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

40 - Eventually Ninjas

August, 2011

I had come to dread Fridays. Specifically, the end of the workday when we were just about to head home. Because if Tom was going to drop a bombshell, that's when she preferred to do it. It didn't happen a lot; just enough that whenever I made it to my car without having a serious discussion about Tom's transition, it felt like a jailbreak.

"Can I talk to you, real quick?" Tom said, affecting a casual air belied by the now-familiar crack in her voice.

With my back to Tom I silently mouthed the word shit, then turned towards her. "Sure," I said with something approximating a smile.

"We're working at my house tomorrow, right?" Indeed we were. Tom and I spent our weekdays working in a managerial capacity. If we wanted to do writing of our own — which, frankly, had become our least favorite part of the job — we needed to work weekends.

I nodded.

"Well, I was thinking that when you came over, I'd be... dressed."

"As opposed to...?" I wasn't being a smart-ass. It just took me a moment to understand what she meant. Dressed. As a woman.

"Oh. Right," I said, embarrassed by my obtuseness. "Duh."

"I just think it's time to move forward," she said. "If that's cool with you."A beleaguered breath escaped my lips, taking both of us by surprise. She cocked her head in confusion. "What?"

"Nothing, I—" I tried, but failed to articulate what I was feeling. "Can we hold off a little longer?"

She frowned. "Why?"

"Because," I said, an icy edge creeping into my voice, "I'd like to hold off a little longer." After all the unqualified support I had given her I was offended that she would begrudge me this.

Tom, it seems, came to the same conclusion. "Sure," she said. "No problem."

Looking back, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that I was being a dick. And sure, yes, guilty. But every step of the way, the decisions, and timing, were Tom's. As it of course should have been. But in that moment I wanted — and in this sense I find me very sympathetic — to gain some semblance of control. Tom was hurtling towards womanhood at what felt to me like breakneck speeds while Operation Man Shit still was mired in the mud.

My gun — now languishing, lonely and unloaded, in the darkness of a gun safe — had not accomplished what I wanted. Which begged the question, What exactly did I want?

It was hard to say. Although I had a pretty good grasp on what I didn't want, starting with the most ubiquitous form of Man Shit, watching sports. Which was, in a sense, a shame because it would have been a tremendous help with my corollary quest of acquiring male friends. (And, as a bonus, I'd finally have something in common with my father-in-law.) Because sports talk was the conversational adhesive that bonded men.

Did you see the game last night?

Yeah! Can you believe that call?

I know! Worst call ever!

Definitely! (They kiss.)

Whereas, with me it generally went like this:

Did you see the game last night?

No.

Whatever, faggot.

OK, no one actually said those words, but boy was it implied. They reacted to my disinterest in televised athletics with a strange mixture of shock, revulsion and condemnation, as if my name had just popped up on a registry for sex offenders. I didn't understand, honestly, what watching sports had to do with masculinity. It was an entirely passive preoccupation and yet I so frequently heard guys using the word we when they were talking about their favorite teams.