Bathroom/trans stuff

[beandelphiki]

Over the past several weeks, I've gradually gotten the sense that my use of the men's washroom is not going totally unnoticed, that some people are reading me as female and think it's odd. I've been trying to reassure myself that this is a touch of paranoia, and while it's to be expected in my situation (in fact, is necessary), it's really my imagination. I'm not so sure anymore.

Last week was my first week back to school after the exam break, and while I was coming out of the washroom just off the cafeteria one day last week, I ran into Chinook's security guard going in.

He's always in the school; I must see him 3 or 4 times a day in the halls. If I'd been lucky, maybe I would never have talked to him. But unfortunately for me, he came across me one day standing by the coffee machine trying to wipe spilled french vanilla coffee off the front. I'd been pulling my drink out, and it caught and spilled coffee all over the floor, the machine, and up my arm. Naturally, that hurt. You know it's going to hurt a lot from the signs on the machine. ("Caution! Coffee is heated to a zillion degrees Fahrenheit! Will burn if it melts the cup!") I was squeaking in pain. Like my voice isn't high enough as it is, right?

I keep thinking he would have mentally brushed off my presence in the men's if it hadn't been for that day, but I'm probably kidding myself. I'm in a school full of adults getting their high school courses - most people here are well into their twenties. With an age range like that, it's not surprising I stand out. I look like I should be going into my freshman year of high school, and that's trying to present as female, yet.

I don't look like a boy, let's face it. I look like a dyke.

So I came out of the bathroom, and he went in, and as he did, he did a triple take. I got the hell out of there before he could ask me any questions. Eating my lunch a little later, I kept trying to convince myself that it was funny. Did you see his face, haha. But it really wasn't funny at all.

I've been trying to avoid him ever since, but yesterday he chased me up a flight of stairs and said, "Are you aware that you've been using the men's washroom?" Uh, no. The urinals didn't tip me off, or anything.

(God, it reminds me of when I used to use the women's, and I would have women informing me while I was in there that I was in the women's, hellointhere. No! You don't say! It's as if these people think that my inability to present an obvious gender somehow confers an inability to tell one sex from the other. Or an inability to read signs.)

I nodded at Mr. Security, and he said something like, "Okay, just checking," but I don't feel the slightest bit better. I went through my wallet last night, taking out my Alberta ID card and stuffing it behind everything else. If he asks, I have my Chinook ID, with my male name on it, and no damning "Gender: F" on it.

I certainly can't go back to the women's after two years of pissing in the guy's, but god, now I don't feel okay going to the bathroom anywhere.

Why can't people mind their own damn business?