The things we do to be seen…
The other day I went over to a buddy’s house and used the bathroom. The toilet seat was up, as it probably had been, for the most part, since his wife and children left town. If it were a public toilet, I would’ve squatted, but being inside a person’s house, I decided to put the seat down and actually sit. Afterward, I wondered whether to put the seat back up. Generally speaking, I’m not entirely convinced that down should be the standard position. It’s certainly cleaner, nicer, and more respectable, but should a guy really have to do the work of raising and lowering the seat every time? However, that’s not my point. Down tends to be the default position, and having already spent way too much time in the bathroom thinking about toilet seats, I left it down, the way I used it.
Over dinner, my buddy, who hadn’t seen me in several months, said my voice is way deeper and my jawline has hardened. (I was wearing too many layers for him to see the thickening of my chest.) I was a tiny bit on edge since I don’t see him very often, and even though he was the very first person to call me Nick, based on a personal essay I wrote two years before I adopted it, he tends to get caught up in the moment and relapse on the name thing. But all was smooth on the gender front, until he referred to me as “she” to the waitress. Twice.
I felt myself crumble, my whole body collapsing under the slight he didn’t even notice. The pronoun thing didn’t used to bother me as much, and I think that maybe because I’m more certain of myself than ever before, it’s become even more deflating to see my sense of self go unacknowledged. I feel looked through, invisible, and I shrink. I’m not entirely sure why I don’t always correct people, either at the time or later. Maybe it happens too often, or maybe it’s too painful, exhausting, annoying, frustrating, confrontational, and endless. Maybe I’m too weak to bear it, or strong enough to handle it, or I tend to implode rather than explode. Maybe I’m just tired of explaining what I want to be recognized and am relying on a hormone to, eventually, do the work for me.
After dinner, we went back to my friend’s house. This time when I went into the bathroom, I made sure to leave the toilet seat up. As I raised it, I wondered which was more ridiculous: my actions or the lengths that I have to go to to make others see me.