One in Every Crowd

by Ivan E. Coyote

  IMAGINE A PAIR OF BOOTS. A sturdy, well-made, kind of nondescript pair of boots. They are functional enough, but kind of plain. Imagine that you live in a country where every citizen is issued this one pair of boots at birth, and that there are no other footwear options permitted by law. If you grow out of or wear through the soles of these government-issued boots, you may trade them in for a new pair, always identical to your old ones. Imagine that everyone you know wears these very same boots without question or complaint.

  Now imagine that your right foot is two sizes bigger than your left one. That no matter what you do, one boot will chafe and the other will slip, and both will cause blisters. When you mention your discomfort you are told that odd-sized pairs of boots are forbidden, because they cause confusion and excess paperwork. It is explained to you that this footwear system works perfectly for everyone else, and reminded that there are people in other countries who have no boots at all. You are beat up in grade three because none of the other kids have ever seen feet like yours. The teacher tells you that you should probably just learn to keep your boots on. Your parents blame each other. You end up wearing an extra sock on your small foot to compensate, and never go to swimming pools. Your feet sweat profusely in the summer and you always undress in the dark. You hate your feet but need them to walk and stand up on. You hate your boots even more. You dream of things that look like sandals and moccasins, but you have no words for them. You learn things will be easier for you if you just never talk about your feet. One time on the bus, you spot a guy with the exact same limp as you, but you pretend not to see him. He watches you limp off at your bus stop and then looks the other way. You can’t stop thinking about the man with the limp for weeks. You are nineteen years old and until that day on the bus you thought you were the only person in the country who couldn’t fit into their boots.

  I have always felt this way about gender pronouns, that ‘she’ pinches a little and ‘he’ slips off me too easily. I’m often asked by well-intentioned people which pronoun I prefer, and I always say the same thing: that I don’t really have a preference, that neither pronoun really fits, but thank you for asking, all the same. Then I tell them they can call it like they see it, or mix it up a little if they wish. Or, they can try to avoid using he or she altogether. I suggest this even though I am fully aware of the fact it is almost impossible to talk about anything other than yourself or inanimate objects without using a gender-specific pronoun. It is especially hard at gigs, when the poor host has to get up and introduce me to the audience. No matter which pronoun the host goes with, there is always someone cringing in the crowd, convinced that an uncomfortable mistake has just been made. I know it would be easier if I just picked a pronoun and stuck with it, but that would be a compromise made for the comfort of everyone else but me. A decision that would inevitably leave me with a blister, or even a nasty rash.

  Perfect strangers have been asking me if I am a boy or a girl as far back as I can remember. Not all of them are polite about it. Some are just curious, others ask me like they have every right to know, as if my ambiguity is a personal insult to their otherwise completely understandable reality. Few of them seem to realize they have just interrupted my day to demand I give someone I don’t know personal information they don’t really need to sell me a movie ticket or a newspaper. I have learned the hard way to just answer the question politely, so they don’t think I’m rude. In my braver days, when someone asked if I was a boy or a girl, I would say something flip and witty, like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘makes you wonder, doesn’t it?,’ but I found that this type of tactic greatly increased the chances I would get the living shit kicked out of me, so I eventually knocked it off. Then I went through a phase where I would answer calmly, and then casually ask them something equally as personal, such as did they have chest hair or were they satisfied with the size of their penis or were those their real breasts, just so they would see how it felt, but this proved just as ineffective.

  A couple of months ago, as I was smoking outside the Anza Club after a gig, this young guy marched up and interrupted the person I was talking with to ask me if I was a man or a woman. I told him I was a primarily estrogen-based organism, and then I asked him the exact same question. He took two steps back and dropped his jaw.

  “I’m a man.” He seemed visibly shaken by the thought of any other option.

  “And were you just born male?” I continued, winking at my companion.

  “Well, yeah, of course I was.”

  “How interesting.” I lit another smoke.

  “Hard to tell these days,” my friend chimed in.

  The guy walked off, looking confused and kind of vulnerable.

  “He’s gone home to grow a moustache,” my buddy said, then laughed and shook his head.

  I thought about it all later, how the guy’s ego had crumpled right in front of us, just because a stranger had questioned his masculinity. How scared he was of not being a real man, how easy it had been to take him down. It dawned on me that if you’ve never had a blister, then you’ll never have a callus, either. And if your soles are too soft, then you are fucked if you ever lose your boots.

