Trans people have a tendency to unknowingly find each other which can make for some awkward but funny encounters. In the spring of 2020 a friend of mine’s estranged son, M-, was living in my guest room because he needed someone to take him in and I pitied the kid. On weekends he would occasionally have a group of friends and coworkers over for D&D, until Covid put a damper on that.

As the first wave of lockdowns were coming to a close there was an unexpected knock at my front door one after noon. I wasn’t exactly closeted, I just didn’t have many opportunities to encounter new people while presenting feminine, so was wearing a dress and didn’t give it a second thought when answering the door. One of the D&D kids was standing on my door step holding a cardboard, they explained it was a box of mini’s for M-. I thanked them for the delivery and went back to working in my office. As I was walking back to the office I overheard my parent’s in law discussing, was that person that dropped off the box a boy or a girl, before concluding they were definitely a boy with long hair.

Unbeknownst to me across town a young woman was hurrying back to her apartment to report to her girlfriend the strange encounter she just had. “I think [deadname] is trans” C- said when she arrived back home. “Wait! What? What happened?” D- asked in response. “I was just over at their house dropping off the box of mini’s for M- and they were wearing a dress and didn’t bat an eye about it.” C- explained. “Just because they were wearing a dress doesn’t mean they’re trans” D- retorted. “Well, I’m going send them a friend request on Facebook and see what happens.” C- said. “Honey, they don’t know who you are, that might freak them out a bit. Let me send one too, they know who I am.” D- pointed out.

A few days later I woke up to a pair of Facebook friend requests. One of them was from a gal who volunteered at the same Girl Scout summer camp as me, the second one was from a person who had heavily filtered profile picture set on a trans banner. The only mutual friend I had with the second person was the first. I shrugged and said screw it she’s trans, and probably also a Girl Scout volunteer, so I’ll accept her friend request even if I don’t actually know who she is.

Soon curiosity and guilt got the better of me, I messaged C-, “Hey I’m sorry, I assume we’ve met before but I can’t exactly place where I know you from. Do you volunteer at the Girl Scout camp?” “Nope, I’m not with the Girl Scouts” she replied. “Oh, uh where do I know you from?” I asked. There was a long lag. The reply was a picture of my house shot from the drivers seat of a car parked at the bottom of the driveway, M- is sitting in the passenger seat. Ok, well that’s creepy. After a delay that probably wasn’t as long as it felt, the caption to the picture arrived “I’m one of M-‘s coworkers”. Ok that’s still weird but probably the best possible explanation given the circumstances. From there the conversation got a bit more casual, what are your pronouns, what’s your actual name. Yay, my first trans friend, I still wasn’t exactly sure which of the coworkers she was.

Two more days passed before curiosity got the better of me again I messaged C- again, “Hey, sorry to be a bother but I’m still not sure exactly who you are, is anything else you can tell me to help place you?” She gave a non answer that moved the conversation into more small talk. A bit later I realized she was describing the glassware in my kitchen, she had definitely been in my house before. I stopped and considered the things I knew, I knew M- got rides to work generally from two people. I looked the first up on Facebook, no that didn’t seem right nothing fit, I moved on to the second same hair color, same birthday… oh… also D-‘s “boyfriend”. I made the connection back to getting both friend requests at once. I knew exactly who she was, and yeah she had been in my house, twice a month for the six months or so prior to the pandemic. And had been by about a week ago to drop off a box of minis.

I told her I had felt bad that I had done a bit of digging because the whole describing my kitchen to me thing freaked me out a bit, but now knew that she was D-‘s girlfriend. She wasn’t upset with my bit of sleuthing and thought it was all in the spirit of her own messing with me. Despite being younger than me in calendar years, she was several years ahead of me in trans time and would go on to be a good friend and helpful resource in my trying to navigate how to gender.

I didn’t hear about the interlude of C- rushing home to discuss her discovery with D- until two years later when D- and I were chatting over lunch at camp this last summer. She thought it was on brand that C- had never thought to explain her side of the story to me, I’m inclined to agree.

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Filed under: Auto-biographical - @ 2023-01-13 15:29

Tags: FridayNightStoryTime, Trans