Dolores then northeast on Market to Turk and Taylor, for what would be about a three mile walk of freedom.
The police were very helpful; San Francisco was a dream.
Oceanna looked around as they walked northeast up Market St. Beside her to the right, Simi looked at other marchers quizzically, glancing back and forth to people on sidewalks or leaning out windows. Mason walked on Oceanna’s left, doing the same thing, Simi’s eyes fell on a crossdresser walking farther to their left.
The lady looked back at Simi, then away.
Simi diverted her eyes, yet returned a critical gaze to the lady after only two seconds.
Oceanna chuckled her friends on both sides of her. “You’re both such noobs.”
Simi looked at Oceanna without comment, then back to people around her.
“Noob like what?” Mason asked.
“I think she means you’re new to this, sweetie. Haven’t been here before?” the lady on Mason’s left asked.
“Mason Winchester,” Mason said to her, extending his hand.
“Hila Mohammad,” the lady said in a thick accent, shaking his hand.
“Hi, too,” Oceanna said to her.
They waved at each other.
“You can call me ‘Hila,’” she said with a smile, moving a little closer to Mason for the walk. “So you’re new here?” she asked in her accent of both Mason and Simi. “Both of you?”
Simi was about to break her neck staring at Hila.
“She’s never been in a parade before,” Oceanna answered Hila. “She’s been in the Army. Just got out.”
“I could tell,” Hila said. “Where— Love to have you but curious— No, never mind. None of my business.”
“You Arabic?” Mason asked Hila.
“I’m not an Arab. Pashtun,” Hila said. “From Afghanistan.”
Oceanna looked sharply at Simi who was looking concerned at Hila.
Simi turned her face to look at people in office building windows.
Hila took out her iPhone and took a few seconds video of herself in the March.
“You mind?” Hila asked.
“What?” Oceanna asked.
Hila snapped a still photo of their group. “It’s for people back home. I am bisexual crossdresser—lots of fun, I am! Sharp as a whip! American idiom. Though I can’t tell Jason Segel from Seth Rogan.” Hila laughed to herself. “But they hate us there, so I want to show them.”
“You look sharp to me,” Oceanna said with a smile.
“You’re not on hormones?” Mason asked Hila.
“Not for me,” Hila said, absentmindedly while she pressed more icons on her phone. Hila commented in Mason’s country slang: “Winky don’t like that.”
“What?” Mason asked.
“I wouldn’t get erections as well on female hormones.” Hila leaned into Mason to speak quietly into his ear. “Fantasy role as a woman is a gas, honey, but I’m man in here. And I am good in bed.”
Hila struck a flashy pose for Mason and called to groups of people on the sidewalk. “Happy Trans Pride!”
* * *
A man and a woman sat in a rare, plush home in Afghanistan, watching morning news on a large, flat-screen T.V.
The man was hysterical. “It’s happening again, Wajia! Make it stop!”
“Asfand! I put it for you on the T.V.! Look: It’s our son! He thinks he’s woman again! See? I’ll play it again—”
“Aaaaaaaaah! No! America do this to him! Sick country! Make it stop! I knew you should not have let him watch the bird cage movie!”
“I loved Nathan Lane!” Wajia said.
* * *
“Afghanistan? My ancestors are from Germany, or Europe, anyway,” Oceanna said to Hila. “They all slept around so much I’m sure it doesn’t matter much to say.”
“England, here,” Mason said. “Or Ireland or Scotland. Hard to tell for mine, too.”
Simi said nothing.
“How long you been in the U.S.?” Oceanna asked Hila.
“Well, I went to college, here. Cornell. English and Marketing, or something close to it,” Hila said, looking uncomfortably at Simi. Turning to Oceanna, Hila asked more quietly, “Is everything alright? Should I leave?”
Simi stopped walking and looked at Hila.
The other three stopped with her. People in the march began to pass them.
No one talked.
Hila held out her hand to Simi who recoiled and started walking again with the march.
“Wait, Simi!” Oceanna followed her.
Hila looked at Mason.
“She doesn’t like C.D.s?” Hila asked, a painful look on her face. “A lot don’t.”
“Um,” Mason took her arm and led her back into the march, several paces behind Simi and Oceanna.
“What did I do? I do something? She thinks I’m an Arab?”
Mason didn’t so much shake his head as turn it, “no.” “It’s not that, Hila. Don’t worry about it on your end. You didn’t do anything.”
“So she just has issues?” Hila asked.
“Not like you think.”
“I’m insecure about Americans hate me. But I am not in that war that way!”
“You were in the war in Afghanistan though?” Mason asked.
“I was a captain in the U.S. Air Force, an interpreter.”
“As an immigrant?” Mason asked. “I mean about the Air Force.”
“I got my citizenship before I entered. I don’t have to explain myself to you—”
“No, no. Sorry. You don’t. It’s not that,” Mason said. “And, you know, it’s not her, either. I know her, and she doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s something else.”
“What else could it be?” Hila asked.
Mason said nothing, continued the march behind Oceanna and Simi.