  The Bathroom Chronicles

  LATELY, I FIND MYSELF ON THE ROAD A LOT. Sleeping in beds unfamiliar with the shape of me, feeling along strange walls to find the light switch in the dark, waking up to wonder at a ceiling I’ve never seen before in the daylight of a different town. Wearing the same pair of pants for a week and running my fingers over a calling card in my pocket when I miss my girlfriend. Airports and a highway and little tiny soaps and MapQuest and gas stations. Always gas stations. Because no matter where you are, or how much time you have until you have to be somewhere else, you’re going to need gas, and someone always has to pee.

  For me, the best gas station bathroom scenario is the single stall version with the sturdy locking door with a sign on it that says men-slash-women and you don’t have to ask for the key first. These are the bathrooms most conducive to a stress-free urination experience for me, for a number of reasons. First of all, you don’t need to ask for the key. The key for the gas station bathroom is usually somewhat wet for some reason, which I find unsanitary and disturbing, and is invariably tied or chained to a filthy germ-harbouring item which is hard to pocket or lose, such as a piece of hockey stick, a giant spoon, or a tire iron. You have to ask for the key from the either bored or harried and always underpaid guy behind the counter, and if there are two keys, one for the men’s and another for the women’s, then the cashier has either no time if there’s a line-up, or lots of time if things are slow, to decide for himself which key he should give you. Keep in mind that he is probably feeling unfulfilled about the fact that he is ten times more likely to be robbed at gunpoint than he is to get a raise anytime in the near future, and that deciding which washroom he thinks I should be using is the most arbitrary power he’s been afforded by this job since he caught that twelve-year-old shoplifting condoms and decided not to call the cops because at least the kid was stealing responsibly.

  So this is the guy who gets to decide where I get to pee. I have learned that asking for the key to a specific washroom will only increase the odds that he will notice that the washroom I wish to enter doesn’t match the hair or voice or footwear of the person he sees in front of him. Maybe he couldn’t care less which bathroom I use, maybe his favourite sister is a dyke. But maybe his religion tells him I am damned, maybe him and his buddies almost killed a guy once for wearing a pink shirt, just in case he was a queer, just for fun. Maybe he dreamt of kissing his best friend all the way through grade eight but never did, and he hates me because I remind him of how scared he is of his own insides. I cannot know his mind. I am in a strange town, and something about me doesn’t fit. It is best if I let him decide, and don’t draw attention, or alert anyone in the line-up behind me to his conundrum.

  Maybe you think I’m just paranoid, that I’m a drama queen, or that I exaggerate to make a point. I would say good fo
r you, that your gender or skin colour or economic status have allowed you to feel safe enough that you still think the rest of us are making this stuff up. You probably don’t even realize how lucky you are to be able to not believe me when I tell you that every time I have to pee in a public bathroom, I also take a risk that someone will take issue with me being somewhere they believe to be the wrong room, depending on who they mistook me to be, based solely on that first quick glance.

  I can pray for a wheelchair-accessible stall, or one of the ungendered kind with a baby-changing station in it, and then hope that no one is waiting there when I slip out, able-bodied and childless. I can cross my fingers that the ladies’ room is empty, or bolt quietly for the closest empty stall if it is not. Unfortunately, women and children have many good reasons to fear what they think is a man in their washroom. I have learned to be more forgiving of their concern, and try not to take any hostility too personally. They only want the same thing I’m looking for: a safe place to pull down their pants and pee.

  I can hold my nose and use the men’s room, and if I’m lucky there will be a seat on the toilet and the guy who comes in to use the urinal will not be the type who hates slightly effeminate men, or the type who likes them a little too much. In men’s rooms, I squat and pee quickly, simultaneously relieved and terrified when I am alone.

  Over the years I have learned a few techniques, like not drinking pop in movie theatres and holding my pee for probably unhealthy lengths of time. I do my best to be polite and non-confrontational, even when confronted or questioned rudely. One of my favourite methods is to enter the women’s room with a preferably ladylike companion who has been previously instructed to ask me if I have a tampon in my purse. I answer her in the most demure and feminine tone I can muster that I left my purse in the car, or that I’m down to my last pantyliner, and dash for the first open stall.

  Just recently, I accidentally improvised the perfect line to deliver to the nice but confused lady that I often meet on my way out of the gas station bathroom. She was standing with her hand on the half-open door, looking first at me and then again at the sign that said “Women” on it. She was in her later sixties, and I felt bad that I had startled her, or maybe made her feel even for a moment that she was lost, or in the men’s room, where she might not be safe. That I had scared an old woman with a full bladder. Again.

  “It’s okay,” I smiled and said calmly. “It’s just me.”

  Dear Lady in the Women’s Washroom

  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.

  Truth Story

  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 ne
ed 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.