Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

38 - Crunchberry Razorscooter

September, 2011

In my life, I had not been privy to many secrets. Not because people feared I would betray their confidence, but because they feared I would judge them harshly. I wouldn't have, but given the hypercritical persona I had created for myself — for instance, if you used the word majority when you really meant plurality I would be all over your ass — I can understand why they thought that. As a result any furtive information that came my way tended to be third- or fourth-hand and I was like the guy who didn't get around to watching The Sixth Sense until it came out on video.

Hey, guys! Can you believe that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time?

Yes, Aaron. And also Rosebud was a sled, the Planet of the Apes was really Earth and Soylent Green was people. Thanks for the news flash, Rip Van Winkle.

(I am a firm believer that you don't have to say spoiler alert for movies that have been out for decades.)

But this time it was different. I knew Tom's secret long before just about anybody. And it wasn't just a secret, it was a huge secret, a powerful secret, a secret that breathed fire and knocked down skyscrapers in downtown Tokyo. A secret that once unleashed could destroy everything.

And what I came to discover was that once Tom let me in on his secret, and the endless lies that accompanied it — lies of self-protection, lies of necessity, lies of habit — not only did his secret become my secret, but his lies became my lies, too. When my friends casually inquired about how Tom was doing, I lied. When co-workers asked me why, in the credits, he was suddenly T.J. Gilmore, rather than Thomas Gilmore as he had been for the past twenty years, I lied. When asked about Tom's bouts of moodiness, I lied. And later, when Tom's physical changes became more noticeable — particularly the weight gain and what some people uncharitably described as "man boobs" (which were really proto-lady boobs, the product of estrogen therapy) — I lied my fucking ass off.

In a sense Tom had not really come out to me; he had, to use LGBT activist Dan Savage's terminology, pulled me into the closet with him. And it was suffocating.

I was not, as was previously established, the friendliest guy on the planet, but I tended to be forthcoming with my personal information. Sometimes too forthcoming — for instance, it turned out that not everyone wanted to hear the story of my vasectomy (in short: a public restroom, a stall with a broken lock, a very surprised very old man walking in on me at a very inopportune moment) — but I enjoyed the simplicity of candor.

During my stint in Tom's vestiary I started to understand why he had a tendency to be emotionally walled off. Because the more he revealed of herself, the more he risked people figuring out his secret. Knowing that I too had the potential to divulge Tom's secret, I did my best to keep my lies as uncomplicated and vague as I could. I desperately wanted to tell people, to let them share my burden, but I was also determined to make sure that when Tom did come out, it would be on her terms.

So, I lied.

Of course what Tom was experiencing made my difficulties pale in comparison. More than ever, Tom was leading a double life. She now spent a fair amount of time dressed as a woman: When she went to see her therapist, or visited a trans-friendly bar or, increasingly, simply out in public in parts of the city where she was unlikely to be recognized (and there were some close calls; it's amazing how often you can randomly run into someone you know in a city of four million people). The rest of the time — when she was at the office or with her kids or with me, she was dressed like a man.

As a result, she was constantly switching back and forth, Mrs. Doubtfire style, changing in the car at a red light, applying lipstick (or wiping it off) with the aid of a visor mirror, double-checking in the parking lot to make certain that her current footwear was gender-appropriate. It had to be tremendously draining. Not just the endless quick changes, but even the simplest questions were fraught with peril.