Hila looked around, seemed uncomfortable. She started to leave, but Mason grabbed her by the arm and took Oceanna in the other, stopping them in their tracks.
“Guys,” Mason said.
Simi seemed to take offense, but stopped with them, staring at the pavement of Market St. beneath them. A trolley track ran beneath the group, between their feet.
“Sorry. Generic term for ‘people,’” Mason said.
Simi relaxed a little, yet still, without saying anything, turned to walk with the March.
Oceanna and Mason started walking with her, and Hila came along, too—largely because Mason wouldn’t let go of her hand.
They waved at people they passed on sidewalks.
“Happy Trans Pride,” Oceanna called out to some. “Happy Trans Pride,” she said to a shopkeeper in a corner store.
“Information is so spread around these days,” Oceanna said. “I’m surprised some internet search parasite hadn’t scanned everyone’s cell phone to tell businesses nearby all about us as we walk by. They could hang cokes out the windows for us to buy, or burritos or panties or something. Nothing private, though, right?”
Hila faked a cough and laughed a bit. “Actually, yes. I know what you mean.”
“You look guilty,” Maso
n said to her.
“Well,” Hila cringed. “Sometimes I meet some folks who may be guilty. Not me, but I’m in a related business.”
Some people on the sidewalk waved at Simi, and she waved back to them.
“Happy Trans Pride,” Oceanna said to them. “Don’t trip over a trolley track, there, Simi,” Oceanna said with a smile. There were trolley rails all up and down Market—which was also the parade route on Sunday.
Simi stepped to the side a little to avoid one.
“What do you do?” Mason asked Hila.
“I’m in marketing for the Giants, over at AT&T Park. A baseball team.” She pointed through the buildings to the east as if you could see it from there, took a little more video. “But I am not like some of the things you are beginning to hear about in business.”
“You mean like the proliferation of ‘cloud’ services?” Oceanna said. “Companies foot the bill ‘themselves,’ they say, for expensive cloud services in exchange for some convenience to a customer, getting all the customer’s personal and business information—and forgetting to tell people that if the cloud company can grow their information database on people, they can increase the size of their data-base sales contracts to other businesses and government. It’s a big business.”
“Yes, exactly that,” Hila said. “Take my photo?”
She handed her phone to Mason who stopped walking for a second to take a photo. Other transpersons crowded into the photo and screamed.
“Switch to video!” Hila yelled.
Mason did and took about five seconds worth of video.
Everyone in the shot screamed and laughed.
“Thank you!” Hila took her phone back and pressed a few more icons on it.
* * *
“Wajiaaaaaaa! It’s happening again!”
* * *
Simi walked along with them, turning her head to look at people and San Francisco.
“I think that’s right,” Hila said. “But medical privacy and its cloud is bigger problem today. People, other companies, knowing that you like to take pictures of your dog or of things you choose to share in email or on social media, is one thing—”
“I think anything that passes through cloud-based smart phones can wind up in the cloud and get data mined and profiled,” Oceanna said.
Hila acknowledged that with a nod. “But the medical community? It’s doctors who talk about you, who don’t even tell you all the time when they give you a new diagnosis, and who even make some up without telling you for bogus third party billing, that’s the problem. You tell them life is hard for trans, and they hit you for depression or suicide in their notes—justifies something else they’re doing? Then other doctors read that, later, and it hits the fan. You have doctors thinking you’re nuts when you’re not, and you don’t even know about it. Ask for your medical records, and you only get part of it. The rest is ‘accidentally’ left out or summarized. Doctors—you know—have as many issues as anybody else, and even illegal things happen all the time. I think it’s a bigger problem than most people think, but it’s kept quiet.”
“People should be able to log onto their own medical records at any time,” Oceanna said, “same as doctors, and people should be able to find out in that log, a record of everyone who views it.”
“Because it could be somebody who is not your doctor, but just wants to learn about you. Maybe a stalker. I guess I’m a little sensitive to that. I’m not only trans, I’m also Afghan, and there was a war. The system is so not set up right.”
Hila pressed more icons on her phone while she walked.
* * *
Another family in Afghanistan was watching T.V.
“Who is that?” a man asked.
“That’s Asfand and Wajia’s little girl!” the woman said. “See? There’s Asfand’s picture beside her, stuck in the same picture!”
“He is in woman’s clothes!”
* * *
The four walked together, more as a group than they had been.
Mason looked at the other marchers around him, people they’d pass on the sidewalk or waiting on perpendicular streets in cars. “You never know where life will take you.” He chuckled at himself.
“What is it?” Simi asked him, leaning in front of Oceanna so she could see him.
Mason looked at her then Oceanna. “Last week, I was just an ol’ country hick in Kingman, and this week, I’m in a Trans March with new friends in San Francisco.”
“That’s my boy,” Oceanna said, giving him a gentle clap on the back.
“He’s a new friend? You just met?” Hila seemed shocked. “Most people don’t want to hang with us.”
“Yep. Like, hardly know him,” Oceanna said.
