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

42 - Get This Party Started!

September, 2011

It was a Friday (of course) when Tom apprised me of her timeline for coming out.

She was going to wait until the 23rd of December, the last work day of the year. She'd first tell the high-level executives at DuckGoose in the morning — a courtesy, and also a savvy bit of office politics— and then make an announcement to everyone else in the company later in the day, when everyone was already in a really good mood. The idea was that we'd all have a week-and-a-half off for Christmas vacation which would give everyone plenty of time to get used to the idea before they met Tamara in January. New Year, fresh start.

"Does that work for you?" she asked. I knew that her question wasn't really a question, but a goodwill gesture to give me the illusion of empowerment which I genuinely appreciated.

I took out my iPhone and called up the calendar. "Unfortunately,"I deadpanned, "I am booked solid through the end of January. Would you mind holding off until Groundhog's Day?"

Tom narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "And if I see my own shadow I have stay in the closet for six more weeks, right?"

I smiled and shrugged innocently. "Hey, I didn't make the rules."

"Nice try, Aaron," he laughed. "Nice try."

My smile faded as my mind wandered. I turned back to my computer, absently clicking around the web. Tom was still talking, but I was just watching random images as they popped up on the screen. LOLCats. Some stupendously fat baby. Muammar Qadaffi being torn apart by an mob. Skyrim. Ashton Kutcher.

"Is that cool?" Tom asked.

Even though I hadn't been listening, I had still managed to absorb a few key words, enough to let me know that she also wanted to bring our lawyer, Jerry, into the loop. Have him look at our contract to make sure transgender wasn't a fireable offense. We both thought it unlikely — we lived in California, not Alabama or Idaho or Kentucky or Montana or Kansas or Georgia or Ohio or Wisconsin or West Virginia or Missouri or Alaska or Wyoming or Oklahoma or South Carolina or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Virginia or Arkansas or Nebraska or South Dakota or Louisiana or Florida or Michigan or North Carolina or Arizona or North Dakota or Texas — but Tom felt it couldn't hurt to check. And, besides, as our attorney, Jerry was legally bound to keep our confidence.

"Yeah," I said absently. "Jerry's great."

Tom looked at me. "You OK? You seem distracted. And that's really more my thing."

"No," I said. "I'm good." And then I changed the subject back to Tom. "Any idea how you're going to break the news to everybody?"

"I'm thinking maybe a song."

"Lola?"

"A little on the head, don't you think?"

(You see, Millennials, Lola is a very famous classic rock song by The Kinks about a transgender woman. Weird Al did a parody of it called Yoda.)

"Dude Looks Like a Lady? Walk On The Wild Side?" He gave me an impatient look. "I'll keep thinking."

"God," he said, "it'll be such a relief not to have to keep secrets anymore."

"For me, too," I said.

Which was ironic, actually, because for the first time in my life, I was keeping a secret of my own.

After that day when Tamara came to our house for the first time, and Samantha had bristled at my breezy assumption that that she was was perfectly fine with my lack of compliments, things deteriorated rapidly.