“So why you here, Mason?” Hila asked.
“Well,” Mason looked lost in thought. “She,” he indicated Oceanna, “bought my old bike—former bike,” he said, teasing Oceanna, “And then Simi showed up on hers. And I was lookin’ for a good ride on my new hog—”
“Look at you!” Hila clapped him on the back also. “What kind?”
“What?” Mason asked
“What kind of bike?” Hila asked.
Mason dug out his cell phone to show her a picture.
“Nice,” Hila said. “What kind of fuel economy you get?”
“I think about 40-42, depending on my speed.”
“You going to stay for the parade on Sunday?” Hila asked.
“We’re going to be in it,” Oceanna said. Plan to be part of the bike contingent at the head of it.”
The march made a left forty-five turn onto Taylor and walked one short block to Turk.
The four of them stood among the marchers, presenters, and television crews and looked at the site of the ‘60s riot.
Simi said nothing, stood still, and stared at the old cafeteria building.
Mason looked at the people around them.
Oceanna looked alternately at the street and the people, reached out and put her arm around Simi.
“I’m too young,” Hila said. “All of us here were, but you, Oceanna? Did you know about the riot at the time?”
Oceanna shook her head. “It’s just ‘Osh.’ And no. I didn’t know of it. And that only makes it worse. This kind of crap was going on all over, and people didn’t know about it. Authorities, police, or jerks in society would call us names or hurt us, or even kill us, and people didn’t know or care.”
After the March, the four of them went in Hila’s car to El Rio, a club on Mission south of Cesar Chavez frequented by lesbians and transpersons. It was crowded that evening, after the trans march.
Hila walked in: unremarkable.
Oceanna walked in: unremarkable.
Simi walked in: drew attention to herself only because her noobie head was on a swivel.
Oceanna laughed at her.
Mason walked in, and everyone noticed immediately. “Ma’am,” he said to the bartender, tipping his cowboy hat to her. “This is a women’s bar?”
Ladies around him stared.
“Mason!” Oceanna took him by the arm and led him to the back, toward the patio.
“Excuse him. He’s new,” Hila said to some ladies, taking him by the other arm. “We bring him along in case we need a mechanic.”
“Ladies,” Mason said to them with a broad smile as he was hauled aft.
Out back on the patio, music played and people danced. Other people sat around and talked. Someone charbroiled dinner.
“Smells nice,” Mason said, looking at the grill.
A lady sat across the patio looking at them.
Simi glanced at the gal, then to her friends, then back…
Mason sat in a chair with his cowboy boots parked up on a railing, had his hat tipped back a little, smiling at everyone.
“Oh, my God, you look like Woody Harrelson,” someone said from their right.
“Well, I’m woody sometimes, anyways, Ma’am,” Mason said with a cheeky grin.
“No you’re not!
” she said. Turning to a friend, she asserted, “No, he’s not!”
“No, he’s not,” her friend agreed.
“But I’m friendly, just the same,” Mason said, tipping his hat to her also.
The ladies walked away, giggling.
Hila came back to them with refreshments, handing them each a glass. “Where’s Osh?”
“Bathroom,” Mason said.
Oceanna came back and sat in a chair next to them. “Nice place.”
“Yeah, it is.” Mason dropped his confident smile and leaned in to Oceanna and Hila with concern on his face. “How am I supposed to act in here?”
They smiled at his discomfort.
“I mean, I know they’re gay, and I don’t care. But I’m a man—who I think they can see is straight—and I don’t think I fit in. Are they going to mind I’m here?”
“No, you’re good,” Hila said. “Just be the wonderful Mason you are. You’re fine.”
“Really,” Oceanna said. “To get freaked out by you would be bigotry or prejudice, and you’re not going to get that here.”
Mason relaxed a little.
“My guess is,” Oceanna said, “that probably everyone of the people in here have known people in their life who treated them badly for being gay or trans or just different. It’s clear you’re one of those straight-arrow, heterosexual mythical beings from the world out there, and—hell—if I were to guess, I’d guess half of these gals would be thankful to God if you just turned out not to be prejudiced against them. You don’t have to do anything in here to be accepted: Don’t reject them, don’t condescend—”
Mason’s face made it clear he would never do that.
“—don’t dump on them, don’t put them down, don’t assume they’re weird.”
“Well,” Mason said, leaning back into his chair. “S’pose I wanted to dance? And I ask a gal to do that?”
“You actually dance?” Hila asked. “Straight men don’t dance.”
“A little two-step,” Mason answered.
Oceanna laughed. “Then you jus’ ask little ol’ me,” Oceanna said.
Mason’s smile grew broad. He stood up, settled his hat on his head proper, took Oceanna by the hand and led her to the D.J.
“’Scuse me, Ma’am,” he said to the D.J. “You got any Brad Paisley on that thing?”
The D.J. laughed at him. “I might. Which one?”
“How about ‘American Saturday Night’? Even though it’s Friday.”
“Sure do!” She said. She found it and let it play.